World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1989, English
Softcover, 262 pages, 24 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Allen & Unwin / NSW
$45.00 - Out of stock
First 1989 edition of "Sexual Subversions" by Australian philosopher Elizabeth Grosz, introducing the works of three well known, if not well-read, French feminists: Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Michèle Le Dœuff. It provides a map of an area where there are few detailed discussion of the achievements of these difficult, yet immensely rewarding, writers. In doing so, this overview raises issues of general relevance to feminist research: it participates in debates around the nature of feminist theory, the relations feminist intellectuals have to male dominated knowledges, and the strategies appropriate for developing non patriarchal, autonomous or woman-centred knowledges. No book in French feminists would be complete without including the contributions of Kristeva and Irigaray. The inclusion of Le Deouff's work, which brings a different perspective to bear on the question of sexual difference, provides a counterbalance to literary appropriations of French feminism by Anglo-American readerships. Kristeva, Irigaray and Le Deouff are the focal points of this study, precisely because each highlights the differences of the others, revealing the frameworks to which the others are committed. Nevertheless, while these writers do not present a common political or theoretical position or form a school, each addresses the question of women's autonomy from male definition, affirms the sexual specificity of women, seeks out a femininity women can use to question the patriarchal norms and ideals of femininity and rejects the preordained positions patriarchy allots to women.
Table of Contents
1 Modern French philosophy, 2 Julia Kristeva and the speaking subject, :1 .Julia Kristeva: Abjection, motherhood and love 4 Luce Irigaray and sexual difference 5 Luce Irigaray and the ethics of alterity 6 Michele Le Doeuff and the philosophical imaginary
Elizabeth Grosz is an Australian philosopher, feminist theorist, taught philosophy at the University of Sydney at the time of publishing. Among the many works to which she has contributed are "Feminist Challenges" and "Crossing Boundaries". She is Jean Fox O'Barr Women's Studies Professor at Duke University.
Very Good copy with light cover reading wear to boards.
2018, English
Softcover, 162 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
Published by
Bottle of Smoke Press / New York
$35.00 - Out of stock
THE NEW NIHILISM contains 13 new essays on a variety of anarchist-related themes; nihilism, comix (and their relationship to anarchist philosophy), class, environmentalism, modern medicine, law (and the lack of justice), crime, modern media, celtomania, late style, and MUCH more. An important and fascinating book that will change the way that you see the world. A must-read for followers of Mr. Wilson's work or anyone interested in opening their minds to un-filtered reality of life and the way the modern world really works.This book will open your eyes. A very important work from an important author and thinker.
Rear cover blurb and author photo by Gerard Malanga.
1992, English
Softcover, 410 pages, 23.17 x 16.66 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$45.00 - Out of stock
From incest to infanticide, from breast-feeding and women's sexuality to female prostitution, from pornography to reproductive politics, and from the first homosexual rights movement to AIDS—this anthology addresses these and other crucial questions concerning the regulation of sexuality: How have society's values and attitudes toward sexuality and morality changed over the centuries? Why and how has the state sought to criminalize certain forms of sexual behavior and to control reproduction? How have churches tried to influence the state in its regulation of sexuality?
Contributions from a diverse group of prominent scholars representing a variety of disciplines are included in this anthology that spans European history. Essays by Randolph Trumbach on "Sex, Gender, and Identity in Modern Culture: Male Sodomy and Female Prostitution in Enlightenment London"; Ruth Perry on "Colonizing the Breast: Sexuality and Maternity in Eighteenth Century England"; Theo van der Meer on "Female Same-Sex Offenders in Late Eighteenth Century Amsterdam"; Robin Ann Sheets on "Pornography, Fairy Tales, and Feminism: Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber'"; and James W. Jones on "Discourses on and of AIDS in West Germany, 1986-1990." Offering the most up-to-date scholarship from a significant and growing field, this collection is essential for both students and faculty in social history, family history, women's and gender studies, gay studies, sociology and literature. These essays were originally published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality.
John C. Fout is professor of history at Bard College. He is the founding editor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality, and general editor of The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society, a book series published by the University of Chicago Press.
Very Good copy.
2014 / 2022, English
Softcover, 92 pages, 14.5 x 21.8 cm
Published by
Zero Books / UK
$29.00 - Out of stock
After 1989, capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political economic system. What effects has this 'capitalist realism' had on work, culture, education and mental health? Is it possible to imagine an alternative to capitalism that is not some throwback to discredited models of state control?
"The beauty of Mark Fisher's laser sharp critique of the destructive effects of life under Neo-Liberalism was that it spoke to ordinary people in plain language that went beyond the often hermetic intellectual world of Academia. He is greatly missed. We need voices like Mark's more than ever."—Bobby Gillespie, Primal Scream”
Mark Fisher is highly respected both as a music writer and a theorist. He writes regularly for The Wire, frieze, New Statesman, and Sight & Sound. He is a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, University Of London, and maintains one of the most successful weblogs on cultural theory, k-punk (http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org)
1996, English
Softcover, 150 pages, 21.6 x 16.5 cm
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$65.00 - Out of stock
"This book saved my life." So recalls the Romanian philosopher E. M. Cioran about a book that meditates on madness and death, the absurdity of existence, and the agony of consciousness. Cioran finds in our darkest fears not only reasons to continue living but also the comic, absurd humor in doing so. This early work by Cioran, whom Susan Sontag calls "the most distinguished figure in the tradition of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein, " and Marc Fumaroli recently described as "a legend...a master of French prose, " portrays the philosophical mind in the crisis of its self-consuming fever. Born out of a terrible insomnia which Cioran characterizes as "a dizzying lucidity which would turn even paradise into hell, " On the Heights of Despair was written in Romania in 1934 at the age of twenty-two. It presents us with the youthful Cioran, who described himself as "a Nietzsche still complete with his Zarathustra, his poses, his mystical clown's tricks, a whole circus of the heights." It also presents Cioran as a connoisseur of apocalypse, a theoretician of despair. For Cioran, writing and philosophy are closely related to physical suffering: both share the "lyrical virtues" that alone lead to metaphysical revelation. The result is a book that becomes a substitute for as well as an antidote to suicide. By enacting the struggle of the Romantic soul against God, the universe, and itself, Cioran releases a saving burst of lyrical energy that carries him safely out of his desperation. On the Heights of Despair shows the philosopher's first grappling with themes he would return to in his mature works: despair and decay, absurdity and alienation, futility and the irrationality of existence.
Emil Mihai Cioran (1911—1995) was a Romanian-born French philosopher and essayist, and author of some two dozen books of savage, unsettling beauty. His works frequently engaged with issues of suffering, decay, and nihilism. For some, he was one of the most subversive thinkers of his time — a 20th-century Nietzsche, only darker and with a better sense of humor. His work has been noted for its pervasive philosophical pessimism, and whimsical, unsystematic, fragmentary style; he is celebrated as one of the great masters of aphorism. He called himself “un homme de fragment.” From the age of 20, Cioran began to suffer from insomnia, a condition which he suffered from for the rest of his life, and permeated his writings. In 1937, Cioran moved to the Latin Quarter of Paris, which became his permanent residence, wherein he lived in seclusion with his partner, Simone Boué, avoiding the public, but still maintained contact with numerous friends, including Mircea Eliade, Eugène Ionesco, Paul Celan, Samuel Beckett, Henri Michaux and Fernando Savater.
1982, English
Softcover, 262 pages, 21 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Johns Hopkins University Press / Baltimore
$45.00 - In stock -
Scarce first paperback edition of Guy Davenport's first book, Tatlin!, a collection of six stories, published by John Hopkins in 1982. When American author, artist, and professor, Guy Davenport (1927—2005) wasn't producing essays and commentary about his friend Ezra Pound, Balthus, Homer, Paul Cadmus, or Charles Burchfield, the devotee of the French utopian philosopher Charles Fourier was producing original fiction works both deeply edifying and unclassifiable.
Tatlin!, Guy Davenport's first collection of fiction, draws on history (real or imagined) to re-create events from the lives of characters as diverse as Franz Kafka, the Soviet engineer-painter-theoretician Tatlin, and the ancient Greek philosopher Herakleitos. These six stories are unified by their dominant themes: that the modern is a renaissance of the archaic, that our age is in a quandary as to what is animate and what is inanimate, that the belief that time can be reversed might be more congenial to mankind than reiterated mechanization. Davenport's tales are brilliant—and always surprising.
Guy Davenport was a writer, illustrator, teacher, and scholar. He is best known for his modernist-style short stories, but his range of works is wide, spanning poetry, translation, and criticism. He was a professor of English for three decades, having taught at Haverford College and the University of Kentucky.
Davenport published over 40 books, among them collections of short stories, translations from the Greek, illustrated works, a novel, and critical studies on literature, culture, and art. Among his five collections of poems are Flowers and Leaves (1966; 1991) and Thasos and Ohio: Poems and Translations, 1950–1980 (1986). He received a MacArthur fellowship, an O. Henry Award, and the Morton Dauwen Zabel award for fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Very Good copy.
1972, English
Softcover, 330 pages, 18 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Doubleday Anchor / US
$25.00 - Out of stock
First 1972 edition of The Structuralists from Marx to Lévi-Strauss, edited by Richard and Fernande DeGeorge and published by Anchor Books. Barthes, Marx, Freud, Saussure, Lacan, Foucault, Jakobson, Althusser...
"The first purpose of this volume is to make representative writings from the most eminent structuralist thinkers easily available. They represent a variety of fields and have, in a sense, pioneered a new approach; they are consequently interdisciplinary sources of valuable insights. The second purpose is to help place structuralism in a historical perspective. Marx, Freud, and Saussure are frequently ignored as precursors of present-day structuralism, and yet they developed many of the techniques used and elaborated upon by present scholars."
Good copy.
1981, English
Softcover, 90 pages, 212.5 x 13.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Routledge & Kegan Paul / London
$25.00 - Out of stock
The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus first appeared in 1921 and was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully-numbered paragraphs of extreme compression and brilliance it immediately convinced many of its readers and captured the imagination of all. Its chief influence, at first, was on the Logical Positivists of the 1920's and 30's, but many other philosophers were stimulated by its philosophy of language, finding attractive, even if ultimately unsatisfactory, its view that propositions were pictures of reality. Perhaps most of all, its own author, after his return to philosophy in the late 1920's, was fascinated by its vision of an inexpressible, crystalline world of logical relationships. The posthumous publication of other writings of his has, therefore, only served to reawaken interest in the Tractatus and to illuminate its more neglected aspects.
In the present edition Mr Pears and Mr McGuinness have been able to revise their translation in the light of Wittgenstein's own suggestions and comments in his correspondence with C. K. Ogden about the first translation.
Introduction by Bertrand Russell.
'Mr Pears and Mr McGuinness have not only achieved a clear and natural English but have been meticulous in their care for accuracy. They have added an index which will be of great value to close students of the work.'—The Times Literary Supplement
'Pears and McGuinness can claim our gratitude not for doing merely this (a better translation) but for doing it with such a near approach to perfection. The present reviewer can find little or nothing of consequence wrong with their work'—Mind
G—VG copy with light edge wear and tanning to cover edge. 1981 edition.
1998, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Temple University Press / Philadelphia
$18.00 - In stock -
First 1989 Edition.
Ludwig Wittgenstein conceived of philosophy as beneficially destructive: its purpose was to remove blocks to the understanding, to destroy "houses of cards," to eliminate philosophical muddles. Rather than providing solutions to philosophical problems—the mind-body problem, the problem of other minds, the problem of skepticism, the problem of universals—Wittgensteinian philosophy tries to show that the problems are nonsensical. This controversial philosopher has been the object of intense scrutiny—both professional and popular—and widely divergent interpretations. In this 100th anniversary of Wittgenstein's birth, Ronald Suter offers a highly accessible account of the thought of one of the most influential Anglo-American philosophers of the twentieth century.
Focusing on his mature conception of philosophy and the application of his philosophical methods to traditional and contemporary debates, Suter shows how Wittgenstein's philosophy can be applied to many philosophical problems. He gives an account of the doctrine of family resemblance and discusses Wittgenstein's relationship to Freud and to Russell. Contrasting Wittgenstein's radically new view of philosophy with more traditional views, the author challenges various notions about the philosopher and shows how his approach dissolves traditional problems in theories of nature, mind, knowledge, and the philosophy of language.
"A very well written and reasoned book; a good introduction to and exposition of Wittgensteinian thinking. Suter does a fine job of showing why Wittgenstein should not be viewed as 'just another analytic philosophy practitioner,' without making him into some sort of mystic.... The book addresses an audience that is rarely addressed by Wittgenstein studies, and it presents interpretations that are original, interesting, and should raise good discussions among the experts."—Julius M. Moravcsik, Stanford University
"This presentation of Wittgenstein is interesting and admirably on target when defending certain interpretations against those of commentators with whom Suter disagrees. And Suter writes lucidly. This is not a simple achievement, and I commend him for really clear and helpful analyses of sticky, dense issues.... A fresh, original study that will be widely discussed—it is no mere 'introduction.'"—Gerald E. Myers, Professor of Philosophy, C.U.N.Y
Near Fine copy.
2023, English
Softcover, 526 pages, 21 x 14 cm
Published by
Urbanomic / Cornwall
Sequence Press / New York
$59.00 - In stock -
"This is an epoch-making book; a major intellectual event, as bold as it is brilliant. Gabriel Catren, in a break with the ‘claustrophobic interpretation’ of Kantian critique, opens up to a hypertranscendental perspectivism that affirms a multiplicity of categorial structures correlated to objective nature-cultures (Umwelten), a multiplicity that is accessible to a nomadic speculative subject, capable of exhibiting a ‘trans-umweltic’ mobility.
The rupture with Kantian enclosure implies the possibility that the human ‘species’ does not constitute a single transcendental type; categorial multiplicity points to the possibility of inhabiting those other ‘transcendental lands’ that emerge from the impersonal field of experience. Achieving such speculative mobility is the task of the philosophy to come, a philosophy on a par with the widespread collapse of the post-Copernican episteme."
—Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
The great poets and thinkers of modernity described a situation we still inhabit today: the catastrophic undermining of all foundations, the disorienting relativisation of all reference points, the prospect of abandonment to chance and contingency alone—the shipwreck of Mallarmé’s Coup de dés.
In this precise and poetic work of philosophy, Gabriel Catren sketches out a new ‘phenoumenodelic’ solution to this momentous ungrounding, defiiantly refusing both unrestrained contingency and aribitrary refoundation. Mobilising a formidable knowledge of all the major currents of modern thought, deftly articulating Kantian transcendentalism and Spinozan immanentism, phenomenological reduction and scientific realism, Pleromatica argues that the projects oriented by the infinite ideas of reason (Truth, Beauty, Justice, Love) need not be abandoned in the face of the ‘exquisite crisis’ of modernity. Instead, the ‘shipwreck’ is to be understood as a suspension of finite subjectivity in the fullness of a ‘phenoumenodelic pleroma’, an atonal milieu ringing with unheard-of possibilities.
Announcing an ambitious programme for the renewal of transcendental philosophy, in Pleromatica Catren recomposes the primary elements of modern thought into a startling new configuration, introducing a vivid constellation of new concepts with which to map out and navigate the vast space of this ‘worldless daydream’.
Translated by Thomas Murphy.
1987, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$90.00 - Out of stock
Scarce original 1987 hardcover edition of Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, published by Thames & Hudson, London. Joscelyn Godwin explores music's effects on matter, living things, and human behavior. Turning to metaphysical accounts of the higher worlds and theories of celestial harmony, the author follows the path of musical inspiration on its descent to Earth, illuminating the archetypal currents that lie beneath Western musical history.
The power of music is spiritual. It is, for many people, the principal point of access to a consciousness beyond that of ordinary life. Musicians and listeners alike can read analyses of the physics or the psychology, the technique or the history of music; but there is a contemporary need, as Joscelyn Godwin reveals in this challenging book, for informed discussion of the almost too obvious fact that there is something supernatural in musical experience. This is that universal dimension of which Plato, Kepler, Rameau and Novalis wrote, and of which Wagner said: 'I feel that I am one with this vibrating Force, that it is omniscient, and that I can draw upon it to an extent that is limited only by my own capacity." The spiritual power of music surfaces in folklore, myth and mystical experience, refusing as music always does- to be bound by narrow rationalism. It embraces Heaven as well as Earth, the music of the spheres as well as the music that is played and sung.
Joscelyn Godwin begins his closely argued study with music's perceived effects on matter, on plants, on animals and on human behaviour. He then turns inward, to the absorbing accounts that have been given of the higher worlds that are the birthplace of Harmony, and of the realm of pure Intelligence which lies both within and beyond. To hear music, however, we need composers and performers, and the argument then follows Harmony on its descent from Heaven to Earth. This descent takes place in the musician's inspiration, in the listener's experience, and in the world at large; for archetypal currents run beneath the surface of musical history, in the centuries that encompass the polyphony of Perotin or J.S. Bach and the psychic impact of Webern, Stockhausen and rock'n'roll. A self-contained final section embodies the fullest account ever given of ancient and modern theoretical systems of celestial harmony, from Pythagoras to Marius Schneider, Rudolf Steiner and Gurdjieff.
Joscelyn Godwin was born in Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, England on January 16, 1945. He was educated as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford, then at Radley College (Music Scholar), and Magdalene College, Cambridge (Music Scholar; B.A., 1965, Mus. B., 1966, M.A. 1969). Coming to the USA in 1966, he did graduate work in Musicology at Cornell University (Ph. D., 1969; dissertation: "The Music of Henry Cowell") and taught at Cleveland State University for two years before joining the Colgate University Music Department in 1971. He has taught at Colgate ever since.
Near Fine in VG—NF dust jacket. Beautifully preserved, unread.
1985, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 13.97 x 21.59 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Verso / London
$30.00 - In stock -
Written in exile from Germany, this potent study of Europe’s most controversial composer explodes the frontiers of musical and cultural analysis.
Richard Wagner's works are among the most controversial in the history of European music — aesthetically, for their ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk, which inspired such productions as the Ring cycle; and in wider terms, because of their ultimate assimilation into the official culture of the Third Reich. The aesthetic and the ideological and political are subtly interwoven throughout In Search of Wagner.
Adorno, who studied under Alban Berg in Vienna and went on to become the most brilliant exponent of the Frankfurt School of German Marxism, was in many ways the cultural antitype of his subject. In his concise synoptic account, he provides deft musicological analyses of Wagner's scores, of his compositional techniques, orchestration and staging methods, quoting copiously from the music dramas themselves. At the same time, he sets down incisive reflections on Wagner's social character, and on the ideological impulses of his artistic activity.
"Adorno's In Search of Wagner is an astonishing book, comparable only... to the later Wagner tracts by Nietzsche... It is essential reading for anyone seriously involved with the composer, and now we can read it thanks to a superior translation by Rodney Livingstone"—New York Review of Books
"Every chapter of this excellent little book has some penetrating insight"—Classical Music Weekly
VG copy.
2017, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 12.9 x 19.8 cm
Published by
Bloomsbury Academic / London
$48.00 - In stock -
"I should have written you after my first reading of The Living Currency; it was already breath-taking and I should have responded. After reading it a few more times, I know it is the best book of our times."—letter to Pierre Klossowski from Michel Foucault, winter 1970.
Living Currency is the first English translation of Klossowski's La monnaie vivante. It offers an analysis of economic production as a mechanism of psychic production of desires and is a key work from this often overlooked but wonderfully creative French thinker.
Edited by Vernon W. Cisney, Nicolae Morar, Daniel W. Smith
contents :
1.Introduction: Pierre Klossowaki: From Theatrical
Pierre Klossowski (August 9, 1905, Paris – August 12, 2001, Paris) was a French writer, translator and artist. He was the eldest son of the artists Erich Klossowski and Baladine Klossowska, and his younger brother was the painter Balthus.
As a writer, Pierre Klossowski wrote full length volumes on the Marquis de Sade and Friedrich Nietzsche, a number of essays on literary and philosophical figures, and five novels. Roberte Ce Soir (Roberte in the Evening) provoked controversy due to its graphic depiction of sexuality.[1] He translated several important texts (by Virgil, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Hölderlin, Franz Kafka, Nietzsche, and Walter Benjamin) into French, worked on films and was also an artist, illustrating many of the scenes from his novels. Klossowski participated in most issues of George Bataille's review, Acéphale, in the late 1930s.
His 1969 book, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, greatly influenced French philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard.
1977, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 400 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st US Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Viking Press / New York
$250.00 - Out of stock
Rare Fine first hardcover 1977 English language edition of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's mighty Anti-Oedipus, published by The Viking Press in New York. With introduction by Michel Foucault.
When it first appeared in France in 1972, Anti-Oedipus was hailed as a masterpiece by some and "a work of heretical madness" by others. Anti-Oedipus was the opening explosion to the post-1968 reaction to the structuralist movement; it remains a primary text of post-structuralism. In his preface, Michel Foucault calls Anti-Oedipus an Introduction to Non-Fascist Living. He refers not just to political fascism but to the fascism that is within us, that causes us to desire our own domination. In the book, philosopher Gilles Deleuze and clinical psychoanalyst Félix Guattari set forth the following theory: Western society's innate herd instinct has allowed the government, the media, and even the principles of economics to take advantage of each person's unwillingness to be cut off from the group. What's more, those who suffer from mental disorders may not be insane, but could be individuals in the purest sense, because they are by nature isolated from society. More than twenty-five years after its original publication, Anti-Oedipus still stands as a controversial contribution to a much-needed dialogue on the nature of free thinking.
Fine copy in Fine dust jacket. Looks like clean, unread but brittle glue.
1983, English
Softcover, 27 pages, 22 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$48.00 - In stock -
Prisms, essays in cultural criticism and society, is the work of a critic and scholar who has had a marked influence on contemporary American and German thought. It displays the unusual combination of intellectual depth, scope, and philosophical rigor that Adorno was able to bring to his subjects, whether he was writing about astrology columns in Los Angeles newspapers, the special problems of German academics immigrating to the United States during the Nazi years, or Hegel's influence on Marx.
In these essays, Adorno explores a variety of topics, ranging from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Kafka's The Castle to Jazz, Bach, Schoenberg, Proust, Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption, museums, Spengler, and more. His writing throughout is knowledgeable, witty, and at times archly opinionated, but revealing a sensitivity to the political, cultural, economic, and aesthetic connections that lie beneath the surfaces of everyday life.
Prisms is included in the series, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.
Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) was a student of philosophy, musicology, psychology, and sociology at Frankfurt where he later became Professor of Philosophy and Sociology and Co-Director of the Frankfurt School. During the war years he lived in Oxford, in New York, and in Los Angeles, continuing to produce numerous books on music, literature, and culture.
Shierry Weber Nicholsen teaches environmental philosophy and psychology in Antioch University Seattle's M.A. Program on Environment and Community and is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Seattle. She has translated several works by Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas.
Very Good copy.
1980, German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 362 pages, 24.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Manfred Pawlak / Herrsching
$80.00 - In stock -
First edition of the deluxe, over-sized 1980 hardcover German re-print of The Philosophy in the Boudoir by Marquis de Sade (1740—1814), illustrated by Sibylle Ruppert (1942—2011), introduction by Guillaume Apollinaire and afterword by Jacques Lacan, published by Manfred Pawlak, Herrsching. German language.
Philosophy In The Boudoir (La philosophie dans le boudoir, 1795), is the most concise, representative text of all the Marquis de Sade's works, containing his notorious doctrine of libertinage expounded in full, coupled with liberal doses of savage, unbridled eroticism, cruelty and violent sexuality. The renegade philosophies put forward here would later rank among the cornerstones of Andre Breton's surrealist manifesto.
Though initially considered a work of pornography, La philosophie dans le boudoir has come to be considered a socio-political drama and perhaps the most representative of the Marquis de Sade's work and philosophy on religion and morality. Dedicated to "voluptuaries of all ages, of every sex", it tells of a young virgin ruthlessly stripped of virtue and schooled in the ways of sexual perversion and libertine philosophy. Continually throughout the work, Sade makes the argument that one must embrace atheism, reject society's beliefs about pleasure and pain, and further makes his argument that if any crime is committed while seeking pleasure, it cannot be condemned.
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket. Tanning to page edges.
1991, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 21 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$65.00 - Out of stock
First 1991 City Lights edition of The Powers of The Word : Selected Essays and Notes 1927-1943 by early 20th-century French spiritual para-surrealist writer, critic, poet, and early, outspoken practitioner of pataphysics, René Daumal (1908-1944). Edited, translated and with introduction by Mark Polizzotti.
"Since his death in 1944, Rene Daumal has come to be recognized as one of the original minds of the twentieth century French letters. Poet, essayist, philosopher and translator, Sanscrit scholar and pupil of Gurdjieff, Daumal was a founder of the Grand Jeu group. He was iconoclastic and eclectic, able to embrace simultaneously Alfred Jarry's Pataphysics and Hindu teachings.
Daumal's two major works in English translation, Mount Analogue and A Night of Serious Drinking, have long been classics in this country; but until now, readers have not had access to the full range of his thought. The Powers of the Word spans a lifetime of essays and notes-many here translated for the first time-from the earliest incitements to drug use and revolt; through Daumal's unique readings of literary works; to his more mature, but no less ardent, meditations." — publisher's blurb
Fine copy. First 1991 Ed.
1995, English
Softcover, 152 pages, 23.2 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
State University of New York Press / New York
$35.00 - Out of stock
First edition of Agamben's Idea of Prose published by SUNY in 1995. This book consists of prose pieces that find a new form of expression for philosophy, an expression showing the inseparability of idea and prose the very form of truth.
Good copy with corner bumping, general light wear, edge wear.
2022, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 19.9 x 13.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Continuum / London
$50.00 - In stock -
From the preface by Alain Badiou: It is no exaggeration to say that Quentin Meillassoux has opened up a new path in the history of philosophy, understood here as the history of what it is to know ... This remarkable "critique of critique" is introduced here without embellishment, cutting straight to the heart of the matter in a particularly clear and logical manner. It allows the destiny of thought to be the absolute once more.
"This work is one of the most important to appear in continental philosophy in recent years and deserves a wide readership at the earliest possible date ... Apres la finitude is an important book of philosophy by an authnted emerging voices in continental thought. Quentin Meillassoux deserves our close attention in the years to come and his book deserves rapid translation and widespread discussion in the English-speaking world. There is nothing like it."—Graham Harman in Philosophy Today
Quentin Meillassoux's remarkable debut makes a strikingly original contribution to contemporary French philosophy and is set to have a significant impact on the future of continental philosophy. Written in a style that marries great clarity of expression with argumentative rigour, After Finitude provides bold readings of the history of philosophy and sets out a devastating critique of the unavowed fideism at the heart of post-Kantian philosophy.
The exceptional lucidity and the centrality of argument in Meillassoux's writing should appeal to analytic as well as continental philosophers, while his critique of fideism will be of interest to anyone preoccupied by the relation between philosophy, theology and religion.
Meillassoux introduces a startlingly novel philosophical alternative to the forced choice between dogmatism and critique. After Finitude proposes a new alliance between philosophy and science and calls for an unequivocal halt to the creeping return of religiosity in contemporary philosophical discourse.
"Rarely do we encounter a book which not only meets the highest standards of thinking, but sets up itself new standards, transforming the entire field into which it intervenes. Quentin Meillassoux does exactly this."—Slavoj Zizek
Fine copy of first 2008 edition.
1968, Japanese / French
Softcover, 228 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$110.00 - Out of stock
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Issue no. 1 (1968) sets the scene perfectly, opening with Japanese author Yukio Mishima depicted as Saint Sebastian by photographer Kishin Shinoyama in a pictorial feature "Les Morts Masculines", a photographic homage to Georges Bataille that also features the photography of Eikoh Hosoe, Ikkō Narahara, Masahisa Fukase, and Osamu Hayasaki, with models including Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata, actor Akira Mita, author Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, actor Jin Nakayama, playwright Jūrō Kara, and others. Other features include " All Japanese are Perverse" — stories by Japanese writers including Yukio Mishima, Taruho Inagaki, Yutaka Haniya, Shinji Sōya; Henry Miller's letters to Anais Nin; a colour gallery of artwork by Belgian painter Paul Delvaux; articles on Vampire fantasy in the arts (including many original illustrations; Witches (illustrated by James Ensor); Oriental Eros, Ancient Indian poetry; Kama Sutra; female bi-sexuality; the history of gay (Danshoku) theatre in Japan; the full-colour art gallery "Masturbation Machine", featuring avant-garde artists Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Masuo Ikeda, Setsu Nagasawa, Carlos Marchioli, Kuniyoshi Kaneko, Masakazu Horiuchi, Tadanori Yokoo, Koji Suzuki, Tommy Ungerer; the fully illustrated museum supplement "Pain and Pleasure : On Torture" by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa with artworks throughout history; pornographic stories by Guillaume Apollinaire and Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne (who coined the term "Pornographer"); fiction by Pierre Morion (pseudo. André Pieyre de Mandiargues); critic Jin'ichi Uekusa on the controversial writings of Roger Peyrefitte, illustrations by Ernst, Bellmer, Labisse, Fini, Lam, and much more.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.
Good copy with some spine damage and tanning/wear.
1969, Japanese
Softcover, 286 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$140.00 - Out of stock
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose was a groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and this, the fourth final issue, and rarest of the four, edited by critic Masaaki Hiraoka and especially designed by self-taught painter, graphic designer and political activist, Kiyoshi Awazu (!)
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. Much like an instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design as principally to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Issue no. 4 includes photographic features by cinematographer Yasuhiro Yoshioka (Woman in the Dunes, Kwaidan, The Face of Another, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief), work by pioneering, self-taught visual artist and designer, Kiyoshi Awazu, Hans Bellmer, illustrations by the incredible Hiroshi Nakamura, sadomasochism in cinema, Ukiyo-e and Shunga art (erotic Japanese prints), writings by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Yukio Mishima, Taruho Inagaki, Jun’nosuke Yoshiyuki, Kôichi Iijima, Jûrô Kara, Ikuya Kato, Minoru Yoshioka, Masaaki Hiraoka, Tadanori Yokoo, and Ryûichi Tamura. Much more....
Very Good copy.
2005, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 576 pages, 12.9 x 19.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Continuum / London
$65.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover edition. "Being and Event" is the centrepiece of Alain Badiou's oeuvre; it is the work that grounds his reputation as one of France's most original philosophers. Long-awaited in translation, "Being and Event" makes available to an English-speaking readership Badiou's groundbreaking work on set theory - the cornerstone of his whole philosophy. This book makes the scope and aim of Badiou's whole philosophical project clear, enabling full comprehension of Badiou's significance for contemporary philosophy. In "Being and Event", Badiou anchors this project by recasting the European philosophical tradition from Plato onwards, via a series of analyses of such key figures as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Rousseau, and Lacan. He thus develops the basis for a history of philosophy rivalling those of Heidegger and Deleuze in its depth. This wide-ranging book is organised in a precise and novel manner, reflecting the philosophical rigour of Badiou's thought. Unlike many contemporary Continental philosophers, Badiou - who is also a novelist and dramatist - writes lucidly and cogently, making his work accessible and engaging.
This English language edition includes a new preface, written especially for this translation. "Being and Event" is essential reading for Badiou's considerable following and anyone interested in contemporary Continental philosophy.
VG copy in G dust jacket closed tear, light wear/age.
2009, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 640 pages, 12.9 x 19.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Continuum / London
$70.00 - Out of stock
Logics of Worlds is the long-awaited sequel to Alain Badiou's much-heralded masterpiece, Being and Event. Tackling the questions that had been left open by Being and Event, and answering many of his critics in the process, Badiou supplements his pioneering treatment of multiple being with a daring and complex theory of the worlds in which truths and subjects make their mark - what he calls a materialist dialectic. The radical recasting of ontology in Being and Event is followed and complemented here by a thoroughgoing transformation in our very understanding of logic, conceived as a theory not of being but of appearing. Unafraid to resurrect and reinvent the classical themes of philosophy, Badiou gives new meaning to concepts such as object, body and relation, mobilising them in arresting studies that range from the architectural planning of Brasilia to contemporary astronomy, and confronting himself with towering philosophical counterparts (Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Lacan, Deleuze). The book culminates in an impassioned call to 'live for an Idea'.
2010, English
Softcover, 275 pages, 14 x 21.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Palgrave Macmillan / UK
$140.00 - In stock -
This book pushes nihilism to its ultimate conclusion by linking revisionary naturalism in Anglo-American philosophy with anti-phenomenological realism in French philosophy. Contrary to the 'post-analytic' consensus uniting Heidegger and Wittgenstein against scientism and scepticism, this book links eliminative materialism and speculative realism.
Very Good—Fine copy, previous owner's name to front endpaper, otherwise As New.