World Food Books

The Irigaray Reader
by Luce Irigaray; Edited by Margaret Whitford

1991, English
Softcover, 244 pages, 22.7 x 15.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Blackwell / Cambridge

$25.00 - Out of stock

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First 1991 edition of The Irigaray Reader, edited by Margaret Whitford. Luce Irigaray is one of the leading French feminist philosophers and psychoanalysts. Her work is concerned primarily with the construction of femininity and sexual differences in Western philosophy and with the exploration of new psychoanalytical and feminist perspectives on sexual differences. She has written a number of influential books, notably Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One, both translated into English. The Irigaray Reader is a collection of Luce Irigaray's most important papers to date. They range across feminism, philosophy, psychoanalysis and linguistics, and are grouped here into three broad sections: The Critique of Patriarchy, Psychoanalysis and Language, and Ethics and Subjectivity. Each section begins with an introduction by Margaret Whitford, and the book also includes bibliographies of works by and about Irigaray. A number of pieces in The Irigaray Reader appear for the first time in English. This is the most comprehensive collection available of Irigaray's work, work which has profoundly influenced contemporary debates across a range of disciplines.

"A magnificent sample of the best and the boldest of Irigaray's writings and the projects she calls for and calls forth. An excellent text for both introductory and advanced work on Irigaray."—Choice

Good copy with some wear.

File under: Luce Irigaray Margaret Whitford Blackwell / Cambridge Feminism Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare Psychoanalysis Philosophy

The Accursed Share Volume 1: Consumption
By Georges Bataille

1991, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
Published by Zone Books / New York

$54.00 - Out of stock

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Most Anglo-American readers know Bataille as a novelist. The Accursed Share provides an excellent introduction to Bataille the philosopher. Here he uses his unique economic theory as the basis for an incisive inquiry into the very nature of civilization. Unlike conventional economic models based on notions of scarcity, Bataille's theory develops the concept of excess: a civilization, he argues, reveals its order most clearly in the treatment of its surplus energy. The result is a brilliant blend of ethics, aesthetics, and cultural anthropology that challenges both mainstream economics and ethnology.

Georges Bataille (1897-1962) was a French writer, essayist, and philosopher whose works include The Story of the Eye, The Blue of Noon, The Accursed Share, and Theory of Religion.

A serious book of political economy that also claims 'the sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space.'... The Accursed Share is a brilliant product of [Bataille's] loony-tunes coupling of critical genres: pseudo/antisurrealist manifestos, leftist political treatises, erotics, Hegel 'n' Nietzsche studies, mysticism, anthropology, and sun worship. - Erik Davis, The Voice Literary Supplement

File under: Georges Bataille Zone Books / New York Theory / Essay Surrealism Philosophy Socialism / Communism / Capitalism

The Accursed Share Volumes II & III
By Georges Bataille

1993, English
Softcover, 464 pages, 15.3 x 22.7 cm
Published by Zone Books / New York

$69.00 - In stock -

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The three volumes of The Accursed Share address what Georges Bataille sees as the paradox of utility: namely, if being useful means serving a further end, then the ultimate end of utility can only be uselessness. The first volume of The Accursed Share, the only one published before Bataille's death, treated this paradox in economic terms, showing that "it is not necessity but its contrary, luxury, that presents living matter and mankind with their fundamental problems." This Zone edition includes in a single volume a reconstruction, based on the versions published in Bataille's posthumous collected works, of his intended continuation of The Accursed Share.

In the second and third volumes, The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty, Bataille explores the same paradox of utility, respectively from an anthropological and an ethical perspective. He first analyzes the fears and fascination, the prohibitions and the transgressions attached to the realm of eroticism as so many expressions of the "uselessness" of erotic life. It is just this expenditure of excess energy that demarcates the realm of human autonomy, of independence relative to "useful" ends. The study of eroticism therefore leads naturally to the examination of human sovereignty, in which Bataille defines the sovereign individual as one who consumes and does not labor, creating a life beyond the realm of utility.

Georges Bataille (1897-1962) was a French writer, essayist, and philosopher whose works include The Story of the Eye, The Blue of Noon, The Accursed Share, and Theory of Religion.

File under: Georges Bataille Zone Books / New York Theory / Essay Surrealism Philosophy Socialism / Communism / Capitalism

The Post Card : From Socrates to Freud and Beyond
by Jacques Derrida

1987, English
Softcover, 522 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$55.00 - Out of stock

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First 1987 edition. Translated by Alan Bass.

"You were reading a somewhat retro loveletter, the last in history. But you have not yet received it. Yes, its lack or excess of address prepares it to fall into all hands: a post card, an open letter in which the secret appears, but indecipherably.

What does a post card want to say to you? On what conditions is it possible? Its destination traverses you, you no longer know who you are. At the very instant when from its address it interpellates, you, uniquely you, instead of reaching you it divides you or sets you aside, occasionally overlooks you. And you love and you do not love, it makes of you what you wish, it takes you, it leaves you, it gives you.
On the other side of the card, look, a proposition is made to you, S and p, Socrates and plato. For once the former seems to write, and with his other hand he is even scratching. But what is Plato doing with his outstretched finger in his back? While you occupy yourself with turning it around in every direction, it is the picture that turns you around like a letter, in advance it deciphers you, it preoccupies space, it procures your words and gestures, all the bodies that you believe you invent in order to determine its outline. You find yourself, you, yourself, on its path.
The thick support of the card, a book heavy and light, is also the specter of this scene, the analysis between Socrates and Plato, on the program of several others. Like the soothsayer, a “fortune-telling book” watches over and speculates on that-which-must-happen, on what it indeed might mean to happen, to arrive, to have to happen or arrive, to let or to make happen or arrive, to destine, to address, to send, to legate, to inherit, etc., if it all still signifies, between here and there, the near and the far, da und fort, the one or the other.

You situate the subject of the book: between the posts and the analytic movement, the pleasure principle and the history of telecommunications, the post card and the purloined letter, in a word the transference from Socrates to Freud, and beyond. This satire of epistolary literature had to be farci, stuffed with addresses, postal codes, crypted missives, anonymous letters, all of it confided to so many modes, genres, and tones. In it I also abuse dates, signatures, titles or references, language itself." — J. D.

“With The Post Card, as with Glas, Derrida appears more as writer than as philosopher. Or we could say that here, in what is in part a mock epistolary novel (the long section is called “Envois,” roughly, “dispatches” ), he stages his writing more overtly than in the scholarly works. . . . The Post Card also contains a series of self-reflective essays, largely focused on Freud, in which Derrida is beautifully lucid and direct.”—Alexander Gelley, Library Journal

As New copy.

File under: Jacques Derrida Sigmund Freud Socrates University of Chicago Press / Chicago Out-of-print / Rare Philosophy Theory / Essay Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Sexual Subversions
by Elizabeth Grosz

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

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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.

File under: Elizabeth Grosz Julia Kristeva Luce Irigaray Michèle Le Dœuff Allen & Unwin / NSW Feminism Philosophy Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay

The New Nihilism
By Peter Lamborn Wilson

2018, English
Softcover, 162 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
Published by Bottle of Smoke Press / New York

$35.00 - Out of stock

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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.

File under: Gerard Malanga Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn Wilson) Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey) Bottle of Smoke Press / New York Anarchism Theory / Essay Sociology / Politics Philosophy

Forbidden History : The State, Society, and the Regulation of Sexuality in Modern Europe
Edited by John C. Fout

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

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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.

File under: John C. Fout Angela Carter Robin Ann Sheets Randolph Trumbach Ruth Perry Theo van der Meer James W. Jones University of Chicago Press / Chicago Out-of-print / Rare Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Philosophy Eros Feminism Sociology / Politics Crime / Violence LGBTQ+ Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

CAPITALIST REALISM : IS THERE NO ALTERNATIVE?
BY MARK FISHER

2014 / 2022, English
Softcover, 92 pages, 14.5 x 21.8 cm
Published by Zero Books / UK

$29.00 - Out of stock

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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)

File under: Mark Fisher Zero Books / UK Socialism / Communism / Capitalism Sociology / Politics Theory / Essay Philosophy

On the Heights of Despair
by E. M. Cioran

1996, English
Softcover, 150 pages, 21.6 x 16.5 cm
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$65.00 - Out of stock

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"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.

File under: E. M. Cioran University of Chicago Press / Chicago Theory / Essay Philosophy

Tatlin!
by Guy Davenport

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 -

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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.

File under: Vladimir Tatlin Franz Kafka Guy Davenport Herakleitos Johns Hopkins University Press / Baltimore Art Out-of-print / Rare Fiction / Poetry Theory / Essay Philosophy

The Structuralists from Marx to Lévi-Strauss
Edited by Richard and Fernande DeGeorge

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

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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.

File under: Roland Barthes Louis Althusser Sigmund Freud Karl Marx Claude Lévi-Strauss Michel Foucault Jacques Lacan Ferdinand de Saussure Roman Jakobson Doubleday Anchor / US Philosophy Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
by Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

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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.

File under: Ludwig Wittgenstein Bertrand Russell Routledge & Kegan Paul / London Philosophy Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language

Interpreting Wittgenstein : A Cloud of Philosophy, a Drop of Grammar
by Ronald Suter

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 -

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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.

File under: Ludwig Wittgenstein Ronald Suter Temple University Press / Philadelphia Philosophy Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay

Pleromatica, or Elsinore’s Trance
by Gabriel Catren

2023, English
Softcover, 526 pages, 21 x 14 cm
Published by Urbanomic / Cornwall Sequence Press / New York

$59.00 - In stock -

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"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.

File under: Gabriel Catren Urbanomic / Cornwall Sequence Press / New York Philosophy Theory / Essay

Harmonies of Heaven and Earth : The Spiritual Dimension of Music from Antiquity to the Avant-Garde
By Joscelyn Godwin

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

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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.

File under: Karlheinz Stockhausen Jean-Philippe Rameau Pérotin Johann Sebastian Bach Anton Webern Plato Johannes Kepler Rudolf Steiner Joscelyn Godwin Novalis George Gurdjieff Marius Schneider Thames and Hudson / London Theory / Essay Sound / Music Out-of-print / Rare Philosophy Art Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Occult / Esoterica

In Search of Wagner
by Theodor Adorno

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 -

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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.

File under: Richard Wagner Rodney Livingstone Theodor W. Adorno Verso / London Sound / Music Out-of-print / Rare Philosophy Sociology / Politics Theory / Essay

Living Currency
by Pierre Klossowski

2017, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 12.9 x 19.8 cm
Published by Bloomsbury Academic / London

$48.00 - In stock -

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"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

Theology to Counter-Utopia, Daniel W. Smith (Purdue University, USA)
Letter from Foucault to Pierre Klossowski
Living Currency, translated by Vernon Cisney (Gettysburg College, USA), Nicolae Morar (University of Oregon, USA) and Daniel W. Smith
Sade and Fourier, translated by Paul Foss-Heimlich
Sade and Fourier and Klossowksi and Benjamin, Paul Foss-Heimlich
Letter from Pierre Klossowski to Paul Foss

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.

File under: Pierre Klossowski Pierre Klossowski Vernon W. Cisney Nicolae Morar Daniel W. Smith Paul Foss Bloomsbury Academic / London Theory / Essay Art Fiction / Poetry Philosophy

Anti-Oedipus : Capitalism and Schizophrenia
by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

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

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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.

File under: Gilles Deleuze Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari Felix Guattari Michel Foucault Viking Press / New York Philosophy Out-of-print / Rare Psychoanalysis Theory / Essay

Prisms
by Theodor W. Adorno

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 -

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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.

File under: Theodor W. Adorno The MIT Press / Massachusetts Philosophy Sound / Music Art Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare Sociology / Politics

Die Philosphie im Boudoir (Philosophy In The Boudoir)
by Marquis de Sade; illustrated by Sibylle Ruppert

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 -

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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.

File under: Sibylle Ruppert The Marquis de Sade Guillaume Apollinaire Jacques Lacan Manfred Pawlak / Herrsching Philosophy Fiction / Poetry Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Drawing Surrealism Theory / Essay Eros Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic

The Powers of The Word : Selected Essays and Notes 1927-1943
by René Daumal

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

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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.

File under: Rene Daumal Mark Polizzotti City Lights Books / San Francisco Out-of-print / Rare Art Surrealism 'Pataphysics / Oulipo Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Theory / Essay Philosophy Drugs / Psychedelia Dada Performance / Dance / Theater

Idea of Prose
By Giorgio Agamben

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

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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.

File under: Giorgio Agamben State University of New York Press / New York Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Out-of-print / Rare Philosophy

After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
by Quentin Meillassoux

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 -

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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.

File under: Quentin Meillassoux Alain Badiou Continuum / London Theory / Essay Philosophy Out-of-print / Rare

Le Sang et La Rose No. 1, 1968

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

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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.

File under: Max Ernst Léonor Fini Felix Labisse Wilfredo Lam Hans Bellmer Paul Delvaux Natsuyuki Nakanishi Masuo Ikeda Setsu Nagasawa Carlos Marchioli Kuniyoshi Kaneko Masakazu Horiuchi Tadanori Yokoo Koji Suzuki Tommy Ungerer Tatsumi Hijikata Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Eikoh Hosoe Ikkō Narahara Masahisa Fukase Osamu Hayasaki Kishin Shinoyama James Ensor Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Jin'ichi Uekusa Roger Peyrefitte Yukio Mishima Taruho Inagaki Yutaka Haniya Shinji Sōya Henry Miller Suehiro Tanemura Guillaume Apollinaire Andre Pieyre De Mandiargues Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne Jūrō Kara Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo Fiction / Poetry Japanese Photography Occult / Esoterica Philosophy Photography Art Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Fetishism / BDSM LGBTQ+ Eros Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Counterculture Surrealism Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Ancient / Medieval / Gothic