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.
1970, English
Softcover, 592 pages, 23.29 x 15.19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$35.00 - In stock -
If Paul Ricoeur is correct in seeing the various currents of contemporary philosophy all converging on the problem of a "grand philosophy of language," then the first sixty pages of this absorbing study of Freud may become the rallying point from which future work can begin. This first part of Freud and Philosophy, "Problematic," presents a profound and clear theory of signification, symbol, and interpretation. The second part, "A Reading of Freud," is required reading for anyone seriously interested in psychoanalysis. The third section interpretation of Ricoeur's own theory of symbol―particularly religious symbol―which places this study at the center of contemporary debate over the sense of myth.In this book are revealed Ricoeur the philosopher of language; Ricoeur the critic of Freud; and Ricoeur the theologian of religious symbol. The author is outstanding in all three roles, and the book that emerges is of rare profundity, enormous scope, and complete timeliness.
Paul Ricoeur is professor of philosophy at the University of Paris.
“Paul Ricouer…has done a study that is all too rare these days, in which one intellect comes to grips with another, in which a scholar devotes himself to a thoughtful, searching, and comprehensive study of a genius…The final result is a unique survey of the panorama of Freudian thought by an observer who, although starting from outside, succeeds in penetrating to its core.” –American Journal of Psychiatry
“Primarily an inquiry into the foundations of language and hermeneutics…[Ricoeur uses] the Freudian ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ as a corrective and counter-balance for phenomenology and create a ‘new phenomenology’…This important work…should have an impact upon serious thinking in philosophy, theology, psychology, and other areas which have been affected by Freud studies.”―International Philosophical Quarterly
“A stimulating tour de force that allows us to envisage both the psychoanalytic body of knowledge and the psychoanalytic movement in a broad perspective within the framework of its links to culture, history and the evolution of Western intellectual thought.” – Psychoanalytic Quarterly
Paul Ricoeur is a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and the University of Paris.
Good copy with general light wear to extremities.
2017, English
Softcover, 162 pages, 22.6 x 15.1 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$48.00 - In stock -
Why sexuality is at the point of a "short circuit" between ontology and epistemology.
Consider sublimation-conventionally understood as a substitute satisfaction for missing sexual satisfaction. But what if, as Lacan claims, we can get exactly the same satisfaction that we get from sex from talking (or writing, painting, praying, or other activities)? The point is not to explain the satisfaction from talking by pointing to its sexual origin, but that the satisfaction from talking is itself sexual. The satisfaction from talking contains a key to sexual satisfaction (and not the other way around)-even a key to sexuality itself and its inherent contradictions. The Lacanian perspective would make the answer to the simple-seeming question, "What is sex?" rather more complex. In this volume in the Short Circuits series, Alenka Zupancic approaches the question from just this perspective, considering sexuality a properly philosophical problem for psychoanalysis; and by psychoanalysis, she means that of Freud and Lacan, not that of the kind of clinician practitioners called by Lacan "orthopedists of the unconscious."
Zupancic argues that sexuality is at the point of a "short circuit" between ontology and epistemology. Sexuality and knowledge are structured around a fundamental negativity, which unites them at the point of the unconscious. The unconscious (as linked to sexuality) is the concept of an inherent link between being and knowledge in their very negativity.
1992, English
Softcover, 310 pages, 22.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Columbia University Press / New York
$15.00 - In stock -
"A persistent criticism of theory in general and of Foucault in particular is that no positive social or ethical consequences result from the practice of theory. Critics from all points on the political spectrum seem to agree on this point. Daniel O'Hara here demonstrates the social uses of interpretation by analyzing the later writings of Foucault and the careers of critics in relation to Foucault's work, including Derrida, Kristeva, Said, Rorty, Harold Bloom, and others.
O'Hara's position is that "doing theory", specifically after Foucault, does have social and ethical consequences, and "radical parody" demonstrates why this is so. It also incorporates into this social context the later work of Kristeva on identification and identity formation. O'Hara shows that "culture is a collective archive of canonical and non-canonical practices of self, a treasure hoard of masks or personnae". For O'Hara, radical parody thus "defines the postmodern experience of the sublime play of discourses in the formation of critical identity". Throughout, O'Hara is interested in what it means to be an "oppositional intellectual", and in what interpretation is and can mean in a culture dominated by a "widespread commodification of intellectual life".
The book concludes with a critical profile of Frank Lentricchia, a critic whose career as an oppositional American intellectual O'Hara finds exemplary.
G—VG copy
1991, English
Softcover, 266 pages, 22 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Routledge / London
$60.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1991 softcover Routledge edition.
"This is a much needed work which will introduce philosophical readers to a way of reading Lacan that will doubtless enhance the dialogue between psychoanalysis and philosophy."—Judith Butler, Johns Hopkins University
"Not only is this book uncommonly lucid in discussing the subtleties of Freud and especially Lacan, but it is insightfully innovative in interpreting the inner link between narcissism and aggression, the imaginary and the symbolic- and death and desire, those twin epicenters of psychoanalytic theory and practice."—Edward S. Casey, State University of New York, Stony Brook
"Boothby's book not only provides us with an excellent introduction to the ideas of Jacques Lacan, but it also does an outstanding job of elucidating Freud's notion of the death drive, and makes clear what one misses in Freud if one does not pay attention to it."—John Muller, Four Winds Hospital
The immensely influential work of Jacques Lacan challenges readers both for the difficulty of its style and for the wide range of intellectual references that frame its innovations. Lacan's work is challenging too, for the way it recentres psychoanalysis on one of the most controversial points of Freudâs theory — the concept of a self-destructive drive or 'death instinct'.
Originally published in 1991, Death and Desire presents in Lacanian terms a new integration of psychoanalytic theory in which the battery of key Freudian concepts — from the dynamics of the Oedipus complex to the topography of ego, id, and superego — are seen to intersect in Freud's most far-reaching and speculative formulation of a drive toward death. Boothby argues that Lacan repositioned the theme of death in psychoanalysis in relation to Freud's main concern — the nature and fate of desire. In doing so, Lacan rediscovered Freud's essential insights in a manner so nuanced and penetrating that prevailing assessments of the death instinct may well have to be re-examined.
Although the death instinct is usually regarded as the most obscure concept in Freud's metapsychology, and Lacan to be the most perplexing psychoanalytic theorist, Richard Boothby's straightforward style makes both accessible. He illustrates the coherence of Lacanian thought and shows how Lacan's work comprises a 'return to Freud' along new and different angles of approach. Written with an eye to the conceptual structure of psychoanalytic theory, Death and Desire will appeal to psychoanalysts and philosophers alike.
Very Good copy.
1991, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 206 pages, 22.5 x 14.5 cm
1st US Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Johns Hopkins University Press / Baltimore
$40.00 - In stock -
"Linking modernist literature with more recent developments in literary theory, Jean-Michel Rabaté's writings on James Joyce have attracted widespread critical acclaim. Praised by Derrida and others, Rabaté's work combines psychoanalytical notions (adopted from Lacan) with more traditional philosophical approaches (Joyce seen in connection with Hegel and Vico, for instance).
Examining Joyce's texts from Dubliners to Finnegans Wake, Rabaté traces a number of interconnected issues and relates them to Joyce's own reading and manuscript sources as well as to recent theoretical discussions. Among these issues are the function of the reader; the role of "perversity" (as opposed to "perversion"); the operation of what Rabaté calls "the unconscious of the text"; the uncertainties of authority; the role of family relations in Joyce; and the connec- tions between the idiosyncracies of Joyce's language and questions of idiolect, idiom, and ideology.
"Rabaté writes with grace and wit, and his intimate acquaintance with French theoretical discussions informs his thinking at every point without ever becoming overbearing; it is always Joyce and Joyce's words that hold the center of attention. He also writes with a sure grasp of Joyce scholarship and extends it in several directions. Joyce emerges as a thoroughly European writer, participating in a culture that goes well beyond the bounds of the English language."
Derek Attridge, Rutgers University
1990, English
Softcover, 230 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Routledge / London
$20.00 - In stock -
First 1990 Ed.
Why is Julia Kristeva widely regarded as one of the most significant french thinkers writing today?
What is her special importance for feminism and postmodernism?
This up-to-date survey of Julia Kristeva's work outlines her intellectual development, from her work on Bakhtin and the logic of poetic language in the 1960s, through her influential theories of the 'symbolic' and the 'semiotic' in the 1970s, to her analyses of horror, love, and melancholy in the 1980s. It gives an invaluable insight into the intel- lectual and historical background to Kristeva's thought, and includes an illuminating overall assessment of Kristeva's work and its importance for western society.
Essential reading for all those who wish to extend their understanding of an important thinker, this first full- length study of Kristeva's work will be of interest to students of literature, sociology, critical theory, feminist theory, French studies, and psychoanalysis.
A former student of Julia Kristeva, John Lechte is Tutor in Sociology at Macquarie University, Australia.
Average copy with wear to cover extremities and spine, eraser-able lead pencil notation.
2000, English
Softcover, 22.5 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Columbia University Press / New York
$40.00 - In stock -
Linguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist, Julia Kristeva is one of the most influential and prolific thinkers of our time. Her writings have broken new ground in the study of the self, the mind, and the ways in which we communicate through language. Her work is unique in that it skillfully brings together psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, literature, linguistics, and philosophy.
In her latest book on the powers and limits of psychoanalysis, Kristeva focuses on an intriguing new dilemma. Freud and psychoanalysis taught us that rebellion is what guarantees our independence and our creative abilities. But in our contemporary "entertainment" culture, is rebellion still a viable option? Is it still possible to build and embrace a counterculture? For whom—and against what—and under what forms?
Kristeva illustrates the advances and impasses of rebel culture through the experiences of three twentieth-century writers: the existentialist John Paul Sartre, the surrealist Louis Aragon, and the theorist Roland Barthes. For Kristeva the rebellions championed by these figures—especially the political and seemingly dogmatic political commitments of Aragon and Sartre—strike the post-Cold War reader with a mixture of fascination and rejection. These theorists, according to Kristeva, are involved in a revolution against accepted notions of identity—of one's relation to others. Kristeva places their accomplishments in the context of other revolutionary movements in art, literature, and politics. The book also offers an illuminating discussion of Freud's groundbreaking work on rebellion, focusing on the symbolic function of patricide in his Totem and Taboo and discussing his often neglected vision of language, and underscoring its complex connection to the revolutionary drive.
Julia Kristeva is a practicing psychoanalyst and professor of linguistics at the University of Paris. She is the author of many acclaimed books, including Time and Sense; Strangers to Ourselves, and New Maladies of the Soul, all published by Columbia.
Translated by Jeanine Herman
NF copy.
1989 / 1991, English
Softcover, 204 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Marion Boyars / London
$25.00 - In stock -
"Julia Kristeva, one of France's leading philosophers, offers in About Chinese Women some original glimpses through the veil of mystery which has hung between the Orient and the Occident for well over two thousand years. Combining a study of Chinese history, literature, religion and politics with her own penetrating insights, Kristeva analyses aspects of a country in which the role of women has evolved and been transformed with startling consequences.
Surveying first the place of women in the social order of the capitalist West, she moves on to examine the family in ancient China, and provides a fascinating account of the Chinese feminist movement of the early twentieth century.
She explores the idea that, because of its Confucian antecedents, the Chinese revolution had to take on an anti-patriarchal character-and was therefore more fundamentally a 'women's revolution' than others elsewhere, before or since.
Born in Rumania, Julia Kristeva has lived in France for many years. She is co-editor of the prestigious journal L'Infini. She has published many books in the fields of philosophy, linguistics and psychoanalysis."
"The book's value lies in its bold perspective... Provocative."—Library Journal
an invaluable and readable account of aspects of China that have received little attention. Brilliant...subtle."—Germaine Bree
"A vivid and imaginative discussion of the surface and the subterranean of Chinese society and specifically of Chinese women."—Spare Rib
Very Good copy. 1991 reprint of 1989 English Marion Boyars edition.
2000, English
Softcover, 184 pages, 21 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Other Press / New York
$25.00 - In stock -
A gem of a personal exploration by Julia Kristeva, examining contemporary issues such as European identity, the role of religion in political life, and the meaning of equality for women.
"In these four packed meditations, bursting with intellectual vitality, Kristeva comes forth as an erudite as well as a personal, political, religious, and philosophical thinker, without relinquishing her (un)usual, exquisite poetic style.... Engaging the issue of the contemporary failure of oedipal subjectivity and attacking our era of technology and robotization, she bravely calls for a return to the origins of our cultural memory. This is a provocative book for intellectuals of every stripe."—Frances L. Restuccia, Boston College and author of Melancholics in Love
"The essays in this collection again prove that Julia Kristeva is one of the most profound and courageous thinkers of our time. From her intimate reading of Hannah Arendt to her diagnosis of Eastern Orthodoxy, Kristeva gives us a fresh perspective. In a noteworthy move in terms of her own work, in her essay on Arendt, Kristeva gives priority to active narrative over poetry. Her very personal reflections on the contemporary situation in the Balkans is stunning. Her diagnosis of the European Union and the role of religion in political economy fascinates with its provocations. And, her insightful comments on the meaning of legal equality for women complicates feminist debates over equality versus difference."—Kelly Oliver, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Julia Kristeva is one of our most brilliant and original theorists, widely acclaimed for her work in linguistics, psychoanalysis, and literary and polit- ical theory. As a linguist, she has created a revolutionary theory of the sign in its relation to social and political emancipation. As a practicing psychoanalyst, she has explored the nature of the human subject and sexuality.
VG copy.
1986—1994, English
Softcover (12 issues), approx 50-80 pages ea., 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
International Synergy Institute / Los Angeles
$600.00 - In stock -
"A thrice yearly exploration of ambiguous borders and dynamic (intellectual/artistic) frontiers."
Exceptionally rare lot of 12 issues (1986—1994) of the trail-blazing subscription-only one-of-a-kind journal published by the International Synergy Institute, a intermedia think-tank active in Hollywood between 1986—1987. IS was founded by American actress and philanthropist Andra Akers (Charlie's Angels, Dallas, Dukes of Hazzard...), edited by experimental composer, researcher and Harry Partch Ensemble member David Dunn, with a cast of incredible contributors spanning these issues that includes media theorist Gene Youngblood (Expanded Cinema...), Australian composer, poet and performer Chris Mann, American ethnobotanist Terence McKenna, American artist Bill Viola, American landscape architect Bonnie Sherk, parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake, mathematician Ralph Abrahams, composer Kenneth Gaburo, Australian experimental composer Warren Burt, early media artist visionaries Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz (Mobile Image, the Electronic Café...), Science Fiction theorist, philosopher and writer for Marvel comics Allyn B. Brodsky, American composer and writer Elaine Barkin, visionary Czech author Lukáš Tomin, aeronautical engineer and astronaut Russell Schweickart, mathematician and polymath Tim Poston, climate crisis artists Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison, American composer John Bischoff, cultural historian William Irwin Thompson, ecological philosopher and author Boleslaw Rok, essayist and activist Tomaž Mastnak, Chilean biologist and philosopher Francisco Varela, artist Michael Kalil, systems theorist Will McWhinney, percussionist and composer Stuart Saunders Smith, mathematician Gottfried Mayer-Kress, alternative broadcaster Jay Levin, British-American futurist Hazel Henderson, actress Debra Clinger (The Love Boat, The Krofft Supershow, Midnight Madness, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour...), musician Mark Trayle, artist Sheila Pinkel, VFX pioneer Mimi Gramatky (LOST, Miami Vice, Star Trek, Tron, Damnation Alley...), sonic healer Jill Purce, robot dance choreographer Margo K. Apostolos, American psychedelic artist Alex Grey, social critic and historian Morris Berman, futurist Riane Eisler, poet James Bertolino, British zoologist, anthropologist and author John Heathorn Huxley, multi-media artist Todd Siler, American philosopher of science Ervin László, Budapest dissident magazine Magyar Narancs, and more.
Issues present: #0, #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14 (12 issues total, not all pictured)
"INTERNATIONAL SYNERGY consists of a global network of vanguard artists, scientists, and meta-physicians who are united by a deep sense of commitment to crossing the boundaries of their individual disciplines. Integral to this awareness is a reconciliation between advanced technological resources and a sense of the planet's sanctity. INTERNATIONAL SYNERGY is dedicated to the premise that such an understanding can form the basis of a creative matrix for responsible action in the information age."
"At this hinge of history, it seems appropriate that we should publish a journal where the passion of the individual scientist/artist can meet in sovereign association with global concerns — spinning the wheel of knowledge so that each of us can create our own theoretical magic." [...] "I am deeply moved by the creative commonwealth in this community, filled with explorers of topology, morphology, chaos dynamics, cognition, mind video, the revisioning of nature and art, telecommunications, sonics, cybernetics, cultural history, fractal politics, and what it now means to be deeply human. The provocative interaction of these ideas cannot help but to create a new and uniquely meaningful story. Come with us."—Andra Akers
Most Good—Very Good, with a couple of issues Average (mostly due to cover rubbing or creasing), all with light wear/age.
1991, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 264 pages, 22.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Stanford University Press / Palo Alto
$250.00 - In stock -
Very rare, sought after first hardcover edition of Oughourlian's "The Puppet of Desire", published in 1991 by Stanford. Translated, with an introduction, by Eugene Webb.
This study of the psychology of desire derives from a theory of imitative or 'mimetic' desire developed by the cultural critic and theorist René Girard. The theory is essentially that all human beings have an instinctive tendency, a kind of social and psychological gravitation, to imitate unwittingly not only the actions but also the attitudes and desires of others. The author, a practicing psychiatrist, extends and amplifies this theory from the viewpoint of psychopathology and applies it to the study of hysteria, possession, and hypothesis. He argues that these phenomena are best understood as expressions of mimetic behaviour, and he traces the history of the ideas concerning hysteria, possession, and hypnosis and relates them to the development of Freud's theory of neurosis. The author points out that mimetic desire is not an inherently pathological force. It may be normal and healthy, but in certain circumstances it can lead to relations of dependency and rivalry that can cause serious psychological problems. It can also take on extreme or bizarre forms without necessarily becoming unhealthy; an example of healthy but extreme unconscious identification with an other (who may be either a person or a cultural figure) is shamanistic possession. The author discusses this kind of phenomenon among African tribes and coins the term 'adorcism' (the opposite of exorcism) to refer to the process of invoking it. The theory of desire as presented in this book is other-oriented, as opposed to Freud's theory of desire, which istrictly object-oriented. The author sees Freud's theory as more in a long history of strategic misinterpretations of the psychology of desire, such as the classical theory of hysteria and the medieval theory of demonic possession. his critique of Freudian theory is radical, and in fact it would not be too much to say that he has moved toward the first new and well-developed theory of psychopathology since Freud.
Jean-Michel Oughourlian is an Armenian-French neuropsychiatrist and psychologist as well as a writer and philosopher recognized both in France and the United States for his collaboration with René Girard and his work on the mimetic theory of desire. Oughourlian is the former chief of psychiatry at the American Hospital of Paris and a former professor of clinical psychopathology at the Sorbonne. He collaborated with René Girard on Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (1978) and has authored several books on psychiatry, neuroscience, and mimetic theory. He is a founding member of the Association Recherches Mimétiques, a French organization devoted to René Girard's thought.
Fine copy with Near Fine dust jacket preserved in archival mylar wrap.
1979, English
Softcover, 352 pages, 22.86 x 15.24 cm
Published by
John Hopkins University Press / Baltimore
$65.00 - Out of stock
Violence and the Sacred is Girard's brilliant 1972 study of human evil and the ritual role of sacrifice. Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred.
"His fascinating and ambitious book provides a fully developed theory of violence as the 'heart and secret soul' of the sacred. Girard's fertile, combative mind links myth to prophetic writing, primitive religions to classical tragedy."
René Noël Théophile Girard (1923—2015) was a French polymath, historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science whose work belongs to the tradition of philosophical anthropology. Girard was the author of nearly thirty books, with his writings spanning many academic domains.
1986, English
Softcover, 182 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Croom Helm / London—Sydney
$20.00 - In stock -
It could be argued that the influence of Lacan on modern literary studies has been greater than anyone’s. Lacan has historicised the universal or mythic perceptions of Freud, and thus lent a new status to literature as a cultural artefact. This book, originally published in 1986, aims to delineate the trends in the uses made of Lacan today; to examine the theoretical substructure by which his work is accommodated to literature; and to analyse the way in which his work ‘models’ the formal relation of the literary text to other texts, to history and to politics.
Good copy with wear and age.
2003, English
Softcover, 362 pages, 21 x 14 cm
Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Ballantine Books / New York
$110.00 - In stock -
2003 paperback edition of Masson's controversial exposé on Freud's Seduction Theory of child sexual abuse — "A watergate of the psyche"-New York Times. Very rare in all editions.
In 1896, Sigmund Freud presented his revolutionary "seduction theory," arguing that acts of sexual abuse and violence inflicted on children are the direct cause of adult mental illness. Nine years later, Freud completely reversed his position, insisting that these sexual memories were actually fantasies that never happened. Why did Freud retract the seduction theory? And why has the psychoanalytic community gone to such lengths to conceal that retraction? In this landmark book, drawing on his unique access to formerly sealed and hidden papers, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson dares to uncover the truth about this critical turning point in Freud's career and its enduring impact on the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.
The Assault on Truth reveals a reality that neither Freud nor his followers could bear to face. Bracing in its honesty, gripping its revelations, this is the book that prompted Masson's break with the psychoanalytic community—and launched his subsequent brilliant career as an independent thinker and writer.
Very Good —NF copy.
1992, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 22.5 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Johns Hopkins University Press / Baltimore
$45.00 - In stock -
First 1992 edition.
To some, René Girard is best known for his views on sacred myth and ritual. To others, he is the eminent structuralist critic who offers challenging readings of major literary works. Still others know him for his analyses of the Bible.
Central to all aspects of Girard's work is his theory of mimesis, a basic hypothesis about the structures of human motivation, Yet nowhere in his writings does Girard offer a systematic presentation of the mimetic theory. In fact, key terminology shifts from work to work, resulting in considerable ambiguity in both basic concepts and explanatory claims.
In Models of Desire Paisley Livingston provides the first rigorous critical reconstruction of Girard's theory of mimesis. Drawing a careful distinction between the theory itself and Girard's often ambitious claims about it, Livingston provides a systematic presentation of Girard's ideas about the role of imitation in human motivation. He surveys responses to Girard's work and compares his theory of mimetic desire with recent work in cognitive psychology and philosophy.
The result is a salient theoretical alternative to the false choice—between psychoanalysis and anti-psychological doctrines—that currently dominates literary theory.
Fine copy.
1997, English
Softcover, 416 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Stanford University Press / Palo Alto
$30.00 - Out of stock
First 1997 edition.
With the collapse of the bipolar system of global rivalry that dominated world politics after the Second World War, and in an age that is seeing the return of "ethnic cleansing" and "identity politics," the question of violence, in all of its multiple ramifications, imposes itself with renewed urgency. Rather than concentrating on the socioeconomic or political backgrounds of these historical changes, the contributors to this volume rethink the concept of violence, both in itself and in relation to the formation and transformation of identities, whether individual or collective, political or cultural, religious or secular. In particular, they subject the notion of self-determination to stringent scrutiny: is it to be understood as a value that excludes violence, in principle if not always in practice? Or is its relation to violence more complex and, perhaps, more sinister?
Reconsideration of the concepts, the practice, and even the critique of violence requires an exploration of the implications and limitations of the more familiar interpretations of the terms that have dominated in the history of Western thought. To this end, the nineteen contributors address the concept of violence from a variety of perspectives in relation to different forms of cultural representation, and not in Western culture alone; in literature and the arts, as well as in society and politics; in philosophical discourse, psychoanalytic theory, and so-called juridical ideology, as well as in colonial and post-colonial practices and power relations.
The contributors are Giorgio Agamben, Ali Behdad, Cathy Caruth, Jacques Derrida, Michael Dillon, Peter Fenves, Stathis Gourgouris, Werner Hamacher, Beatrice Hanssen, Anselm Haverkamp, Marian Hobson, Peggy Kamuf, M. B. Pranger, Susan M. Shell, Peter van der Veer, Hent de Vries, Cornelia Vismann, and Samuel Weber.
VG copy.
1992, English
Softcover, 494 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of California Press / Berkley
$40.00 - In stock -
First 1991 edition.
The Languages of Psyche traces the dualism of mind and body during the 'long eighteenth century,' from the Restoration in England to the aftermath of the French Revolution. Ten outstanding scholars investigate the complex mind-body relationship in a variety of Enlightenment contexts - science, medicine, philosophy, literature, and everyday society. No other recent book provides such an in-depth, suggestive resource for philosophers, literary critics, intellectual and social historians, and all who are interested in Enlightenment studies.
Very Good copy, light wear.
1987, English
Softcover, 216 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Columbia University Press / New York
$50.00 - Out of stock
First 1987 edition.
Freud and Oedipus reassesses Freud’s central concept of the Oedipus complex from the interlocking perceptives of biography, intellectual history, and Greek tragedy. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary materials, Peter Rudnytsky establishes how Freud reached his epochal formulation through his own self-analysis and clinical work. He then places Freud’s discoveries in the context of nineteenth-century German intellectual and literary history. Finally, he demonstrates how many of Freud’s insights are foreshadowed in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and discusses the psychoanalytic and structuralist interpretation of Sophocles’ Oedipus cycle as a whole.
Very Good copy.
1984 / 1987, English
Softcover, 306 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Basil Blackwell / Oxford
$35.00 - In stock -
First 1984 UK Basil Blackwell edition, 1987 print.
Desire in Language traces the path of an investigation, extending over a period of ten years, into the semiotics of literature and the arts. But the essays of Julia Kristeva in this volume, though they often deal with literature and art, do not amount to either "literary criticism" or "art criticism." Their concern, writes Kristeva, "remains intratheoretical: they are based on art and literature in order to subvert the very theoretical, philosophical, or semiological apparatus."
Probing beyond the discoveries of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Roman Jakobson and others, Julia Kristeva proposes and tests theories centered on the nature and development of the novel, and on what she has defined as a signifying practice in poetic language and pictural works. Desire in Language fully shows what Roman Jakobson has called Kristeva's "genuine gift of questioning generally adopted 'axioms,' and her contrary gift of releasing various 'damned questions' from their traditional question marks."
Average—Good copy. Heavy tanning to page block edges, general wear to covers with knocking to spine.
1981, English
Softcover, 378 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Vintage Books / New York
$40.00 - Out of stock
A Pulitzer Prize Winner and landmark book from one of the truly original scholars of our time: a magnificent revelation of turn-of-the-century Vienna where out of a crisis of political and social disintegration so much of modern art and thought was born.
"Not only is it a splendid exploration of several aspects of early modernism in their political context; it is an indicator of how the discipline of intellectual history is currently practiced by its most able and ambitious craftsmen. It is also a moving vindication of historical study itself, in the face of modernism's defiant suggestion that history is obsolete."—David A. Hollinger, History Book Club Review
"Each of [the seven separate studies] can be read separately....Yet they are so artfully designed and integrated that one who reads them in order is impressed by the book's wholeness and the momentum of its argument."—Gordon A. Craig, The New Republic
"A profound work...on one of the most important chapters of modern intellectual history"—H.R. Trevor-Roper, front page, The New York Times Book Review
"Invaluable to the social and political historian...as well as to those more concerned with the arts"—John Willett, The New York Review of Books
"A work of original synthesis and scholarship. Engrossing."—Newsweek
G—VG copy with light age/wear to extremities.
1985, English
Softcover, 400 pages, 22.5cm x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Athlone Press / UK
$70.00 - Out of stock
1985 English language edition of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's mighty Anti-Oedipus, published by The Athlone Press in England. 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.
Very Good copy of this scarce early English edition.
1982, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 328 pages, 22.5 x 14 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
MacMillan / London
$40.00 - Out of stock
First 1982 HC edition.
Since the publications of his first essays in the early 1960s Christian Metz has produced a body of work that has established him as the most influential contemporary theorist of cinema and as a leading contributor to the development of semiotics generally.
Psychoanalysis and Cinema: The Imaginary Signifier is in many ways a culmination of this work. In the first half of the book Metz explores a number of aspects of the psychological anchoring of cinema as a social institution, using Freudian psychoanalysis to examine the nature of cinematic spectatorship, the relations of cinema and voyeurism, fetishism and so on. In the second half, he shifts his approach a little to look at the operations of meaning in the film text, at the figures of image and sound concatenation. Thus he is led to consideration of metaphor and metonymy in film, this involving a detailed account of these two figures as they appear in psychoanalysis and linguistics - an account which brilliantly disentangles the various analogies that have been proposed between metaphor and metonymy, condensation and displacement, paradigm and syntagm, and makes an important contribution to our general understanding of these issues as well as to our particular understanding of cinema.
Throughout, the book is an argument with and recasting of initial semiotic thinking dependent on reference to fixed linguistics models; it offers something of a 'second semiotics', concerned now with the institution of modes of subjectivity, cinema as imaginary signifier, and with the movement and effects of meaning, film as text.
CHRISTIAN METZ teaches at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His published works include two volumes of Essais sur la signification au cinema, Langage et cinema and Essais semiotiques. The Translators CELIA BRITTON and ANNWYL WILLIAMS are with the Department of French Studies at the University of Reading. BEN BREWSTER is at the University of Kent at Canterbury. ALFRED GUZZETTI is at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University.
G—VG copy, discolouration to dj spine edge, light age/wear.
1982, English
Softcover, 218 pages, 22.5 x 15 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Columbia University Press / New York
$80.00 - Out of stock
1982 Columbia classics re-print of Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (French: Pouvoirs de l'horreur. Essai sur l'abjection), a 1980 book by Julia Kristeva. The work is an extensive treatise on the subject of abjection, in which Kristeva draws on the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to examine horror, marginalization, castration, the phallic signifier, the "I/Not I" dichotomy, the Oedipal complex, exile, and other concepts appropriate to feminist criticism and queer theory.
According to Kristeva, the abject marks a "primal order" that escapes signification in the symbolic order; the term is used to refer to the human reaction (horror, vomit) to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object, or between the self and the other.
Powers of Horror is an excellent introduction to an aspect of contemporary French literature which has been allowed to become somewhat neglected in the current emphasis on para-philosophical modes of discourse. Kristeva is one of the leading voices in contemporary French criticism, on a par with such names as Genette, Foucault, Greimas and others...—Paul de Man
1982 English translation by Leon S. Roudiez.
1989, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 21.5 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Basil Blackwell / Oxford
$80.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1989 English edition of Laplanche's New Foundations for Psychoanalysis, translated from the original French edition of 1987.
New Foundations for Psychoanalysis represents a distillation of twenty years' work by one of France's most distinguished psychoanalysts. In a provocative study of the various foundations that have been proposed for psychoanalysis Jean Laplanche demonstrates that it cannot be epistemologically grounded in either biology, phylogenesis, mechanics or linguistics. These disciplines are, rather, the background against which it emerges in an inaugural gesture which captures something of the emergence of the human being.
Returning to the founding moment of psychoanalysis, Laplanche then elaborates a general theory of seduction, in which seduction is seen as neither an encounter with a perverse father nor a surrender to an attentive mother, but as a primal encounter with an enigmatic signifier. This encounter can be reactivated in the process of analysis, allowing the enigmatic quality of the signifier to be transcended and a translation-based theory of repression to emerge.
Jean Laplanche teaches at the University of Paris where he is director of the Centre de Recherches en Psychanalyse et Psychopathologie. He is co-author, with J. B. Pontalis, of The Language of Psychoanalysis and the author of Holderlin et la question du pere and Life and Death in Psychoanalysis. David Macey, a professional translator, is also the author of Lacan in Contexts.
VG—Near Fine copy. Crisp with edge tanning.