World Food Books

Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics
Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow

1983, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 22.5 x 15 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$35.00 - In stock -

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This book, which Foucault himself has judged accurate, is the first to provide a sustained, coherent analysis of Foucault’s work as a whole. Published by University of Chicago Press in 1983, this 2nd edition with an afterword by and an Interview with Michel Foucault.

To demonstrate the sense in which Foucault’s work is beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, the authors unfold a careful, analytical exposition of his oeuvre. They argue that during the of Foucault’s work became a sustained and largely successful effort to develop a new method—“interpretative analytics”—capable oo explaining both the logic of structuralism’s claim to be an objective science and the apparent validity of the hermeneutical counterclaim that the human sciences can proceed only by understanding the deepest meaning of the subject and his tradition.

“There are many new secondary sources [on Foucault]. None surpass the book by Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. . . . The American paperback edition contains Foucault’s ’On the Genealogy of Ethics,’ a lucid interview that is now our best source for seeing how he construed the whole project of the history of sexuality.”—David Hoy, London Review of Books

VG copy.

File under: Michel Foucault Hubert L. Dreyfus Paul Rabinow University of Chicago Press / Chicago Philosophy Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Sociology / Politics

Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles/Eperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche
by Jacques Derrida

1978, English / French
Softcover, 166 pages, 23 x 12 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$35.00 - In stock -

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First 1978 bi-lingual English-French edition.
Translated by Barbara Harlow.

Nietzsche has recently enjoyed much scrutiny from the nouveaux critiques. Jacques Derrida, the leader of that movement, here combines in his strikingly original and incisive fashion questions of sexuality, politics, writing, judgment, procreation, death, and even the weather into a far-reaching analysis of the challenges bequeathed to the modern world by Nietzsche.

Spurs, then, is aptly titled, for Derrida’s “deconstructions” of Nietzsche’s meanings will surely act as spurs to further thought and controversy. This dual-language edition offers the English-speaking reader who has some knowledge of French an opportunity to examine the stylistic virtuosity of Derrida’s writing—of particular significance for his analysis of “the question of style.”

Very Good copy w. sunning to spine and back cover (milder in real life than depicted)

File under: Jacques Derrida University of Chicago Press / Chicago Psychoanalysis Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Philosophy

Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! : A Paul Scheerbart Reader
by Paul Scheerbart

2014, English
Hardcover, 320 pages 25 x 18 cm
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$65.00 $50.00 - In stock -

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German writer, critic, and theorist Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915) died nearly a century ago, but his influence is still being felt today. Considered by some a mad eccentric and by others a visionary political thinker in his own time, he is now experiencing a revival thanks to a new generation of scholars who are rightfully situating him in the modernist pantheon.

Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is the first collection of Scheerbart’s multifarious writings to be published in English. In addition to a selection of his fantastical short stories, it includes the influential architectural manifesto Glass Architecture and his literary tour-de-force Perpetual Motion: The Story of an Invention. The latter, written in the guise of a scientific work (complete with technical diagrams), was taken as such when first published but in reality is a fiction—albeit one with an important message. Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is richly illustrated with period material, much of it never before reproduced, including a selection of artwork by Paul Scheerbart himself. Accompanying this original material is a selection of essays by scholars, novelists, and filmmakers commissioned for this publication to illuminate Scheerbart’s importance, then and now, in the worlds of art, architecture, and culture.

Coedited by artist Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin, with new artwork created for this publication by McElheny, Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! is a long-overdue monument to a modern master

File under: Paul Scheerbart Paul Scheerbart University of Chicago Press / Chicago Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Architecture / Interior Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Art Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Drawing Fiction / Poetry Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction SALE

The Gift of Death & Literature in Secret
by Jacques Derrida

2007, Englosh
Softcover, 160 pages, 22 x 14 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$35.00 - In stock -

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The Gift of Death, Jacques Derrida’s most sustained consideration of religion, explores questions first introduced in his book Given Time about the limits of the rational and responsible that one reaches in granting or accepting death, whether by sacrifice, murder, execution, or suicide. Derrida analyzes Czech philosopher Jan Patocka’s Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History and develops and compares his ideas to the works of Heidegger, Lévinas, and Kierkegaard. One of Derrida’s major works, The Gift of Death resonates with much of his earlier writing, and this highly anticipated second edition is greatly enhanced by David Wills’s updated translation. This new edition also features the first-ever English translation of Derrida’s Literature in Secret. In it, Derrida continues his discussion of the sacrifice of Isaac, which leads to bracing meditations on secrecy, forgiveness, literature, and democracy. He also offers a reading of Kafka’s Letter to His Father and uses the story of the flood in Genesis as an embarkation point for a consideration of divine sovereignty. “An important contribution to the critical study of ethics that commends itself to philosophers, social scientists, scholars of religion . . . [and those] made curious by the controversy that so often attends Derrida.”—Booklist, on the first edition

VG copy.

File under: Jacques Derrida University of Chicago Press / Chicago Philosophy Performance / Dance / Theater Out-of-print / Rare

Rimbaud : Complete Works, Selected Letters

2005, English / French
Softcover, 496 pages, 23.6 x 16.2 cm
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$45.00 - Out of stock

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The enfant terrible of French letters, Jean-Nicholas-Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91) was a defiant and precocious youth who wrote some of the most remarkable prose and poetry of the nineteenth century, all before leaving the world of verse by the age of twenty-one. More than a century after his death, the young rebel-poet continues to appeal to modern readers as much for his turbulent life as for his poetry; his stormy affair with fellow poet Paul Verlaine and his nomadic adventures in eastern Africa are as iconic as his hallucinatory poems and symbolist prose.

The first translation of the poet’s complete works when it was published in 1966, Rimbaud: Complete Works, Selected Letters introduced a new generation of Americans to the alienated genius—among them the Doors’s lead singer Jim Morrison, who wrote to translator Wallace Fowlie to thank him for rendering the poems accessible to those who "don’t read French that easily." Forty years later, the book remains the only side-by-side bilingual edition of Rimbaud’s complete poetic works.

Thoroughly revising Fowlie’s edition, Seth Whidden has made changes on virtually every page, correcting errors, reordering poems, adding previously omitted versions of poems and some letters, and updating the text to reflect current scholarship; left in place are Fowlie’s literal and respectful translations of Rimbaud’s complex and nontraditional verse. Whidden also provides a foreword that considers the heritage of Fowlie’s edition and adds a bibliography that acknowledges relevant books that have appeared since the original publication. On its fortieth anniversary, Rimbaud remains the most authoritative—and now, completely up-to-date—edition of the young master’s entire poetic ouvre.

Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Wallace Fowlie
Updated, Revised, and with a Foreword by Seth Whidden

File under: Arthur Rimbaud University of Chicago Press / Chicago Fiction / Poetry Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle

Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy
by Theodor W. Adorno

1992, English
Softcover, 180 pages, 21 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$35.00 - In stock -

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First 1992 University of Chicago English edition.

"A masterpiece.... This is tremendous stuff, well translated and urgently to be recommended."—Peter Franklin, Musical Times

Theodor W. Adorno goes beyond conventional thematic analysis to gain a more complete understanding of Mahler's music through his character, his social and philosophical back-ground, and his moment in musical history. Adorno examines the composer's works as a continuous and unified development that began with his childhood response to the marches and folk tunes of his native Bohemia. Since its appearance in 1960 in German, Mahler has established itself as a classic of musical interpretation. Now available in English, the work is presented here in a translation that captures the stylistic brilliance of the original.

"Consistently wonderful.... No one who is fascinated by Mahler's music, perhaps even more no one who finds it insuffer-able, can afford to ignore this book." —Michael Tanner, Times Literary Supplement

"Penetrates to the very bone and marrow of Mahler's entire output."—Harold Blumenfeld, Musical Quarterly

"A major work in the Adorno canon: it is grandly conceived and fully realized on every level."—Stephen Miles, Notes

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69), one of the foremost members of the Frankfurt school of critical theory, studied with Alban Berg in Vienna during the late twenties, and was later the director of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt from 1956 until his death. His works include Aesthetic Theory, Introduction to the Sociology of Music, The Jargon of Authenticity, Prism, and Philosophy of Modern Music.

Very Good—Near Fine copy.

File under: Gustav Mahler Theodor W. Adorno University of Chicago Press / Chicago Philosophy Out-of-print / Rare Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Sound / Music Art

On Monsters and Marvels
by Ambroise Pare

1982, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 23 x 14 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$45.00 - Out of stock

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Ambroise Paré, born in France around 1510, was chief surgeon to both Charles IX and Henri III. In one of the first attempts to explain birth defects, Paré produced On Monsters and Marvels, an illustrated encyclopedia of curiosities, of monstrous human and animal births, bizarre beasts, and natural phenomena. Janis L. Pallister’s acclaimed English translation offers a glimpse of the natural world as seen by an extraordinary Renaissance natural philosopher.

Scarce 1982 edition. Good—VG copy, light wear and spotting to block edges.

File under: Ambroise Pare Janis L. Pallister University of Chicago Press / Chicago Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Occult / Esoterica Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Art

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

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

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

Myself and My Aims : Writings on Art and Criticism
by Kurt Schwitters

2021, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 656 pages, 23 x 18 cm
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$65.00 - In stock -

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Kurt Schwitters was a major protagonist in the histories of modern art and literature, whose response to the contradictions of modern life rivals that of Marcel Duchamp in its importance for artists working today. His celebrated Merz pictures—collaged and assembled from the scrap materials of popular culture and the debris of the studio, such as newspaper clippings, wood, cardboard, fabric, and paint—reflect a lifelong interest in collection, fragmentation, and abstraction, techniques he also applied to language and graphic design.

As the first anthology in English of the critical and theoretical writings of this influential artist, Myself and My Aims makes the case for Schwitters as one of the most creative thinkers of his generation. Including material that has never before been published, this volume presents the full range of his prolific writing on the art and attitudes of his time, joining existing translations of his children’s stories, poetry, and fiction to give new readers unprecedented access to his literary imagination. With an accessible introduction by Megan R. Luke and elegant English translations by Timothy Grundy, this book will prove an exceptional resource for artists, scholars, and enthusiasts of his art.

"This indispensable collection follows Schwitters' swiftly changing thought on a diverse range of subjects from architecture and painting to graphic art and poetry. In each case Schwitters delivers his canny diagnosis with rigor, humor, and unflinching belligerence. No figure was able to reconcile Dadaist nihilism with constructivist optimism quite like Schwitters, and his striking insights about the hollow metaphysics of consumer society will not fail to resonate with anyone torn between the positions of critique and complicity today."—Devin Fore, Princeton University

File under: Kurt Schwitters Kurt Schwitters Megan R. Luke University of Chicago Press / Chicago Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Theory / Essay Dada Art Painting

Death & Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges
by Mieke Bal

1988, English
Hardcover, 324 pages, 15.24 x 22.86 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$30.00 - In stock -

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Combining literary criticism and feminist analysis, Death and Dissymmetry radically reinterprets not only the Book of Judges but also the tradition of its reception and understanding in the West. In Mieke Bal's account, Judges documents the Israelite culture learning to articulate itself in a decisive period of transition.

Counter to standard readings of Judges, Bal's interpretation demonstrates that the book has a political and ideological coherence in which the treatment of women plays a pivotal role. Bal concentrates here not on the assassinations and battles that rage through Judges but on the violence in the domestic lives of individual characters, particularly sexual violence directed at women. Her skillful reading reveals that murder, in this text, relates to gender and reflects a social structure that is inherently contradictory. By foregrounding the stories of women and subjecting them to subtle narrative analysis, she is able to expose a set of preoccupations that are essential to the sense of these stories but are not articulated in them. Bal thereby develops a "countercoherence" in conflict with the apparent emphases of Judges―the politics, wars, and historiography that have been the constant focus of commentators on the book.

Death and Dissymmetry makes an important contribution to the development of a feminist method of interpreting ancient texts, with consequences for religious studies, ancient history, literary theory, and gender studies.

Maria Gertrudis "Mieke" Bal (b. 1946) is a Dutch cultural theorist, video artist, and Professor Emerita in Literary Theory at the University of Amsterdam.

Very Good copy w/o dust jacket, therefore Good.

File under: Mieke Bal University of Chicago Press / Chicago Feminism Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Crime / Violence Sociology / Politics Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay

Six Years : The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972
by Lucy Lippard

1973 / 1997, English
Softcover, 280 pages, 173 x 213 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$70.00 - Out of stock

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“Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or 'dematerialized.'”—Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years

In 1973 the critic and curator Lucy R. Lippard published Six Years, a book with possibly the longest subtitle in the bibliography of art: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones) edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard. Six Years, sometimes referred to as a conceptual art object itself, not only described and embodied the new type of art-making that Lippard was intent on identifying and cataloging, it also exemplified a new way of criticizing and curating art. The result is a book with the character of a lively contemporary forum that offers an invaluable record of the thinking of the artists—a historical survey and essential reference book for the period. Lippard provides a new preface to this 1997 reprint edition.

Includes: Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Dennis Adrian, Carl Andre, Eleanor Antin, Keith Arnatt, Art-Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, David Askevold, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, N.E. Thing Co., Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Ian Burn, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Gerald Ferguson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Gilbert & George, Dan Graham, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Hans Haacke, Charles Harrison, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Peter Hutchinson, Stephen Kaltenbach, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Lee Lozano, Bruce McLean, Walter de Maria, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Mel Ramsden, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Gerry Schum, Richard Serra, Willoughby Sharp, Seth Siegelaub, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Athena Tacha Spear, Bernar Venet, Wolf Vostell, Franz Erhard Walther, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, William Wiley, Ian Wilson, La Monte Young

"Essential source book of documentation of the Conceptual Art, Land Art, Earth Art, Arte Povera, Minimal Art, Performance Art, Video Art movements. Documents the activities, day by day, month by month, year by year of artists including Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Dennis Adrian, Carl Andre, Eleanor Antin, Keith Arnatt, Art-Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, David Askevold, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, N.E. Thing Co., Josef Beuys, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Ian Burn, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Gerald Ferguson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Gilbert & George, Dan Graham, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Hans Haacke, Charles Harrison, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Peter Hutchinson, Stephen Kaltenbach, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Lee Lozano, Bruce McLean, Walter de Maria, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Mel Ramsden, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Gerry Schum, Richard Serra, Willoughby Sharp, Seth Siegelaub, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Athena Tacha Spear, Bernar Venet, Wolf Vostell, Franz Erhard Walther, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, William Wiley, Ian Wilson, La Monte Young and others. "The unusual form of this provocative book intentionally reflects the chaotic network of ideas connected with so-called conceptual art or information art or idea art, in America and abroad, from 1966 to 1972. Arranged as a continuous bibliographical chronology, into which is woven a rich collection of original documents - including texts by, and taped discussions with and among, the artists involved - and annotations by Lucy R. Lippard, the book has the informal quality of a lively contemporary forum. Only a minimum of order is imposed; for the most part the reader is left to confront the curious compendium of information on his or her own, to follow changing ideas and artistic developments over the six-year period, to witness the gradual (and controversial) "dematerialization" of the art object." -- publisher's statement."

Good—Very Good copy with general light shelf wear and tanning to spine.

File under: Vito Acconci Bas Jan Ader Dennis Adrian Carl Andre Eleanor Antin Keith Arnatt Art-Language Richard Artschwager Michael Asher David Askevold John Baldessari Robert Barry Frederick Barthelme N.E. Thing Co. Joseph Beuys Mel Bochner Alighiero Boetti Stanley Brouwn Daniel Buren Victor Burgin Donald Burgy Ian Burn Jack Burnham James Lee Byars Hanne Darboven Agnes Denes Jan Dibbets Peter Downsbrough Gerald Ferguson Rafael Ferrer Barry Flanagan Gilbert & George Dan Graham Guerrilla Art Action Group Hans Haacke Charles Harrison Michael Heizer Douglas Huebler Peter Hutchinson Stephen Kaltenbach Allan Kaprow On Kawara Joseph Kosuth Christine Kozlov John Latham Barry Le Va Sol LeWitt Richard Long Lee Lozano Bruce McLean Walter de Maria Robert Morris Bruce Nauman Claes Oldenburg Yoko Ono Dennis Oppenheim Adrian Piper Michelangelo Pistoletto Sigmar Polke Mel Ramsden Allen Ruppersberg Edward Ruscha Robert Ryman Gerry Schum Richard Serra Willoughby Sharp Seth Siegelaub Tony Smith Robert Smithson Michael Snow Keith Sonnier Athena Tacha Spear Bernar Venet Wolf Vostell Franz Erhard Walther William Wegman Lawrence Weiner William Wiley Ian Wilson La Monte Young Lucy R. Lippard University of Chicago Press / Chicago Conceptual Art Arte Povera Minimal Art Performance / Dance / Theater Feminism Curatorial Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Art Photography Film / Video Ecology / Earth Fluxus Group Shows / Collections Sculpture / Installation

What is Contemporary Art?
by Terry Smith

2009, English
Softcover, 344 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$70.00 $30.00 - In stock -

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Who gets to say what counts as contemporary art? Artists, critics, curators, gallerists, auctioneers, collectors, or the public?

Revealing how all of these groups have shaped today's multifaceted definition, Terry Smith brilliantly shows that an historical approach offers the best answer to the question: What is Contemporary Art? Smith argues that the most recognisable kind is characterised by a return to mainstream modernism in the work of such artists as Richard Serra and Gerhard Richter, as well as the retro-sensationalism of figures like Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami. At the same time, Smith reveals, postcolonial artists are engaged in a different kind of practice: one that builds on local concerns and tackles questions of identity, history, and globalisation. A younger generation embodies yet a third approach to contemporaneity by investigating time, place, mediation, and ethics through small-scale, closely connective art making.

Inviting readers into these diverse yet overlapping art worlds, Smith offers a behind-the-scenes introduction to the institutions, the personalities, the biennials, and of course the works that together are defining the contemporary. The resulting map of where art is now illuminates not only where it has been but also where it is going.

File under: Richard Serra Gerhard Richter Damien Hirst Takashi Murakami Terry Smith University of Chicago Press / Chicago Theory / Essay Art Conceptual Art Sculpture / Installation Painting Performance / Dance / Theater SALE

Archive Fever : A Freudian Impression
by Jacques Derrida

1996, English
Softcover, 122 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$35.00 - Out of stock

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Translated by Eric Prenowitz

In this work, Jacques Derrida guides the reader through an extended meditation on remembrance, religion, time, and technology - all occasioned by a deconstructive analysis of the notion of archiving. The archival concept has played a pivotal role in numerous critical debates - a place of origin, yet of perpetuity, a place of stasis and order, yet of discovery, the notion of archive houses a complex of diverse, and often disparate, meanings. As a depository of civic record and social history whose very name derives from the Greek word for town hall, the archive would seem to be a public entity, yet it is stocked with the personal, even intimate, artifacts of private lives. This inherent tension between public and private inaugurates, argues Derrida, an inquiry into the human impulse to preserve, through technology as well as tradition, both a historical and a psychic past.

VG copy. Out of print.

File under: Jacques Derrida Eric Prenowitz University of Chicago Press / Chicago Philosophy Theory / Essay Psychoanalysis Out-of-print / Rare

Positions
by Jacques Derrida

1982, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 20.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$38.00 - Out of stock

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First English paperback edition from 1982. Positions is a collection of three interviews with Jacques Derrida that illuminate and make more accessible the complex concepts and terms treated extensively in such works as Writing and Difference and Dissemination. Derrida takes positions on his detractors, his supporters, and the two major preoccupations of French intellectual life, Marxism and psychoanalysis.

The interviews included in this volume offer a multifaceted view of Derrida. “Implications: Interview with Henri Ronse” contains a succinct statement of principles. “Seminology and Grammatology: Interview with Julia Kristeva” provides important clarifications of the role played by linguistics in Derrida’s work. “Positions: Interview with Jean-Louis Houdebine and Guy Scarpetta” is a wide-ranging discussion that touches on many of the polemics that Derrida’s work has provoked.

Translated and annotated by Alan Bass.

Alan Bass, whose translation of Writing and Difference was highly praised for its clarity, accuracy, and readability, has provided extremely useful critical notes, full of vital information, including historical background.

Very Good.

File under: Jacques Derrida Alan Bass University of Chicago Press / Chicago Theory / Essay Philosophy Out-of-print / Rare

Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money
by Jacques Derrida

1994, English
Softcover, 182 pages, 15.2 x 22.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$35.00 - Out of stock

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First English language edition of Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money, by Jacques Derrida, translated by Peggy Kamuf and published by University of Chicago Press in 1994.

Is "giving" possible? Is it possible to give without immediately entering into a circle of exchange that turns the gift into a debt to be returned? This question leads Jacques Derrida to make out an irresolvable paradox at what seems the most fundamental level of the gift's meaning: for the gift to be received as a gift, it must not appear as such, since its mere appearance as gift puts it in the cycle of repayment and debt.

Derrida reads the relation of time to gift through a number of texts: Heidegger's "Time and Being, " Mauss's "The Gift, " as well as essays by Benveniste and Levi-Strauss that assume Mauss's legacy. It is, however, a short tale by Baudelaire, "Counterfeit Money, " that guides Derrida's analyses throughout. At stake in his reading of the tale, to which the second half of this book is devoted, are the conditions of gift and forgiveness as essentially bound up with the movement of dissemination, a concept that Derrida has been working out for many years.

For both readers of Baudelaire and students of literary theory, this work will prove indispensable.

Fine copy.

File under: Jacques Derrida Charles Baudelaire Claude Lévi-Strauss University of Chicago Press / Chicago Philosophy Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare Socialism / Communism / Capitalism

The Gift of Death
by Jacques Derrida

1996, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 124 pages, 215 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$45.00 - In stock -

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First 1995 University of Chicago Press hardcover edition of "The Gift of Death", Jacques Derrida's most sustained consideration of religion to date. While continuing to explore questions introduced in "Given Time" such as the possibility, or impossibility, of giving and the economic and anthropological nature of gifts, Derrida turns to the notion of "responsibility" and the ultimate gifts of life and death.

Derrida divides the book into four parts, which deal respectively with the development of the notion of responsibility in the Platonic and Christian traditions; the relation between sacrifice and mortality; the contemporary meaning of the story of Abraham and Isaac; and the relation between religious ideology and economic rationality, explicitly linking this book with "Given Time." The texts under discussion include the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, as well as writings from Patocka, Heidegger, Levinas, and Kierkegaard (whom he addresses here for the first time in print.)

Derrida's main concern is with the meaning of moral and ethical responsibility in Western religion and philosophy. He questions the limits of the rational and the responsible that one reaches in granting or accepting death, whether by sacrifice, murder, execution, or suicide. Beginning with a discussion of Patocka's "Heretical Essays on the History of Philosophy," Derrida develops Patocka's ideas concerning the sacred and responsibility through comparisons with the works of Heidegger, Levinas, and, finally, Kierkegaard. Derrida's treatment of Kierkegaard makes clear that the two philosophers share some of the same concerns. He then undertakes a careful reading of Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling," comparing and contrasting his own conception of responsibility with that of Kierkegaard, and extending and deepening his recent accounts of the gift and sacrifice. For Derrida, the very possibility of sacrifice, especially the ultimate sacrifice of one's own life for the sake of another, comes into question.

This work resonates with much of Derrida's earlier writing and will be of interest to scholars in anthropology, philosophy, and, of course, literary criticism. In addition, given the emphasis on the work of Kierkegaard and on the role of religion in our thinking, it will be of particular interest to a new readership among scholars of ethics and religion.

File under: Jacques Derrida University of Chicago Press / Chicago Philosophy Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay

To Destroy Painting
by Louis Marin

1994, English
Softocver, 196 pages, 15.5 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$45.00 - Out of stock

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The work of the French cultural critic Louis Marin (1931-1992) is of importance to scholars concerned with issues of representation. This text, first published in France in 1977, presents Marin's theories about the aims of painting in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. A meditation on the work of Poussin and Caravaggio and on their milieux, the book explores a number of notions implied by theories of painting and offers insight into the aims and effects of visual representaion.

First edition Very Good—Fine copy.

File under: Caravaggio Nicolas Poussin Louis Marin University of Chicago Press / Chicago Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism Painting Theory / Essay Art

Joy of the Worm : Suicide and Pleasure in Early Modern English Literature
by Drew Daniel

2022, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 23 x 15.2 cm
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$58.00 - In stock -

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Consulting an extensive archive of early modern literature, Joy of the Worm asserts that voluntary death in literature is not always a matter of tragedy.

In this study, Drew Daniel identifies a surprisingly common aesthetic attitude that he calls "joy of the worm," after Cleopatra's embrace of the deadly asp in Shakespeare's play-a pattern where voluntary death is imagined as an occasion for humor, mirth, ecstatic pleasure, even joy and celebration.

Daniel draws both a historical and a conceptual distinction between "self-killing" and "suicide." Standard intellectual histories of suicide in the early modern period have understandably emphasized attitudes of abhorrence, scorn, and severity toward voluntary death. Daniel reads an archive of literary scenes and passages, dating from 1534 to 1713, that complicate this picture. In their own distinct responses to the surrounding attitude of censure, writers including Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, and Addison imagine death not as sin or sickness, but instead as a heroic gift, sexual release, elemental return, amorous fusion, or political self-rescue. "Joy of the worm" emerges here as an aesthetic mode that shades into schadenfreude, sadistic cruelty, and deliberate "trolling," but can also underwrite powerful feelings of belonging, devotion, and love.

Drew Daniel is associate professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Twenty Jazz Funk Greats, a study of the English "industrial" music pioneers Throbbing Gristle, and The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect and Epistemology of the English Renaissance. He is also one half of the electronic duo Matmos.

"The lucidity of Daniel's razor-sharp prose is surpassed only by the boldness and sensitivity of his thought. Joy of the Worm resists the easy logic of secularization, whereby classical valorization and Christian condemnation of self-killing sequentially give way to a modern understanding of suicide as a cry for help. Instead, Daniel attunes us to materialist understandings and aesthetic representations of self-destruction in which cruelty and tenderness, sorrow and mirth, ugliness and beauty mingle conceptually and tonally. Daniel's meticulous and humane readings attune us to a complex affective and social landscape surrounding suicide." — Melissa E. Sanchez, University of Pennsylvania

"What happens if we take seriously the failed seriousness of literary scenes of self-killing? 'Joy within death' is the ambit of Daniel's revelatory book, which gathers instances on both sides of Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (1643)-the work that debuted the word 'suicide'-to show this 'contrary aesthetic tendency' accreting generic force. By reckoning with the levity that animates the choice not to bear what must be borne, Joy of the Worm offers a brilliant and necessary meditation on the resources early modernity furnishes for finding pleasure in an age of destruction and setting down the burden of false hope." — Ellen MacKay, University of Chicago

"Joy of the Worm is a brilliant, deeply thoughtful, conceptually agile, ethically serious, and surprisingly funny work. Before the emergence of suicide as the pathologized act we currently understand it to be, self-killing enabled a wider set of affective and aesthetic responses. Alert to the difficulty of this topic, Daniel moves deftly back and forth between our twenty-first-century present and the early modern past so that we can understand our own assumptions for what they are: historically contingent ways of framing and perhaps diminishing a fundamental human possibility." — Timothy M. Harrison, author of 'Coming To: Consciousness and Natality in Early Modern England'

File under: Drew Daniel University of Chicago Press / Chicago Fiction / Poetry Theory / Essay

Ghost Image
by Hervé Guibert

2014, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 52 x 80 cm
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$44.00 - Out of stock

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Ghost Image is made up of sixty-three short essays - meditations, memories, fantasies, and stories bordering on prose poems - and not a single image. Herve Guibert's brief, literary rumination on photography was written in response to Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida, but its deeply personal contents go far beyond that canonical text. Some essays talk of Guibert's parents and friends, some describe old family photographs and films, and spinning through them all are reflections on remembrance, narcissism, seduction, deception, death, and the phantom images that have been missed. Both a memoir and an exploration of the artistic process, Ghost Image not only reveals Guibert's particular experience as a gay artist captivated by the transience and physicality of his media and his life, but also his thoughts on the more technical aspects of his vocation. In one essay, Guibert searches through a cardboard box of family portraits for clues-answers, or even questions-about the lives of his parents and more distant relatives.

Rifling through vacation snapshots and the autographed images of long-forgotten film stars, Guibert muses, "I don't even recognize the faces, except occasionally that of an aunt or great-aunt, or the thin, fair face of my mother as a young girl." In other essays, he explains how he composes his photographs, and how - in writing - he seeks to escape and correct the inherent limits of his technique, to preserve those images lost to his technical failings as a photographer. With strains of Jean Genet and recurring themes that speak to the work of contemporary artists across a range of media, Guibert's Ghost Image is a beautifully written, melancholic ode to existence and art forms both fleeting and powerful - a unique memoir at the nexus of family, memory, desire, and photography.

HERVÉ GUIBERT (1955-1991) was a French writer and photographer. A critic for Le Monde, he was the author of some thirty books, most notably To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life, which presents an intimate portrait of Michel Foucault and played a significant role in changing public attitudes in France towards AIDS.

File under: Hervé Guibert University of Chicago Press / Chicago Art Fiction / Poetry Eros Photography Theory / Essay LGBTQ+

Artist as Author : Action and Intent in Late-Modernist American Painting
by Christa Noel Robbins

2021, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 256 pages, 25.5 x 18 cm
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$75.00 $65.00 - Out of stock

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With Artist as Author, Christa Noel Robbins provides the first extended study of authorship in mid-20th century abstract painting in the US. Taking a close look at this influential period of art history, Robbins describes how artists and critics used the medium of painting to advance their own claims about the role that they believed authorship should play in dictating the value, significance, and social impact of the art object. Robbins tracks the subject across two definitive periods: the "New York School" as it was consolidated in the 1950s and "Post Painterly Abstraction" in the 1960s. Through many deep dives into key artist archives, Robbins brings to the page the minds and voices of painters Arshile Gorky, Jack Tworkov, Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, Sam Gilliam, and Agnes Martin along with those of critics such as Harold Rosenberg and Rosalind Krauss. While these are all important characters in the polemical histories of American modernism, this is the first time they are placed together in a single study and treated with equal measure, as peers participating in the shared late modernist moment.

File under: Arshile Gorky Jack Tworkov Helen Frankenthaler Kenneth Noland Sam Gilliam Agnes Martin Christa Noel Robbins Harold Rosenberg Rosalind Krauss University of Chicago Press / Chicago Painting Theory / Essay Art Minimal Art SALE

Isa Genzken
Sculpture as World Receiver

2017, English
Hardcover, 192 pages, 17.7 x 22.8 cm
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$65.00 - Out of stock

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The work of German sculptor Isa Genzken is brilliantly receptive to the ever-shifting conditions of modern life. In this first book devoted to the artist, Lisa Lee reflects on Genzken's tendency to think across media, attending to sculptures, photographs, drawings, and films from the entire span of her four-decade career, from student projects in the mid-1970s to recent works seen in Genzken's studio.

Through penetrating analyses of individual works as well as archival and interview material from the artist herself, Lee establishes four major themes in Genzken's oeuvre: embodied perception, architecture and built space, the commodity, and the body. Contextualizing the sculptor's engagement with fellow artists, such as Joseph Beuys and Bruce Nauman, Lee situates Genzken within a critical and historical framework that begins in politically fraught 1960s West Germany and extends to the globalized present. Here we see how Genzken tests the relevance of the utopian aspirations and formal innovations of the early twentieth century by submitting them to homage and travesty.

Sure to set the standard for future studies of Genzken's work, Isa Genzken is essential for anyone interested in contemporary art.

File under: Isa Genzken Lisa Lee University of Chicago Press / Chicago Art Sculpture / Installation Painting Theory / Essay

Hilma af Klint
Notes and Methods

2018, English
Hardcover, 288 pages, 21.6 x 27.9 cm
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$100.00 - Out of stock

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At the turn of the twentieth century, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) created a body of work that left visible reality behind, exploring the radical possibilities of abstraction years before Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, or Piet Mondrian. Many consider her the first trained artist to create abstract paintings. With Hilma af Klint: Notes and Methods, we get to experience the arc of Klint's artistic investigation in her own words.

Hilma af Klint studied at the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm where she was part of the first generation of female students. Up until the beginning of the century, she painted mainly landscapes and detailed botanical studies. Her work from this period was that of a young artist of her time who meticulously observed the world around her. But, like many of her contemporaries, af Klint was also interested in the invisible relationships that shape our world, believing strongly in a spiritual dimension. She joined the Theosophical Society, and, with four fellow female members who together called themselves "The Five," began to study mediumship. Between 1906 and 1915, purportedly guided by a higher power, af Klint created 193 individual works that, in both scale and scope of imagery, are like no other art created at that time. Botanically inspired images and mystical symbols, diagrams, words and geometric series, all form part af Klint's abstract language. These abstract techniques would not be seen again until years later.

Notes and Methods presents facsimile reproductions of a wide array of af Klint's early notebooks accompanied by the first English translation of af Klint's extensive writings. It contains the rarely seen "Blue Notebooks," hand-painted and annotated catalogues af Klint created of her most famous series "Paintings for the Temple," and a dictionary compiled by af Klint of the words and letters found in her work. An introduction by Iris Muller-Westermann illuminates this unique and important contribution to the legacy of Hilma af Klint.

File under: Hilma af Klint Iris Muller-Westermann University of Chicago Press / Chicago Art Painting Drawing Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic