Philosophy, Literature & Theory · 2011-11-17 · Philosophy, Literature & Theory Stanford...

Philosophy, Literature &

Theory

StanfordUniversity Press

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2012

2 Literature & theory

AVAILABLE IN JUNE 2012

Hip FiguresA Literary History of the Democratic PartyMichael F. SzalayHip Figures dramatically alters our understanding of the post-war American novel by show-ing how it mobilized fantasies of black style on behalf of the Democratic Party. Fascinated by jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, novelists such as Nor-man Mailer, Ralph Ellison, John Updike, and Joan Didion turned to hip culture to negotiate the voter realignments then reshap-ing national politics. Figuratively transporting white professionals and managers into the skins of African Americans, these novel-ists and many others insisted on their own importance to the ambitions of a party dependent on coalition-building but not fully committed to integration.

“This bold and ingenious book gives us the hipster’s racial background, but also a crucial glimpse into how cultural politics matter to politics in the weightiest and most straightforward sense.”

—Bruce Robbins, Columbia University

352 pp., 20129780804776356 Paper $24.95 $19.96 sale9780804776349 Cloth $80.00 $64.00 sale

Florence Dore and Michael Szalay, EditorsPost•45 Group, Series Board

Post•45 publishes groundbreaking work

on U. S. culture after the Second World

War. Our goal is to question rather than

reproduce critical orthodoxies—to ask

basic questions about how to read and

categorize American writing since 1945.

Though the series will gravitate toward

literature, we welcome writing on a

wide range of popular and avant-garde

culture, including film, drama, music,

graphic arts, and computer-based forms.

3Literature & theory

TAble Of COnTenTS

literature & Theory .....2-15

Philosophy .....................16-19

exam Copy Policy ............ 13

Ordering .................................14

America’s Corporate ArtThe Studio Authorship of Hollywood Motion PicturesJerome ChristensenContrary to theories of single person authorship, America’s Corporate Art argues that the corporate studio is the author of Hollywood motion pictures, both during the classical era of the studio system and beyond, when studios became players in global dramas staged by mas-sive entertainment conglomer-ates. Hollywood movies are examples of a commodity that, until the digital age, was rare: a self-advertising artifact that markets the studio’s brand in the very act of consumption.

“This highly original and engag-ing study makes a significant contribution to American film history and to film and media theory, particularly media indus-try studies. no other author has analyzed studio authorship with the depth, care, and complexity that Christensen exhibits here, nor has such an argument been supported with close readings of individual films.”

—Thomas Schatz, University of Texas at Austin

400 pp., 102 illustrations, 20129780804778633 Paper $29.95 $23.96 sale9780804771672 Cloth $90.00 $72.00 sale

ProjectionsComics and the History of Twenty-First-Century StorytellingJared GardnerProjections argues that the seem-ingly sudden visibility of comics is no accident. Beginning with the parallel development of nar-rative comics at the turn of the 20th century, comics have long been a form that invites—indeed requires—readers to help shape the stories being told. Today, with the rise of interactive media, the creative techniques and the read-ing practices comics have been experimenting with for a century are now in universal demand. Recounting the history of comics from the nineteenth-century rise of sequential comics to the news-paper strip, through comic books and underground comix, to the graphic novel and webcomics, Gardner shows why they offer the best models for rethinking story-telling in the twenty-first century.

“Original, provocative, deeply informed, and a much needed corrective to the presentist bias of comics studies.”

—Charles Hatfield, California State University, Northridge,

author of Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature

240 pp., 69 figures, 20129780804771474 Paper $24.95 $19.96 sale9780804771467 Cloth $80.00 $64.00 sale

Most SUP titles are also available as e-books via www.sup.org/ebooks or your favorite e-book retailer! Check out our website for e-book rental options and bundle discounts.

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Cover drawing: Friese Undine. “The International College of Somnology.” Ink and enamel on aluminum, 2007.


The Stillbirth of CapitalEnlightenment Writing and Colonial IndiaSiraj AhmedThis book targets one of the humanities’ most widely held premises: namely, that the Eu-ropean Enlightenment laid the groundwork for modern impe-rialism. It argues instead that the Enlightenment’s vision of empire calls our own historical and theo-retical paradigms into question. While eighteenth-century British India has not received nearly the same attention as nineteenth- and twentieth-century empires, it is the place where colonial rule and Enlightenment reason first became entwined. The Still-birth of Capital makes its case by examining every work about British India written by a ma-jor author from 1670 to 1815.

“This ambitious book takes on con-temporary critics of colonial dis-course studies and makes a pow-erful argument about the violent histories of european militarized trading companies in the Indian Ocean and the capacity of eigh-teenth-century texts to critically register these violent practices.”

—Suvir Kaul, University of Pennsylvania


Monopolizing the MasterHenry James and the Politics of Modern Literary ScholarshipMichael AneskoHenry James defied pos-terity to disturb his bones: he was adamant that his legacy be based exclusively on his publications and that his private life and

writings remain forever private. Despite this, almost immediately after his death in 1916 an intense struggle began among his family and his literary disciples to control his posthumous reputation, a struggle that was continued by later generations of critics and biogra-phers. Monopolizing the Master gives a blow-by-blow account of this conflict, which aroused intense feel-ings of jealousy, suspicion, and proprietorship among those who claimed to be the just custodians of James’s literary legacy. With an unprecedented amount of new evidence now available, Michael Anesko reveals the remarkable social, political, and sexual intrigue that inspired—and influenced—the deliberate construction of the Legend of the Master.

“Michael Anesko combines scholarship with the writer’s craft to engage both the seasoned Jamesian and the educated general reader. The story he tells is significant and compelling: it promises to change once again the way that we understand Henry James, all while opening a window onto academe’s seamier side.”

— Greg Zacharias, Creighton University

“As this extraordinary work of scholarship shows, it would be family, friends, publishers, biographers, and critics who strove to perpetuate one or another ‘Henry James’ in accordance with their view of the dead author. Anesko gives a vivid pres-ence to these secondary actors like the novelist’s nephew, Per-cy lubbock (the first editor of James’s letters), and leon edel, whose successful campaign to obtain and retain exclusive rights to publish James’s letters and biography is a scandal of modern scholarship only now being exposed in detail.”

—Millicent Bell, Emerita, Boston University

272 pp., 8 illustrations, 20129780804769327 Cloth $35.00 $28.00 sale


AVAILABLE IN JULY 2012

Ends of EnlightenmentJohn BenderEnds of Enlightenment explores three realms of eighteenth-century European innovation that remain active in the twenty-first century: the realist novel, philosophical thought, and the physical sciences, especially human anatomy. This book’s fresh perspective consid-ers the novel as an art but also as a force in thinking. The critical distance afforded by a view back across the centuries allows Bender to redefine such novelists as Defoe, Fielding, Goldsmith, God-win, and Laclos by placing them along philosophers and scientists like Newton, Locke, and Hume but also alongside engravings by Hogarth and by anatomist Wil-liam Hunter. His book probes the kinship among realism, hypoth-esis, and scientific fact, defining in the process the rhetorical basis of public communication during the Enlightenment.

“bender is our best index to the extraordinary efflorescence of eighteenth-century studies at the turn into the new millennium. His oeuvre is an essential handbook for those who care about the legacy of enlightenment.”

—Clifford Siskin, New York University

320 pp., 17 photos, 20129780804742122 Paper $25.95 $20.76 sale9780804742115 Cloth $85.00 $68.00 sale

Royal Censorship of Books in Eighteenth-Century FranceRaymond BirnToday, we are inclined to believe that intellectual freedom has no greater adversary than the censor. In eighteenth-century France, the matter was more complicated. Royal censors envisioned them-selves not as fulfilling a mission of state-sponsored repression but rather as guiding the liter-ary traffic of the Enlightenment. In essence, eighteenth-century French censors served as cultural intermediaries who bore respon-sibility for expanding public awareness of the progressive thought of their time.

“Offers richly documented insight into the complex mental world of enlightenment-era censors, along with a compelling account of how the government man-aged their work, and in the effort, ended up encapsulating so many of the key paradoxes of modern-ization in the eighteenth century.”

—H-France 216 pp., 20129780804763592 Cloth $60.00 $48.00 sale


The Holocaust in Italian Culture, 1944–2010Robert S. C. GordonThis book is the first major study of how postwar Italy confronted, or failed to confront, the Holo-caust. Fascist Italy was the model for Nazi Germany, and Musso-lini was Hitler’s prime ally in the Second World War. But Italy also became a theater of war and a vic-tim of Nazi persecution after 1943, as resistance, collaboration, and civil war raged. Gordon probes a rich range of cultural mate-rial as he paints a picture of this shared encounter with the dark-est moment of twentieth-century history. His book probes aspects of Italian national identity and memory, offering a new model for analyzing the interactions between national and interna-tional images of the Holocaust.

“This outstanding book fills a criti-cal gap in the literature and has profound significance for the study of Italy and for the memory of the Holocaust.”

—Marla Stone, Occidental College



Nelly Sachs, Flight and MetamorphosisAn Illustrated BiographyAris Fioretos Translated by Tomas TranæusThis richly illustrated biography is the first book in English to chronicle the life of Nelly Sachs

(1891–1970), recipient of the 1966 Nobel Prize in Liter-ature. The book follows Sachs from her secluded years in Berlin as the only child of assimilated German Jews, through her last-minute flight from the Nazis in 1940, to her exile in “peaceful Sweden”—a time of poverty and isolation, but also of growing fame. Enriched by over 300 images of Sachs’s manuscripts, photographs, and possessions, Nelly Sachs, Flight and Metamorpho-sis not only offers detailed insights into the contexts of Sachs’s formation as a writer, but also looks at themes of trauma and testimony in her central works.

Aris Fioretos draws upon many previously unknown manuscripts, documents, medical records, and pho-tos to produce the first reliably detailed narratives of Sachs’s foundational experiences: her teenage years when she experienced the unrequited love later desig-nated as the source for her entire oeuvre; her involve-ment with the Jewish Cultural League—seven years marked by mounting terror but also by her first public recognition as a writer; and her exposure to the radical Modernism of Swedish poetry in the 1940s.

“for some years the time has been ripe for a literary biography of nelly Sachs. now these thorough, thoughtful, deeply stud-ied pages, enlivened by remarkable images, should become a definitive source. Along with her close comrade Paul Celan, though not wholly like him, Sachs draws us into a molten his-tory we forget at our peril.”

—John Felstiner, author of Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew, and Can Poetry Save the Earth? A Field

Guide to Nature Poems


The Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers, with Selected Letters of Una JeffersVolume Two, 1931–1939Edited by James KarmanThe 1930s marked a turning point for Robinson Jeffers, both in his career as a poet and in his private life. The letters collected in this second volume of anno-tated correspondence document Jeffers’ rising fame as a poet, his controversial response to the turmoil of his time, his struggles as a writer, the growth and matu-ration of his twin sons, and the network of friends and acquain-tances that surrounded him. The letters also provide an intimate portrait of Jeffers’ relationship to his wife Una—including a full account of the 1938 crisis at Mabel Dodge Luhan’s home in Taos, New Mexico that nearly destroyed their marriage.

“These letters are crucial to any-one working seriously on Jeffers and his poetry and will deeply reward any reader interested in his work and life.”

—Tim Hunt, Illinois State University



AVAILABLE IN FEBRUARY 2012

Theater of StateParliament and Political Culture in Early Stuart EnglandChris R. KyleThis book chronicles the ex-pansion and creation of new public spheres in and around Parliament in the early Stu-art period. It focuses on two closely interconnected nar-ratives: the changing nature of communication and dis-course within parliamentary chambers and the interaction of Parliament with the wider world of political dialogue and the dissemination of informa-tion. Concentrating on the rapidly changing practices of Parliament in print culture, rhetorical strategy, and lobby-ing during the 1620s, this book demonstrates that Parliament not only moved toward the center stage of politics but also became the center of the post-Reformation public sphere.

“frames the demotics, theatrics, and staging of parliamentary speech in terms of the history of communication. no account of early modern politics will be complete without this.”

—David Cressy, The Ohio State University

288 pp., 20129780804752886 Cloth $60.00 $48.00 sale

The World in PlayPortraits of a Victorian ConceptMatthew KaiserNineteenth-century Britain was a world in play. The Victorians invented the weekend and built hundreds of parks and playgrounds. In the wake of Darwin,

they re-imagined nature as a contest for survival. The playful child became a symbol of the future.

A world in play means two things: a world in flux and a world trapped, like Alice in Wonderland, in a ludic microcosm of itself. The book explores the extent to which play (competition, leisure, mischief, luck, festivity, imagination) pervades nineteenth-century literature and culture and forms the founda-tions of the modern self. Play made the Victorian world cohere and betrayed the illusoriness of that coherence. This is the paradox of modernity. Kai-ser gives an account of how certain Victorian mis-fits—working-class melodramatists of the 1830s, the reclusive Emily Brontë, free spirits Robert Louis Stevenson and John Muir, mischievous Oscar Wil-de—struggled to make sense of this new world. In so doing, they discovered the art of modern life.

“It has been a long time since I have read any new critic who has made me sit up and take notice with virtually every line, but Matthew Kaiser is such a critic, a new and potentially major voice in literary criticism. The book is brilliantly written, witty without being cute, profoundly sensitive to language, and truly original.”

—George Levine, Emeritus, Rutgers University

“Sophisticated, theoretically astute, and unfailingly interesting, The World in Play makes a compelling case for the centrality of play to Victorian conceptions of modernity.”

—Stephen Arata, University of Virginia

216 pp., 20119780804776080 Cloth $50.00 $40.00 sale


Milton and the Post-Secular PresentEthics, Politics, TerrorismFeisal G. MohamedOur post-secular present, argues Feisal Mohamed, has much to learn from our pre-secular past. Through a consideration of poet and polemicist John Milton, this book explores current post-secu-larity, an emerging category that it seeks to clarify and critique. It examines ethical and political engagement grounded in belief, with particular reference to the thought of Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, and Gayatri C. Spivak.

“This is an impressive work, one in which a powerful intellect grapples with difficult prob-lems and spurs us on to further thought. Mohamed’s examina-tion of the tensions between pre/post-secular belief and mod-ern liberalism should interest not only literary critics but also theologians, scholars of religious studies, philosophers, and politi-cal theorists.”

—Tyler Roberts, Grinnell College

Cultural Memory in the Present192 pp., 20119780804776516 Paper $21.95 $17.56 sale9780804776509 Cloth $65.00 $52.00 sale

AVAILABLE IN MAY 2012

The Beauty of the RealWhat Hollywood Can Learn from Contemporary French ActressesMick LaSalleEven as actresses become increasingly marginalized by Hollywood, French cinema is witnessing

an explosion of female talent—a Golden Age unlike anything the world has seen since the days of Stan-wyck, Hepburn, Davis, and Garbo. In France, the joy of acting is alive and well. Scores of French actresses are doing the best work of their lives in movies tailored to their star images and unique personalities. Yet virtually no one this side of the Atlantic even knows about them. Viewers who feel shortchanged by Hollywood will be thrilled to discover The Beauty of the Real.This book showcases a range of contemporary French actresses to an audience that will know how to appreci-ate them—an American public hungry for the exact qualities that these women represent. To spend time with them, to admire their flashing intelligence and fearless willingness to depict life as it is lived, gives us what we’re looking for in movies but so rarely find: in-sights into womanhood, meditations on the dark and light aspect’s of life’s journey, revelations and explora-tions that move viewers to reflect on their own lives. The stories they bring to the screen leave us feeling renewed and excited about movies again.

“laSalle understands how women in french movies are al-lowed to be deeper, older, and more real than most Holly-wood characters.”

—Roger Ebert

“Mick laSalle’s informal, lucid prose brings alive the magic of french cinema and its brilliant array of female actors, contrast-ing them with their American equivalents and, in so doing, revealing the distinctive character of french filmmaking. This book is especially valuable for its first-hand interviews with some of france’s greatest screen actresses.”

—Peter Cowie, Film historian, author, and founding editor of the International Film Guide

216 pp., 17 screenshots, 20129780804768542 Cloth $24.95 $19.96 sale

AVAILABLE IN APRIL 2012

The Long and Short of ItFrom Aphorism to NovelGary Saul MorsonBrevity may be the soul of wit, but it is also much more. In this exploration of the shortest literary works—wise sayings, proverbs, witticisms, sar-

donic observations about human nature, pithy evoca-tions of mystery, terse statements regarding ultimate questions—Gary Saul Morson argues passionately for the importance of these short genres not only to schol-ars but also to general readers.

We are fascinated by how brief works evoke a powerful sense of life in a few words, which is why we browse quotation anthologies and love to repeat our favorites. Arguing that all short genres are short in their own way, Morson explores the unique form of brevity that each of them develops. Apothegms (Heraclitus, Lao Tzu, Wittgenstein) describe the universe as ultimately un-knowable, offering not answers but ever deeper ques-tions. Dicta (Spinoza, Marx, Freud) create the sense that unsolvable enigmas have at last been resolved. Say-ings from sages and sacred texts assure us that good-ness is rewarded, while sardonic maxims (Ecclesiastes, Nietzsche, George Eliot) uncover the self-deceptions behind such comforting illusions. Just as witticisms display the power of mind, “witlessisms” (William Spooner, Dan Quayle, the persona assumed by Mark Twain) astonish with their spectacular stupidity.

“A passionate, imaginative book, full of energy and wisdom. The Long and Short of It is an exciting, horizon-opening essay on literary short forms that provide an interface between lit-erature and philosophy.”

—Thomas Pavel, University of Chicago



Accident SocietyFiction, Collectivity, and the Production of ChanceJason PuskarThis book argues that language and literature actively produced chance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by cat-egorizing injuries and losses as innocent of design. Automobile collisions and occupational inju-ries became “car accidents” and

“industrial accidents.” During the post-Civil War period of racial, ethnic, and class-based hostility, chance was an abstract enemy against which society might unite. Accident Society reveals the extent to which American collectivity has depended—and continues to depend—on the literary production of chance.

“The intellectual range of this book is staggering. each chapter not only shifts the discourse about a particular literary text, finding hidden illuminations, but also radiates new possibilities for understanding the social, philosophical, and political coor-dinates that situate the texts. It is truly a brilliant book.”

—Eric Wertheimer, Arizona State University

280 pp., 20129780804775359 Cloth $60.00 $48.00 sale



After La Dolce VitaA Cultural Prehistory of Berlusconi’s ItalyAlessia RicciardiThis book chronicles the demise of the supposedly leftist Italian cultural establishment during the long 1980s. During that time, the nation’s literary and intellectual vanguard managed to lose the prominence handed it after the end of World War II and the defeat of Fascism. What emerged instead was a uniquely Italian brand of cul-tural capital that deliberately avoided any critical questioning of the prevailing order. Ric-ciardi criticizes the develop-ment of this new hegemonic arrangement in film, literature, philosophy, and art criticism.

“There is no sweetness, light-ness, weakness, or softness in Ricciardi’s indictment, but hard facts and bitter truths piled up to heavy conclusions: Italy’s intellectual life is the very culprit of a historical process of progressive civic and social degeneration that has led to the catastrophe that many have called berlusconi’s Italy. A very courageous book.”

—Roberto M. Dainotto, Duke University


Obscure InvitationsThe Persistence of the Author in Twentieth-Century American LiteratureBenjamin WidissLiterary studies in the postwar era have consistently barred attributing specific intentions to authors based on textual evidence or ascribing textual presences to the authors them-selves. Obscure Invitations argues that this taboo has blinded us to fundamental elements of twentieth-century literature. Widiss focuses on the particu-larly self-conscious constructions of authorship that characterize modernist and postmodernist writing, elaborating the narra-tive strategies they demand and the reading practices they yield.

“Obscure Invitations will be recognized as a significant in-tervention in American literary studies. each of the readings it contains is a tour de force: well researched, elegantly written, and powerfully persuasive.”

—Loren Glass, University of Iowa

“An important new assessment of the place of the author in twenti-eth-century American narrative.”

—Mark Maslan, University of California at Santa Barbara


Julian BellFrom Bloomsbury to the Spanish Civil WarPeter Stansky and William AbrahamsJulian Bell explores the life of a younger member, and sole poet, of the Bloomsbury Group, the most important community of British writers and intellectuals in the twentieth century, which includes Virginia Woolf (Julian’s aunt), E. M. Forster, the econo-mist John Maynard Keynes, and the art critic Roger Fry. This biography draws upon the ex-panding archives on Blooms-bury to present Julian’s life more completely and more personally than has been done previously. It is an intense and profound exploration of personal, sexual, intellectual, political, and literary life in England between the two world wars. Through Julian, the book provides important insights on Virginia Woolf, his mother Vanessa Bell, and other members of the Bloomsbury Group.

“An intergenerational conversa-tion, between the younger and the older Peter Stansky, as well as between Julian bell and his elders in the bloomsbury Group. A new Julian bell emerges [in this] beau-tiful, tragic book.”

—Peter Mandler, University of Cambridge

328 pp., 20129780804774130 Cloth $45.00 $36.00 sale

11Literature & theory Literature & theory

AVAILABLE IN FEBRUARY 2012

Robinson Jeffers and the American SublimeRobert ZallerRobinson Jeffers and the Ameri-can Sublime is the most com-prehensive and most substantial critical work ever devoted to the major American poet Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962). Jeffers, the best known poet of California and the American West, particu-larly valorized the Big Sur region, making it his own as Frost did New England and Faulkner, Mississippi, and connecting it to the wider tradition of the American sublime in Emerson, Thoreau, and John Muir. The book also links Jeffers to a Puri-tan sublime in early American verse and explores his response to the Darwinian and Freudian revolutions and his engagement with modern astronomy.

“This book sets out to be the fullest and most detailed expli-cation of Jeffers’ large body of poetry and his literary career, and it delivers on that ambi-tion. It is the best single critical book about Jeffers and sets a benchmark that will be difficult to meet, let alone surpass.”

—Albert Gelpi, Emeritus, Stanford University

440 pp., 20129780804775632 Cloth $65.00 $52.00 sale

Our ConradConstituting American ModernityPeter Lancelot MalliosOur Conrad is about the Ameri-can reception of Joseph Conrad and its crucial role in the for-mation of American modern-ism. Although Conrad did not visit the country until a year before his death, his fiction served as both foil and mir-ror to America’s conception of itself and its place in the world.

“A strikingly original study of cul-tural influence. Mallios enlarges our understanding of the real cosmopolitanism of our most homegrown literary figures.”

—Geoffrey Harpham, President and Director,

National Humanities Center“Our Conrad is one the most stimulating works of scholarship I have read in some time. [It] will be embraced by scholars in english and American literature and American history, as well as readers outside academia who want to understand the connection of America with the rest of the world during the early twentieth century.”

—Fred Hobson, University of North Carolina at

Chapel Hill488 pp., 15 illustrations, 20109780804783132 Paper $27.95 $22.36 sale9780804757911 Cloth $65.00 $52.00 sale

Now in Paperback

Mimesis and TheoryEssays on Literature and Criticism, 1953–2005René GirardEdited and with an Introduc-tion by Robert DoranMimesis and Theory brings together twenty of René Girard’s uncol-lected essays on literature and literary theory, which, along with his classic, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, have left an indelible mark on the field of literary and cultural studies. Spanning over fifty years of critical production, this anthol-ogy offers unique insights into the origin, development, and expansion of Girard’s “mimetic theory”—a groundbreaking account of human interaction and of the genesis of cultural forms.

The essays run the gamut of West-ern literary culture, from Racine and Shakespeare to Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Stendhal, Proust, and Dostoevsky receive extended treatment, and Girard’s observations on the chang-ing landscape of literary studies are chronicled in several essays devoted to psychoanalysis, formalism, struc-turalism, and post-structuralism.Cultural Memory in the Present344 pp., 20089780804781077 Paper $24.95 $19.96 sale9780804755801 Cloth $50.00 $40.00 sale


How Strange the ChangeLanguage, Temporality, and Narrative Form in Peripheral ModernismsMarc CaplanIn this book, Marc Caplan argues that the literatures of ostensibly marginal modern cultures are key to under-standing modernism. Caplan undertakes an unprecedented comparison of nineteenth-century Yiddish literature and twentieth-century Anglophone and Francophone African lit-erature and reveals unexpected similarities between them.

Through comparative readings of narratives by Reb Nakhman of Breslov, Amos Tutuola, Yisro-el Aksenfeld, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Isaac Meyer Dik, among others, Caplan demonstrates that these literatures’ “belated” relationship to modernization suggests their potential to an-ticipate subsequent crises in the modernity and post-modernity of metropolitan cultures.

“A masterpiece in comparative lit-erature that will quickly establish itself as a classic in both Yiddish and African literary studies.”

—Ato Quayson, University of Toronto

360 pp., 20119780804774765 Cloth $60.00 $48.00 sale

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SephardismSpanish Jewish History and the Modern Literary ImaginationEdited by Yael Halevi-WiseArguing that the Sephardic experience played a much more vital role in the development of modern nationalism and literary history than has been generally acknowledged, this book dem-onstrates how modern writers from Europe, the Americas, North Africa, Israel, and India have used Sephardic history to explore the role and status of minorities and dissidents.

“This book offers a fresh and creative take on the ways that modern authors have imagined Sephardic Jews or employed the trope of Sepharad in order to advance various political, moral, or literary projects.”

—Julia Phillips Cohen, Vanderbilt University

“A tour de force in the study of Jews as ‘other’ in the modern lit-erary consciousness....An impor-tant addition to every library.”

—Sander L. Gilman, Emory University

376 pp., 1 figure, 20129780804777469 Cloth $45.00 $36.00 sale

Sanctuary in the WildernessA Critical Introduction to American Hebrew PoetryAlan MintzSanctuary in the Wilderness is a critical introduction to Ameri-can Hebrew poetry, focusing on a dozen key poets. This secular poetry began with a preoccupa-tion with the situation of the individual in a disenchanted world and then moved outward to engage American vistas and Jewish fate and hope in midcen-tury. American Hebrew poets hoped to be read in both Pales-tine and America, but were disap-pointed on both scores. Several moved to Israel and connected with the vital literary scene there, but most stayed and persisted in the cause of American Hebraism.

“This fascinating literary study of twelve Hebrew poets who flourished as a ‘virtual community’ in America about the middle of the twentieth century revises and expands our understanding of poetry, modernism, Hebrew, and, not least, America. It in-vites us to wonder when and under what conditions such an island of Hebrew creativity might surface here again.”

—Ruth Wisse, Harvard University


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Music from a Speeding TrainJewish Literature in Post-Revolution RussiaHarriet MuravThis book explores the uniquely Jewish space created by Jew-ish authors working within the limitations of the Soviet cultural system. It situates Russian- and Yiddish- language authors in the same literary universe—one in which modernism, revolu-tion, socialist realism, violence, and catastrophe join tradi-tional Jewish texts to provide the framework for literary creativity. These writers represented, at-tacked, reformed, and mourned Jewish life in the pre-revolution-ary shtetl as they created new forms of Jewish culture.

“This pioneering book offers an illuminating interpretation of Soviet Jewish culture, treating this complex phenomenon from a refreshingly new literary perspective. It is the first literary study to cover the entire Soviet period and deal equally expertly with Yiddish and Russian texts.”

—Mikhail Krutikov, University of Michigan


A Jewish Voice from Ottoman SalonicaThe Ladino Memoir of Sa’adi Besalel a-LeviEdited by Aron Rodrigue and Sarah Abrevaya SteinTranslation, Transliteration, and Glossary by Isaac JerusalmiThis book presents for the first time the complete text of the earliest known Ladino-language memoir, transliterated from the original script, translated into English, and introduced and explicated by the editors. The memoirist, Sa’adi Besalel a-Levi (1820–1903), wrote about Otto-man Jews’ daily life at a time when the long-ascendant fabric of Otto-man society was just beginning to unravel. His vivid portrayal of life in Salonica, a major port in the Ottoman Levant with a majority-Jewish population, thus provides a unique window into a way of life before it disappeared as a result of profound political and social changes and the World Wars.

“This precious historical source is a gripping read and will advance the scholarly agenda of Sephardic studies.”

—Francesca Trivellato, Yale University

432 pp., 1 illustration, 3 maps, 20129780804771665 Cloth $50.00 $40.00 sale

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Across MeridiansHistory and Figuration in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Transnational NovelsJinqi LingOver the course of the last two decades, novelist Karen Tei Ya-mashita has reshaped the Asian American literary imagination in profound ways. In Across Merid-ians, Jinqi Ling offers readers the most critically engaged examina-tion to date of Yamashita’s literary corpus. Crafted at the intersec-tion of intellectual history, ethnic studies, literary analysis, and critical theory, Ling’s study goes beyond textual investigation to intervene in larger debates over postmodern representation, spa-tial materialism, historical form, and social and academic activism.

“With this intellectually rigorous, original study of the complete fictional oeuvre of Karen Tei Ya-mashita, Jinqi ling produces the first book-length treatment of a novelist whose audacious, inge-nious visions of the Americas and of the contemporary crisscrossed globe have awaited just such rich, sustained attention.”

—Caroline Rody, University of Virginia

Asian America264 pp., 20129780804778015 Cloth $49.95 $39.96 sale


The Semblance of IdentityAesthetic Mediation in Asian American LiteratureChristopher LeeThe history of Asian American literature reveals the ongoing attempt to work through the fraught relationship between identity politics and literary representation. This relation-ship is especially evident in literary works which claim that their content represents the socio-historical world. The Semblance of Identity argues that the reframing of the field as a critical, rather an identity-based, project nonetheless continues to rely on the logics of identity.

“The Semblance of Identity makes an impressive contribution to Asian American studies by providing a fresh look at the field’s uneasy relationship with the ‘identity politics’ from which it was born. lee of-fers an elegant, theoretically sophisticated picture of what ‘post-identity’ Asian American studies might look like.”

—Timothy Yu, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Asian America208 pp., 20129780804778701 Cloth $50.00 $40.00 sale

Tokyo in TransitJapanese Culture on the Rails and RoadAlisa Freedman352 pp., 16 figures, 3 illustrations, 2 maps, 20109780804771450 Paper $22.95 $18.36 sale9780804771443 Cloth $65.00 $52.00 sale



Straitjacket SexualitiesUnbinding Asian American Manhoods in the MoviesCeline Parreñas ShimizuThis book looks to cinematic history to reveal the dynamic ways Asian American men, from Bruce Lee to Long Duk Dong, create and claim a variety of mas-culinities. Representations of love, romance, desire, and lovemak-ing show how Asian American men fashion manhoods that negotiate the dynamics of self and other, expanding our ideas of sexuality. The unique ways in which Asian American men express intimacy is powerfully represented onscreen, offering distinct portraits of individuals struggling with group identities.

“An utterly original examination of Asian American masculinity on the silver screen, Straightjacket Sexualities is a critical tour-de-force that reveals cinema to be an ethical event. It offers a theory of responsibility in the face of vul-nerability and persecution to en-courage the emergence of new and better forms of manhood.”

—David L. Eng, University of Pennsylvania

Asian America304 pp., 27 halftones, 20129780804773010 Paper $22.95 $18.36 sale9780804773003 Cloth $70.00 $56.00 sale

On Uneven GroundMiyazawa Kenji and the Making of Place in Modern JapanHoyt LongThe history of literary and artis-tic production in modern Japan has typically centered on the literature and art of Tokyo, yet cultural activity in the country’s regional cities and rural towns was no less vibrant. On Uneven Ground recovers pieces of this neglected history through the figure of Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933). While alive, he remained a mostly unknown and unread provincial author whose ex-periments with narrative fiction, amateur theater, and farmer’s art reveal an intense determination to reimagine and remake his native place, in the northeast of Japan, meaningful.

“Provides fresh insight into Mi-yazawa Kenji’s oeuvre, as well as the complex relationship be-tween the institutions of cultural (re)production and the literary product, thereby destabilizing persistent notions of a singular, monolithic national Japanese literature.”

—Edward Mack, University of Washington

312 pp., 20119780804776868 Cloth $60.00 $48.00 sale

AVAILABLE IN MARCH 2012

Reading Colonial JapanText, Context, and CritiqueEdited by Michele M. Mason and Helen J.S. LeeReading Colonial Japan is a unique anthology that aims to deepen knowledge of Japanese colonialism(s) by providing an eclectic selection of translated Japanese primary sources and analytical essays that illumi-nate Japan’s many and varied colonial projects. The primary documents highlight how central cultural production and dissemination were to the colonial effort, while accentuat-ing the myriad ways colonialism permeated every facet of life.

“A splendid collection of co-lonial writings in translation, paired with critical essays that address historical and theoretical concerns in original and engaging ways. It is an exceptional achievement and a truly important addition to cultural studies, Asian stud-ies, history, and the study of colonialism/postcolonialism, migration, and translation.”

—Sabine Frühstück, University of California, Santa Barbara


16 Philosophy

The Power of LifeAgamben and the Coming PoliticsDavid KishikGiorgio Agamben’s work devel-ops a new philosophy of life. On its horizon lies the conviction that our form of life can become the guiding and unifying power of the politics to come. Informed by this promise, The Power of Life weaves decisive moments and neglected aspects of Agam-ben’s writings over the past four decades together with the thought of those who influenced him most (including Kafka, Heidegger, Benjamin, Arendt, Deleuze, and Foucault). In addi-tion, the book positions his work in relation to key figures from the history of philosophy (such as Plato, Spinoza, Vico, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Derrida).

“Presents new biographical material about Agamben, while providing a novel and lucid inter-pretation of his work that focuses on its capacity for imagining new forms of life and transforming our ethical, political, and philo-sophical thought and practice.”

—Matthew Calarco, California State University, Fullerton


The Kingdom and the GloryFor a Theological Genealogy of Economy and GovernmentGiorgio Agamben Translated by Lorenzo Chiesa (with Matteo Mandarini)Why has power in the West as-sumed the form of an “economy,” that is, of a government of men and things? If power is essential-ly government, why does it need glory, that is, the ceremonial and liturgical apparatus that has always accompanied it?

The greatest novelty to emerge from The Kingdom and the Glory is that modern power is not only government but also glory, and that the ceremonial, liturgical, and acclamatory aspects that we have regarded as vestiges of the past actually constitute the basis of Western power. With this book, the work begun with Homo Sacer reaches a decisive point, profoundly challeng-ing and renewing our vision of politics.Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics328 pp., 20119780804760164 Paper $24.95 $19.96 sale9780804760157 Cloth $70.00 $56.00 sale


The Future and Its EnemiesIn Defense of Political HopeDaniel Innerarity Translated by Sandra Kingery In The Future and Its Enemies, Spanish philosopher Daniel In-nerarity makes a plea for a new social contract that would commit us to moral and political responsi-bility with respect to future gen-erations. He urges us to become advocates for the future in the face of enemies who, oblivious to the costs of modernization, press for endless and unproductive accelera-tion. His accessible book proposes a new way of confronting the unknown—one grounded in the calculation of risk. Declaring the classical right-left divide to be redundant, Innerarity presents his hopes for a renewed democracy and a politics that would find con-vincing ways to mediate between the priorities of the present, the heritage of the past, and the chal-lenges that lie ahead.

“Thanks to its clear analyses and its multiple avenues of inquiry, this essay points the way to a new democratic lucidity.”

—Pierre Rosanvallon, Libération


DawnThoughts on the Presumptions of Morality, Volume 5Friedrich Nietzsche Translated by Brittain Smith, Afterword by Keith Ansell-PearsonDawn is the most recent volume to appear in the first complete, critical, and annotated English

edition of all of Nietzsche’s work. The edition, orga-nized originally by Ernst Behler and Bernd Magnus, is a translation of the celebrated Kritische Studienaus-gabe in 15 Bänden (1980) edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. The book is the first to appear under the editorial direction of Alan D. Schrift, Keith Ansell-Pearson, and Duncan Large, and to incorporate subsequent corrections to the 1980 edition.

Continuing the positivistic turn of Human, All Too Human, Dawn is the second installment in the free spirit trilogy that culminated in The Joyful Science. One of Nietzsche’s “yes-saying” books, it marks his first significant confrontation with morality and of-fers glimpses of many of the signature themes in his mature works. Dawn has come to be admired in recent years for its ethical naturalism, psychologi-cal observations, and therapeutic insights. Presented in Nietzsche’s aphoristic style, it is a text with hidden riches, one that must be read between the lines and one that the discerning reader will admire and cherish.

“This series will become the definitive resource for english readers.”

—Gary Shapiro, University of Richmond

“The first volume under the general editorship of Alan D. Schrift and Duncan large, Dawn represents a huge leap for-ward. We can finally look forward to the completion of this nineteen-volume series, which will be invaluable not only to specialists but also to students and anyone interested in this remarkable thinker.”

—Alexander Nehamas, Princeton University

The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche456 pp., 20119780804780056 Paper $21.95 $17.56 sale9780804728768 Cloth $65.00 $52.00 sale

17Philosophy Philosophy

Releasing the ImageFrom Literature to New MediaEdited by Jacques Khalip and Robert Mitchell Releasing the Image understands images as something beyond mere representations of things. Releasing images from that func-tion, it shows them to be self-ref-erential and self-generative, and in this way capable of producing forms of engagement beyond spectatorship and subjectiv-ity. The essays included here cover historical periods from the Romantic era to the present and address a range of topics, from Cézanne’s painting, to im-ages in poetry, to contemporary audiovisual art. They reveal the aesthetic, ethical, and political stakes of the project of releasing images and provoke new ways of engaging with embodiment, agency, history, and technology.

“A stunning collection of es-says by leading philosophers and media theorists who break with notions of the im-age as frozen or static, and refocus the debate around topics of embodiment, agency, virtuality and temporality.”

—Tim Lenoir, Duke University


18 Philosophy

The Problem of DistractionPaul NorthWe live in an age of distraction. Contemporary analyses of culture, politics, techno-science, and psy-chology insist on this. They often suggest remedies for it, or ways to capitalize on it. Yet they almost never investigate the meaning and history of distraction itself. The Problem of Distraction corrects this lack of attention. It inquires into the effects of distraction, defined not as the opposite of attention, but as truly discontinuous intellect. Human being has to be recon-ceived, according to this argument, not as quintessentially thought-bearing, but as subject to repeated, causeless blackouts of mind.

“This thoughtful study asks what would be involved in theorizing the interpretive framework through which an interrogation of distraction would first become thinkable.”

—Gerhard Richter, University of California, Davis

“This superb analysis of distrac-tion and our lack of attention to it breaks significant new ground in our critical history.”

—David Ferris, University of Colorado at Boulder

248 pp., 20119780804775380 Cloth $55.00 $44.00 sale

AVAILABLE IN AUGUST 2012

Post-Postmodernismor, The Cultural Logic of Just-in-Time CapitalismJeffrey T. NealonPost-Postmodernism begins with a simple premise: we no longer live in the world of “postmodern-ism,” famously dubbed “the

cultural logic of late capitalism” by Fredric Jameson in 1984. Far from charting any simple move “beyond” postmodernism since the 1980s, though, this book argues that we’ve experienced an intensification of post-modern capitalism over the past decades, an increas-ing saturation of the economic sphere into formerly independent segments of everyday cultural life. If “frag-mentation” was the preferred watchword of postmod-ern America, “intensification” is the dominant cultural logic of our contemporary era.

Post-Postmodernism surveys a wide variety of cultural texts in pursuing its analyses—everything from the classic rock of Black Sabbath to the post-Marxism of Antonio Negri, from considerations of the corpo-rate university to the fare at the cineplex, from read-ing experimental literature to gambling in Las Vegas, from Badiou to the undergraduate classroom. Insofar as cultural realms of all kinds have increasingly been overcoded by the languages and practices of economics, Nealon aims to construct a genealogy of the American present, and to build a vocabulary for understanding the relations between economic production and cul-tural production today.

“This is a work of very considerable importance. now perhaps more than at any other time, culture and the economy con-stitute a seamless whole: everything can be given its price. nealon poses the question: if postmodernism was the cultural logic of late capitalism, what is the cultural logic that has ac-companied our current regime of accumulation? His answer is novel and ingenious.”

—Kenneth Surin, Duke University


19Philosophy Philosophy

MalfeasanceAppropriation Through Pollution?Michel Serres Translated by Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon

“Malfeasance is a welcome in-troduction to, and an elegant demonstration of, Michel Serres’s recent work. In the face of pollution’s calamities, Serres calls for responsible action, a new social contract, a peace-ful compact with the world. Reversing Rousseau’s negative command—’This is mine’—he proffers, ‘This is enough for me.’”

—Pierre Saint-Amand, Brown University


noW in PAPERBAcK

GuiltThe Bite of ConscienceHerant Katchadourian

“Subtle, generous, and both informed and informative. It also has the rare merit of adhering to solid academic standards yet being accessible to a general literate audience .... Highly recommended.”

—H. Oberdiek, CHOICE



Arendt and AdornoPolitical and Philosophical InvestigationsEdited by Lars Rensmann and Samir GandeshaHannah Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno, two of the most influ-ential political philosophers and theorists of the twentieth century, were contemporaries with simi-lar interests, backgrounds, and a shared experience of exile. Yet until now, no book has brought them together. In this first com-parative study of their work, lead-ing scholars discuss divergences, disclose surprising affinities, and find common ground between the two thinkers. This pioneering work recovers the relevance of Ar-endt and Adorno for contempo-rary political theory and philoso-phy and lays the foundation for a critical understanding of political modernity: from universalistic claims for political freedom to the abyss of genocidal politics.

“The book assembles the most dis-tinguished experts on Arendt and Adorno. The mutual antipathy be-tween the two thinkers, the study reveals a surprising affinity, espe-cially with regard to the critique and rethinking of modernity.”

—Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame



Testing the LimitDerrida, Henry, Levinas, and the Phenomenological TraditionFrançois-David Sebbah Translated by Stephen BarkerTesting the Limit claims that the textual origins of phenomenol-ogy determine, in their temporal rhythms, the nature of the sub-jectivation on which they focus. The book situates these consid-erations within the broader pic-ture of the state of contemporary French phenomenology (chiefly the legacy of Merleau-Ponty), in order to show that these three thinkers share a certain “family resemblance,” the identifica-tion of which reveals something about the traces of other phe-nomenological families. It is by testing the limit within the context of traditional phenom-enological concerns about the appearance of subjectivity and ipseity that Derrida, Henry, and Levinas radically reconsider phenomenology and that French phenomenology assumes its present form.Cultural Memory in the Present328 pp., 20129780804772754 Paper $29.95 $23.96 sale9780804772747 Cloth $90.00 $72.00 sale

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Philosophy, Literature & Theory · 2011-11-17 · Philosophy, Literature & Theory Stanford...

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