The material elements of writing have long been undervalued; but analysis of these elements--sound, signature, letters--can transform our understanding of major texts. Tom Cohen argues in this book that in an era of representational criticism the role of close reading has been overlooked. Through astonishing new readings of writers such as Plato, Bakhtin, Poe, Whitman, and Conrad, Professor Cohen exposes the limitations of new historicism and neo-pragmatism, and demonstrates how the "materiality of language" challenges representational models of meaning imposed by the canon.
The material elements of writing have long been undervalued; but analysis of these elements--sound, signature, letters--can transform our understandin...
The material elements of writing have long been undervalued; but analysis of these elements--sound, signature, letters--can transform our understanding of major texts. Tom Cohen argues in this book that in an era of representational criticism the role of close reading has been overlooked. Through astonishing new readings of writers such as Plato, Bakhtin, Poe, Whitman, and Conrad, Professor Cohen exposes the limitations of new historicism and neo-pragmatism, and demonstrates how the "materiality of language" challenges representational models of meaning imposed by the canon.
The material elements of writing have long been undervalued; but analysis of these elements--sound, signature, letters--can transform our understandin...
Tom Cohen questions the way history, ideology and politics are invoked in contemporary cultural studies. Enlisting the work of three seminal figures in literary theory--Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man, and M. Bakhtin--Cohen argues for a new politics of memory that moves beyond what he sees as our current paralyzing preoccupation with the present, and also for a new approach to the reading and analysis of cultural texts that breaks with the mimetic premises of traditional criticism.
Tom Cohen questions the way history, ideology and politics are invoked in contemporary cultural studies. Enlisting the work of three seminal figures i...
The work of Jacques Derrida has transformed our understanding of a range of disciplines in the humanities through its questioning of some of the basic tenets of western metaphysics. This volume is a trans-disciplinary collection dedicated to his work. The assembled contributions--on law, literature, ethics, gender, politics and psychoanalysis--constitute an investigation of the role of Derrida's work in the humanities, present and future. The volume is distinguished by work on some of his most recent writings, and contains Derrida's own address on "the future of the humanities."
The work of Jacques Derrida has transformed our understanding of a range of disciplines in the humanities through its questioning of some of the basic...
The work of Jacques Derrida has transformed our understanding of a range of disciplines in the humanities through its questioning of some of the basic tenets of western metaphysics. This volume is a trans-disciplinary collection dedicated to his work. The assembled contributions--on law, literature, ethics, gender, politics and psychoanalysis--constitute an investigation of the role of Derrida's work in the humanities, present and future. The volume is distinguished by work on some of his most recent writings, and contains Derrida's own address on "the future of the humanities."
The work of Jacques Derrida has transformed our understanding of a range of disciplines in the humanities through its questioning of some of the basic...
Renowned contributors use the late work of this crucial figure to open new speculations on "materiality."
A "material event," in one of Paul de Man's definitions, is a piece of writing that enters history to make something happen. This interpretation hovers over the publication of this volume, a timely reconsideration of de Man's late work in its complex literary, critical, cultural, philosophical, political, and historical dimensions.
A distinguished group of scholars responds to the problematic of "materialism" as posed in Paul de Man's posthumous final book, Aesthetic...
Renowned contributors use the late work of this crucial figure to open new speculations on "materiality."
Renowned contributors use the late work of this crucial figure to open new speculations on "materiality."
A "material event," in one of Paul de Man's definitions, is a piece of writing that enters history to make something happen. This interpretation hovers over the publication of this volume, a timely reconsideration of de Man's late work in its complex literary, critical, cultural, philosophical, political, and historical dimensions.
A distinguished group of scholars responds to the problematic of "materialism" as posed in Paul de Man's posthumous final book, Aesthetic...
Renowned contributors use the late work of this crucial figure to open new speculations on "materiality."
In the first "The Man Who Knew Too Much, Alfred Hitchcock films a clay pigeon crossing the sky, a dark disc resembling a black sun. When the same work takes viewers into a temple for sun worshippers (it turns out to be a front for spies), another black orb is introduced: a black marble used to hypnotize initiates. Tom Cohen traces this motif--and many other--seeing it as an explicit challenge both to Enlightenment-era protocols of representation and to the auteurism that has defined studies of Hitchcock. This second volume presents the director's works as a radical collage of images and...
In the first "The Man Who Knew Too Much, Alfred Hitchcock films a clay pigeon crossing the sky, a dark disc resembling a black sun. When the same work...
In the first The Man Who Knew Too Much, Alfred Hitchcock films a clay pigeon crossing the sky, a dark disc resembling a black sun. When the same work takes viewers into a temple for sun worshippers (it turns out to be a front for spies), another black orb is introduced: a black marble used to hypnotize initiates. Tom Cohen traces this motif--and many others--seeing it as an explicit challenge both to Enlightenment-era protocols of representation and to the auteurism that has defined studies of Hitchcock. This second volume of Hitchcock's Cryptonomies presents the director's works as a radical...
In the first The Man Who Knew Too Much, Alfred Hitchcock films a clay pigeon crossing the sky, a dark disc resembling a black sun. When the same work ...
Tom Cohen's radical exploration of Hitchcock's cinema departs from conventional approaches--psychoanalytic, feminist, political--to emphasize the dense web of signatures and markings inscribed on and around his films. Aligning Hitchcock's agenda with the philosophical and aesthetic writings of Nietzsche, Derrida, and Benjamin, Cohen's project dramatically recasts the history and meaning of cinema itself. This first volume of "Hitchcock's Cryptonymies provides a singularly close reading of films such as "The Lady Vanishes, Spellbound, and "North by Northwest, exposing the often imperceptible...
Tom Cohen's radical exploration of Hitchcock's cinema departs from conventional approaches--psychoanalytic, feminist, political--to emphasize the dens...