This volume deals with the enduring presence of one of Western culture's most fascinating and influential figures in ancient, modern, and postmodern art and literature: Venus/Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality. The collection, which is the first of its kind, seeks to explore Venus's significance as a figure of beauty and creativity across cultures and disciplines, engaging a range of media, theoretical approaches, and cultural perspectives. Thirteen international scholars—including Elisabeth Bronfen, Tom Conley, Laurence Rickels, and Barbara Vinken—illuminate Venus's...

'The plane of immanence is entirely made up of Light', Deleuze writes in Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Engaging the whole body of Deleuze's work, including less rehearsed texts such as The Actual and the Virtual, Lucretius and the Simulacrum and his lectures on Spinoza, Hanjo Berressem traces the 'line of light' that runs through Deleuze's thought. The focus on the philosophical luminism that suffuses Deleuze's work delivers a novel reading of Deleuzian philosophy from the perspective of the complementarity of the photon. Berressem reveals a wealth of surprising and brilliant insights for...

Hanjo Berressem establishes the notion of a schizoanalytic ecology as the most consistent conceptual spine of Felix Guattari's work. To look at a situation ecologically means to analyze and administer it with the practical aim of creating a space in which it is possible to actualize viable modes of life. To create a multiplicitous, open and elastic milieu that is conducive to processes of both individuation and singularization.Berressem covers the whole range of Guattari's solo work, as well as the books co-authored with Gilles Deleuze. But the core of his argument is developed by a...