This book investigates the function of topographical names and descriptions in a variety of narratives, poems, and philosophical or theoretical texts, primarily from the 19th and 20th centuries, but including also Plato and the Bible. Topics include the initiating efficacy of speech acts, ethical responsibility, political or legislative power, the translation of theory from one topographical location to another, the way topographical delineations can function as parable or allegory, and the relation of personification to landscape.

This innovative work sets two texts by two different authors on facing pages, designed so that they read in tandem--Miller's text on the right, Asensi's on the left. It makes a long trajectory, moving back and forth as an ox plows a field, boustrophedonically, to borrow the figure in Manuel Asensi's title. Black Holes, by J. Hillis Miller, analyzes changes in the contemporary research university in the West. The mission of the research university has been profoundly influenced by the end of the Cold War and by globalization, advances in communication technologies, and shifts in funding...

Der vorliegende Band ist eine neue thematisch orientierte Zusammenstellung von Hillis Millers jungeren Arbeiten, die alle um die eine Frage kreisen: warum und wozu Literaturwissenschaft, oder im erweiterten Sinne Kulturwissenschaft' - im Zeitalter der elektronischen Medien und der vorwiegend nachgefragten technologischen Berufe der heutigen Zeit weder in der Geschaftswelt noch in der personlichen Entwicklung? Diese Frage ist nicht ganz neu, hat viele Facetten und erfordert differenzierte Antworten, die vom politischen und kulturellen Klima einer Gesellschaft abhangen."