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Philosophy, 

Literature, 

& Theory 

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Stanford University Press 

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2013 

Stanford 

University Press

AVAILABLE IN APRIL 2013 

The Highest Poverty 

Monastic Rules and 

Form-of-Life 

Giorgio Agamben 

Translated by Adam Kotsko 

What is a rule, if it appears to become 

confused with life? And what is a human 

life, if, in every one of its gestures, 

of its words, and of its silences, it 

cannot be distinguished from the rule? 

It is to these questions that Agamben’s 

new book turns by means of an impassioned 

reading of the fascinating and 

massive phenomenon of Western monasticism 

from Pachomius to St. Francis. 

The book reconstructs in detail the 

life of the monks with their obsessive 

attention to temporal articulation and 

to the Rule, to ascetic techniques and 

to liturgy. But Agamben’s thesis is that 

the true novelty of monasticism lies 

not in the confusion between life and 

norm, but in the discovery of a new 

dimension, in which “life” as such, 

perhaps for the first time, is affirmed 

in its autonomy, and in which the 

claim of the “highest poverty” and 

“use” challenges the law in ways that 

we must still grapple with today. 

Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics 

144 pp., 2013 

9780804784061 Paper $17.95 $14.36 sale 

9780804784054 Cloth $50.00 $40.00 sale 

The Sparks of 

Randomness, 

Volume 2 

The Atheism of Scripture 

Henri Atlan 

Translated by Lenn J.Schramm 

In this second volume Henri Atlan 

pursues his investigation of human 

life, which he grounds in a distinctive 

intermingling of the biological and 

cognitive sciences and traditions of 

Jewish thought. The Atheism of Scripture 

offers up a paradox: its audacious 

thesis is that the Word or revealed 

scripture can be better understood 

without God. It must be decrypted or 

analyzed atheistically, that is, not as 

divine revelation, but in and of itself. 

“Henri Atlan has undoubtedly become 

a great scholar and important international 

figure in the academic community. 

His approach to texts is original and 

stimulating, his ideas both lucid and 

insightful. He has written many volumes 

on a variety of subjects, but this one has 

special meaning due to the convulsions 

society has been undergoing in recent 

years. The book is steeped in psychology 

and religion, biology and sociology, mysticism 

and ethos. Drawing from Talmudic 

sources but also from secular ones, it is 

sure to find appeal in many circles.” 

—Elie Wiesel 

Cultural Memory in the Present 

408 pp., 3 tables, 7 figures, 2013 

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Table of Contents 

Philosophy.....................................2- 9 

Literature and Theory..........10-15 

Exam Copy Policy..................................9 

Ordering......................................................9 

2 Philosophy

Dreaming of 

Michelangelo 

Jewish Variations on a 

Modern Theme 

Asher D. Biemann 

Dreaming of Michelangelo is the first 

book-length study to explore the 

intellectual and cultural affinities 

between modern Judaism and the life 

and work of Michelangelo Buonarroti. 

It argues that Jewish intellectuals 

found themselves in the image of 

Michelangelo as an “unrequited lover” 

whose work expressed loneliness and 

a longing for humanity’s response. 

The modern Jewish imagination 

thus became consciously idolatrous. 

Writers brought to life—literally—Michelangelo’s 

sculptures, seeing in them 

their own worldly and emotional 

struggles. According to Biemann, the 

phenomenon of Jewish self-recognition 

in Michelangelo’s work offered an 

alternative to the failed promises of 

the German enlightenment. Through 

this unexpected discovery, he rethinks 

German Jewish history and its connections 

to Italy, the Mediterranean, 

and the art of the Renaissance. 

“A very creative and productive lens for 

re-examining the entry into modernity 

by Western European Jews.” 

—Richard Block, University of Washington 

200 pp., 3 illustrations, 2012 

9780804768818 Cloth $50.00 $40.00 sale 

Living Thought 

The Origins and Actuality 

of Italian Philosophy 

Roberto Esposito 

Translated by Zakiya Hanafi 

The work of contemporary Italian 

thinkers, what Roberto Esposito 

refers to as Italian Theory, is attracting 

increasing attention around the world. 

This book explores the reasons for its 

growing popularity, its distinguishing 

traits, and why people are turning to 

these authors for answers to real-world 

issues and problems. The approach he 

takes, in line with the keen historical 

consciousness of Italian thinkers 

themselves, is a historical one. He 

offers insights into the great “unphilosophical” 

philosophers of life—poets, 

painters, politicians and revolutionaries, 

film-makers and literary critics— 

who have made Italian thought, from 

its beginnings, an “impure” thought. 

“In this expansive, provocative, and beautifully 

written work, Roberto Esposito, 

who is one of the most original voices 

in the Continental panorama today, sets 

out to articulate the ‘Italian difference,’ a 

question all the more enticing in light 

of the waning of the French generation 

that shaped the profile of European philosophy 

from the 1970s onward.” 

—Giovanna Borradori, Vassar College 



9780804781565 Paper $23.95 $19.16 sale 

9780804781558 Cloth $75.00 $60.00 sale 

AVAILABLE IN JUNE 2013 

Philosophy and 

Melancholy 

Benjamin’s Early Reflections 

on Theater and Language 

Ilit Ferber 

This book traces the concept of 

melancholy in Walter Benjamin’s early 

writings. Rather than focusing on the 

overtly melancholic subject matter 

of Benjamin’s work or the unhappy 

circumstances of his own fate, Ferber 

considers the concept’s implications 

for his philosophy. Informed by Heidegger’s 

discussion of moods and their 

importance for philosophical thought, 

she contends that a melancholic mood 

is the organizing principle or structure 

of Benjamin’s early metaphysics 

and ontology. Her novel analysis of 

Benjamin's arguments about theater 

and language features a discussion of 

the Trauerspiel book that is amongst 

the first in English to scrutinize 

the baroque plays themselves. 

“This is a remarkable study of Walter 

Benjamin’s early writings. No longer 

an obscure hermetic work from some 

distant historical moment, Benjamin’s 

Trauerspiel becomes central to contemporary 

philosophical concerns.” 

—Andrew Benjamin, Monash University 


264 pp., 2013 

9780804785204 Paper $24.95 $19.96 sale 

9780804785198 Cloth $85.00 $68.00 sale 

Philosophy 

3

Stanford BRIEFS 

Why Internet 

Porn Matters 

Margret Grebowicz 

Now that pornography is on 

the Internet, its political and 

social functions have changed. 

So contends Margret Grebowicz 

in this imperative philosophical 

analysis of Internet 

porn. The production and 

consumption of Internet porn, 

in her account, are a symptom 

of the obsession with self-exposure 

in today’s social networking 

media, which is, in turn, a 

symptom of the modern democratic 

construction of the governable 

subject as both transparent 

and communicative. In 

this first feminist critique to 

privilege the effects of pornography’s 

Internet distribution 

rather than what it depicts, 

Grebowicz examines pornsharing 

communities (such as 

the bestiality niche market) and 

the politics of putting women’s 

sexual pleasure on display (the 

“squirting” market) as part of 

the larger democratic project. 

Stanford Briefs deliver fresh 

content in a bite-sized form. 

Shorter than the average 

book, these offerings either 

provide the essence of a 

topic, or present incisive 

analyses of current affairs 

and contemporary issues 

that are too long for a 

journalistic outlet, but too 

short for a book. Stanford 

Briefs promote mindful 

action and intelligent 

debate, bringing novel 

perspectives and theoretical 

approaches to the fore. 

Arguing against this project, 

she shows that sexual pleasure 

is not a human right. Unlikely 

convergences between thinkers 

like Catherine MacKinnon, 

Jean Baudrillard, Judith Butler, 

and Jean-François Lyotard allow 

her to formulate a theory of 

the relationships between sex, 

speech, and power that stands 

as an alternative to such cyberlibertarian 

mottos as “freedom 

of speech” and “sexual freedom.” 

“A bracing, vital book that should be 

required reading for any scholar interested 

in the politics and theory 

of sexuality.” 

—Ann Cahill, Elon University 

136 pp., 2013 

9780804786621 Paper $12.99 $10.39 sale 

9780804785778 ebook $9.99 


About Europe 

Philosophical Hypotheses 

Denis Guénoun 

Translated by Christine Irizarry 

The concept of the universal was 

born in the lands we now call Europe, 

yet it is precisely the universal that 

is Europe’s undoing. All European 

politics is caught in a tension: to assert 

a European identity is to be open to 

multiplicity, but this very openness 

could dissolve Europe as such. This 

book reflects on Europe and its changing 

boundaries over the span of twenty 

centuries. A work of philosophy, it 

consistently draws on concrete events. 

From ancient Greece and Rome, to 

Christianity, to the Reformation, to the 

national revolutions of the twentieth 

century, what we today call “Europe” 

has been a succession of projects in 

the name of ecclesia or community. 

“This remarkable book is a highly insightful 

exploration of how European identities 

are shaped in our time.” 

—Ernesto Laclau, University of Essex 


352 pp., 13 figures, 2013 

9780804773867 Paper $29.95 $23.96 sale 

9780804773850 Cloth $90.00 $72.00 sale 

4 Philosophy

Ronald Dworkin 

Third Edition 

Stephen Guest 

Ronald Dworkin is widely accepted 

as the most important and most 

controversial Anglo-American jurist 

of the past forty years. And this 

same-named volume on his work has 

become a minor classic in the field, 

offering the most complete analysis 

and integration of Dworkin’s work 

to date. This third edition offers a 

substantial revision of earlier texts 

and, most importantly, incorporates 

discussion of Dworkin’s recent 

masterwork Justice for Hedgehogs. 

Praise for earlier editions: 

“Guest sets out to present a comprehensive, 

concise and accessible account 

of his work, which he has done 

with clarity, honesty and even the 

occasional hint of a smile.” 

—Paul Roberts, University of Nottingham 

“The leading work in the field . . . I 

know of no comparable work of 

this scope and depth in the study of 

Dworkin's work.” 

—David A. Richards, New York University 

Jurists: Profiles in Legal Theory 

336 pp., 2012 

9780804772334 Paper $27.95 $22.36 sale 

9780804772327 Cloth $90.00 $72.00 sale 

What We Mean by 

Experience 

Marianne Janack 

This book takes on the critique of 

empiricism and the skepticism with 

regard to experience that has issued 

from two seemingly disparate intellectual 

strains of thought: anti-foundationalist 

and holistic philosophy 

of science and epistemology (Kuhn 

and Rorty, in particular) and feminist 

critiques of identity politics. Both 

strains render experience an intractable 

problem by opening up a gap 

between a naturalistic understanding 

of human beings and an understanding 

of humans as cultural entities, 

as non-natural makers of meaning. 

Marianne Janack aims to close this 

gap, to allow us to be naturalistic and 

hermeneutic at once. Drawing on 

cognitive neuroscience, the pragmatist 

tradition, and ecological psychology, 

her book rescues experience 

as natural contact with the world. 

“In this engaging and highly readable 

book, Marianne Janack asks us to think 

about experience in a new and original 

way. She forges new connections 

across diverse philosophical and other 

scholarly positions, each time bringing 

the reader back to different ways of 

considering experience.” 

—Lorraine Code, York University 

216 pp., 2 figures, 2012 

9780804776158 Paper $21.95 $17.56 sale 

9780804776141 Cloth $65.00 $52.00 sale 


Human Rights as 

a Way of Life 

On Bergson’s Political 

Philosophy 

Alexandre Lefebvre 

The work of Henri Bergson, the 

foremost French philosopher of 

the early twentieth century, is not 

usually explored for its political 

dimensions. Indeed, Bergson is 

best known for his writings on time, 

evolution, and creativity. This book 

concentrates instead on his political 

philosophy—and especially on his 

late masterpiece, The Two Sources of 

Morality and Religion—from which 

Alexandre Lefebvre develops an 

original approach to human rights. 

“Lefebvre’s elaboration of Bergson’s 

concept of love is brilliant. His insistence 

on Bergson’s use of biology to 

understand morality ties into contemporary 

debates on neo-vitalism, and 

his discussion of De Waal engages 

with debates around naturalism and 

morality. This important book makes 

a real contribution to political theory 

and, more locally, to studies in recent 

French thought.” 

—Leonard Lawlor, Penn State University 


208 pp., 2013 

9780804785792 Paper $24.95 $19.96 sale 

9780804785785 Cloth $80.00 $64.00 sale 

Philosophy 

5

A Systems Theory 

of Religion 

Niklas Luhmann 

Edited by André Kieserling 

Translated by David A. Brenner 

with Adrian Hermann 

Synthesizing approaches as disparate 

as the philosophy of language, historical 

linguistics, deconstruction, and 

formal systems theory/cybernetics, 

A Systems Theory of Religion takes 

on important topics that range from 

religion’s meaning and evolution to 

secularization, turning decades of sociological 

assumptions on their head. 

It provides us with a fresh vocabulary 

and a fresh philosophical and sociological 

approach to one of society’s 

most fundamental phenomena. 

“This posthumously published book 

by Niklas Luhmann is arguably one 

of the most important works in the 

sociology and philosophy of religion of 

the last hundred years. It can only be 

compared in significance and scope to 

the works of Rudolf Otto, Mary Douglas, 

René Girard, Émile Durkheim, Max 

Weber, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. It is not 

just original, but also generative and 

indispensable: future discussions will 

have to refer to it, and it will become de 

rigueur and uncircumventable.” 

—Eduardo Mendieta, Stony Brook University 


320 pp., 2013 

9780804743297 Paper $24.95 $19.96 sale 

9780804743280 Cloth $80.00 $64.00 sale 

6 Philosophy 

Theory of Society, 

Volume 1 

Niklas Luhmann 

Translated by Rhodes Barrett 

This first volume of Luhmann’s twopart 

final work was initially published 

in German in 1997. The culmination 

of his thirty-year theoretical project to 

reconceptualize sociology, it offers a 

comprehensive description of modern 

society on a scale not attempted since 

Talcott Parsons. Beginning with an 

account of the fluidity of meaning and 

the accordingly high improbability of 

successful communication, Luhmann 

analyzes a range of communicative 

media, including language, writing, 

the printing press, and electronic 

media as well as “success media,” such 

as money, power, truth, and love, all 

of which structure this fluidity and 

make communication possible. 

“Niklas Luhmann’s membership in 

the canon of genuinely original and 

comprehensive social theorists is 

radiantly evident. Together with that 

of Simmel, Durkheim, Weber, Mead, 

and Parsons, his work stands as one 

of the monumental achievements of 

twentieth-century sociology. With the 

English publication of Theory of Society, 

Luhmann’s magnum opus is finally 

available to a global readership.” 

—David Wellbery, University of Chicago 


488 pp., 2012 

9780804739504 Paper $27.95 $22.36 sale 

9780804739498 Cloth $85.00 $68.00 sale 

Pragmatism Ascendent 

A Yard of Narrative, a 

Touch of Prophecy 

Joseph Margolis 

Pragmatism Ascendent is the last of 

four volumes on the contribution of 

pragmatism to American philosophy 

and Western philosophy as a whole. 

It covers the period of American 

philosophy’s greatest influence 

worldwide, from the second half of the 

20th century through the beginning of 

the 21st. The book provides an account 

of the way pragmatism reinterprets 

the revolutionary contributions of 

Kant and Hegel, the significance of 

pragmatism’s original vision, and 

the expansion of classic pragmatism 

to incorporate the strongest themes 

of Hegelian and Darwinian sources. 

In the process, it addresses many 

topics either scanted or not addressed 

at all in most overviews of 

the pragmatism’s relevance today. 

“Margolis’s pragmatism is one that 

stands alongside Rorty, Bernstein, and 

Putnam for the next generation of pragmatic 

naturalists to study and follow. 

This book will long be an essential piece 

of that body of master work.” 

—John Shook, 

State University of New York at Buffalo 

200 pp., 2012 

9780804782289 Paper $24.95 $19.96 sale 

9780804782272 Cloth $80.00 $64.00 sale

In the Self’s Place 

The Approach of 

Saint Augustine 

Jean-Luc Marion 

Translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky 

An original phenomenological reading 

of Augustine that considers his engagement 

with notions of identity in Confessions. 

Using the Augustinian experience 

of confessio, Jean-Luc Marion develops 

a model of selfhood that examines 

this experience in light of the whole of 

the Augustinian corpus. Towards this 

end, Marion engages with noteworthy 

modern and postmodern analyses of 

Augustine’s most “experiential” work, 

including the critical commentaries of 

Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, and 

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Marion ultimately 

concludes that Augustine has preceded 

postmodernity in exploring an excess 

of the self over and beyond itself, and 

in using this alterity of the self to itself, 

as a driving force for creative relations 

with God, the world, and others. 

“In the Self’s Place engages with Augustine’s 

Confessions, one of the incomparable 

texts that open the intellectual and 

religious space we call ‘the West.’ Here 

Marion continues his critiques of the self 

and metaphysics, his analysis of praise, 

and his bold case for the univocity of love. 

A major achievement!” 

—Kevin Hart, University of Virginia 


448 pp., 2012 

9780804762915 Paper $25.95 $20.76 sale 

9780804762908 Cloth $90.00 $72.00 sale 

ANNOUNCING ITS RE-RELEASE 

WITH A NEW PREFACE BY THE 

AUTHOR 

Being Given 

Toward a Phenomenology 

of Givenness 

Jean-Luc Marion 

Translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky 

Along with Husserl’s Ideas and 

Heidegger’s Being and Time, Being 

Given is one of the classic works of 

phenomenology in the twentieth 

century. Through readings of Kant, 

Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, and 

twentieth-century French phenomenology 

(e.g., Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, 

and Henry), it ventures a bold and 

decisive reappraisal of phenomenology 

and its possibilities. 

“Simply dazzling: it is a work of tremendous 

depth and highly original 

thought. . . . It’s amazing how much 

Marion . . . has changed the landscape 

of phenomenology—or what we on 

this side of the Atlantic call ‘continental 

philosophy of religion.’ ” 

—The Christian Century 

“A major event in contemporary phenomenology, 

which will be a major 

source of debate and inspiration 

for contemporary philosophy and 

theology.” 

—The Year’s Work in Critical and 

Cultural Theory 


408 pp., 2002 

9780804734110 Paper $31.95 $25.56 sale 

9780804734103 Cloth $77.00 $61.60 sale 

On Philosophy 

Notes from a Crisis 

John McCumber 

Deepening divisions separate today’s 

philosophers, first, from the culture 

at large; then, from each other; and 

finally, from philosophy itself. Though 

these divisions tend to coalesce publicly 

as debates over the Enlightenment, 

their roots lie much deeper. Overcoming 

them thus requires a confrontation 

with the whole of Western philosophy. 

The book’s interpretations of figures 

past and present are as scrupulous as 

its conclusions will be controversial. 

The result contributes to the most 

important question confronting us 

today: does reason itself have a future? 

“A highly original book that makes a 

distinctive and significant contribution 

to a number of different philosophical 

debates, including the nature of reason, 

the philosophy of history, the modernity/postmodernity 

debate, and the 

relationship between metaphysics and 

oppression.” 

—Amy Allen, Dartmouth University 

288 pp., 2013 

9780804781435 Paper $25.00 $20.00 sale 

9780804781428 Cloth $85.00 $68.00 sale 

Philosophy 

7

Human, All Too 

Human II and 

Unpublished 

Fragments from the 

Period of Human, All 

Too Human II (Spring 

1878–Fall 1879) 

Volume 4 

Friedrich Nietzsche 

Translated with an Afterword by 

Gary Handwerk 

Volume 4 of The Complete Works 

of Friedrich Nietzsche contains two 

works, Mixed Opinions and Maxims 

(1879) and The Wanderer and His 

Shadow (1880), originally published 

separately, then republished together 

in the 1886 edition of Nietzsche’s 

works. Like its predecessor, Human, 

All Too Human II is above all an act 

of resistance not only to the intellectual 

influences that Nietzsche felt 

called upon to critique, but to the 

basic physical facts of his daily life. 

“This series will become the definitive 

resource for English readers.” 

—Gary Shapiro, University of Richmond 

The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche 

648 pp., 2012 

9780804783934 Paper $21.95 $17.56 sale 

9780804728751 Cloth $65.00 $52.00 sale 

8 Philosophy 

The Neuro-Image 

A Deleuzian Film- 

Philosophy of Digital 

Screen Culture 

Patricia Pisters 

Arguing that today’s viewers move 

through a character’s brain instead 

of looking through his or her eyes or 

mental landscape, this book approaches 

twenty-first-century globalized 

cinema through the concept of 

the “neuro-image.” Pisters explains 

why this concept has emerged now, 

and she elaborates its threefold 

nature through research from three 

domains—Deleuzian (schizoanalytic) 

philosophy, digital networked screen 

culture, and neuroscientific research. 

Topics covered along the way include 

the omnipresence of surveillance, the 

blurring of the false and the real and 

the affective powers of the neo-baroque, 

and the use of neuro-images in 

politics, historical memory, and war. 

“This outstanding work makes a major 

contribution to film studies and to the 

understanding of the work of Gilles 

Deleuze. It extends Deleuze’s questions 

and concerns by thinking through 

recent developments in film and 

moving-images culture and succeeds 

magnificently in mobilizing his ideas in 

order to discover something new.” 

—Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University 


392 pp., 2012 

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9780804781350 Cloth $90.00 $72.00 sale 

AVAILABLE IN MARCH 2013 

Spectacular Speculation 

Thrills, the Economy, and 

Popular Discourse 

Urs Stäheli 

Translated by Eric Savoth 

A history and sociological analysis of the 

semantics of speculation from 1870 to 

1930, when speculation began to assume 

enormous importance in popular culture. 

Informed by the work of Luhmann, 

Foucault, Simmel and Deleuze, it looks 

at how speculation was translated into 

popular knowledge and charts the discursive 

struggles of making speculation a 

legitimate economic practice. Noting that 

the vocabulary available to discuss the 

concept was not properly economic, the 

book reveals the underside of putting it 

into words. Speculation’s success depended 

upon non-economic language and 

morally questionable thrills: a proximity 

to the wasteful practice of gambling or 

other “degenerate” behaviors, the experience 

of financial markets as seductive, 

or out of control. American discourses 

of speculation take center stage, and 

the book covers an unusual range of 

material, including stock exchange 

guidebooks, ticker tape, moral treatises, 

plays, advertisements, and newspapers. 

“A stunningly original and disturbing account 

of euphoria and hysteria in world 

financial markets.” 

—Werner DeBondt, DePaul University 


9780804771320 Paper $27.95 $22.36 sale 

9780804771313 Cloth $85.00 $68.00 sale

NEW IN PAPERBACK 

The Problem 

of Distraction 

Paul North 

We live in an age of distraction. Contemporary 

analyses of culture, politics, 

techno-science, and psychology 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 reconceived, 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 distraction and 

our lack of attention to it breaks significant 

new ground in our critical history.” 

—David Ferris, 

University of Colorado at Boulder 

248 pp., 2011 

9780804786874 Paper $22.95 $18.36 sale 

9780804775380 Cloth $55.00 $44.00 sale 

Examination 

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Philosophy 

9

Barbarism and Its 

Discontents 

Maria Boletsi 

Barbarism and civilization form one of 

the oldest and most rigid oppositions 

in Western history. According to this 

dichotomy, barbarism functions as the 

negative standard through which “civilization” 

fosters its self-definition and 

superiority by labeling others “barbarians.” 

Since the 1990s, and especially 

since 9/11, these terms have become 

increasingly popular in Western political 

and cultural rhetoric—a rhetoric 

that divides the world into forces of 

good and evil. This study intervenes 

in this recent trend and interrogates 

contemporary and historical uses of 

barbarism, arguing that barbarism also 

has a disruptive, insurgent potential. 

“Our age is no less barbaric than any 

other time, though more efficient 

and more globally repercussive in its 

ability to perpetrate acts of barbarism. 

Boletsi’s attempt to recoup and recast 

the notion of barbarism as redemptive 

force—discursive and worldly ‘real’––is 

a timely and compelling undertaking 

that she carries out admirably and conscientiously.” 

—Djelal Kadir, Penn State University 



9780804782760 Cloth $60.00 $48.00 sale 

The Game of 

Probability 

Literature and Calculation 

from Pascal to Kleist 

Rüdiger Campe 

Translated by 

Ellwood H. Wiggins, Jr. 

The Game of Probability revisits 

the seventeenth and eighteenthcentury 

“probabilistic revolution,” 

providing a history of the relations 

between mathematical and rhetorical 

techniques, between the scientific 

and the aesthetic. Focusing on the 

interpretation of games of chance as 

the model for probability and on the 

reinterpretation of aesthetic form as 

verisimilitude (a critical question for 

theoreticians of that new literary genre, 

the novel), the scope alone of Campe’s 

book argues for probability’s crucial 

role in the constitution of modernity. 

“This marvelous book belongs among 

the most distinguished publications to 

have emerged out of cultural studies in 

Germany during the past thirty years.” 

—David E. Wellbery University of Chicago 


504 pp., 3 tables, 2013 

9780804768658 Paper $35.00 $28.00 sale 

9780804768641 Cloth $95.00 $76.00 sale 

Writing Against Time 

Michael W. Clune 

For centuries, a central goal of art has 

been to make us see the world with 

new eyes. Thinkers from Edmund 

Burke to Elaine Scarry have understood 

this effort as the attempt to create 

new forms. But as anyone who has ever 

worn out a song by repeated listening 

knows, artistic form is hardly immune 

to sensation-killing habit. Some of 

our most ambitious writers—Keats, 

Proust, Nabokov, Ashbery—have been 

obsessed by this problem. Attempting 

to create an image that never gets old, 

they experiment with virtual, ideal 

forms. Poems and novels become 

workshops, as fragments of the real 

world are scrutinized for insights and 

the shape of an ideal artwork is pieced 

together. These writers, voracious in 

their appetite for any knowledge that 

will further their goal, find help in 

unlikely places. The logic of totalitarian 

regimes, the phenomenology of music, 

the pathology of addiction, and global 

commodity exchange furnish them 

with tools and models for arresting 

neurobiological time. Reading central 

works of the past two centuries in light 

of their shared ambition, Clune produces 

a revisionary understanding of 

some of our most important literature. 

200 pp., 2013 

9780804770828 Paper $22.95 $18.36 sale 

9780804770811 Cloth $75.00 $60.00 sale 

10 Literature & Theory

AVAILABLE IN MARCH 2013 

Warped Mourning 

Stories of the Undead in the 

Land of the Unburied 

Alexander Etkind 

After Stalin’s death in 1953, the Soviet 

Union dismantled the enormous system 

of terror and torture that he had 

created. But there has never been any 

Russian ban on former party functionaries, 

nor any external authority to 

dispense justice. Memorials to the Soviet 

victims are inadequate, and their 

families have received no significant 

compensation. This book’s premise is 

that late Soviet and post-Soviet culture, 

haunted by its past, has produced a 

unique set of memorial practices. More 

than twenty years after the collapse of 

the Soviet Union, Russia remains “the 

land of the unburied”: the events of 

the mid-twentieth century are still 

very much alive, and still contentious. 

Alexander Etkind shows how post- 

Soviet Russia has turned the painful 

process of mastering the past into an 

important part of its political present. 

“Etkind’s brilliant and lucid work presents 

the first serious account of theoretical 

challenges to mourning theories in the 

context of Soviet terror.” 

—Nancy Condee, University of Pittsburgh 



9780804773935 Paper $25.95 $20.76 sale 

9780804773928 Cloth $85.00 $68.00 sale 

Georges Bataille 

Phenomenology and 

Phantasmatology 

Rodolphe Gasché 

Translated by Roland Végső 

This book investigates what Bataille, 

in “The Pineal Eye,” calls mythological 

representation: the mythological 

anthropology with which this unusual 

thinker wished to outflank and 

undo scientific (and philosophical) 

anthropology. Gasché probes that 

anthropology by situating Bataille’s 

thought with respect to the quatrumvirate 

of Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche, 

and Freud. He begins by showing 

what Bataille’s understanding of 

the mythological owes to Schelling. 

Drawing on Hegel, Nietzsche, and 

Freud, he then explores the notion 

of image that constitutes the sort 

of representation that Bataille’s 

innovative approach entails. Gasché 

concludes that Bataille’s mythological 

anthropology takes on Hegel’s phenomenology 

in a systematic fashion. 

“A splendid introduction to a revolutionary 

thinker, still not as known in 

this country as he ought to be, written 

by a renowned commentator on 

twentieth-century French thought. An 

important book!” 

—Arkady Plotnitksy, Purdue University 


352 pp., 2012 

9780804776073 Paper $25.95 $20.76 sale 

9780804776066 Cloth $85.00 $68.00 sale 

Better Left Unsaid 

Victorian Novels, Hays 

Code Films, and the 

Benefits of Censorship 

Nora Gilbert 

Better Left Unsaid is in the unseemly 

position of defending censorship 

from the central allegations that are 

traditionally leveled against it. Taking 

two genres generally presumed to 

have been stymied by the censor’s 

knife—the Victorian novel and 

classical Hollywood film—this book 

reveals the varied ways in which 

censorship, for all its blustery selfrighteousness, 

can actually be good 

for sex, politics, feminism, and art. 

“Through her meticulous comparisons 

of Victorian novels and Hays Code 

Hollywood, Gilbert studies visual and 

verbal slippage, inference, irony, and 

the pleasure of perversion. Informative 

and a delight to read, Better Left Unsaid 

sparkles with wit and invention.” 

—Tom Conley, Harvard University 

The Cultural Lives of Law 


9780804784207 Cloth $50.00 $40.00 sale 

Literature & Theory 11


Counterculture 

Colophon 

Grove Press, the 

Evergreen Review, and the 

Incorporation of the Avant- 

Garde 

Loren Glass 

Responsible for such landmark 

publications as Lady Chatterley’s 

Lover, Tropic of Cancer, Naked Lunch, 

Waiting for Godot, The Wretched of 

the Earth, and The Autobiography of 

Malcolm X, Grove Press was the most 

innovative publisher of the postwar 

era. Counterculture Colophon tells the 

story of how the press and its house 

journal, The Evergreen Review, revolutionized the publishing industry and radicalized 

the reading habits of the “paperback generation.” In the process, it offers 

a new window onto the 1960s, from 1951, when Barney Rosset purchased 

the fledgling press for $3,000, to 1970, when the multimedia corporation into 

which he had built the company was crippled by a strike and feminist takeover. 

Grove Press was not only responsible for ending censorship of the printed 

word in the United States but also for bringing avant-garde literature, especially 

drama, into the cultural mainstream as part of the quality paperback 

revolution. Much of this happened thanks to Rosset, whose charismatic 

leadership was crucial to Grove’s success. With chapters covering world 

literature and the Latin American boom, including Grove’s close association 

with UNESCO and the rise of cultural diplomacy; experimental drama 

such as the theater of the absurd, the Living Theater, and the political epics 

of Bertolt Brecht; pornography and obscenity, including the landmark 

publication of the complete work of the Marquis de Sade; revolutionary 

writing, featuring Rosset’s daring pursuit of the Bolivian journals of Che 

Guevara; and underground film, including the innovative development 

of the pocket filmscript, Loren Glass covers the full spectrum of Grove’s 

remarkable achievement as a communications center of the counterculture. 

“Brimming with as many colorful and brilliant personalities as it is with good ideas 

and cogent analyses, this book fills in a major gap in our knowledge of postwar 

American culture, and will appeal to anyone who has ever felt the lure of dangerously 

sexy ideas.” 

—Mark McGurl, Stanford University 

“A riveting and highly entertaining narrative, Glass’s book offers a compelling new 

map of the world system of postwar literature, a map on which Paris and New 

York figure less as competing capitals than as the closest of trading partners. It 

provides a whole new perspective on the American literary scene of the 1950s, 

60s, and 70s.” 

—James F. English, University of Pennsylvania 


9780804784160 Cloth $27.00 $21.60 sale 

Atmosphere, Mood, 

Stimmung 

On a Hidden Potential 

of Literature 

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht 

Translated by Erik Butler 

What are the various atmospheres 

or moods that the reading of literary 

works can trigger? Hans Ulrich 

Gumbrecht has long argued that the 

function of literature is not so much 

to describe, or to re-present, as to 

make present. Here, he goes one 

step further, exploring the substance 

and reality of language as a material 

component of the world—impalpable 

hints, tones, and airs that, as 

much as they may be elusive, are 

no less matters of actual fact. 

“The perspective on literature that 

[Gumbrecht] presents here—the 

study of the emotional reactions, 

moods, and atmospheres that reading 

can trigger—entails a serious methodological 

challenge. How can one 

avoid delivering subjective impressions 

without any objective relevance? 

His answer is as simple as it is bold, 

thought-provoking, and charming: 

You can’t.” 

—Eckart Goebel, New York University 


9780804781220 Paper $18.95 $15.16 sale 

9780804781213 Cloth $65.00 $52.00 sale 



After 1945 

Latency as Origin of 

the Present 

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht 

What is it the legacy that humankind 

has been living with since 1945? We 

were once convinced that time was 

the agent of change. But in the past 

decade or two, our experience of time 

has been transformed. Technology 

preserves and inundates us with the 

past, and we perceive our future as 

a set of converging and threatening 

inevitabilities: nuclear annihilation, 

global warming, overpopulation. 

Overwhelmed by these horizons, we 

live in an ever broadening present. In 

identifying the prevailing mood of 

the post-World War II decade as that 

of “latency,” Gumbrecht returns to 

the era when this change in the pace 

and structure of time emerged and 

shows how it shaped the trajectory 

of his own postwar generation. 

“Quirky, superbly composed, and 

nuanced. . . . A totally original meditation 

on how our sense of time has 

changed over the last two-thirds of a 

century.” 

—Harold Bloom, Yale University 

240 pp., 2013 

9780804785181 Cloth $35.00 $28.00 sale 

AVAILABLE IN MAY 2013 

Nineteenth-Century 

Jewish Literature 

A Reader 

Edited by Jonathan M. Hess, 

Maurice Samuels, and 

Nadia Valman 

Recent scholarship has brought to light 

the existence of a dynamic world of 

specifically Jewish forms of literature in 

the nineteenth century—fiction by Jews, 

about Jews, and often designed largely for 

Jews. This volume makes this material 

accessible to English speakers for the 

first time, offering a selection of Jewish 

fiction from France, Great Britain, and 

the German-speaking world. Offering 

unique insights into the hopes and fears 

of Jews experiencing the dramatic impact 

of modernity, the literature collected 

in this book will provide compelling 

reading for all those interested in modern 

Jewish history and culture, whether 

general readers, students, or scholars. 

“As a compendium of previously unavailable 

material, Nineteenth-Century 

Jewish Literature gives us a glimpse 

into a forgotten world. By presenting 

the literature itself, this book opens 

rather than closes the question of what 

this body of literature means, allowing 

readers to see it for themselves 

and engage with it in new ways.” 

—Lisa Moses Leff, American University 

Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture 

456 pp., 2013 

9780804775472 Paper $29.95 $23.96 sale 

9780804775465 Cloth $95.00 $76.00 sale 

Slow Print 

Literary Radicalism and 

Late Victorian Print Culture 

Elizabeth Carolyn Miller 

This book explores the literary culture 

of Britain’s radical press from 1880 to 

1910, a time that saw a flourishing of 

radical political activity as well as the 

emergence of a mass print industry. 

“Builds carefully on several generations of 

scholarship in the field—but pushes the 

scholarly conversation forward in important 

and new directions through its archival 

findings and synthetic analysis. This is 

a sit-up-and-take-notice, must-read book 

in Victorian and modernist studies.” 

—Ann Ardis, University of Delaware 


9780804784085 Cloth $60.00 $48.00 sale 

On Making Sense 

Queer Race Narratives 

of Intelligibility 

Ernesto Javier Martínez 

“On Making Sense represents nothing less 

than a much needed generational shift 

in the practice of Queer Studies itself.” 

—Robert F. Reid-Pharr, The Graduate Center, City 

University of New York 

Stanford Studies in Comparative Race and Ethnicity 

216 pp., 2012 

9780804783408 Paper $22.95 $18.36 sale 

9780804783392 Cloth $70.00 $56.00 sale 


AVAILABLE IN MAY 2013 

Having It All in the 

Belle Epoque 

How French Women’s 

Magazines Invented the 

Modern Woman 

Rachel Mesch 

At once deeply historical and 

surprisingly timely, Having it All 

in the Belle Epoque shows how the 

debates that continue to captivate 

high-achieving women in America 

and Europe can be traced back 

to the early 1900s in France. The 

first two photographic magazines 

aimed at women, Femina and La 

Vie Heureuse created a female role 

model who—unlike the fear-inducing New Woman—could balance age-old 

feminine convention with new equalities. Often referred to simply as the 

“modern woman,” the feminine role model promoted in Femina and La Vie 

Heureuse was a bundle of decidedly new contradictions, as she embraced a 

newfound sense of equality without completely abandoning conventional 

gender roles. Full of never before studied images of the modern French 

woman in action—from the adorably adventurous mountain climber, 

literally reaching new heights, to the multiple dazzling incarnations of the 

woman writer herself, gracefully balancing work and family, Having it All 

shows how these early magazines exploited new photographic technologies, 

artistic currents, and literary trends to offer a powerful new model 

of French femininity—one that has exerted a lasting, if rarely recognized, 

influence on French expression. The book introduces and explores the 

concept of Belle Epoque literary feminism, a product of the elite literary 

and artistic milieu from which the magazines emerged. Through an astute 

blend of historical research, literary criticism, and visual analysis, Mesch 

offers an original window onto a bygone era that can serve as a framework 

for ongoing debates about feminism, femininity, and work-life tensions. 

“Mesch illuminates both the context that produced the paradox of ‘having it all’ 

and the difficulties that arose as a result. Her book opens a window onto a distant 

and relatively unknown past, all the while shedding light on debates that 

are still very much alive today.” 

—Susan Hiner, Vassar College 

“For too long, we have tended to view the Belle Epoque through the prism 

of the feminism of our own day—how it measures up or falls short of current 

standards. By linking women’s magazines of the time to novels, visual imagery, 

and cultural practices, Mesch breaks out of this straitjacket, offering the most 

insightful and thorough examination of that space to date.” 

—Lenard R. Berlanstein, University of Virginia 


9780804784245 Cloth $39.95 $31.96 sale 

Watching War 

Jan Mieszkowski 

What does it mean to be a spectator 

to war in an era when the boundaries 

between witnessing and perpetrating 

violence have become profoundly 

blurred? Arguing that the contemporary 

dynamics of military spectatorship 

took shape in Napoleonic Europe, 

Watching War explores the status of 

warfare as a spectacle unfolding before 

a mass audience. By showing that the 

battlefield was a virtual phenomenon 

long before the invention of photography, 

film, or the Internet, this book 

proposes that the unique character of 

modern conflicts has been a product of 

imaginary as much as material forces. 

“Urgent, difficult, and often painful 

questions drive this captivating book: 

the inextricable link between waging 

and representing war, between witnessing 

and perpetrating atrocity, and between 

the various logics that organize, 

mediate, disseminate, and legitimate 

the militarization of the world. We ignore 

such questions at our own peril.” 

—Rebecca Comay, University of Toronto 


9780804782401 Paper $24.95 $19.96 sale 

9780804782395 Cloth $80.00 $64.00 sale 


NEW IN PAPERBACK 

AVAILABLE IN JULY 2013 

Camp Sites 

Sex, Politics, and Academic 

Style in Postwar America 

Michael Trask 

Reading across the disciplines of the 

mid-century university, this book argues 

that the political shift in postwar 

America from consensus liberalism 

to New Left radicalism entailed as 

many continuities as ruptures. 

“Full of surprises, Trask’s book shows 

how Cold War academic culture 

shared in the irony, detachment, and 

performance of 1950s camp. Or so the 

New Left believed, which explains why 

they viewed homosexuals and college 

professors with such suspicion. This 

stunning history of postwar America 

shows what was at stake when angry 

young men put their bodies on the 

line on college campuses in the 1960s, 

and it illuminates the ongoing paradoxes 

of Left protest.” 

—Heather Love, University of Pennsylvania 

296 pp., 2013 

9780804784412 Paper $24.95 $19.96 sale 

9780804784405 Cloth $85.00 $68.00 sale 

Walter Benjamin 

Images, the Creaturely, 

and the Holy 

Sigrid Weigel 

Translated by 

Chadwick Truscott Smith 

Arguing that the importance of 

painting and other visual art for 

Benjamin’s epistemology has yet to 

be appreciated, Weigel undertakes 

the first systematic analysis of their 

significance to his thought. She does 

so by exploring Benjamin’s dialectics 

of secularization, an approach that allows 

Benjamin to explore the simultaneous 

distance from and orientation 

towards revelation and to deal with 

the difference and tensions between 

religious and profane ideas. In the 

process, Weigel identifies the double 

reference of ‘life’ to both nature and 

to a ‘supernatural’ sphere as a guiding 

concept of Benjamin’s writings. 

“Weigel’s readings, which are steeped 

in philological detail and hermeneutic 

insight, brilliantly exhibit the stakes 

involved in approaching Benjamin’s 

work anew.” 

—John T. Hamilton, Harvard University 



9780804780605 Paper $26.95 $21.56 sale 

9780804780599 Cloth $85.00 $68.00 sale 

Police Aesthetics 

Literature, Film, and the Secret 

Police in Soviet Times 

Cristina Vatulescu 

“Analyzing Soviet literature, film, and aesthetic 

theory through the long-obscured 

prism of the personal police file, Vatulescu 

insightfully draws upon archival 

material from both Russia and Romania 

to shed valuable light on the way the 

secret police informed—or in formed on, 

as the case may be—artists of the era.” 

—Tim Harte, Slavic Review 


9780804786928 Paper $22.95 $18.36 sale 

9780804760805 Cloth $60.00 $48.00 sale 

Literature, Disaster, 

and the Enigma of 

Power 

A Reading of ‘Moby-Dick’ 

Eyal Peretz 

“A highly unusual meditation on Moby- 

Dick, powerful and enigmatic in itself.” 

—Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University 

192 pp., 2003 

9780804787093 Paper $21.95 $17.56 sale 

9780804746144 Cloth $46.00 $36.80 sale 



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