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Anthony Adler deposited Deconfabulation: Agamben’s Italian Categories and the Impossibility of Experience in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 2 weeks, 1 day agoAgamben’s self-professed epigonism underwrites his entire project, serving as an even more fundamental methodological concept than the signature, paradigm, and archeology. In Infancy and History, Agamben maintains that transcendental experience is no longer a viable source of philosophical insight; philosophers go astray referring their thinking b…[Read more]
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James Elkins deposited The “Finnegans Wake of Russia,” And Its Translation Problems: On Sasha Sokolov’s “Between Dog and Wolf” in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 2 weeks, 2 days agoThe essays I am posting on Humanities Commons are also on Librarything and Goodreads. These aren’t reviews. They are thoughts about the state of literary fiction, intended principally for writers and critics involved in seeing where literature might be able to go. Each one uses a book as an example of some current problem in writing.
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James Elkins deposited Why Write Average Books? On Julian Barnes’s “The Sense of an Ending” in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 2 weeks, 2 days agoThe essays I am posting on Humanities Commons are also on Librarything and Goodreads. These aren’t reviews. They are thoughts about the state of literary fiction, intended principally for writers and critics involved in seeing where literature might be able to go. Each one uses a book as an example of some current problem in writing.
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James Elkins deposited Compulsively Fractal Writing and Its Limits: Thoughts on Stephen Dixon, and Especially “Frog” in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 2 weeks, 2 days agoThe essays I am posting on Humanities Commons are also on Librarything and Goodreads. These aren’t reviews. They are thoughts about the state of literary fiction, intended principally for writers and critics involved in seeing where literature might be able to go. Each one uses a book as an example of some current problem in writing.
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James Elkins deposited The Images in Monica Ong’s “Silent Anatomies” in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 2 weeks, 6 days agoThis is an essay on the relation of images and text. It is part of a larger research project online at writingwithimages.com. See that site for the context; the the project’s purpose is to theorize the possibilities of fiction and poetry that are presented alongside images.
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Anthony Adler deposited The Biopolitics of Noise: Kafka’s “Der Bau” in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 2 weeks, 6 days agoAn analysis of the politics of sound and noise in Kafka’s “Der Bau.”
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Anthony Adler deposited The Abject Life of Things h.c. andersen’s sentimentality in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 2 weeks, 6 days agoThe following paper attempts a philosophically rigorous interpretation of H.C. Andersen’s tales. Through a radically conceived sentimentality — the unmediated juxtaposition of the abjection of things, conceived as a paradoxical “desire for desire” having no place in the world, with a cruel, apathetic gaze — Andersen challenges the exist…[Read more]
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James Elkins deposited Images in Andre Breton’s “Nadja” in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 3 weeks agoThis is an essay on the relation of images and text. It is part of a larger research project online at writingwithimages.com. See that site for the context; the the project’s purpose is to theorize the possibilities of fiction and poetry that are presented alongside images.
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Anthony Adler deposited Analog in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Audiophilia, Semiaura and the Cultural Memory of the Phonograph in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 3 weeks ago“analyses the spectral presence of the phonograph within a digital omnipresence: its afterlife as a material echo of the past… Analyzing audiophilia— basically a desire for material presence — in the apparently disembodied age of the digital, Adler shows how the former is as it were animated as aura by the effects of the latter (infinite…[Read more]
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Anthony Adler deposited What’s the Deal?: Fichte’s Closed Commercial State, Trump, and Economic Nationalism in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 3 weeks, 1 day agoStarting out from an analysis of the “Art of the Deal,” this paper seeks to understand Trump’s “deal-making” as a form of life under capitalism organized around the paradoxical desire to simultaneously “be the game” and be the “biggest winner”— In this way, Trump exemplifies a modern pathological form of existence whose proximate roots can be…[Read more]
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James Elkins deposited Deconstructing Danielewski’s “Complexity” in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 3 weeks, 3 days agoThe essays I am posting on Humanities Commons are also on Librarything and Goodreads. These aren’t reviews. They are thoughts about the state of literary fiction, intended principally for writers and critics involved in seeing where literature might be able to go. Each one uses a book as an example of some current problem in writing.
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James Elkins deposited On the Limits of Wit and of Plotting in Maximalist Novels: Notes on Sergio De la Pava, Naked Singularity in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 3 weeks, 4 days agoThe essays I am posting on Humanities Commons are also on Librarything and Goodreads. These aren’t reviews. They are thoughts about the state of literary fiction, intended principally for writers and critics involved in seeing where literature might be able to go. Each one uses a book as an example of some current problem in writing.
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James Elkins deposited What is the Genuinely Strange in Literature? Notes on Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 3 weeks, 4 days agoThe essays I am posting on Humanities Commons are also on Librarything and Goodreads. These aren’t reviews. They are thoughts about the state of literary fiction, intended principally for writers and critics involved in seeing where literature might be able to go. Each one uses a book as an example of some current problem in writing. All c…[Read more]
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Charles Gleek deposited The ‘White’ to Freedom of Inquiry and Expression: Reading the University of Chicago’s Letter to the Class of 2020. in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 1 month agoDebates over safe spaces and trigger warnings have become a regular part of campus discourse, especially in context with discussions over free speech, intellectual freedom, and the role that universities play in the social formation. In particular, the University of Chicago entered into the public fray surrounding safe spaces in the fall of 2016…[Read more]
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Charles Gleek deposited “In This Way the Moons and the Seasons Passed”: Distantly Reading the Literary Criticism of Things Fall Apart. in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 2 months agoI employ distant reading techniques and data visualization tools to assess the literary criticism of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. My findings suggest that the scholarly literary criticism of Things Fall Apart did not occur independently with the publication of Achebe’s work in 1958, but was a part of a larger trend in literary criticism a…[Read more]
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Charles Gleek deposited Review of Post-Racial or Most Racial? Race and Politics in the Obama Era by Michael Tessler in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 2 months, 1 week agoTesler presents a powerful argument against this fantasy of a post-racial America. Through the employment of solid data analysis with compelling descriptions, Post-Racial or Most Racial? explicates a muscular argument to reinforce claims made against a post-racial America reality that can be found in contemporary journalistic narratives.…[Read more]
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Charles Gleek deposited Read. Write. LitMag: Whiteness in the Fall 2016 issue of Brevity in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 2 months, 1 week agoThis paper explores the extent to which whiteness is represented in the Fall 2016 issue of Brevity. I suggest that the authors’ representation of whiteness manifests in the forms of both white privilege and white supremacy, and thus serves as the predominant theme of this issue of the magazine. I also consider the ways in which distant reading t…[Read more]
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Lisa Zunshine deposited Strange Concepts and the Stories They Make Possible in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 4 months, 1 week agoFantastic tales of rebellious robots and animated artifacts are a permanent fixture in popular culture. What kind of behavior do we expect from such conceptual hybrids in science fiction, nonsense poetry, and surrealist art?
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Mario Ortiz-Robles deposited Artaud y México in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 5 months agoThis essay proposes the concept of literary immanence as a new critical model for reading world literature from the perspective of the specific situation experienced by the subject as he or she encounters the world. The literary event is instantiated within three discursive domains: literary immanence, the literary situation into which the subject…[Read more]
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Mario Ortiz-Robles deposited Local Speech, Global Acts: Performative Violence and the Novelization of the World in the group
TM Literary and Cultural Theory on MLA Commons 5 months agoThis article examines the performativity of novelistic discourse in order to propose a different set of terms for understanding the circulation of the novel around the world than those that are based on the referential form/content model.
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