Elliott Jane - Theory After ’Theory’

THEORY AFTER THEORY

This volume argues that theory, far from being dead, has undergone major shifts in order to come to terms with the most urgent cultural and political questions of today. Offering an overview of theorys new directions, this groundbreaking collection includes essays on affect, biopolitics, biophilosophy, the aesthetic, and neoliberalism, as well as examinations of established areas such as subaltern studies, the postcolonial and ethics.

Influential figures such as Agamben, Badiou, Arendt, Deleuze, Derrida and Meillassoux are examined in a range of contexts. Gathering together some of the top thinkers in the field, this volume not only speculates on the fate of theory but shows its current diversity, encouraging conversation between divergent strands. Each section highlights new areas of theoretical exploration and stages a comparison between different but ultimately related ways in which key thinkers are moving beyond poststructuralism.

Jane Elliott is Lecturer in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, UK. She is the author of Popular Feminist Fiction as AmericanAllegory: Representing National Time (2008), and her essays have appeared in Cultural Critique, Modern Fiction Studies, Novel, and the PMLA. She is currently at work on a project on neoliberalism, choice and the novel.

Derek Attridge is Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, UK. Among his books are Peculiar Language: Literature asDifference from the Renaissance to James Joyce (1988), The Singularity ofLiterature (2004), J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in theEvent (2004) and Reading and Responsibility: Deconstructions Traces (2010). His edited and co-edited volumes include Post-structuralist Joyce:Essays from the French (1984), Post-structuralism and the Question ofHistory (1987) and Acts of Literature by Jacques Derrida (1992).

THEORY AFTER THEORY

Edited by Jane Elliott and Derek Attridge

First edition published 2011

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2011 Jane Elliott and Derek Attridge for selection and editorial matter; individual contributions; the contributors

The right of the Jane Elliott and Derek Attridge to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted, in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Theory after theory/edited by Jane Elliott and Derek Attridge.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. LiteratureHistory and criticismTheory, etc. 2. LiteraturePhilosophy.

I. Elliott, Jane, 1969. II. Attridge, Derek.

PN441.T445 2011

801.95dc222010033268

ISBN13: 9780415484183 (hbk)

ISBN13: 9780415484190 (pbk)

ISBN13: 9780203831168 (ebk)

Notes on Contributors

Amanda Anderson is Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature at The Johns Hopkins University and Director of the School of Criticism and Theory (at Cornell University). She is the author of The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory (Princeton University Press, 2006), The Powers of Distance: Cosmopolitanism and the Cultivation of Detachment (Princeton University Press, 2001) and Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture (Cornell University Press, 1993). She has also co-edited, with Joseph Valente, Disciplinarity at the Fin de Sicle (Princeton University Press, 2002).

Ray Brassier is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the American University of Beirut. He is the author of Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Palgrave, 2007). He is currently working on a book that proposes to conjoin historical with eliminative materialism.

Adriana Cavarero is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Verona. Her publications include Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood (Routledge, 2000), Stately Bodies: Literature, Philosophy and the Question of Gender (University of Michigan Press, 2002), For More than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression (Stanford University Press, 2005) and Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence (Columbia University Press, 2008).

Eva Cherniavsky is Andrew R. Hilen Professor of American Literature and Culture and affiliated faculty in Womens Studies at the University of Washington. She is the author of That Pale Mother Rising: Sentimental Discourses and the Imitation of Motherhood in Nineteenth-Century America (Indiana University Press, 1995) and of Incorporations: Race, Nation, and the Body Politics of Capital (University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Her current research considers the changing contours of the political in the context of neoliberal governance with an emphasis on the reimagination of citizenship in popular culture.

Rey Chow is Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature at Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Duke University. Since 1991 she has authored seven books, including Writing Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 1993), Ethics after Idealism (Indiana University Press, 1998), The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Columbia University Press, 1992), The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work (Duke University Press, 2006) and Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility (Columbia University Press, 2007). Her writings have been widely anthologized and translated into multiple European and Asian languages. The Rey Chow Reader, ed. Paul Bowman, is available from Columbia University Press.

Claire Colebrook is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. She has published books on contemporary European philosophy, literary theory, feminist theory, literary history and poetry. Her two most recent books are Milton, Evil and Literary History (2009) and Deleuze and the Meaning of Life (2010).

Laurent Dubreuil is a Professor of Romance Studies and Comparative Literature and the Director of the French Studies Program at Cornell University. His main research has to do with philosophy, literary criticism and theory, and the epistemology of the disciplines. He is the author of several books, including, force damiti (Paris: Hermann, 2009), Ltat critique de la littrature (Paris: Hermann, 2009) and Empire of Language (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming in 2011). The editor-at-large of the French interdisciplinary journal Labyrinthe, Dubreuil is currently assembling a special issue of Diacritics on Negative Politics. A Mellon Fellow in the New Directions Program, Laurent Dubreuil is also working more and more on neuroscience, evolutionary theory or animal behaviour from a theoretical and experimental perspective.