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Inventing Agency: Essays on the Literary and Philosophical Production of the Modern Subject

Claudia Brodsky (Ed.)

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Description for Inventing Agency: Essays on the Literary and Philosophical Production of the Modern Subject Paperback. A state-of-the-art overview and reappraisal of the literary and philosophical origins of theory and, in particular, of modern subjectivity. Editor(s): Brodsky, Claudia; LaBrada, Eloy. Num Pages: 272 pages. BIC Classification: DSA; HP. Category: (U) Tertiary Education (US: College). Dimension: 142 x 215 x 32. Weight in Grams: 358.
Inventing Agency addresses some of the most central and pressing concerns in criticism, theory, and philosophy today. As new metaphysics of the realia of power and independently animated objects have replaced ancient conceptualizations of substance, being, and causation, the question of the subject -of the capability for just such conceptual change, for acting to any effect whatsoever-has reemerged with fresh critical urgency. Writing on theories and fictions of the subject from Aristotle to Althusser and Fielding to Flaubert, the contributors to Inventing Agency explore the unprecedented productions of the subject as agent-of cognition, aesthetic experience and judgment, imagination and ... Read more

Product Details

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Format

Paperback

Publication date

2017

Condition

New

Number of Pages

272

Place of Publication

New York, United States

ISBN

9781501317132

SKU

V9781501317132

Shipping Time

Usually ships in 5 to 9 working days

Ref

99-50

About Claudia Brodsky (Ed.)

Claudia Brodsky is Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, USA, and ancien directeur de programme of the College international de philosophie, Paris, France. Her previous publications include The Imposition of Form (1987), Lines of Thought (1996), In the Place of Language (2009), Why Philosophy, Intro., Ed. and Contributor, PMLA (2016), and, co-edited with Toni Morrison, Birth of a ... Read more

Reviews for Inventing Agency: Essays on the Literary and Philosophical Production of the Modern Subject

Inventing Agency, Essay on the Literary and Philosophical Production of the Modern Subject offers an admirable examination of the multiple ways the capacity to think and act, to reflect or negate have been both re-defined and questioned in the modern era. The authors gathered in this volume engage in a productive dialogue, focusing on distinctive works and critical perspectives. The ... Read morequestion of agency is approached through a variety of texts that focus on aesthetics, philosophy, painting, narrative strategies and historical singularities. Knowledgeable and provocative, Inventing Agency goes far beyond the terms with which, from Descartes to Kant, the question of the authority and status of the subject have been framed, raising important questions regarding communicability and current forms of critical thought in its relationship to history.
Marie-Helene Huet, M. Taylor Pyne Professor of French and Italian, Princeton University, USA
This collection of essays proposes a provocative and original approach to the much debated nature of the subject with a simple yet far-reaching and creative move. Instead of describing or analyzing what the subject is, the essays consider what subjects do, in the world, in time, and in history. The 'inventing' of the subject's agency does not mean that the authors are discovering agency, but rather points to the underlying meaning of the word 'invention,' in that the authors uncover what theoretical approaches have overlooked: the subject as agent, as an actor who has been occulted by static, reductive, or deterministic theories. This dynamic approach does not result in a unified theory but yields multifaceted explorations of the subject's acts of speech in which agency works, carried out in close analyses of texts written by diverse philosophers and literary figures that include Descartes, Gournay, Diderot, Richardson, Flaubert, Aristotle, Fielding, Adam Smith, Hegel, and Kant.
Sylvie Romanowski, Professor Emerita of French, Northwestern University, USA
Inventing Agency presents a set of innovative and probing essays focused on the question of the subject. Each offers a new perspective on the imbrication of literature and philosophy, investigating topics such as feeling and judgment, temporality and sexuality. The essays have a wide disciplinary range, bringing in art history, disability studies, and more general questions of literary studies such as narrative, poetics and performative language. Many of the essays pose the question of the (post)enlightenment subject anew, seeking openings in the legacies of Diderot, Kant and Hegel to open up possibilities of de-essentialized subjectivity. The volume is a serious and engaging contribution to the study of literature and philosophy and the interrelation between language and thinking. The book culminates in Claudia Brodsky's magisterial essay on Kant's notions of common sense, language and judgment-a preview of what promises to be a challenging and illuminating book to come.
Susan Bernstein, Professor of Comparative Literature, Brown University, USA
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Inventing Agency: Essays on the Literary and Philosophical Production of the Modern Subject

Claudia Brodsky (Ed.)

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