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Demonstrates how visual art can work as a powerful technology of the self Starting from criticisms of a simple, given self, found in Nietzsche, Freud, and Foucault, Katrina Mitcheson addresses the problem of how a complex self is constructed, and how a hermeneutics of the self can avoid reproducing a subjugated self. Critically examining Ricoeur's narrative account of self-construction, Mitcheson makes the case that narrative as a model of self-construction overlooks the variety of processes that can contribute to forming a self and neglects the materiality of these processes. Drawing on the work of a range of visual artists including Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois, this study develops an alternative account of a plural and corporeal hermeneutics of the self. Diverse examples are explored of how visual art can operate not only as a critical technology of the self, exposing practices which contribute to our subjugation, but can also discover, explore, and affect bodily processes, thereby enabling experimentation in self-construction.

With in-depth studies of Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Alain Badiou and Jacques Ranciere, along with shorter analyses of Jean-Claude Milner and Quentin Meillassoux, Boncardo asks how StephaneMallarme became so politically significant for left-wing French intellectuals.

Leemon McHenry argues that Whitehead's metaphysics provides a better basis for achieving a unification of physical theory than a traditional substance metaphysics. He investigates the influence of Maxwell's electromagnetic field, Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics on the development of the ontology of events and compares Whitehead's theory to his contemporaries, C. D. Broad and Bertrand Russell, as well as W. V. Quine. In this way, McHenry defends the naturalised and speculative approach to metaphysics as opposed to analytical and linguistic methods that arose in the 20th century.

Hans-Georg Gadamer's poetics completely overturns the European aesthetic tradition. By concentrating on the experience of meaning, Unfinished Worlds shows how Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics transforms aesthetics into a mode of attentive practice. It has deep implications for all of the humanities, and how we can understand the meaning of poetry, art, literature, history and theology. His emphasis on participation promises an approach that will revolutionise aesthetic and hermeneutic practice, and gives us new ways to think about the cultural productivity and social legitimacy of the humanities.

Using animals for scientific research is a highly contentious issue that Continental philosophers engaging with 'the animal question' have been rightly accused of shying away from. Now, Wahida Khandker asks whether Continental approaches to animality and organic life will make us reconsider our treatment of non-human animals. By following its historical and philosophical development, she argues that the concept of 'pathological life' as a means of understanding organic life as a whole plays a pivotal role in refiguring the human-animal distinction. She explores the significance of this across philosophy and the life sciences through the work of a number of key thinkers of life and process, from Henri Bergson to Donna Haraway.

Following a long tradition of objectification, 20th-century French feminism often sought to liberate the female body from the confines of patriarchal logos and to inscribe its rhythms in writing. Amaleena Damle addresses questions of bodies, boundaries and philosophical discourses by exploring the intersections between a range of contemporary philosophers and authors on the subject of contemporary female corporeality and transformation.

The work of the Italian Continental philosopher Giorgio Agamben is usually read in terms of critical theory or traditional political philosophy. In this book, the author argues that Agamben's thought has been widely misunderstood. It radically reinterprets Agamben's political philosophy, including his concepts of 'bare life' and 'the exception'.

Combining recent insights from animal studies, critical plant studies and the new materialisms, Danielle Sands reads fiction and philosophy alongside each other to propose a method of thinking of and with animals that draws on a bestiary of affects. She challenges the claim that empathy should be primary mode of engagement with nonhuman life. Instead, she looks at the stories that we tell, and are told, by insects - beings at the edges of animal life. The indifference, even disgust, that these creatures evoke in us forms the basis for a new ethics not limited by empathy. Along the way she encounters fiction writers Yann Martel, Karen Joy Fowler, Han Kang and Jim Crace beside the philosophy of Graham Harman, Donna Haraway, Jacques Derrida and Roger Caillois.

Providing a guide to fantasy writing from the classical period to the 20th century, this text focuses on different examples of how fantasy has acted as a political response to cultural opportunities and pressures. A wide variety of styles and genres are investigated.

Stephen Zepke shows how the idea of sublime art waxes and wanes in the work of Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Ranciere and the recent Speculative Realism movement.

Navigates varied approaches to the representation of the nonhumanIs it possible to read, write and think non-anthropocentrically? To compare what literature and philosophy can teach us about the nonhuman?By pursuing underexplored areas of Animal Studies within five interdisciplinary chapters, Danielle Sands proposes a thinking of and with animals that draws on a range of affects from empathy to disgust. Examining the benefits of empathy in facilitating cross-species understanding and kinship, Sands also reveals its limits.Danielle Sands is Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London and Fellow at the Forum for Philosophy, LSE.

With in-depth studies of Jean-Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Alain Badiou and Jacques Ranciere, along with shorter analyses of Jean-Claude Milner and Quentin Meillassoux, Boncardo asks how Stephane Mallarme became so politically significant for left-wing French intellectuals.

Difficult Atheism shows how contemporary French philosophy is rethinking the legacy of the death of God in ways that take the debate beyond the narrow confines of atheism into the much broader domain of post-theological thinking. Christopher Watkin argues that Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux each elaborate a distinctive approach to the post-theological, but that each approach still struggles to do justice to the death of God.

Marcel Mauss' 'Essai sur le don' (1923-4) has become one of the central non-philosophical references of contemporary French philosophy. Deleuze (and Guattari) and Derrida, to cite only two, engage with the concept of the gift explicitly and repeatedly. Gerald Moore shows how the problematic of the gift drives and illuminates the last century of French philosophy. By tracing the creation of the gift as a concept, from its origins in philosophy and the social sciences, right up to the present, Moore shows its central importance for a poststructuralist understanding of the relation between philosophy and politics.

A volume that reflects a broadening area of English Studies that takes in non-western literatures and places more emphasis on the contexts and broader notions of "writing". It discusses writing from and about Africa and also touches on studies in black writing.

This text presents the current state in interdisciplinary racial studies, looking in detail at the construction, perception and representation of race in a variety of literature. The essays examine style, figures of speech, settings, narrative devices and historical social situations.

This study explores the relationship between writing and film, looking at box office successes such as "The Piano" and "The English Patient" as well as adaptations of 19th century "classic" novels, and science fiction films such as "Blade Runner" and "Starship Troopers".

This text surveys the writing genres that have contributed to the American notions of America. Essays from scholars from both sides of the Atlantic chart the range of responses to American nationhood, from colonial times to the present, and include dissenting responses from minority communities.

Mathew Abbott argues that Agamben's thought is misunderstood when read in terms of critical theory or traditional political philosophy. He shows instead that it engages in political ontology: studying the political stakes of the question of being.