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"Derrida is one of the few Continental philosopher-critics as esteemed for his writings about visual topics as for his attention to more textually based subjects. This volume collects key and scarce writings about the making and apprehension of "visual objects," though the chief focus is on drawing, painting, and photography (with sorties into video and film). What preoccupied Derrida when it came to the visual arts is visibility: what does a pencil actually trace-make visible- when someone is making a drawing? What aspect of the drawing documents the artist's thought and what part documents an external object? What comes from painting other than a painting? The writings collected range from essays originally published in small magazines and journals to never-before translated talks and interviews. There are 19 pieces in all, of which seven have been previously published in English.. The rest have been translated into English for the first time. None is included in the Press's already substantial inventory of works by Derrida. The collection comprises three thematic sections: (1) "The Traces of the Visible" is attuned to the field's preoccupation with the "trace," what is an "image," visibility, and space. (2) "Rhetoric of the Line: Painting, Drawing" engages nearly every register in which one can experience art: the materiality of line and text, the eros of aesthetic experience, the politics of color, and the components of painting, writing and drawing taken together. (3) "Spectralities of the Image: Photography, Video, Cinema and Theatre" explores the media we most readily associate with modern and contemporary art practices"--

"In Don't Forget to Live, the final book penned before his death in 2010, renowned French philosopher Pierre Hadot focuses our attention on Goethe and the long tradition of spiritual exercises. As Hadot explains, the term "spiritual exercise" has nothing to do with religion as we might assume. Instead, spiritual exercises are acts of the intellect, imagination, or will that are characterized by their purpose. Thanks to these exercises, a person strives to transform how they see the world, the self, and the relationship between the two. The exercises do not work to inform, but to form. Hadot begins his remarkable study of Goethe with the spiritual exercise of concentrating on the present moment. This exercise was dear to Goethe and allows us to experience each moment intensely without being distracted by the weight of the past or the mirage of the future. Hadot then explores another exercise, the view from above, in which we actively take a distance from things so as to help us see them in perspective. He then turns our attention to Goethe's poem "Urworte" in which the focus is on hope, a figure who represents a fundamental attitude we should cultivate. Through Hadot's masterful treatment of these three exercises we clearly grasp Goethe's deep love for life despite its pains and fears, and this deep love serves as a powerful reminder for us to live as well"--

"The French writer Albert Camus is best known for his novels and philosophical works, which are among the most influential of the twentieth century. But his journals, which he kept from 1935 to 1959, offer an intimate glimpse into his thinking at its most personal. Beautifully retranslated by Ryan Bloom and supplemented by an introduction by Alice Kaplan, Travels in the Americas presents the journals that Camus wrote during his eventful visits to the United States in 1946 and to South America in 1949. When Camus sailed to the US in 1946, he was virtually unknown to American audiences. All that was about to change-The Stranger, his first book translated into English, was about to be published, and he would soon be a literary star. By 1949, when he set out for South America, Camus was an international celebrity. Camus's journals from these two trips record his impressions, frustrations, and longings. Here are his vivid first impressions of New York City, his encounters with publishers and critics and assorted shipmates. Camus appears unguarded, his fallibility on full display. He is irritated by mediocrity and frustrated by his health. Yet he is also moved to rapture by landscapes, by women, or simply by the bounty of his own philosophical imagination. Long unavailable in English and now freshly translated and annotated, these journals let readers walk beside the existentialist thinker as he experiences the changes in his own life and in the world around him, openly describing his passions and preoccupations on the way, all in his inimitable style"--