This 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]

This 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.

Levinas’s treatment of persecution as the inaugural basis of ethical responsibility tacitly relies on the ethical subject’s availability for seduction through an invitation to profane the beloved that is the obverse of the face. Using Jean Laplanche’s conception of the enigmatic signifier, I interpret the face–beloved dyad as a pathological r…[Read more]

On performativity of Dickens as author in his prefaces

The animal characteristics of the monster in late Victorian gothic fiction make visible the biopolitical rationalisation of life in modern societies. Key moments in Bram Sto- ker’s Dracula and R.L. Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde provide evidence for the animality of late Victorian gothic monsters. In an extended reading of Ric…[Read more]

In setting his 1898 tale In the Cage in a telegraph office, Henry James was adapting and investigating a metaphor that earlier novelists had used for the workings of fiction. As invoked by writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens, the idealized image of the electric telegraph hints at some of the formal and ideological properties of…[Read more]

In setting his 1898 tale In the Cage in a telegraph office, Henry James was adapting and investigating a metaphor that earlier novelists had used for the workings of fiction. As invoked by writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens, the idealized image of the electric telegraph hints at some of the formal and ideological properties of…[Read more]

The rhetoric of “excellence” is pervasive across the academy. It is used to refer to research outputs as well as researchers, theory and education, individuals and organizations, from art history to zoology. But does “excellence” actually mean anything? Does this pervasive narrative of “excellence” do any good? Drawing on a range of sources we…[Read more]

In the past, Palestinian cinema was dominated by a nationalist discourse revolving around refugee ideology, resulting from the trauma of the lost homeland. As the past is generally static, revisiting it became an exercise in nostalgia. The last decade, however, has seen the emergence of a number of transnational Palestinian films telling stories…[Read more]

Fantastic tales of rebellious robots and animated artifacts are a permanent fixture in popular culture and have been since antiquity. What kind of behavior do we expect from conceptual hybrids in science fiction, nonsense poetry, and surrealist art?

This course explores major currents of political radicalism both within and outside of the dominant western political tradition. Topics considered may include antidemocratic radicalism, democratic radicalism, Marxian radicalism, radical feminism, radical individualism, and post-colonial radicalism. Readings will include selections from Kant,…[Read more]

This course explores major currents of political radicalism both within and outside of the dominant western political tradition. Topics considered may include antidemocratic radicalism, democratic radicalism, Marxian radicalism, radical feminism, radical individualism, and post-colonial radicalism. Readings will include selections from Kant,…[Read more]

Selected works from the literatures of former European colonies: African, Indian, Caribbean, Australian, Canadian, Latin American, etc.