Leo Bersani: A Speculative Introduction

Description

For the past 60 years, Leo Bersani has inspired, resisted, guided, and challenged scholarly work in the fields of literary criticism, queer theory, cultural studies, psychoanalytic theory, and film and visual studies. Moving across an impressive range of sources, Mikko Tuhkanen seeks out the “fundamental notes”—the questions that we find and refind—in Bersani’s extensive oeuvre across the decades. The chapters explore Bersani’s engagement with psychoanalytic theory (Freud, Laplanche, Klein, Lacan), French and American modernist fiction (Proust, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, James, Beckett), poststructuralist theory (Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Blanchot), queer theory (Butler, Edelman), and the visual arts (Caravaggio, Almodóvar, Pasolini, Malick, Dumont). This first introduction to Bersani's work provides a chronological overview of his thought and details his contributions to literary studies and critical theory. Cover Contents Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction Part One Wanting Being 1 The Psychoanalytic Subject 2 What Is an Individual? (A Deleuzean Query) 3 Performativity and Speculative Politics 4 The Antisocial Thesis Part Two The Correspondence Thesis 5 Whither Narcissus? 6 Saving Frivolity, or, on Sociability and Spandrels 7 The Virtual Unconscious Part Three … But Is It Art? 8 Fascinating Rhythm 9 Leo Bersani’s Speculative Aesthetics Works Cited Index