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Summary
Provocative, inventive, and at times outrageous essays on literary theory, philosophy, and cultural criticism.
These provocative, inventive, and at times outrageous essays on literary theory, philosophy, and cultural criticism describe, in their form and content, the end of criticism, even while performing the endlessness of that endgame. In a sense, the book deconstructs all forms of critique and criticism, including deconstruction, and including its own self. That the book is so painfully aware of the futility of its own enterprise, even while pursuing it relentlessly and with such critical rigor, is what makes this a book of masocriticism as well as about masocriticism.
"Masocriticism portrays the cruel mockery self-consciousness makes of its denizens, and faces up to what Wittgenstein called 'the groundlessness of our believing' as consistently as any book I know. I heartily recommend it." -- H. L. Hix, author of Spirits Hovering Over the Ashes
"This book is completely engaged with its materials--the conjunction of passion for its thesis with intellectual rigor makes it stand out within the literature. The mode of writing, where Mann is able to mix what at first seem to be 'oracular' pronouncements with close readings of key texts--such as Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy--makes for a pretty exhilarating read." -- Sande Cohen, California Institute of the Arts
Paul Mann is the author of The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. The Afterlife of the Avant-Garde
2. Masocriticism
3. The Exquisite Corpse of Georges Bataille
4. Nietzsche, the Tragic-Real, and the Exquisite Corpse of Theory
