May 2, 2013

"Of all the books published on the emotions in the last two decades, Terada’s is the most incisive. Realizing that emotion has become the default position among humanists trying to fend off poststructuralist critique, Terada demonstrates just how wrong a reading they provide of emotion and theory both. Emotion lies at the center of posthumanist discourse (in Derrida, de Man, Deleuze, and others) precisely because emotion 'requires the death of the subject.' In addition to its startling originality and elegant thinking, Feeling in Theory is also one

"Written on the eve of World War II, Sartre’s small book contends that we resort to emotions when the difficult world makes agency inconceivable. Since we cannot alter the world with our actions, we transform it with our emotions, subjectively, magically. Sartre’s theory illuminates the critical emotions remarkably well, for these affects often arise when modern critics wish to insert agency into deterministic social systems that appear to be totalizing and daunting. Thus Sartre’s diagnosis helps to explain the appeal of the recent affective turn in criticism and theory.

"Taking its title from Milton: A Poem, Oe’s novel (1983) is indeed saturated by Blake. An author-narrator tries to prepare his mentally disabled son for independence by equipping him with concepts derived (of all things) from his reading of Blake. As improbable as that plot may seem, it prompts a radical rethinking of sympathy that remains true to Blake’s own experiments while extending sympathy into entirely new territory.

"Ngai explores the neglected aesthetics of 'ugly feelings' that accompany situations of suspended agency, with chapters on anxiety, irritation, paranoia, envy, disgust, and a few categories of her own invention: 'stuplimity' and 'affectedness.' Her archive dazzles in range, imagination, and juxtaposition, summoning everything from classic nineteenth-century American literature to the most recent avant-garde experiments.

"Milton’s late dramatic poem has prompted endless controversy. Critics still cannot agree on whether Milton disavows or endorses the revolutionary violence of his biblical protagonist, who invokes the divine will, pulls the pillars down, and leaves 3000 Philistines dead. Long before 9/11, when Samson’s resemblance to a suicide bomber dramatically heightened the moral stakes of interpretation, Samson Agonistes haunted Blake.

"Makdisi’s book is the best on Blake since the flourishing of poststructuralist criticism in the 1980s. Equally adept at reconstructing the popular politics of the 1790s and theorizing Blake’s proto-Marxist understanding of that politics, Makdisi brilliantly explicates Blake’s critique of the intersecting forms of domination in British society, tracing the origins of Blake’s insights to the radical traditions of seventeenth-century antinomianism. In my view, Makdisi reads Blake exactly as Blake wished to be read.

"Best known for its defense of academic freedom, Conflict of the Faculties (1798) also includes a short essay from 1795 that responds directly to the French Revolution.

"Published in English only a year after the equally important Specters of Marx, The Politics of Friendship develops two crucial concepts (passive decision and teleiopoesis) that align Derrida with the activist formalism of recent reading practices emphasizing the agency of emotions. To my knowledge, it is also the only text of Derrida’s to engage Blake. Although his remarks on the poet are brief, they incisively identify Blake as a forerunner of the deconstructive Marx he is eager to promote."

"At a time when the emotions, no matter how differently construed, are regularly celebrated for the knowledge and agency they are supposed to afford, Cameron’s book presents a salutary counterpoint. In a series of powerful essays, she explores how a surprising cluster of writers, from Emerson and Melville to William Empson and Simone Weil, aspires to emotion-cancelling impersonality. My favorite chapter explains why the Puritan author Jonathan Edwards turned against his own religious enthusiasm and encouraged his readers to 'think of the same that the sleeping rocks dream of.'"