Life.After.Theory

(Paperback)

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Is there life after theory If the death of the Author has now been followed by the death of the Theorist, what's left Indeed, who's left To explore such riddles Life. After.Theory brings together new interviews with four theorists who are left, each a major figure in their own right: Jacques Derrida, Frank Kermode, Toril Moi, and Christopher Norris. Framed and introduced by Michael Payne and John Schad, the interviews pursue a whole range of topics, both familiar and unfamiliar. Among other things, Derrida, Kermode, Moi and Norris discuss being an outsider, taking responsibility, valuing books, getting angry, doing science, listening to music, remembering Empson, rereading de Beauvoir, being Jewish, asking forgiveness, smoking in libraries, befriending the dead, committing bigamy, forgetting to forget, thinking, not thinking, believing, and being mad. These four key thinkers explore why there is life after theory...but not as we know it. Jacques Derrida is Professor at the +cole des Hautes +tudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author of a range of extraordinarily influential works including Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference and Dissemination. Sir Frank Kermode is a former King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge and author of, among many other books, The Sense of An Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, Shakespeare's Language, and Not Entitled, his memoirs. Toril Moi is James B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University. Her books include Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory, Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman and What Is a Woman And Other Essays. Christopher Norris is Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy at the University of Cardiff. He has published some twenty books to date, including, most recently, Deconstruction and the Unfinished Project of Modernity, Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism, Truth Matters: Realism, Anti-Realism, and Response-Dependence, and Hilary Putnam: Reason, Realism, and the Uses of Uncertainty.

Reviews

"The question of the meaning of the term life after theory' is approached through a series of interview with Jacques Derrida, Frank Kermode, Christopher Norris and Toril Moi. The last three are conducted by one of the editors of the volume (Michael Payne), while the interview with Derrida is the transcript of a round table discussion held at Loughborough University on November 10th, 2001. ...some touchstones for thinking the problem of what life after theory' might mean are clearly laid out." -Kir Kuiken, Philosophy in Review/ Comptes Rendus Philosophiques, January 2004-June 2004
"The book is fresh, unprogrammatic and lively: a reminder of thinking at its best." The Philosopher's Magazine * Blurb from reviewer *
"life.after.theory is both a useful contribution to post-structuralism and a critique of what remains of it." Times Literary Supplement * Times Literary Supplement *

Author Bio

John Schad is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Lancaster. Michael Payne is John P. Crozer Professor of English at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania.