The Death Drive: Philosophy, Literature, Theory

(Hardback)

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The first collection to provide an overview of the well-known psychoanalytic theory of the death drive in literary and cultural theory, this book features contributions from a range of prominent scholars working in the area of literature and psychanalysis.

After its Freudian theorization, the death-drive has been re-interpreted by various psychoanalysts (including Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan, and Slavoj iek), philosophers (Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean Baudrillard), political theorists (Judith Butler), queer theorists (Laurent Berlant, Lee Edelman), and posthumanist thinkers (Rosi Braidotti).

This volume brings together some of the leading thinkers and theorists about the death-drive as a psychological, aesthetic, and theoretical principle in literary and cultural theory, examining texts by writers such as Plato, Henry James, and Ezra Pound.

Author Bio

Jeffrey R. Di Leo is Professor of English and Philosophy at the University of Houston-Victoria, USA. He is editor and founder of the critical theory journal symploke, editor-in-chief of American Book Review, and Executive Director of the Society for Critical Exchange and its Winter Theory Institute.

Paul Allen Miller is Carolina Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina. He has held visiting appointments in Bochum, Paris, and Beijing. He has published ten books, fifteen edited volumes, and 92 articles; his latest book is Foucaults Seminars on Antiquity: Learning to Speak the Truth.