In the Archive of Longing
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€112.99
A01=Mena Mitrano
Aesthetic experience
American avant-garde
Author_Mena Mitrano
Category=D
Category=DS
Category=JBSF11
Critical Theory
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Modernism
Public Intellectual
Walter Benjamin
Product details
- ISBN 9781474414340
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 29 Jun 2016
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Reads modernism and theory through Susan Sontag’s archive
This adventurous critical inquiry into Sontag's archive illuminates the intimate link between modernism and theory while also providing a fascinating reintroduction to these two movements and concepts. Mena Mitrano explores three core ideas in this study: the confusion of terms between modernism and theory; the concept of an ‘unwritten theory’ suggested by Sontag's subterranean engagement with the foremost theorists of our time (Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Lacan, Jameson and others) in the rawness of her journals and notebooks; and Sontag's identity as a non-traditional philosopher, through the extraordinary discipleship to Walter Benjamin. The book is driven by new archival research and will have a multi-layered impact, changing our perception of Sontag as a post-Cold War public intellectual as well as interrogating key concepts in the Humanities.
Key Features
Original study of Susan Sontag's contribution to the development of critical thoughtOpens new avenues for research in the expanding field of new modernist studies and in the field of criticismDiscusses Sontag's collaboration with Walter Benjamin which reopens the question of the author and encourages an understanding of this concept from a psychoanalytic perspective, as a transgenerational phenomenonIncludes a discussion of the role of the American avant-garde in Sontag's abandonment of philosophy and in her turn to a pioneering, more theoretical literary criticism
Mena Mitrano is Associate Professor of American literature and language in the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Her research area is theoretical-critical thought, which she explores from an interdisciplinary perspective. Her work covers major critical theorists (Walter Benjamin), psychoanalysis (Ferenczi), great women thinkers (Hannah Arendt). She is the author of studies on Gertrude Stein and Susan Sontag, major American women intellectuals who shaped the link between modernism and theory:Gertrude Stein: Woman Without Qualities (2005) and In the Archive of Longing: Susan Sontag’s Critical Modernism (Edinburgh University Press 2016). She has written on language and literature and is interested in exploring literary/philosophical borders. She was educated at Rutgers University and has been a Research Associate at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, and a Visiting Lecturer at the Weissman Center for Leadership, Mount Holyoke College.
