There are sons who grow up unhappily believing that no matter what they do, they cannot please their fathers. Often unable to shed their sense of lifelong failure, either they give up and suffer in a permanent sulk, or they try with all their might to prove they are worth something after all. These [...]
In "Stupidity" Avital Ronell explores the fading empire of cognition, modulating stupidity into idiocy, puerility, and the figure of the ridiculous philosopher instituted by Kant. Drawing on a range of writers including Dostoevsky, Schlegel, Musil, and Wordsworth, "Stupidity" investigates ignorance,[...]
Avital Ronell asks why "there is no culture without drug culture". She deals with the usual drugs and alcohol (and their celebrities: Freud's cocaine, Baudelaire's hashish, the Victorians' laudanum), and moves beyond them to addictions that are culturally accepted - an insatiable appetite for romanc[...]
'Brilliant' - "Esquire". 'Trauma TV' is ...the most illuminating essay on TV and video ever written' - "Artforum". 'Over the past decade, Avital Ronell has put together what must be one of the most remarkable critical oeuvres of our era' - Jonathan Culler. '[Avital Ronell] jumps between the vulgate [...]
The focus of this edition is not on the nostalgic appeal of SCUM. Rather, in a characteristically brilliant and erudite introduction, renowned scholar Avita Ronell reconsiders Solanas's infamous text in light of the social milieu in which it was written, and reinterprets its status as a cult classic[...]