Reading Ronell

A scintillating exploration of the responsibility of reading in Avital Ronell's work Avital Ronell has won worldwide acclaim for her work across literature and philosophy, psychoanalysis and popular culture, political theory and feminism, art and rhetoric, drugs and deconstruction. In works such as The Test Drive, Stupidity, Crack Wars, and The Telephone Book, she has perpetually raised new and powerful questions about how we think, what thinking does, and how we fool ourselves about the troubled space between thought and action. In this collection, some of today's most distinguished and innovative thinkers turn their attention to Ronell's teaching, writing, and provocations, observing how Ronell reads and what comes from reading her. By reading Ronell, and reading Ronell reading, contributors examine the ethico-political implications of her radical dislocations and carefully explicate, extend, and explore the paraconcepts addressed in her works. Contributors are Pierre Alferi, Gil Anidjar, Susan Bernstein, Judith Butler, Tom Cohen, Diane Davis, Peter Fenves, Werner Hamacher, Elissa Marder, Jean-Luc Nancy, Shireen R. K. Patell, Thomas Pepper, Laurence A. Rickels, Hent de Vries, Elisabeth Weber, and Samuel Weber. Cover......Page 1 Title Page......Page 3 Copyright Page......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 Diane Davis Introduction......Page 10 Jean-Luc Nancy Addressee: Avital......Page 18 Judith Butler Ronell as Gay Scientist......Page 30 Peter Fenves The Courage of the Critic: Avital Ronell and the Idea of Emergence......Page 40 Susan Bernstein Conference Call: Ronell, Heidegger, Oppen......Page 58 Laurence A. Rickels Take Me to Your Reader......Page 69 Werner Hamacher Uncalled: A Commentary on Kafka's "The Test"......Page 83 Elissa Marder Avital Ronell's Body Politics......Page 103 Pierre Alferi Serial......Page 122 Gil Anidjar War Bodies......Page 125 Samuel Weber The Indefinite Article or the Love of a Phrase......Page 140 Shireen R. K. Patell Learning Impossibility: Pedagogy, Aporia, Ethics......Page 152 Hent de Vries Testing Existence, Exacting Thought: Reading Ronell with Deleuze......Page 173 Thomas Pepper The Problems of a Generation or Thinking and Thanking Zwang AND Drang......Page 195 Tom Cohen Roaming (Dis)Charges: "Catastrophe of the Liquid Oozing"......Page 214 Elisabeth Weber "Vectorizing Our Thoughts Toward 'Current Events'": For Avital Ronell......Page 231 Contributors......Page 250 Index......Page 256

Avital Ronell has won worldwide acclaim for her work across literature and philosophy, psychoanalysis and popular culture, political theory and feminism, art and rhetoric, drugs and deconstruction. In works such as The Test Drive, Stupidity, Crack Wars, and The Telephone Book, she has perpetually raised new and powerful questions about how we think, what thinking does, and how we fool ourselves about the troubled space between thought and action.

 

In this collection, some of today's most distinguished and innovative thinkers turn their attention to Ronell's teaching, writing, and provocations, observing how Ronell reads and what comes from reading her. By reading Ronell, and reading Ronell reading, contributors examine the ethico-political implications of her radical dislocations and carefully explicate, extend, and explore the paraconcepts addressed in her works.

A scintillating exploration of the responsibility of reading in Avital Ronell's work.