Benjamin Noys: The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory (2010)

The Persistence of the Negative offers an original and compelling critique of contemporary Continental theory through a rehabilitation of the negative. Against the usual image of rival thinkers and schools, Benjamin Noys identifies and attacks a shared consensus on the primacy of affirmation and the expelling of the negative that runs through the leading figures of contemporary theory: Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, Antonio Negri, and Alain Badiou.

While positioning the emergence of affirmative theory as a political response to the corrosive effects of contemporary capitalism, Noys argues that, all too often, affirmation is left re-affirming the conditions of the present rather than providing the means to disrupt and resist them.

Refusing to endorse an anti-theory position that would read theory as the symptom of political defeat, The Persistence of the Negative traverses these leading thinkers in a series of lucid readings to reveal the disavowed effects of negativity operating within their work.

Overturning the limits of recent debates on the politics of theory, The Persistence of the Negative vigorously defends the return of theory to its political calling.

Publisher Edinburgh University Press, 2010
ISBN 0748638636, 9780748638635
196 pages

review (Baylee Brits, Parrhesia)
review (Raphael Schlembach, Shift Magazine)

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Jean-François Lyotard: Libidinal Economy (1974/1993)

Libidinal Economy, a major work of modern Continental philosophy in its own right, is regarded as the most important response to Deleuze and Guattari’s groundbreaking work. Having broken from Marxism, Lyotard presents an almost nihilistic attack on the philosophies of desire in a polemical and compelling work.

This philosophical development of the Freudian concept of ‘libidinal economy’ is in part a response to Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, it can also be seen as culminating a line of modern thought ranging from de Sade, Nietzsche and Bataille, to Deleuze, Klossowski, Irigaray and Cixous.

First published as Economie Libidinale, Les Editions De Minuit, Paris, 1974
Translated and with Introduction by Ian Hamilton Grant
Publisher Indiana University Press, 1993
ISBN 0253207282, 9780253207289
275 pages

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Gary Genosko (ed.): The Guattari Reader (1996)

Félix Guattari (1930-1992) was a radical analyst, social theorist and activist-intellectual. Best known for his collaborations with the philosopher Gilles Deleuze on Anti-Oedipus, A Thousand Plateaus and What is Philosophy?, The Guattari Reader makes available for the first time the broad canvas of Guattari’s formidable theoretical and activist writings, many previously untranslated, to provide an indispensable companion to the existing literature.Aside from illustrating the salience of Guattari’s collaborative work with Deleuze and other European intellectuals, this volume charts Guattari’s own solo writing career – from his tenure as Lacan’s analysand in the 1950s and his prominent role in the international anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s through his participation in queer politics, outlaw radio, and the formation of subversive collective organizations. This volume provides an important register of Guattari’s more political side, documenting his interventions in particular political conflicts in contemporary Europe. Guattari’s ideas and projects defy disciplinary boundaries and escape compartmentalization. They will appeal to those working in and between politics, philosophy, semiotics, psychoanalysis, sociology, and cultural studies.

Publisher Blackwell Publishers, 1996
ISBN 0631197079, 9780631197072
304 pages

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