The Shape of the Signifier

The Shape of the Signifier is a critique of recent theory--primarily literary but also cultural and political. Bringing together previously unconnected strands of Michaels's thought--from "Against Theory" to Our America--it anatomizes what's fundamentally at stake when we think of literature in terms of the experience of the reader rather than the intention of the author, and when we substitute the question of who people are for the question of what they believe. With signature virtuosity, Michaels shows how the replacement of ideological difference (we believe different things) with identitarian difference (we speak different languages, we have different bodies and different histories) organizes the thinking of writers from Richard Rorty to Octavia Butler to Samuel Huntington to Kathy Acker. He then examines how this shift produces the narrative logic of texts ranging from Toni Morrison's Beloved to Michael Hardt and Toni Negri's Empire. As with everything Michaels writes, The Shape of the Signifier is sure to leave controversy and debate in its wake.

"Michaels's absorbing new book swims against the critical stream with a brilliance and originality unmatched this side of Slavoj ?i?ek."--Henry Staten, Modernism/modernity "[This] book is not scholarship, criticism, or theory. It is a brazen call for the return to ideology."--Lindsay Waters, Chronicle of Higher Education "[W]hat makes this book compelling ... is his central thesis: that the apparent diversity of the marketplace of ideas, as in the marketplace of commodities, conceals fundamental uniformity (so many choices in the cereal aisle, so few in the voting booth)."--Robin J. Sowards, The Minnesota Review

Walter Benn Michaels is Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is the author of The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism and Our America.

AUTHOR APPROVEDTraditions in World CinemaGeneral Editors: Linda Badley and R. Barton PalmerFounding Editor: Steven Jay SchneiderThis series introduces diverse and fascinating movements in world cinema. Each volume concentrates on a set of films from a different national, regional or, in some cases, cross-cultural cinema which constitute a particular tradition . The New Neapolitan CinemaAlex Marlow-Mann Vito and the Others (1991), Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician (1992) and Libera (1993), the debuts of three young Neapolitan filmmakers, stood out dramatically from the landscape of Italian cinema in the early 1990s. On the back of their critical success, over the next decade and a half, Naples became a thriving centre for film production.In this first study in English, Alex Marlow-Mann provides a detailed, multi-faceted and provocative study of this distinct regional tradition. In tracing the movement's relationship with the popular musical melodramas previously produced in Naples, he reveals how contemporary filmmakers have interrogated, subverted and reconfigured cinematic convention as part of a comprehensive re-examination of Neapolitan identity.Key features include: Analyses of over 45 contemporary Italian films, including Paolo Sorrentino's The Consequences of Love , Mario Martone's L'amore molesto and Antonio Capuano's Pianese Nunzio: 14 in May. A theoretical discussion of regional cinema and the place of Neapolitan Cinema in the wider context of the European film industry. Alex Marlow-Mann is the Research Coordinator at the Centre for Film Studies of the University of St Andrews. He has taught at the universities of Reading, Cardiff and Leeds and published numerous articles on Italian cinema.[ENDORSEMENT TO FOLLOW]

The Shape of the Signifier is a critique of recent theory--primarily literary but also cultural and political. Bringing together previously unconnected strands of Michaels's thought--from "Against Theory" to Our America--it anatomizes what's fundamentally at stake when we think of literature in terms of the experience of the reader rather than the intention of the author, and when we substitute the question of who people are for the question of what they believe. With signature virtuosity, Michaels shows how the replacement of ideological difference (we believe different things) with identitarian difference (we speak different languages, we have different bodies and different histories) organizes the thinking of writers from Richard Rorty to Octavia Butler to Samuel Huntington to Kathy Acker. He then examines how this shift produces the narrative logic of texts ranging from Toni Morrison's Beloved to Michael Hardt and Toni Negri's Empire. As with everything Michaels writes, The Shape of the Signifier is sure to leave controversy and debate in its wake.

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