Stupidity - Softcover

Ronell, Avital

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252071271 ISBN 13: 9780252071270

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2002

Synopsis

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, dumbfounded-ness, and the limits of reason.
 

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"The foremost thinker of the repressed conditions of knowledge, Avital Ronell, with the Nietzschean audacity characteristic of her thought, probes the philosophical no-man's land of stupidity. With dazzling readings of Musil, Schlegel, Dostoevsky, and Wordsworth, Ronell conjures a figure of non-knowledge whose sovereign failures of cognition constitute a radical challenge to the philosophical, political and ethical premises of the discourses of modernity." -- Jean-Luc Nancy, author of The Sense of the World "Avital Ronell has dared to approach a topic that effectively undoes any knowing or analytic posture, even any questioning stance. Advancing in full awareness of her vulnerability (and demonstrating constantly how this vulnerability exceeds awareness), she confronts the philosophical, psychosomatic, and ethico-political effects of her non-object through brilliant readings of a host of writers for whom stupidity (or idiocy) has become a haunting obsession or a kind of ambiguous promise. And throughout this process, she pursues a stunning meditation on the act of writing itself." -- Christopher Fynsk, author of Infant Figures: The Death of the Infans and other Scenes of Origin

About the Author:

Avital Ronell is a professor of German, comparative literature, and English at New York University, where she directs the Research in Trauma and Violence project. She is the author of The Telephone Book, Dictations, Crack Wars, and other books.
 

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0252071271
• ISBN 13: 9780252071270
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376