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Info page for book:   The Delirium of Praise
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The Delirium of Praise

Bataille, Blanchot, Deleuze, Foucault, Klossowski

Eleanor Kaufman

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The laudatory essay, in which one author praises the work of another, is frequently characterized as an unimportant, even uncritical mode of writing. But as Eleanor Kaufman argues in The Delirium of Praise, this mode of exchange is serious and substantial enough to merit scholarly attention. By not conforming to standard practices of critical discourse, laudatory essays give new status to supposedly inferior forms of communication and states of being—including chatter, silence, sickness, imbalance, and absence of work—and emphasize affective states or emotions such as joy, friendship, and...

The laudatory essay, in which one author praises the work of another, is frequently characterized as an unimportant, even uncritical mode of writing. But as Eleanor Kaufman argues in The Delirium of Praise, this mode of exchange is serious and substantial enough to merit scholarly attention. By not conforming to standard practices of critical discourse, laudatory essays give new status to supposedly inferior forms of communication and states of being—including chatter, silence, sickness, imbalance, and absence of work—and emphasize affective states or emotions such as joy, friendship, and longing.

The Delirium of Praise examines a group of five twentieth-century French intellectuals—Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Pierre Klossowski—and their laudatory essays about each other. Structured as a circular series of exchanges, the book examines pairings of two thinkers with respect to a given theme. The exchange between Bataille and Blanchot takes up the themes of chatter and silence with regard to the novelist Louis-René des Forêts; the Blanchot-Foucault exchange explores friendship and impersonality through the lens of Jacques Derrida; the Foucault-Deleuze exchange considers "absence of work" (désoeuvrement) and the obscure French philosopher Jacques Martin; the Deleuze-Klossowski exchange revolves around the question of the sick body and the person of Nietzsche; and the final exchange between Klossowski and Bataille focuses on imbalanced economies and the writings of the Marquis de Sade. Where the praise is most excessive, approaching delirium, Kaufman locates a powerful thought-energy that pushes the laudatory essay to its limits. In her conclusion, she presents this unique mode of thought exchange as a form of intellectual hospitality.

Kaufman uncovers a suspension of subjectivity, of personality, even of place and time, that is both articulated in the laudatory essays and enacted by them. Her examination of this neglected mode as practiced by five important French thinkers offers a unique perspective on twentieth-century intellectual history.

Reviews

Reviews

An original and illuminating appraisal of one of the most important groups of writers within twentieth-century French thought.

Kaufman writes beautifully, so this book will be of immense value not only to students of recent French literature and philosophy but also to anyone interested in the declining cultural power and presence of intellectual exchange... A serious contribution to the literary dimensions of philosophy.

Kaufman's book offers many provocative insights into the closed world of Parisian intellectual after World War II... Stylishly written.

Kaufman's book is a remarkably astute work that manages to do the impossible: read these elusive authors together, identifying at the same time the specificities of their remarkable sameness and their concomitant radical difference.

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Table of Contents

Contents:

1 Introduction: Noli me legere (Don't read me)
2 Chattering Silences: Bataille and Blanchot on Louis-René des Forêts's Le Bavard
3 "O My Friends, There is No Friend": Blanchot, Foucault

Contents:

1 Introduction: Noli me legere (Don't read me)
2 Chattering Silences: Bataille and Blanchot on Louis-René des Forêts's Le Bavard
3 "O My Friends, There is No Friend": Blanchot, Foucault, and Derrida
4 Madness and Repetition: The Absence of Work in Deleuze, Foucault and Jacques Martin
5 Bodies, Sickness, and Disjunction: Deleuze, Klossowski, and the Revocation of Nietzsche
6 Objects, Reserve, and the General Economy: Klossowski, Bataille, and Sade
7 Conclusion: Intellectual Hospitality

Author Bio
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Eleanor Kaufman

Eleanor Kaufman is a professor of comparative literature, English, and French and Francophone studies, as well as an affiliate in Jewish studies and the Center for the Study of Religion at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is author of The Delirium of Praise: Bataille, Blanchot, Deleuze, Foucault, Klossowski and coeditor of Deleuze and Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy...