Tina Chanter

Ewa Plonowska Ziarek

Explores how the concept of revolution permeates and unifies Kristeva’s body of work.

The Unstable Boundaries of Kristeva's Polis

Revolt, Affect, Collectivity

Examines Gombrowicz’s modernist aesthetics in the context of his critique of nationalism, his exploration of queer eroticism, and his interest in hybrid and subaltern identities.

Modernism, Gender, Nationality

Gombrowicz's Grimaces

Jean-Jacques Thomas

David R. Castillo

Revisits, reassesses, and reclaims the legacy of May ’68 in light of our present cultural and historical emergency. Continental Theory Buffalo is the inaugural volume of the Humanities to the Rescue book series, a public humanities project dedicated to discussing the role of the arts and humanities today. This book is a collaborative act of humanistic renewal that builds on the transcontinental legacy of May 1968 to offer insightful readings of the cultural (d)evolution of the last fifty years. The volume contributors revisit, reclaim and reassess the “revolutionary” legacy of May 1968 in light of the urgency of the present and the future. Their essays are effective illustrations of the potential of such interpretive traditions as philosophy, literature and cultural criticism to run interference with (and offer alternatives to) the instrumentalist logic and predatory structures that are reducing the world to a collection of quantifiable and tradeable resources. The book will be of interest to cultural historians and theorists, media studies scholars, political scientists, and students of French and Francophone literature and culture on both sides of the Atlantic. David R. Castillo is Professor of Spanish and Humanities Institute Director at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Jean-Jacques Thomas is Distinguished Professor and Melodia E. Jones Endowed Chair at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Ewa Plonowska Ziarek is Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York; a Senior Research Fellow at the College of Fellows, Philosophy, at Western Sydney University; and a Visiting Faculty in the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts at the University of Maine.

Transatlantic Crossroads of a Critical Insurrection

Continental Theory Buffalo

Henk Oosterling

Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars, Intermedialities: Philosophy, Arts, Politics is a comprehensive collection devoted to the new field of research called 'intermedialities.' The concept of intermedialities stresses the necessity of situating philosophical and political debates on social relations in the divergent contexts of media theories, avant-garde artistic practices, continental philosophy, feminism, and political theory. The 'intermedial' approach to social relations does not focus on the shared identity but instead on the epistemological, ethical, and political status of inter (being-in-between). At stake here are the political analyses of new modes of being in common that transcend national boundaries, the critique of the new forms of domination that accompany them, and the search for new emancipatory possibilities. Opening a new approach to social relations, intermedialities investigates not only engagements between already constituted positions but even more the interval, antagonism, and differences that form and decenter these positions. Consequently, in opposition to the resurgence of cultural and ethnic particularisms and to the leveling of difference produced by globalization, the political and ethical analysis of the 'in-between' enables a conception of community based on difference, exposure, and interaction with others rather than on an identification with a shared identity. Investigations of 'in-betweenness,' both as medium specific and between heterogeneous 'sites' of inquiry, range here from philosophical conceptuality to artistic practices, from the political circulation of money and power to the operation of new technologies. They inevitably invoke the crucial role of embodiment in creative thought and collective acting. As a mediating instance between the psyche and society, matter and spirit, nature and culture, and biology and technology, the body is another interval forming and informed by socio-linguistic relations. As these complex intersections between media, materiality, art, and the philosophy and politics of the in-between suggest, the project of intermedialities provides new ways of rethinking relations among arts, politics, and science.

Ewa Plonowska Ziarek

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