Description: Explores the enduring impact of Marquis de Sade's philosophy and literature on modernist thinkers and some of modern philosophy's most relevant subjects.
Brief description: James Martell is Associate Professor of French at Lyon College, USA. He has published articles on Derrida, Deleuze, Beckett, Malabou, and the cinema of Béla Tarr in journals like Mosaic, the Oxford Literary Review, and Sanglap. He co-edited in 2018 together with Fernanda Negrete a special volume of Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui, titled 'Beckett Beyond Words, ' and in 2021 Tattooed Bodies: Theorizing Body Inscription Across Disciplines and Cultures (Palgrave) with Erik Larsen. His book, Modernism, Self-Creation, and the Maternal: The Mother's Son (Routledge) was published in 2019.
Review Quotes:
"Sade's role in shaping the modernist consciousness is difficult to underestimate. This indispensable collection of essays sheds invaluable light on the myriad of ways in which this most singular of 18th-century thinkers was taken up in the 20th century to articulate modernist perspectives on desire and subjectivity, reason and unreason, transgression and abjection." --Ian James, Professor of Modern French Philosophy and Literature, University of Cambridge, UK
"Rather than focusing on just one aspect of the Marquis de Sade's influence on European culture, this groundbreaking collection situates his work within the key areas it has shaped: continental philosophy, literary modernism, and modernity itself. Here is a book brimming with new insights and offering a nuanced view of Sade's huge contribution to contemporary philosophical, literary, and cultural debates." --Ulrika Maude, Professor of Modern Literature, University of Bristol, UK