Stupidity - Softcover

Ronell, Avital

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252071271 ISBN 13: 9780252071270

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2002

Synopsis

Ronell confronts the philosophical, psychological, and political effects of stupidity through readings of a host of writers---Dostoyevsky, Heidegger, Kant, Deleuze, Arendt, and Paul de Man.

About this title

Review:

"The foremost thinker of the repressed conditions of knowledge, Avital Ronell, with the Nietzschean audacity characteristic of her though, probes the philosophical no-man's land of stupidity."

"[An] energetic book ... [Ronell's] fifth and perhaps most accomplished.... Stupidity as Ronell understands it is a kind of black hole devouring the light of rationality itself."

"In the face of the Enlightenment, stupidity disrupts, disturbs, or dissents. . . . Disrupt, disturb, and dissent--that is just what Ronell means to do in this book."

"[Ronell] proves herself yet again to be one of the most original and exciting of contemporary critics. . . . If you at all suspect that you might be intelligent, do not avoid Stupidity--embrace it."

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.'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' - Jean-Luc Nancy, author of "The Sense of the World". '(An) energetic book ...(Ronell's) fifth and perhaps most accomplished..."Stupidity" as Ronell understands it is a kind of black hole devouring the light of rationality itself' - Jonathan Re, "Times Literary Supplement". 'In the face of the Enlightenment, stupidity disrupts, disturbs, or dissents...Disrupt, disturb, and dissent - that is just what Ronell means to do in this book' - Edward Rothstein, "New York Times". '(Ronell) proves herself yet again to be one of the most original and exciting of contemporary critics...If you at all suspect that you might be intelligent, do not avoid "Stupidity" - embrace it' - "Choice".

About this edition

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