Feeling in Theory

by Terada, Rei

• ISBN13: 9780674011274
• ISBN10: 0674011279
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-05-30
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Because emotion is assumed to depend on subjectivity, the "death of the subject" described in recent years by theorists such as Derrida, de Man, and Deleuze would also seem to mean the death of feeling. This revolutionary work transforms the burgeoning interdisciplinary debate on emotion by suggesting, instead, a positive relation between the "death of the subject" and the very existence of emotion. Reading the writings of Derrida and de Man--theorists often seen as emotionally contradictory and cold--Terada finds grounds for construing emotion as nonsubjective. This project offers fresh interpretations of deconstruction's most important texts, and of Continental and Anglo-American philosophers from Descartes to Deleuze and Dennett. At the same time, it revitalizes poststructuralist theory by deploying its methodologies in a new field, the philosophy of emotion, to reach a startling conclusion: if we really were subjects, we would have no emotions at all. Engaging debates in philosophy, literary criticism, psychology, and cognitive science from a poststructuralist and deconstructive perspective, Terada's work is essential for the renewal of critical thought in our day.

Author Biography

Rei Terada is Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Abbreviations and Textual Note	xi
Introduction: Emotion after the ``Death of the Subject''	1	(15)
Cogito and the History of the Passions	16	(32)
Philosophy of Emotion	18	(4)
Cogito and the History of the Passions	22	(2)
Feeling and Phenomena	24	(7)
Imaginary Seductions	31	(10)
Idea-Signs of Passion	41	(7)
Pathos (Allegories of Emotion)	48	(42)
Emotion and Figure	55	(8)
Safety and the Sublime	63	(3)
The Allegory of Emotion	66	(6)
Inner Voices, Hostile Strangers: Moral and Social Feelings	72	(9)
Emotion Degree Zero	81	(9)
A Parallel Philosophy	90	(38)
Nobody's Passion: Emotion and the Philosophy of Music	92	(7)
Emotional Reference	99	(7)
Why You Can't Make a Subject That Feels Pain	106	(4)
From Affection to Affect	110	(9)
The Regime of Affect	119	(9)
Psyche, Inc.: Derridean Emotion after de Man	128	(24)
Hardly Thinking	130	(4)
Psyche and Prosopopoeia	134	(6)
``The Theater of Petty Passions''	140	(7)
L'ame	147	(5)
Conclusion: Night of the Human Subject	152	(7)
Notes	159	(32)
References	191	(16)
Index	207