For half a century René Girard’s theories of mimetic desire and scapegoating have captivated the imagination of thinkers and doers in many fields as an incisive look into the human condition, particularly the roots of violence. In a 1993 interview with Rebecca Adams, he highlighted the positive dimensions of mimetic phenomena without expanding on what they might be. Now, two decades later, this groundbreaking book systematically explores the positive side of mimetic theory in the context o...

Comparing Canada and the Americas: From Roots to Transcultural Networks covers the Americas in a comparative perspective spanning from the 19th century to the 21st century. It explores socio-cultural dynamics changing considerably in the Americas, which are progressively shedding their original fascination for Europe and slowly recognizing the importance of Indigenous, Afro-descendants, and immigrant cultures. The Americas have many dynamics in common, such as the presence of shar...

As the centenary of the Great War approaches, citizens worldwide are reflecting on the history, trauma, and losses of a war-torn twentieth century. It is in remembering past wars that we are at once confronted with the profound horror and suffering of armed conflict and the increasing elusiveness of peace.The contributors to Bearing Witness do not presume to resolve these troubling questions, but provoke new kinds of reflection. They explore literature, the arts, history, ...

The spread of capsular civilization is a worst-case scenario that is taking shape before our very eyes, without us even being aware of it. In the face of the speed of our technology, the suburbanization of our daily lives and the ever more extreme but poignant polarization of our society, we feel obliged to return to the capsules of our vehicles, in architectural cocoons or urbanistic enclaves: malls, gated communities, amusement parks. Since September 11, the war in Iraq and the War on Te...

Images of ruins may represent the raw realities created by bombs, natural disasters, or factory closings, but the way we see and understand ruins is not raw or unmediated. Rather, looking at ruins, writing about them, and representing them are acts framed by a long tradition. This unique interdisciplinary collection traces discourses about and representations of ruins from a richly contextualized perspective. In the introduction, Julia Hell and Andreas Schönle discuss how European modernit...

The concepts of utopia and dystopia have received much historical attention. Utopias have traditionally signified the ideal future: large-scale social, political, ethical, and religious spaces that have yet to be realized. Utopia/Dystopia offers a fresh approach to these ideas. Rather than locate utopias in grandiose programs of future totality, the book treats these concepts as historically grounded categories and examines how individuals and groups throughout time have interpret...

Translation, before 9/11, was deemed primarily an instrument of international relations, business, education, and culture. Today it seems, more than ever, a matter of war and peace. In The Translation Zone, Emily Apter argues that the field of translation studies, habitually confined to a framework of linguistic fidelity to an original, is ripe for expansion as the basis for a new comparative literature.Organized around a series of propositions that range from the idea tha...

Noam Chomsky has become the acknowledged supreme anti-authoritarian figure of our age. A prolific writer, researcher and critical thinker, he has shaped contemporary linguistics, philosophy and liberal thought like no other. Volumes on Chomsky abound, yet an approachable and up-to-date introduction to the man and his life has until now been lacking, due perhaps to the sometimes dense and technical nature of Chomsky’s writing, and also the sheer volume of his work. Noam Chomsky presents jus...

Silence lies between forgetting and remembering. This book explores how different societies have constructed silences to enable men and women to survive and make sense of the catastrophic consequences of armed conflict. Using a range of disciplinary approaches, it examines the silences that have followed violence in twentieth-century Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. These essays show that silence is a powerful language of remembrance and commemoration and a cultural practice with its o...

The identity of European cinema, like the identity of Europe itself, is multiple, complex, and fascinating. Providing both a general survey of contemporary European cinema production, distribution and exhibition and detailed critical analysis of specific films, directors, and national cinemas, this volume offers a stimulating and thought-provoking contribution to current film debate.While the book’s critical essays offer keen insight into the complex identities of European cinema, ...

How have issues of place and identity, of belonging and exclusion, been represented in visual culture? Irit Rogoff uses the work of contemporary artists to explore how art in the twentieth century has confronted issues of identity and belonging.

Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability argues for a rethinking of comparative literature focusing on the problems that emerge when large-scale paradigms of literary studies ignore the politics of the "Untranslatable"-the realm of those words that are continually retranslated, mistranslated, transferred from language to language, or especially resistant to substitution.In the place of "World Literature"-a dominant paradigm in the humanities, one groun...