<i>The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime</i> is first of all the detailed reading of David Lynch’s The Lost Highway, based on the premises of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lynch’s unique universe of the “ridiculous sublime” is interpreted as a simultaneous playful staging and traversing of the fundamental ideological fantasies that sustain our late capitalist society.<br><br>A master of reversals, Zizek invites the reader to reexamine with him easy assumptions, received opinion, and current critical trends, as well as pose tough questions about the ways in which we understand our world and culture. He offers provocative readings of Casablanca, Schindler’s List, and Life Is Beautiful in the process of examining topics as diverse―and as closely linked―as ethics, politics, and cyberspace.

The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost Highway (Occasional Papers (Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities), 1.)

Humor & Entertainment

Žižek, Slavoj

Movies

Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities

For much of the 20th century, an apparently solid conceptual wall allowed us to separate information and bodies. Information is that which exists between elements; bodies are the elements themselves. One is abstract the other corporeal. One is intricately involved in signs and syntax, the other in cells and organs. Yet in the last few decades, it has become increasingly clear that this conceptual wall leaks--bodies and information will not stay separate from one another. Data have become flesh just as flesh has become data. Semiotic Flesh marks an important contribution to the emerging field of information studies, providing multiple perspectives on the implications of burgeoning information technologies and biotechnologies.The essays and responses in this volume focus on the sites where flesh and information productively intermingle, including the strange connections between LSD and DNA research, the implications of computer-assisted surgery, and the role of the human body in virtual reality installations.

Semiotic Flesh: Information and the Human Body (Short Studies from the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities)

Science & Math

"A Manifesto for Literary Studies," writes Marjorie Garber, “is an attempt to remind us of the specificity of what it means to ask literary questions, and the pleasure of thinking through and with literature. It is a manifesto in the sense that it invites strong declarations and big ideas, rather than impeccable small contributions to edifices long under construction.” Known for her timely challenges to the preconceptions and often unquestioned boundaries that circumscribe our culture, Garber’s beautifully crafted arguments situate “big public questions of intellectual importance” - such as human nature and historical correctness - within the practice of literary historians and critics. This manifesto revives the ancient craft whose ultimate focus is language in action. In this book, Garber passionately states that “the future importance of literary studies - and, if we care about such things, its intellectual and cultural prestige both among the other disciplines and in the world - will come from taking risks, and not from playing it safe.”

A Manifesto for Literary Studies (Short Studies from the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the)

Literature & Fiction

Garber, Marjorie

History & Criticism

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Books by Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities