Subjects and Simulations: Between Baudrillard and Lacoue-Labarthe

Subjects and Simulations presents essays focused on suffering and sublimity, representation and subjectivity, and the relation of truth and appearance in the twenty-first century. Inspired by the work of Jean Baudrillard, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and JeanLuc Nancy, sixteen authors study how the real reasserts itself in an age of every more fragmented media, and how art and literature give us access to forms of truth that elude philosophy. How does representation grant us access to the place once occupied by the subject? Is political life possible? Can plural thinking be retrieved? Will metaphor and simulation give us ways of being in an evanescent world? The volume engages discussions of French and Continental philosophy, post-structuralism, deconstruction, simulacra, aesthetics, existentialism, and media theory.

Table of Contents:
Between Subjects and Simulations—at the Limits of Representation, Hugh J. Silverman and Anne O’Byrne Part One: Re-presenting Subjectivity Introduction Chapter 1. Simulate This!:The Seductive Return of the Real in Baudrillard, Drew Hyland Chapter 2. The Fiction of the Unconscious: The Use and Abuse of Representation in Freud, Alina Clej Chapter3. The Postmodern Subject: Truth and Fiction in Lacoue-Labarthe’s Nietzsche, Hugh J. Silverman Chapter 4. The Subject of the Good: Exhaltation without Representation in Lacoue-Labarthe and Wittig, Stephen David Ross Part Two: The Art of Representation Introduction Chapter 5. Fiction, Allegory, Irony: The Unveiling of Lacoue-Labarthe, Massimo Verdicchio Chapter 6. The Power of the Text: Lacoue-Labarthe, Rorty, and the Literariness of Philosophy, Gary E. Aylesworth Chapter 7. Edging the Sublime: Baudrillard and the Inaccessible Real, Basil O’Neill 119 Chapter 8. In the Wake of Critique: Notes from the Inside Cover of Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, Thomas P. Brockelman Part Three: Unrepresentable Communities Introduction149 Chapter 9. Utopia is Here: Revolutionary Communities in Baudrillard and Nancy, Anne O’Byrne Chapter 10. Eden Foreclosed: The Subjectivity of Social Identification, Bettina Bergo Chapter 11. The (Ir)resistible Suffering of Others: Tragedy, Death and the Spectator, Robin May Schott Chapter 12. The Subjects of Philosophy: "The We" and Us, James R. Watson Part Four: Political Mediations Introduction Chapter 13. 9/11 and the Representation of the Unrepresentable: Chora, Aleph and Mediation, Damian Ward Hey Chapter 14. Amerika (Kafka)/ America (Baudrillard): Modern Media and Tele-tactility, Katherine Rudolph Chapter 15. Dressing like Hitler: Reality, Simulation and Hyperreality, Martin Weiss Chapter 16. Moved by Appearances: Metaphor, Metamorphosis and Irony in the Later Works of Jean Baudrillard, Henk Oosterling

About the Author :
Anne O'Byrne is associate professor of philosophy at Stony Brook University. Hugh J. Silverman was professor of philosophy and comparative literary and cultural studies at Stony Brook University. He was also executive director of the International Association for Philosophy and Literature (IAPL) and co-director of the International Philosophical Seminar.

Review :
In this important new book, the late Hugh J. Silverman and Anne O'Byrne have brought together insightful and engaging essays on two figures now often neglected: Lacoue Labarthe and Baudrillard. The excellent set of writers in this volume make important claims against this neglect while engaging important topics in recent Continental philosophy. A highly recommended read. In this remarkable, interdisciplinary collection, a group of prominent scholars rethink the converging and diverging legacies of Baudrillard and Lacoue-Labarthe in the aftermath of their deaths in 2007. By pushing the boundaries of philosophy, psychoanalysis, aesthetics, politics and media theory, the essays probe the recalcitrance of the real and the remainders of subjectivity in the age of the ever-growing intensity and the new forms of the seduction of simulacra. With elegant and comprehensive introductions written by the editors, Anne O’Byrne and Hugh J. Silverman, Subjects and Simulations is an indispensable reading for anyone interested in the rapidly changing status of 'reality,' 'fiction,' and subjectivity, as well as in the political and ethical challenges brought about by these changes.