Pierre Klossowski
The Persistence of a Name

Ian James

Legenda (General Series)

Legenda

1 July 2000  •  284pp

ISBN: 1-900755-34-3 (paperback)  •  RRP £75, $99, €85

ContemporaryFrenchArtFiction


Novelist, essayist, translator and painter Pierre Klossowski (1905-) is one of the most singular figures in twentieth-century French thought and writing. His readings of Sade and Nietzsche exerted a decisive influence on a subsequent generation of writers including, among others, Deleuze, Lyotard and Foucault. Klossowski is also the author of a number of significant novels, among them the trilogy Les Lois de l'hospitalité and Le Baphomet (winner of the 1965 Prix des Critiques). This is the first book in English devoted to Klossowski's writing, and aims to show the key contribution he makes to the development of post-modern thought and aesthetics. Ian James focuses on a central paradox in Klossowski's work. Each of the proper names to which Klossowski obsessively returns suggests a figure, a personal history or a recognizable oeuvre, and yet each also seeks to dismantle the very idea of identity, and to overturn the notion of a stable self.

Ian James is a Fellow in French at Downing College Cambridge.

Reviews:

  • ‘Klossowski is presented here as a key contributor to post-modern thought and aesthetics.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies xxxix/1, 2003, 106
  • Antonella Arrigoni, Studi francesi XLVI, 2002, 2
  • ‘The appearance of the first monograph in English on Klossowski is welcome, all the more so as James's study provides such a scrupulous and thoughtful account of Klossowski's diverse output, its intellectual inheritance and its contemporary resonances.’ — Ian Maclachlan, French Studies LVII.2, 2003, 270-1

Bibliography entry:

James, Ian, Pierre Klossowski: The Persistence of a Name (Legenda, 2000)

First footnote reference: 35 Ian James, Pierre Klossowski: The Persistence of a Name (Legenda, 2000), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 James, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

James, Ian. 2000. Pierre Klossowski: The Persistence of a Name (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (James 2000: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 James 2000: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)


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