Table of Contents

Contents: 1 Introduction: Noli me legere (Don't read me) 2 Chattering Silences: Bataille and Blanchot on Louis-Rene des Forets's Le Bavard 3 "O My Friends, There is No Friend": Blanchot, Foucault, and Derrida 4 Madness and Repetition: The Absence of Work in Deleuze, Foucault and Jacques Martin 5 Bodies, Sickness, and Disjunction: Deleuze, Klossowski, and the Revocation of Nietzsche 6 Objects, Reserve, and the General Economy: Klossowski, Bataille, and Sade 7 Conclusion: Intellectual Hospitality

Promotional Information

Cogently and elegantly written, The Delirium of Praise succeeds in locating the creative force of interwoven and complicated expressions of friendship. Going against the pragmatic and edifying traditions of literature, Kaufman's book rewards where it unsettles, or where it displaces and confuses received ideas about the ends of communication and dialogue. -- Tom Conley, Harvard University

About the Author

Eleanor Kaufman is an assistant professor of English at the University of Virginia and coeditor of Deleuze and Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy, and Culture.

Reviews

An original and illuminating appraisal of one of the most important groups of writers within twentieth-century French thought. -- Iam James French Studies What gives her study its remarkable coherence is the emphatically textual instantiation of the friendships between Bataille, Blanchot, Deleuze, Foucault, and Klossowski... The Delirium of Praise is to be commended for its remarkable conciseness, which is the reward of a lucid structure and accounts for its compact size. In addition to these achievements, it needs be noted that it can also be read as an introduction to the work of Pierre Klossowski, long overdue in English, as Kaufman rightly points out... her insightful but elliptical remarks make the reader hope that she will find an opportunity to revisit both the works of Klossowski and the many refreshingly original questions raised in this inquiry of truly impressive scope. -- Arnd Wedemeyer MLN Kaufman writes beautifully, so this book will be of immense value not only to students of recent French literature and philosophy but also to anyone interested in the declining cultural power and presence of intellectual exchange... A serious contribution to the literary dimensions of philosophy. Choice Kaufman's book offers many provocative insights into the closed world of Parisian intellectual after World War II... Stylishly written. -- Steven Winspur Dalhousie French Studies Kaufman's book is a remarkably astute work that manages to do the impossible: read these elusive authors together, identifying at the same time the specificities of their remarkable sameness and their concomitant radical difference. -- Allan Stoekl Comparative Literature Studies