Fighting Theory

International interest in the work of Avital Ronell has expressed itself in reviews, articles, essays, and dissertations. For Fighting Theory, psychoanalyst and philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle conducted twelve interviews with Ronell, each focused on a key topic in one of Ronell's books or on a set of issues that run throughout her work. What do philosophy and literary studies have to learn from each other? How does Ronell place her work within gender studies? What does psychoanalysis have to contribute to contemporary thought? What propels one in our day to Nietzsche, Derrida, Nancy, Bataille, and other philosophical writers? How important are courage and revolt? Ronell's discussions of such issues are candid, thoughtful, and often personal, bringing together elements from several texts, illuminating hints about them, and providing her up-to-date reflections on what she had written earlier. Intense and often ironic, Fighting Theory is a poignant self-reflection of the worlds and walls against which Avital Ronell crashed.

Filipino Martial Arts illustrates the basic strikes, blocks, counters, and disarms of the Serrada Escrima fighting system. A highly effective, well-rounded warrior art, Serrada Escrima uses basic stick-fighting movements that are equally applicable in both unarmed and knife fighting. Profusely illustrated, this martial arts manual describes not only the techniques but also the history and philosophy of the Filipino martial arts and their relevance in the fighting and mixed martial arts world today. Filipino Martial Arts: Cabales Serrada Escrima is an essential addition to any martial arts library.

From one of the most important army officers of his generation, a memoir of the revolution in warfare he helped lead, in combat and in Washington When John Nagl was an army tank commander in the first Gulf War of 1991, fresh out of West Point and Oxford, he could already see that America’s military superiority meant that the age of conventional combat was nearing an end. Nagl was an early convert to the view that America’s greatest future threats would come from asymmetric warfare—guerrillas, terrorists, and insurgents. But that made him an outsider within the army; and as if to double down on his dissidence, he scorned the conventional path to a general’s stars and got the military to send him back to Oxford to study the history of counterinsurgency in earnest, searching for guideposts for America. The result would become the bible of the counterinsurgency movement, a book called Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. But it would take the events of 9/11 and the botched aftermath of the Iraq invasion to give counterinsurgency urgent contemporary relevance. John Nagl’s ideas finally met their war. But even as his book began ricocheting around the Pentagon, Nagl, now operations officer of a tank battalion of the 1st Infantry Division, deployed to a particularly unsettled quadrant of Iraq. Here theory met practice, violently. No one knew how messy even the most successful counterinsurgency campaign is better than Nagl, and his experience in Anbar Province cemented his view. After a year’s hard fighting, Nagl was sent to the Pentagon to work for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, where he was tapped by General David Petraeus to coauthor the new army and marine counterinsurgency field manual, rewriting core army doctrine in the middle of two bloody land wars and helping the new ideas win acceptance in one of the planet’s most conservative bureaucracies. That doctrine changed the course of two wars and the thinking of an army. Nagl is not blind to the costs or consequences of counterinsurgency, a policy he compared to “eating soup with a knife.” The men who died under his command in Iraq will haunt him to his grave. When it comes to war, there are only bad choices; the question is only which ones are better and which worse. Nagl’s memoir is a profound education in modern war—in theory, in practice, and in the often tortured relationship between the two. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about the fate of America’s soldiers and the purposes for which their lives are put at risk.

Combat Stress Injury represents a definitive collection of the most current theory, research, and practice in the area of combat and operational stress management, edited by two experts in the field. In this book, Charles Figley and Bill Nash have assembled a wide-ranging group of authors (military / nonmilitary, American / international, combat veterans / trainers, and as diverse as psychiatrists / psychologists / social workers / nurses / clergy / physiologists / military scientists). The chapters in this volume collectively demonstrate that combat stress can effectively be managed through prevention and training prior to combat, stress reduction methods during operations, and desensitization programs immediately following combat exposure.

Anna Kornbluh provides an overview of Marxist approaches to film, with particular attention to three central concepts in Marxist theory in general that have special bearing on film: “the mode of production,” “ideology,” and “mediation.” In explaining how these concepts operate and how they have been used and misused in film studies, the volume employs a case study to exemplify the practice of Marxist film theory. Fight Club is an exceptionally useful text with which to explore these three concepts because it so vividly and pedagogically engages with economic relations, ideological distortion, and opportunities for transformation. At the same time, it is a very typical film in terms of the conditions of its production, its marketing, and its popularity. Adapted from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the film is a contemporary classic that has lent itself to significant re-interpretation with every shift in the political economic landscape since its debut. Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club models a detailed cinematic interpretation that students can practice with other films, and furnishes a set of ideas about cinema and society that can be carried into other kinds of study, giving students tools for analyzing culture broadly defined.

Anna Kornbluh provides an overview of Marxist approaches to film, with particular attention to three central concepts in Marxist theory in general that have special bearing on film: “the mode of production,” “ideology,” and “mediation.” In explaining how these concepts operate and how they have been used and misused in film studies, the volume employs a case study to exemplify the practice of Marxist film theory. Fight Club is an exceptionally useful text with which to explore these three concepts because it so vividly and pedagogically engages with economic relations, ideological distortion, and opportunities for transformation. At the same time, it is a very typical film in terms of the conditions of its production, its marketing, and its popularity. Adapted from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the film is a contemporary classic that has lent itself to significant re-interpretation with every shift in the political economic landscape since its debut. Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club models a detailed cinematic interpretation that students can practice with other films, and furnishes a set of ideas about cinema and society that can be carried into other kinds of study, giving students tools for analyzing culture broadly defined.

The phrase “martial arts studies” is increasingly circulating as a term to describe a new field of interest. But many academic fields including history, philosophy, anthropology, and Area studies already engage with martial arts in their own particular way. Therefore, is there really such a thing as a unique field of martial arts studies? Martial Arts Studies is the first book to engage directly with these questions. It assesses the multiplicity and heterogeneity of possible approaches to martial arts studies, exploring orientations and limitations of existing approaches. It makes a case for constructing the field of martial arts studies in terms of key coordinates from post-structuralism, cultural studies, media studies, and post-colonialism. By using these anti-disciplinary approaches to disrupt the approaches of other disciplines, Martial Arts Studies proposes a field that both emerges out of and differs from its many disciplinary locations.