The Subject Is Reading

The Subject Is Reading is intended for first-year writing courses in which students study reading, writing, and literature.

The book explores what it means for a human organism to be a “subject” and responds to what it sees as the contemporary ablation of subjectivity in favour of an impoverished “biopolitics” (a concept borrowed from Foucault). It is preoccupied with questions of ethics and education, arguing that Lacanian psychoanalysis, like Freirean literacy, constitutes first and foremost an education in responsible subjecthood. It identifies such an education as a very necessary intervention in what appears to be a global double bind between fanatical certainty and capitalist abstraction. The book asserts that, contrary to most trends concerning the appropriation of psychoanalysis or Freirean techniques for teaching, Freirean pedagogy and Lacanian psychoanalysis are not purely “toolboxes” but profound epistemological and philosophical arguments. These arguments also combine to suggest a new socio-political conception of theology. In addition the book draws on examples from literature and popular culture to explicate certain ideas. In this regard the book primarily undertakes a reading of selected works by J.M. Coetzee.

The Female as Subject presents 11 essays by an international group of scholars from Europe, Japan, and North America examining what women of different social classes read, what books were produced specifically for women, and the genres in which women themselves chose to write. The authors explore the different types of education women obtained and the levels of literacy they achieved, and they uncover women’s participation in the production of books, magazines, and speeches. The resulting depiction of women as readers and writers is also enhanced by thirty black-and-white illustrations. For too long, women have been largely absent from accounts of cultural production in early modern Japan. By foregrounding women, the essays in this book enable us to rethink what we know about Japanese society during these centuries. The result is a new history of women as readers, writers, and culturally active agents. The Female as Subject is essential reading for all students and teachers of Japan during the Edo and Meiji periods. It also provides valuable comparative data for scholars of the history of literacy and the book in East Asia.

Don't miss B. A. Shapiro's new novel, The Collector's Apprentice, available now! “Vibrant and suspenseful . . . Like The Art Forger, this new story takes us into the heart of what it means to be an artist.” —The Washington Post “B. A. Shapiro captivated us in 2012 with her ‘addictive’ novel The Art Forger. Now, she’s back with another thrilling tale from the art world.” —Entertainment Weekly When Alizée Benoit, an American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), vanishes in New York City in 1940, no one knows what happened to her. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Not her artistic patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. Not her close-knit group of friends, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner. And, some seventy years later, not her great-niece, Danielle Abrams, who while working at Christie’s auction house uncovers enigmatic paintings hidden behind works by those now-famous Abstract Expressionist artists. Do they hold answers to the questions surrounding her missing aunt?

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