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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.
- GenresPhilosophy
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
3 people are currently reading
115 people want to read
About the author
Avital Ronell
39 books77 followersAvital Ronell is Professor of German, comparative literature, and English at New York University, where she directs the Research in Trauma and Violence project, and has also written as a literary critic, a feminist, and philosopher.
Ronell to Israeli diplomats and was a performance artist before entering academia.
She gained a B.A. from Middlebury College and studied with Jacob Taubes at the Hermeneutic Institute at the Free University of Berlin. She received her Ph.D. under the advisement of Stanley Corngold at Princeton University in 1979, and then continued her studies with Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous in Paris.
She joined the comparative literature faculty at the University of California, Berkeley before moving to NYU. She is also a core faculty member at the European Graduate School.
Ronell to Israeli diplomats and was a performance artist before entering academia.
She gained a B.A. from Middlebury College and studied with Jacob Taubes at the Hermeneutic Institute at the Free University of Berlin. She received her Ph.D. under the advisement of Stanley Corngold at Princeton University in 1979, and then continued her studies with Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous in Paris.
She joined the comparative literature faculty at the University of California, Berkeley before moving to NYU. She is also a core faculty member at the European Graduate School.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 29, 2019
Let’s maybe knock a couple of stars off there.
Avital Ronell, now nearing seventy, got Me Too’d by a dood—with the hilarious name of Nimrod. Surely Avital will get the two “registers” in which we laughingly speak that name—one High Hebraic, one Beavis and Buttheadian. The story told by the Nimrod is one of generational misunderstanding. Avital’s neediness, proceeding from a gushing geyser of academic rock star narcissism and the legit need of an aging, lonely woman, “made him feel” put upon, abused, “not heard,” to which anyone Gen X or older will say: Are you serious? Have you never worked for a successful, ego-ful, somewhat babyish boss? Because we all, boys and girls, have. Be that as it may. The Nimrod is suing NYU for a jillion dollars. Avital is returning with a sly Derridean take on L’Age de Butthurt.
So here is Avital straight, very little chaser, speaking confessionally (and in a mirror) with little regard for her nominal interlocutor, the smart and interesting but little heard Anne Dufourmantelle. Ronell has riffed all her life on everyday stuff—things she annoyingly calls street concepts (annoying because there is literally nothing “street” about her)—like telephones, crack cocaine, “loser sons” a la George W. Bush and Donald Trump, Jr., and so on. There is riffing off slang, galore. I must confess I find Ronell’s frequently malaproppy Israeli takes on what she seems hoodrat lingo infinitely less tasty than Slavoj Zizek’s legitimately geeky riffs on popular culture.
Yet: Avital remains protean in her imagination, in her ability to make connections, in her Derrida-derived sentence construction that expresses the most abstruse of philosophical concepts using the jiviest, swerviest, unlikeliest of verbs. Like Zizek, Ronell is a salad spinner, or, as she would say, tosser, of the brain in general and of received ideas in particular. Dig her up. You may see some commonplace concepts quite differently.
Avital Ronell, now nearing seventy, got Me Too’d by a dood—with the hilarious name of Nimrod. Surely Avital will get the two “registers” in which we laughingly speak that name—one High Hebraic, one Beavis and Buttheadian. The story told by the Nimrod is one of generational misunderstanding. Avital’s neediness, proceeding from a gushing geyser of academic rock star narcissism and the legit need of an aging, lonely woman, “made him feel” put upon, abused, “not heard,” to which anyone Gen X or older will say: Are you serious? Have you never worked for a successful, ego-ful, somewhat babyish boss? Because we all, boys and girls, have. Be that as it may. The Nimrod is suing NYU for a jillion dollars. Avital is returning with a sly Derridean take on L’Age de Butthurt.
So here is Avital straight, very little chaser, speaking confessionally (and in a mirror) with little regard for her nominal interlocutor, the smart and interesting but little heard Anne Dufourmantelle. Ronell has riffed all her life on everyday stuff—things she annoyingly calls street concepts (annoying because there is literally nothing “street” about her)—like telephones, crack cocaine, “loser sons” a la George W. Bush and Donald Trump, Jr., and so on. There is riffing off slang, galore. I must confess I find Ronell’s frequently malaproppy Israeli takes on what she seems hoodrat lingo infinitely less tasty than Slavoj Zizek’s legitimately geeky riffs on popular culture.
Yet: Avital remains protean in her imagination, in her ability to make connections, in her Derrida-derived sentence construction that expresses the most abstruse of philosophical concepts using the jiviest, swerviest, unlikeliest of verbs. Like Zizek, Ronell is a salad spinner, or, as she would say, tosser, of the brain in general and of received ideas in particular. Dig her up. You may see some commonplace concepts quite differently.
August 14, 2012
Illuminating, cracked me up at times, and mesmerizing in its well-spoken style and brilliance.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews