Books by Jean-Jacques Lecercle

The construction of a Marxist theory of language as a social, material and political phenomenon .

Considers the 'strong readings' that Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze imposed on the texts they read. Why do philosophers read literature? How do they read it? Does their philosophy derive from their reading of literature? If so, to what extent? Anyone who reads contemporary European philosophers has to ask such questions. Lecercle demonstrates that philosophers need literature, as much as literary critics need philosophy: it is an exercise not in the philosophy of literature, where literature is a mere object of analysis, but in philosophy and literature, a heady and unusual mix.

This study offers an account of the way in which the genre of Victorian nonsense was constructed, and why such writers as Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear are of enduring significance to both philosophy and linguistics.