Books by Rei Terada

Terada revisits debates about appearance and reality in order to make a startling claim: that the purpose of such debates is to police feelings of dissatisfaction with the given world.

This revolutionary work transforms the interdisciplinary debate on emotion by suggesting a positive relation between the "death of the subject" and the very existence of emotion. Reading the writings of Derrida and de Man, Terada finds grounds for construing emotion as nonsubjective.

More than twenty years after his death, Paul de Man remains a haunting presence in the American academy. This work analyzes and evaluates aspects of de Man's powerful legacy. It focuses on: his great theme of "reading"; his complex notions of "history," "materiality," and "aesthetic ideology"; and his institutional role as a teacher.