Books by Samuel Weber

"Plagues and pandemics confront societies with something they often seek to deny, namely that mortality and vulnerability is not just an individual concern. The narratives examined in this book both confirm the desire to avoid this recognition as well as the different ways it asserts itself nevertheless"--

This book investigates the forces that shape and limit interpretive practices. Weber suggests that institutions are never entirely free of the necessity of consolidating their authority through an ambivalent process of reinstituting themselves, a process in which interpretation plays a crucial role.

The title of this book echoes a phrase used by the Washington Post to describethe American attempt to kill Saddam Hussein at the start of the war againstIraq. Its theme is the notion of targeting (skopos) as the name of an intentionalstructure in which the subject tries to confirm its invulnerability by aiming todestroy a target.

This readable, thought-provoking, and multidisciplinary study explores theatrical writings that question the Aristotelian aesthetical-generic conception and seek instead to work with the medium of theatricality itself.

This text argues that psychoanalysis is not just a theory of psychic conflict: it is a thought in conflict with itself. This is a study of Freud's defences of psychoanalysis and the conflicts into which psychoanalytic theory has been drawn.

A leading theorist on literature and media reveals a new and productive aspect of Benjamin's thought by focusing on the critical suffix "-ability" that Benjamin so tellingly deploys in his work. The result is an illuminating perspective on Benjamin's thought by way of his language.