Books in the The French List - (Seagull titles CHUP) series

We defy augury. There‿s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‿tis not to come ‿ the readiness is all. Under the sign of Hamlet‿s last act, Hélÿne Cixous, in her eightieth year, launched her new book‿and the latest chapter in her Human Comedy, her Search for Lost Time. Surely one of the most delightful, in its exposure of the seams of her extraordinary craft, We Defy Augury finds the reader among familiar faces. In these pages we encounter Eve, the indomitable mother; Jacques Derrida, the faithful friend; children, neighbors; and always the literary forebears: Montaigne, Diderot, Proust, and, in one moving passage, Erich Maria Remarque. We Defy Augury moves easily from Cixous‿s Algerian childhood, to Bacharach in the Rhineland, to, eerily, the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center, in the year 2000. In one of the most astonishing passages in this tour-de-force performance of the art of digression, Cixous proclaims: “My books are free in their movements and in their choice of routes [‿] They are the product of many makers, dreamed, dictated, cobbled together.â€? This unique experience, which could only have come from the pen of Cixous, is now available in English, and readers are sure to delight in this latest work by one of France‿s most celebrated writer-philosophers. Â

Argues that the use of the terms 'war' and 'terror' dehumanize the enemy and permit treatment that would otherwise be impermissible. This title examines the implications and corrupting impact of the attempt to impose 'good' through violence and the attempt to spread democratic values by unethical means.

French philosopher and literary theorist Roland Barthes was one of the leading influences on the post-structuralist movement in twentieth-century literary thought. This title presents the life and thought of Barthes, through a work that is a testament to Barthes' belief that a literary work should invite the active participation of the reader.

French cultural theorist and urbanist Paul Virilio is best known for his writings on media, technology, and architecture. This title gathers conversations in which Virilio and architectural writer Marianne Brausch look at a 20th century characterized by enormous technological acceleration and by technocultural accidents of barbarism and horror.

By charting the history of the philosophy of conflict in Western discourse, the author offers a critique of contemporary notions of war and terror.