Volleys of Humanity : Essays 19722009

A selection of important yet previously untranslated and unpublished essays.

`This is perhaps the richest single volume of Cixous'' critical writings yet published in English. A lucid and beautiful introduction by Eric Prenowitz leads into an explosive salvo of texts, ranging from early essays already justly famous ("Fiction and its Phantoms" and "The Character of `Character''") to the tremendous title-essay "Volleys of Humanity", first published in French in 2009. There are also remarkable essays (previously unpublished in English) on Joyce, Clarice Lispector ("the greatest writer in the twentieth century"), and Michel Foucault, as well as on Algeria, US politics and theatre, cities and the unforeseeable.''

Professor Nicholas Royle, University of Sussex

`As essayist, Helene Cixous always astonishes with the unforeseeable volleys of her poetically driven, politically riven prose. How fortunate her English language readers are to find these priceless texts together in one volume. Time, almost forty years, has passed, but untouched Is the absolute youth and vitality of every line.

Professor Peggy Kamuf, University of Southern California

These fifteen essays --- four previously unpublished in the original French, five published in English for the first time and two appearing in substantially revised translations --- range from sophisticated literary analysis to theoretical and political manifesto, from cultural critique to autobiographical narrative. Each translation is accompanied by a critical apparatus providing references and commentary.