Experimenting

Simon Morgan Wortham is Professor of English at the University of Portsmouth. His books include Counter-institutions: Jacques Derrida and the Question of the University (Fordham).Gary Hall is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Middlesex University.

"At a time when many have sought to don the mantle of a "public intellectual", Sam Weber has been developing a rigorous analysis of the very possibility of a public sphere today and of its conditions of existence. The essays in this collection attest to the significance of this undertaking and build upon it. No discussion of the role and place of intellectuals today can afford to ignore them." -- -Wlad Godzich University of California, Santa Cruz "An indispensable volume. Though still insufficiently recognized, Samuel Weber has been for some decades one of the most acute, inspiring and important thinkers in literary and cultural theory." -- -Nicholas Royle University of Sussex Experimenting is a wonderful collection of essays about Samuel Weber's work. Weber is one of our most important critics. As the two new essays by him included in this volume show, he combines in a quite extraordinary way strikingly original insights into literature, philosophy, critical theory, global culture, technics, and the new media. These distinguished essays about Weber do justice to Samuel Weber's breadth, originality, and indispensable importance in present-day intellectual life. The essays tend to focus on the role of technicity in Weber's work, as he relates it to the aesthetic, to interpretation, and to institutions. Each essay, however, is in its own way admirably true to Weber's remarkable gift for transforming the authors he discusses by going beyond them "experimentally." -- -J. Hillis Miller University of California, Irvine "An excellent job of presenting the incredible range of Weber's thought." -- -Emily Apter New York University "A solid book that offers an unprecedented evaluation and presentation of Weber's work. A landmark volume." -- -Patricia Dailey Columbia University