Reading David Foster Wallace Between Philosophy and Literature

Allard den Dulk is Senior Lecturer of Philosophy, Literature and Film at Amsterdam University College and Research Fellow at the Faculty of Humanities of the VU University AmsterdamPia Masiero is Professor of American Literature at Ca’ Foscari University of VeniceAdriano Ardovino is Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at “G. d’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara

• Introduction: David Foster Wallace between philosophy and literature – Allard den Dulk, Pia Masiero and Adriano ArdovinoPart I: General perspectives 1 Absorbing art: the Hegelian project of Infinite Jest – Adam Kelly 2 Stages, Socrates, and the performer stripped bare: David Foster Wallace as philosopher-dramatist – Jeffrey Severs3 ‘A matter of perspective’: ‘Good Old Neon’ between literature and philosophy – Adriano Ardovino and Pia Masiero4 The influence of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism on David Foster Wallace – Paolo PitariPart II: Consciousness, self and others 5 ‘What all she’d so painfully learned said about her’: a comparative reading of David Foster Wallace’s ‘The Depressed Person’ and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground – Allard den Dulk6 Infinite Jest’s ‘trinity of you and I into we’: Wallace’s ‘click’ between Joyce’s literary consubstantiality and Wittgenstein’s family resemblance – Dominik Steinhilber7 Solipsism, loneliness, alienation: David Foster Wallace as interpreter of Wittgenstein – Guido Baggio8 ‘This is just my opinion’: modelling a public sphere in The Pale King – Daniel South 9 Pioneers of consciousness: hypothesis for a diptych – Lorenzo Marchese 10 The problem of other minds in ‘Good Old Neon’ – Matt Prout Part III: Embodiment, gender and sexuality 11 ‘I am in here’: David Foster Wallace and the body as object – Clare Hayes-Brady 12 ‘The interstices of her sense of something’: David Foster Wallace, the quest for affect, and the future of gendered interactions – Mara Mattoscio13 ‘You are loved’: race, love, and language in early Wallace – Lola Boorman 14 ‘They remain just bodies’: on pornography in David Foster Wallace (1989–2006) – Chiara Scarlato15 ‘Something staring back at you’: an anamorphic reading of Infinite Jest – Angelo Maria GrossiIndex