Solace in Oblivion

The author of five books, Robert Cowan is Assistant Dean at Hunter College and Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College, both of the City University of New York.

• CONTENTS: Theorize Transcendence – Suppression – Rage Against Time: Leopardi and Cioran against Sloterdijk – Ghost Your Past: Fanon and Meinhof in NDiaye and Pinckney – Embrace the Silence: Bakhtin among Diderot and Pelevin – Follow the Fool: Schopenhauer between Wagner and Nietzsche – Infliction – Idolize the Inhuman: Musil through Scarry, Felman, and Laub – Imagine Going Nuclear: Beckett with Bataille or Levinas – Fall into Occidentalism: Cioran before the Maoïstes and the Alt-Right – Become a Corpse: Bloch and Blanchot around Dostoevsky – Practice Immanence.

«In his captivating exploration of the tension between immanence and transcendence in modern and contemporary European literature, philosophy, and critical theory, Robert Cowan takes us on a compelling quest for responses to an enduring and multifaceted human aspiration – to trespass the limits of the material world and access the divine.» (Nicoletta Pireddu, Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, Georgetown University)«In this important, wide-ranging literary and theoretical exploration of the drive for transcendence, Robert Cowan presents a comparative critique of global neo-Gnosticism. Grounded in varied, specific examples and a first-person point of view, Cowan compellingly shows how far the planet is from achieved secularization. Whatever we consider the secular or ‹worldly› to be, the more it seems to dominate, the more the otherworldly may manifest itself in the temptations of oblivion.» (Kirk Wetters, Professor and Chair of German, Yale University)