Stupidity

Avital Ronell is a professor of German, comparative literature, and English at New York University, where she directs the Research in Trauma and Violence project. She is the author of The Telephone Book, Dictations, Crack Wars, and other books.

"The foremost thinker of the repressed conditions of knowledge, Avital Ronell, with the Nietzschean audacity characteristic of her thought, probes the philosophical no-man's land of stupidity." -- Jean-Luc Nancy, author of The Sense of the World "[An] energetic book ... [Ronell's] fifth and perhaps most accomplished... Stupidity as Ronell understands it is a kind of black hole devouring the light of rationality itself." -- Jonathan Re, Times Literary Supplement "In the face of the Enlightenment, stupidity disrupts, disturbs, or dissents... Disrupt, disturb, and dissent -- that is just what Ronell means to do in this book." -- Edward Rothstein, New York Times "[Ronell] proves herself yet again to be one of the most original and exciting of contemporary critics... If you at all suspect that you might be intelligent, do not avoid Stupidity -- embrace it." -- Choice "Stupidity is remarkable in its ability to connect and co-articulate questions of Western literature and philosophy in a language that is original, moving, and exact." --differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies