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Aliens & Anorexia, New Edition

By Chris Kraus

Product Image: Aliens & Anorexia, New Edition

Aliens & Anorexia, New Edition

By Chris Kraus

0 - Default Title
Description
A novel about failure, empathy, and sadness, with a cast of characters that includes Simone Weil, Paul Thek, and the author herself. First published in 2000, Chris Kraus's second novel, Aliens & Anorexia, defined a female form of chance that is both emotional and radical. Unfolding like a set of Chinese boxes, with storytelling and philosophy informing each other, the novel weaves together the lives of earnest visionaries and failed artists. Its characters include Simone Weil, the first radical philosopher of sadness; the artist Paul Thek; Kraus herself; and "Africa," Kraus's virtual S&M partner, who is shooting a big-budget Hollywood film in Namibia while Kraus holes up in the Northwest woods to chronicle the failure of Gravity & Grace, her own low-budget independent film. In Aliens & Anorexia, Kraus makes a case for empathy as the ultimate perceptive tool, and reclaims anorexia from the psychoanalytic girl-ghetto of poor "self-esteem." Anorexia, Kraus writes, could be an attempt to leave the body altogether: a rejection of the cynicism that this culture hands us through its food. As Palle Yourgrau writes in the book's new foreword, "Kraus's rescue operation for aliens like Weil from behind enemy lines on planet Earth is a gift, if, in the end, like all good deeds, it remains--as Weil herself would be the first to insist--a fool's errand."
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Edition:
1
Number of Pages:
264
Release Date:
2013-08-16
Publication Date:
2013-08-16
Publisher:
MIT Press
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
1584351268
ISBN13:
9781584351269
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Minimum Reading Age:
18
Weight:
401 g
Height:
149 cm
Width:
226 cm
Thickness:
22 cm
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