In Praise of Risk

In Praise of Risk

$35.00

Publication Date: 1st October 2019

This book, whose original French edition achieved worldwide attention when its author died trying to save two children caught in a riptide, challenges the psychic work the modern world devotes to avoiding risk. Weaving psychoanalytic case studies together with philosophical reflections, Dufourmantelle shows how risk is an essential property of life, one that requires our embrace. Read More
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This book, whose original French edition achieved worldwide attention when its author died trying to save two children caught in a riptide, challenges the psychic work the modern world devotes to avoiding risk. Weaving psychoanalytic case studies together with philosophical reflections, Dufourmantelle shows how risk is an essential property of life, one that requires our embrace. Read More
Description

When Anne Dufourmantelle drowned in a heroic attempt to save two children caught in rough seas, obituaries around the world rarely failed to recall that she was the author of a book entitled In Praise of Risk, implying that her death confirmed the ancient adage that to philosophize is to learn how to die. Now available in English, this magnificent and already much-discussed book indeed offers a trenchant critique of the psychic work the modern world devotes to avoiding risk.

Yet this is not a book on how to die but on how to live. For Dufourmantelle, risk entails an encounter not with an external threat to life but with something hidden in life that conditions our approach to such ordinary risks as disobedience, passion, addiction, leaving family, and solitude

Keeping jargon to a minimum, Dufourmantelle weaves philosophical reflections together with clinical case histories. The everyday fears, traumas, and resistances that therapy addresses brush up against such broader concerns as terrorism, insurance, addiction, artistic creation, and political revolution. Taking up a project than joins the work of many French thinkers, such as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Hélène Cixous, Giorgio Agamben, and Catherine Malabou, Dufourmantelle works to dislodge Western philosophy, psychoanalysis, ethics, and politics from the redemptive logic of sacrifice. She discovers the kernel of a future beyond annihilation where one might least expect to find it, hidden in the unconscious.

In an era defined by enhanced security measures, border walls, trigger warnings, and endless litigation, Dufourmantelle’s masterwork provides a much-needed celebration of the risks that define what it means to live.

Details
  • Price: $35.00
  • Pages: 240
  • Carton Quantity: 56
  • Publisher: Fordham University Press
  • Imprint: Fordham University Press
  • Publication Date: 1st October 2019
  • Trim Size: 6 x 9 in
  • ISBN: 9780823285440
  • Format: Paperback
  • BISACs:
    POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory
    PSYCHOLOGY / Movements / Psychoanalysis
    PHILOSOPHY / Mind & Body
Reviews
. . . Anne Dufourmantelle’s In Praise of Risk makes a number of careful interventions related to the notion of risk, intercut with narratives of her own sessions as an analyst.
- Cultural Critique
. . . In Praise of Risk, defies classification. It is not an ordinary philosophical or psychoanalytic study but an extremely original mixture of the two.
- Sofia Philosophical Review
This very rich book will have enormous appeal for readers interested in the intersection of philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis, and humanistic inquiry. It productively challenges the assumptions of all these disciplines in novel ways and offers, in the final analysis, a redemptive path through that which matters to us most: living and dying well. Highly recommended.
- Choice
Magisterial. Dufourmantelle shows how life is universalized in risk and how recognizing this fact means enlisting in a fraternity among humans.---Antonio Negri
To live is to accept a certain degree of risk—the risk of hairline disappointments, of a too forceful will to believe, of brusque rejections that fatigue the soul, of being misunderstood yet again, of being undone without ever being saved. We could venture the idiom ‘life goes on’ with cynicism or despair, but we could also do so with the measure of desire. Anne Dufourmantelle’s beautiful book places us on the side of life and love, showing us the power of psychoanalytic reflection on those moments when we are asked to find the courage to risk ourselves on behalf of the other.---Jamieson Webster, author of Conversion Disorder
Author Bio
Anne Dufourmantelle (Author)
Anne Dufourmantelle, philosopher and psychoanalyst, taught at the European Graduate School and wrote monthly columns for the Paris newspaper Libération. Her books in English include Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Being; Blind Date: Sex and Philosophy; and, with Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality.

Steven Miller (Translator)
Steven Miller is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for Psychoanalysis and Culture at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He is author of War After Death: On Violence and Its Limits and translator of books by Jean- Luc Nancy, Catherine Malabou, and Étienne Balibar.

Table of Contents

Translator’s Introduction: The Risk of Reading | ix

To Risk One’s Life | 1

Eurydice Saved | 4

Minuscule Magical Dependencies | 8

Voluntary Servitude and Disobedience | 11

In Suspense | 13

At the Risk of Passion | 17

Leaving the Family | 22

Forgetting, Anamnesis, Deliverance | 24

Incurable (In)fidelities | 29

Zero Risk? | 33

How (Not) to Become Oneself . . . | 36

Being in Secret | 39

Befriending Our Fears | 41

At the Risk of Being Sad | 46

At the Risk of Being Free | 49

The Time They Call Lost | 52

Dead Alive | 55

Of a Perception Infinitely Vaster . . . | 59

Anxiety, Lack—Spiritual Hunger? | 63

Farewell Magic World: Beyond Disappointment | 67

Life—Mine, Yours | 70

At the Risk of the Unknown | 72

At the Risk of Being Carnal | 74

May There Be an End to Our Torment . . . | 79

Breaking Up | 82

At the Risk of Speech | 86

Solitudes | 89

Laughter, Dreaming—Beyond the Impasse | 93

Hope No More | 101

Once Upon a Time, the “Athenaeum” . . . or, Why Risk Romanticism? | 106

Risking Belief | 111

Risking Variation | 114

The Event: Hyperpresence | 119

Intimate Prophecy | 122

At the Risk of Bedazzlement | 127
Desire, Body, Writing | 130

Healing? | 139

An Other Language | 142

Risking Scandal | 145

Taking the Risk of Childhood | 148

Assiduity | 151

Risking the Future | 154

At the Risk of Beauty | 158

At the Risk of Spirit | 162

Risking the Universal? | 164

Hauntings | 167

Spirals, Ellipses, Metaphors, Anamorphoses | 170

Envisaging Night | 173

Revolutions | 176

At the Risk of Going Through Hell (Eurydice) | 180

Notes | 187

When Anne Dufourmantelle drowned in a heroic attempt to save two children caught in rough seas, obituaries around the world rarely failed to recall that she was the author of a book entitled In Praise of Risk, implying that her death confirmed the ancient adage that to philosophize is to learn how to die. Now available in English, this magnificent and already much-discussed book indeed offers a trenchant critique of the psychic work the modern world devotes to avoiding risk.

Yet this is not a book on how to die but on how to live. For Dufourmantelle, risk entails an encounter not with an external threat to life but with something hidden in life that conditions our approach to such ordinary risks as disobedience, passion, addiction, leaving family, and solitude

Keeping jargon to a minimum, Dufourmantelle weaves philosophical reflections together with clinical case histories. The everyday fears, traumas, and resistances that therapy addresses brush up against such broader concerns as terrorism, insurance, addiction, artistic creation, and political revolution. Taking up a project than joins the work of many French thinkers, such as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Hélène Cixous, Giorgio Agamben, and Catherine Malabou, Dufourmantelle works to dislodge Western philosophy, psychoanalysis, ethics, and politics from the redemptive logic of sacrifice. She discovers the kernel of a future beyond annihilation where one might least expect to find it, hidden in the unconscious.

In an era defined by enhanced security measures, border walls, trigger warnings, and endless litigation, Dufourmantelle’s masterwork provides a much-needed celebration of the risks that define what it means to live.

  • Price: $35.00
  • Pages: 240
  • Carton Quantity: 56
  • Publisher: Fordham University Press
  • Imprint: Fordham University Press
  • Publication Date: 1st October 2019
  • Trim Size: 6 x 9 in
  • ISBN: 9780823285440
  • Format: Paperback
  • BISACs:
    POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory
    PSYCHOLOGY / Movements / Psychoanalysis
    PHILOSOPHY / Mind & Body
. . . Anne Dufourmantelle’s In Praise of Risk makes a number of careful interventions related to the notion of risk, intercut with narratives of her own sessions as an analyst.
– Cultural Critique
. . . In Praise of Risk, defies classification. It is not an ordinary philosophical or psychoanalytic study but an extremely original mixture of the two.
– Sofia Philosophical Review
This very rich book will have enormous appeal for readers interested in the intersection of philosophy, psychology, psychoanalysis, and humanistic inquiry. It productively challenges the assumptions of all these disciplines in novel ways and offers, in the final analysis, a redemptive path through that which matters to us most: living and dying well. Highly recommended.
– Choice
Magisterial. Dufourmantelle shows how life is universalized in risk and how recognizing this fact means enlisting in a fraternity among humans.---Antonio Negri
To live is to accept a certain degree of risk—the risk of hairline disappointments, of a too forceful will to believe, of brusque rejections that fatigue the soul, of being misunderstood yet again, of being undone without ever being saved. We could venture the idiom ‘life goes on’ with cynicism or despair, but we could also do so with the measure of desire. Anne Dufourmantelle’s beautiful book places us on the side of life and love, showing us the power of psychoanalytic reflection on those moments when we are asked to find the courage to risk ourselves on behalf of the other.---Jamieson Webster, author of Conversion Disorder
Anne Dufourmantelle (Author)
Anne Dufourmantelle, philosopher and psychoanalyst, taught at the European Graduate School and wrote monthly columns for the Paris newspaper Libération. Her books in English include Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Being; Blind Date: Sex and Philosophy; and, with Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality.

Steven Miller (Translator)
Steven Miller is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for Psychoanalysis and Culture at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He is author of War After Death: On Violence and Its Limits and translator of books by Jean- Luc Nancy, Catherine Malabou, and Étienne Balibar.

Translator’s Introduction: The Risk of Reading | ix

To Risk One’s Life | 1

Eurydice Saved | 4

Minuscule Magical Dependencies | 8

Voluntary Servitude and Disobedience | 11

In Suspense | 13

At the Risk of Passion | 17

Leaving the Family | 22

Forgetting, Anamnesis, Deliverance | 24

Incurable (In)fidelities | 29

Zero Risk? | 33

How (Not) to Become Oneself . . . | 36

Being in Secret | 39

Befriending Our Fears | 41

At the Risk of Being Sad | 46

At the Risk of Being Free | 49

The Time They Call Lost | 52

Dead Alive | 55

Of a Perception Infinitely Vaster . . . | 59

Anxiety, Lack—Spiritual Hunger? | 63

Farewell Magic World: Beyond Disappointment | 67

Life—Mine, Yours | 70

At the Risk of the Unknown | 72

At the Risk of Being Carnal | 74

May There Be an End to Our Torment . . . | 79

Breaking Up | 82

At the Risk of Speech | 86

Solitudes | 89

Laughter, Dreaming—Beyond the Impasse | 93

Hope No More | 101

Once Upon a Time, the “Athenaeum” . . . or, Why Risk Romanticism? | 106

Risking Belief | 111

Risking Variation | 114

The Event: Hyperpresence | 119

Intimate Prophecy | 122

At the Risk of Bedazzlement | 127
Desire, Body, Writing | 130

Healing? | 139

An Other Language | 142

Risking Scandal | 145

Taking the Risk of Childhood | 148

Assiduity | 151

Risking the Future | 154

At the Risk of Beauty | 158

At the Risk of Spirit | 162

Risking the Universal? | 164

Hauntings | 167

Spirals, Ellipses, Metaphors, Anamorphoses | 170

Envisaging Night | 173

Revolutions | 176

At the Risk of Going Through Hell (Eurydice) | 180

Notes | 187