For the past 60 years, Leo Bersani has inspired, resisted, guided, and challenged scholarly work in the fields of literary criticism, queer theory, cultural studies, psychoanalytic theory, and film and visual studies. Moving across an impressive range of sources, Mikko Tuhkanen seeks out the “fundamental notes”—the questions that we find and refind—in Bersani’s extensive oeuvre across the decades.
The chapters explore Bersani’s engagement with psychoanalytic theory (Freud, Laplanche, Klein, Lacan), French and American modernist fiction (Proust, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, James, Beckett), poststructuralist theory (Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Blanchot), queer theory (Butler, Edelman), and the visual arts (Caravaggio, Almodóvar, Pasolini, Malick, Dumont). This first introduction to Bersani's work provides a chronological overview of his thought and details his contributions to literary studies and critical theory.
Author Biography:
Mikko Tuhkanen is Professor of English at Texas A&M University, USA. He is the author of The Essentialist Villain: On Leo Bersani (2018) and The American Optic: Psychoanalysis, Critical Race Theory, and Richard Wright (2009). He is also the editor of Leo Bersani: Queer Theory and Beyond (2014), as well as the co-editor, with E. L. McCallum, of Queer Times, Queer Becomings (2011) and The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature (2014).
