J. Hillis Miller is Distinguished Research Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of many books and articles on literature and literary theory, most recently of For Derrida.
"This book, published 53 years after his first, is extremely
powerful, and perhaps his most powerful. It is powerful in its
subject matter, in the acuteness of its analysis and in the anguish
that burns on every page. . . . There is no 'cool and amused
insouciance' here, but an angry and tenacious demand to pay the
closest attention to literature, and to the reading of literature,
because of its importance in showing us, in detail, the political
storms in which we are living."-- "Times Higher Education"
"With The Conflagration of Community, J. Hillis Miller demonstrates
why criticism matters, and why there is no substitute for good
reading, reading which takes time, which is open and responds to
the other, and which takes responsibility for its ethical acts.
This profoundly moving and politically urgent, eloquent study
offers both an invitation to attend to our most pressing concerns
with all seriousness, while issuing on every page an injunction
that we take literature seriously. Far from being barbaric or
impossible to write poetry after Auschwitz, as Adorno claimed,
Miller lets his community of readers know why, now more than ever,
such writing is necessary, and its reading an implacable necessity
that befalls us all."--Julian Wolfreys, Loughborough University
"As much a literary memoir as a project in critical theory, The
Conflagration of Community is masterly from beginning to end.
Through Kafka, Miller conjures an Auschwitz of the Imaginary with
global, nondenominational dimensions. His chapters are rich
literary and cultural explorations, and they bespeak the
combination of fluidity and deep concerted meditation of critical
commentary at its best. A magnificent achievement."--Henry Sussman,
SUNY at Buffalo "Henry Sussman, University of Buffalo"
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