Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a Life in Theory

Untying Things Together explores the concept of a sexuality of theory, proposing that critical thinking has a pleasurable aspect. Eric L. Santner argues that this tradition has informed his intellectual and spiritual development and offers a new way of conceptualizing the eros of thinking.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 05 April 2022
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Untying Things Together is a groundbreaking work that helps to clarify the stakes of the last fifty years of literary and cultural theory by proposing the idea of a sexuality of theory. In 1905, Freud published his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, the book that established the core psychoanalytic thesis that sexuality is central to formations of the unconscious. With this book, Eric L. Santner inverts Freud's title to take up the sexuality of theory—or, more exactly, the modes of enjoyment to be found in the kinds of critical thinking that, since the 1960s, have laid claim to that ancient word, "theory." Santner unfolds his argument by tracking his own relationship with this tradition and the ways his intellectual and spiritual development has been informed by it.

Untying Things Together is both an intellectual history of major theoretical paradigms and a call for their reexamination and renewal. Revisiting many of the topics he has addressed in previous work, Santner proposes a new way of conceptualizing the eros of thinking, attuned to how our minds and bodies individually and collectively incorporate or "encyst" on a void at the heart of things. Rather than proposing a "return to theory," Santner's book simply employs theory as a way of further "(un)tying together" the resources of philosophy, art and literature, theology, psychoanalysis, political thought, and more.

In conclusion, Untying Things Together is a thought-provoking and innovative work that offers a new way of understanding the relationship between sexuality, theory, and the resources of philosophy, art, literature, theology, psychoanalysis, and political thought. By proposing the idea of a sexuality of theory, Santner challenges us to reexamine the stakes of the last fifty years of literary and cultural theory and to consider the ways in which our minds and bodies incorporate or "encyst" on a void at the heart of things. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the fields of philosophy, literature, and cultural theory.

Dimension: 229 x 152 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780226816470