Disarming Intelligence: Proust, Val?ry, and Modern French Criticism

A critical account of the idea of intelligence in modern French literature and thought In the late...
CHF 223.14
CHF 223.14
SKU: 9780691257976
Product Type: Books
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Author: Zakir Paul
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Subtotal: CHF 223.14
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Disarming Intelligence: Proust, Val?ry, and Modern French Criticism by Paul, Zakir

Disarming Intelligence: Proust, Val?ry, and Modern French Criticism

CHF 223.14

Disarming Intelligence: Proust, Val?ry, and Modern French Criticism

CHF 223.14
Author: Zakir Paul
Format: Hardcover
Language: English

A critical account of the idea of intelligence in modern French literature and thought

In the late nineteenth century, psychologists and philosophers became intensely interested in the possibility of quantifying, measuring, and evaluating "intelligence," and using it to separate and compare individuals. Disarming Intelligence analyzes how this polyvalent term was consolidated and contested in competing discourses, from fin de siècle psychology and philosophy to literature, criticism, and cultural polemics around the First World War.

Zakir Paul examines how Marcel Proust, Henri Bergson, Paul Valéry, and the critics of the influential Nouvelle revue française registered, negotiated, and subtly countered the ways intelligence was invoked across the political and aesthetic spectrum. For these writers, intelligence fluctuates between an individual, sovereign faculty for analyzing the world and something collective, accidental, and contingent. Disarming Intelligence shows how literary and critical styles questioned, suspended, and reimagined what intelligence could be by bringing elements of uncertainty and potentiality into its horizon. The book also explores interwar political tensions--from the extreme right to Walter Benjamin's engaged essays on contemporary French writers. Finally, a brief coda recasts current debates about artificial intelligence by comparing them to these earlier crises of intelligence.

By drawing together and untangling competing conceptions of intelligence, Disarming Intelligence exposes its mercurial but influential and urgent role in literary and cultural politics.

Author: Zakir Paul
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 08/13/2024
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.92d
ISBN: 9780691257976

About the Author
Zakir Paul is assistant professor of comparative literature at New York University.

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