This book combines two shorter works by Rosset, Le Principe de Cruaute and La Force Majeure, dating respectively from 1983 and 1988. The two works provide essential and highly topical illustrations of Rosset's central thesis of acceptance of the real. Rosset formulates a philosophical practice that refuses to turn away from the world and thus accepts a confrontation with reality (termed "the real") whose immediacy comprises equal parts of violence and of "joy," or approbation of the real. Beginning with this notion of joy, Rosset offers a reinterpretation of Nietzsche that, rather than treating the philosopher as a nihilist, underscores his quest for experience without illusion.

Cruel Investigation investigates the fascination with joyful malice in 18th-century Europe and how this obsession helped inform the very meaning of humanity. James A. Steintrager reveals how the understanding of cruelty moved from an inexplicable, apparently paradoxical "inhuman" pleasure in the misfortune of others to an eminently human trait stemming from will and freedom

A dazzling biography of the French literary superstar Colette, who is also the subject of a major motion picture. “A fine and intelligent biography of Colette, with her long tumultuous life and the great body of her work scrupulously considered and presented with style.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK AWARD • NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD Having spent her childhood in the shadow of an overpowering mother, Colette escaped at age twenty into a turbulent marriage with the sexy, unscrupulous Willy—a literary charlatan who took credit for her bestselling Claudine novels. Weary of Willy’s sexual domination, Colette pursued an extremely public lesbian love affair with a niece of Napoleon’s. At forty, she gave birth to a daughter who bored her, at forty-seven she seduced her teenage stepson, and in her seventies she contributed to the pro-Nazi press during the Occupation, even though her beloved third husband, a Jew, had been arrested by the Gestapo. And all the while, this incomparable woman poured forth a torrent of masterpieces, including Gigi, Sido, Cheri, and Break of Day. Judith Thurman, author of the National Book Award-winning biography of Isak Dinesen, portrays Colette as a thoroughly modern woman: frank in her desires, fierce in her passions, forever reinventing herself. Rich with delicious gossip and intimate revelations, shimmering with grace and intelligence, Secrets of the Flesh is one of the great biographies of our time. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by The Village Voice and Newsday “[Colette] has been the subject of . . . a half-dozen significant biographies over the past thirty years. Yet this one by Judith Thurman will be hard to top. . . . Its prose is smoothly urbane, at times aphoristic, always captivating.”—The Washington Post Book World “It will stand as literature in its own right.”—Richard Bernstein, The New York Times “[An] essential biography by a stylish writer of great sympathetic understanding and intellectual authority.”—Philip Roth

A Gallery Book. Gallery Books has a great book for every reader.

A pathology of sexual repression and Catholicism in Spain.

A challenging rethinking of traditional theories, and redefinition of the genre, of realism.

Play art' or interactive art is becoming a central concept in the contemporary art world, disrupting the traditional role of passive observance usually assumed by audiences, allowing them active participation. The work of 'play' artists - from Carsten Holler's 'Test Site' at the Tate Modern to Gabriel Orozco's 'Ping Pond Table' - must be touched, influenced and experienced; the gallery-goer is no longer a spectator but a co-creator. Time to Play explores the role of play as a central but neglected concept in aesthetics and a model for ground-breaking modern and postmodern experiments that have intended to blur the boundary between art and life. Moving freely between disciplines, Katarzyna Zimna links the theory and history of 20th and 21st century art with ideas developed within play, game and leisure studies, and the philosophical theories of Kant, Gadamer and Derrida, to critically engage with current discussion on the role of the artist, viewers, curators and their spaces of encounter. She combines a consideration of the philosophical implications of play with the examination of how it is actually used in modern and postmodern art - looking at Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Relational Aesthetics. Focusing mainly on process-based art, this bold book proposes a fresh approach - reaching beyond classical cultural theories of play.