The Epistemology of Reading And Interpretation.

This important book explores the condition of modernity - alienation, melancholy, nostalgia - through the works of writers and philosophers, and with particular reference to the social and aesthetic philosophy of Walter Benjamin. Christine Buci-Glucksmann addresses modernity through the notion of the other, and shows how the feminine is used as one of the main sources of allegorical interpretation, standing for the miraculous, the utopian, the dangerous and the androgynous. The author also examines Baudelaire's haunting image of the city and its profound effect on conceptions of modernity.