Date of Publication: 2008-09-01

The bestiary proposed in this series of articles attempts to rethink the spectacle consisting of modern dichotomies by which the self is declined along ontological, metaphysical, and ethical premises: the real and the ideal, the said and the unsaid, the rational and the irrational, the bound and the free, the familiar and the exotic, the universal and the particular, self and world.

The reader is therefore encouraged to engage in a multiple reading of the articles presented in this collection. As individual scholarly pieces of inquiry, these articles provide thoughtful insights into the inexhaustible topic of modernity and the modern subject–they tell stories of the past, the present, and of a prospective future.

As academic works, however, they also reflect and/or unsettle disciplinary paradigms and scholarly practices, from which they acquire legitimacy and visibility; they conform, apply, reconfigure and/or experiment with new grounds by borrowing from an eclectic mix of various thinkers, their tools, and their axiomatic propositions that constitute their theoretical and critical apparatus.

This exercise is ultimately an introspective journey in which we are placed not only as the spectator–the one who gazes through the bars–but also the spectacle–the beast subject to the gaze–finding itself in a predicament of which the subject, itself, is the architect.

Jean-Jacques Defert is a Ph.D. candidate in Modern Languages and Cultural Studies and Izaak Walton Killam scholar at the University of Alberta. His interests lie primarily in cultural metaphors and paradigms, phenomena of permeability -borrowings and migrations of concepts- between discursive fields, domains of knowledge and disciplines. He is the first author of a forthcoming “Récits du 19ème siècle: Structure et contenu historiographique au Canada” (Presses de l’Université Laval, 2009). Former publications include “Rethinking the Present – Archaeology of an Idea” (Kakanian, 2004).

Trevor Tchir is a PhD candidate in Political Theory at the University of Alberta. His thesis focuses on Hannah Arendt’s theory of disclosure of the “who” in political action. His previous research at the University of Ottawa centered on Charles Taylor’s Best Account Principle and his expressive theory of language and reason.

Dan Webb is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Alberta. His interests lie primarily in the field of Continental political thought, and Frankfurt School Critical Theory. His most recent publication is entitled "If Adorno isn't the Devil, it's because he's a Jew: Lyotard's misreading of Adorno through Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus" (forthcoming, "Philosophy and Social Criticism" 2008).

"Declensions of the Self takes the critical reader on a deeply interdisciplinary foray into that bestiary of the "other" that populates modern narratives of the self [.] this is the rare multi-author volume where the whole outweighs the parts through an ongoing insistence on critical dialogism."

Richard Cavell, Professor of English, University of British Columbia

"This volume exemplifies exceedingly well the synergies of multi / inter - disciplinary collectives which are arising within the 21st century academy [.]Scholars and students will find this book a sometimes challenging but always illuminating and insightful volume. This is cutting edge analysis of the theorization of the self within multiple cultural contexts and perspectives. It is a solidly documented volume in which theory and cultural analysis are inseparable."

Donald Bruce, Professor of French and Dean of Arts, University of Guelph