Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Genealogy and the Desacralization of Literature -- Part I: To Know What Literature Is -- 1. The Functions of Literature -- 2. Universalizing Marginality: How Europe Became Deaf in the Eighteenth Century -- 3. Monstrous Body, Tortured Soul: Frankenstein at the Juncture between Discourses -- 4. Indians, Polynesians, and Empire Making: The Case of Herman Melville -- Part II: A Language Poised against Death -- 5. Post-Foucauldian Criticism: Government, Death, Mimesis -- 6. Cannibalizing the Humanist Subject: A Genealogy of Prospero -- 7. Grounds for Decolonization: Arguedas's Foxes -- 8. Genealogical Determinism in Achebe's Things Fall Apart -- Part III: Seeking the Limits of the Possible -- 9. Sex Matters: Genealogical Inquiries, Pedagogical Implications -- 10. The Real and the Marvelous in Charleston, South Carolina: Ntozake Shange's Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo -- 11. Body/Talk: Mishima, Masturbation, and Self-Performativity -- 12. "Dreadful Dioramas": Guibert's Countermemories -- Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Z.