This lucidly written book looks at the interpretative audacity of five major "overreaders"--Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Emmanuel Levinas, Slavoj Zi"ek and Stanley Cavell--and asks what is at stake and what is to be gained by their approaches to literature and film.

Colin Davis is Professor of French at Royal Holloway, University of London. His most recent books are After Poststructuralism: Reading, Stories and Theory (2004), Haunted Subjects: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis and the Return of the Dead (2007), and Scenes of Love and Murder: Renoir, Film and Philosophy (2009).