PB July 2016576 REViEWs For review in Prabuddha bharata, publishers need to send two copies of their latest publications Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststructuralist Philosophy Katerina Kolozova Foreword by François Laruelle Columbia University Press, 61 West 62 Street, New York City, New York 10023. usa. www.cup.columbia . edu. 2014. 208 pp. hb. $50. isbn 9780231166102. his book pioneers a feminist reading from the non-philosophical perspective. François Laruelle's path-breaking paradigm is situated within the gender studies' context by himself in his foreword while defining 'sexed gender' as a 'non-standard conception, which is a truly generic conception of "gender" itself, which recognizes the mark of the real' (xi). Laruelle sets the tone for this rigorously exacting volume by giving precedence to experience over everything else: 'It seems possible to us in this way to extract the nuance of the queer from its traditional philosophical context-to remove it from that frame and bring it back to a humane or generic level' (xvi). Katerina Kolozova critiques the 'postmodern or poststructualist philosophy' for abandoning 'any attempt to think the real by proclaiming it unthinkable' (5). Kolozova follows Laruelle to align 'rigorous theory ... with the real' (ibid.). Kolozova envisions a coming together of the one and the multiple: 'The instance of continuity in its immanence functions as a unifying force for the self or the subjective processuality' (47). The core theme of gender studies or feminist debates is the either/or of sex and gender. The author succinctly clarifies this dichotomy: 'The dichotomy between sex and gender reflects and reproduces the opposition between the real and the unreal' (52). Analysing Judith Butler's Bodies that Matter (1993), Kolozova holds that Butler's text 'is symptomatic of the dichotomy of the real and fiction' (54). However, Kolozova is happy with Undoing Gender (2004) as here Butler's 'thinking seems to be relieved of this unnecessary burden' of 'the real and the imagined' (77). Juxtaposing Laruelle with Deleuze, Kolozova prefers the former due to his preference to the 'determination in the last instance' (63). This work is an intersection of gender studies, philosophy, culture studies, with pertinent aspects of subjectivity. Anyone interested in any of these fields or connected with the humanities should read this book to understand that the 'non-philosophical discourse implies a constitutive entanglement of the real with the transcendental' (146). Editor Prabuddha Bharata The Complete Works of W. H. Auden: Prose: Volume VI, 1969–1973 Ed. Edward Mendelson Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540. usa. www.press.princeton. edu. 2015. 808 pp. hb. $65. isbn 9780691164588. A Certain World, which inaugurates this volume of Auden's prose is 'a map of ... [Auden's] planet' (3). He quotes Simone Weil: 'To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself.' Two other gems from this section are important for understanding the hitherto unknown religious Auden, Nature of Prayer: 'Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are' (Ortega y Gasset) and 'To pray is to think about the meaning of life' (Ludwig Wittgenstein) (235). Auden's choice of the mystic Weil, the deeply transcendental phenomenologist Gasset, and the deeply Catholic Wittgenstein, shows the value he put on the vita contemplativa. Yet in classrooms where Auden is taught-mostly his Musee des Beaux Arts-students are not sensitised to Auden's religious quest. A T