"Throughout his career, Bersani has shown us ways to resist structures that oppress and to discover modes of relatedness to the world around us.... He is concerned with the tendency of social structures to classify, to create legitimate and non-legitimate groups, because these structures derive power from our willingness to accept the identities they impose upon us."

"The energy in these essays derives from Bersani's attempts to imagine escapes from dualistic thinking and restrictive structures."--Daniel A. Burr "Gay and Lesbian Review"

"Bersani offers essays dealing with the metaphysical question of relations: of authors to their readers, of authors to other authors, of the mind to the body, of citizens to the state, of gender to personal identity, and so on. . . . Decidedly non-analytic in its approach, Bersani's argument rests principally on analyses of films and literary works: Claire Denis's film Beau travail, Jean Genet's novel Our Lady of the Flowers, Pierre Bergounioux's book La Casse, to name just three. It is certainly an interesting approach to a traditional problem, perhaps not an approach that will appeal to Anglo-American philosophers but one that will likely interest Continental philosophers and those working in film theory, gender studies, and related disciplines in English studies. Recommended."