Deconstruction and psychoanalysis have long since dismissed the philosophical subject’s claims to mastery. If so, after the subject, what remains? In this brilliantly conceived and meticulously argued book, bearing on the thought of Derrida, Artaud, Lacan, Heidegger, Nancy, and numerous others, Cathrine Bjørnholt Michaelsen explores with incisive authority the far-reaching ramifications of this question as it traverses philosophy, literature, experience itself.

Leslie Hill, Emeritus Professor of French Studies, University of Warwick

Referring to an impressive array of thinkers from Heidegger to Hölderlin, Derrida, Nancy, Artaud, Blanchot, Freud, Lacan, Deleuze and Guattari, this remarkable, highly original study traces the ‘remains’ of a self that has lost itself. A superb exploration of impossible solitude, the inability to be alone, results in the discovery of relations upon which our responsibility and sense of self depend.

Claudia Welz, professor of ethics and philosophy of religion, Aarhus University

With a brilliant array of sources ranging across philosophy, psychology, literature, and poetry, Cathrine Bjørnholt Michaelsen reaches into her deep depository and with an acute interpretative acumen deconstructs “self” through the prevailing question of “Who asks the question who?” Not only does this book challenge views on the self, but readers are also left with “the what or who” that remains in the abandonment of “the” subject and “the” self—a development, we find, that has already begun to find its place in our experience, giving new meaning to solitude.

David Jones, editor of Comparative and Continental Philosophy and co-author of The Fractal Self: Science, Philosophy, and the Evolution of Human Cooperation