Learned, exigent, original, and timely, Erik Roraback’s The Power of the Impossible: On Community and the Creative Life presents authoritative readings of what important theorists from Spinoza to Bataille, Blanchot, Nancy, Žižek, and others have had to say about community and the individual, with sections along the way on how those theorists might lead us to approach work by Henry James, James Joyce, Ralph Ellison, Dante Alighieri, and, surprisingly, the great tennis player, Ivan Lendl. Roraback also develops on the basis of his theorists his own persuasive concept of an impossible/possible global community yet to come that would facilitate individual creativity as well as contest the repressive hegemony of finance capitalism and technology, especially digital technology. ~ J. Hillis Miller, The University of California at Irvine

A spirited, luminous romp through theory, literature, and professional tennis! This original, unorthodox study illuminates our current crises of community formation and creativity in ways unexpected but necessary. ~ Robert Appelbaum, Chair and Professor of English Literature, Uppsala University