My debt to the work of Frances Ferguson, Stanley Fish, Michael Fried, and Steven Knapp will be obvious to any reader of this book, and I am grateful for the opportunity to acknowledge it here. Michael Fried also read and criticized an earlier version of The Shape of the Signifier, as did Jed Esty, Ruth Leys, Mark Maslan, Sean McCann, and a couple of anonymous readers, and I am grateful for their many helpful suggestions. Even when I could not follow them, I saw their justice. Many others have made important contributions to my thinking about the subjects of this book. I want especially to thank Paul Anderson, Jennifer Ashton, Nicholas Brown, Michael Clune, Jamie Daniel, Winfried Fluck, Jason Gladstone, Reichii Miura, Lisa Siraganian, Martin Stone, and Vershawn Young. Finally, I want to thank the editors of Critical Inquiry, Narrative, New Literary History, Radical History Review, and Transition for permission to reprint material published, in earlier versions, in their journals.