The Author (Maggie Nelson)

Maggie Nelson is a writer and teacher, and arguably a philosopher, as the writing in The Argonauts, with its use of language, ideas, and techniques of rhetoric (argument) has strong, engaging echoes of contemporary philosophical writing. It balances this type of critical thinking and analysis with a clever, careful interweaving of elements of autobiography: she is revealing her own thoughts on, and interpretations of, existing material while, at the same time, illustrating both with vivid descriptions of personal experiences that support and illuminate them. In that sense, the book is part memoir and part critical analysis, fulfilling what is arguably the purpose of the most widely engaging philosophical writing: making the theoretical seem personal and lived.

This is not to say that the writing, and the self-persona that the author creates as a result of that writing, are confessional, or that everything about the...