The surge of interest in Jean-Francois Lyotard's writings has pushed him into the centre of debate on the postmodern.

These two lectures by Jacques Derrida, 'Foreigner Question: Come from Abroad' and 'Step of Hospitality/No Hospitality', derive from a series of seminars on 'hospitality' conducted by Derrida in Paris, January 1996. The book consists of two texts on facing pages. 'Invitation' by Anne Dufourmantelle appears on the left clarifying and inflecting Derrida's 'response' on the right. The interaction between them not only enacts the 'hospitality' under discussion, but preserves something of the rhythms of teaching. The book also characteristically combines careful (...) readings of canonical texts and philosophical topics with attention to the most salient events in the contemporary world, using 'hospitality' as a means of rethinking a range of political and ethical situations. For example, Antigone is revisited in light of the question of impossible mourning; the trial of Socrates is brought into conjunction with the televised funeral of François Mitterrand. (shrink)

In this major reinterpretation, Howard Caygill argues that all of Benjamin's work is characterized by its focus on a concept of experience derived from Kant but applied by Benjamin to objects as diverse as urban experience, visual art, literature and philosophy. The book analyzes the development of Benjamin's concept of experience in his early writings showing that it emerges from an engagement with visual experience, and in particular the experience of colour. By representing Benjamin as primarily a thinker of the (...) visual field, Caygill is able to bring forward previously neglected texts on inscription and the visual field and to cast many of his more familiar texts, for instance the Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction in a new light. (shrink)

This far-ranging and ambitious attempt to rethink postcolonial theory's discussion of the nation and nationalism brings the problems of the postcolonial condition to bear on the philosophy of freedom. Closely identified with totalitarianism and fundamentalism, the nation-state has a tainted history of coercion, ethnic violence, and even, as in ultranationalist Nazi Germany, genocide. Most contemporary theorists are therefore skeptical, if not altogether dismissive, of the idea of the nation and the related metaphor of the political body as an organism. Going (...) against orthodoxy, Pheng Cheah retraces the universal-rationalist foundations and progressive origins of political organicism in the work of Kant and its development in philosophers in the German tradition such as Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. Cheah argues that the widespread association of freedom with the self-generating dynamism of life and culture's power of transcendence is the most important legacy of this tradition. Addressing this legacy's manifestations in Fanon and Cabral's theories of anticolonial struggle and contemporary anticolonial literature, including the Buru Quartet by Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, and the Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's nationalist novels, Cheah suggests that the profound difficulties of achieving freedom in the postcolonial world indicate the need to reconceptualize freedom in terms of the figure of the specter rather than the living organism. (shrink)

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today. “[Fanon] demonstrates how insidiously the problem of race, of color, connects with a whole range of words and images.” — Robert Coles, The New York Times Book Review.

Critics have long treated the most important intellectual movement of modern history--the Enlightenment--as if it took shape in the absence of opposition. In this groundbreaking new study, Darrin McMahon demonstrates that, on the contrary, contemporary resistance to the Enlightenment was a major cultural force, shaping and defining the Enlightenment itself from the moment of inception, while giving rise to an entirely new ideological phenomenon-what we have come to think of as the "Right." McMahon skillfully examines the Counter-Enlightenment, showing that it (...) was an extensive, international, and thoroughly modern affair. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida has had a huge influence on contemporary political theory and political philosophy. Derrida's thinking has inspired Slavoj Zizek, Richard Rorty, Ernesto Laclau, Judith Butler and many more contemporary theorists. This book brings together a first class line up of Derrida scholars to develop a deconstructive approach to politics. Deconstruction examines the internal logic of any given text or discourse. It helps us analyze the contradictions inherent in all schools of thought,and as such it has proved revolutionaty in political (...) analysis,particularly ideology critique. This book is ideal for all students of political theory,and anyone looking for an accessible guide to Derrida's thinking and how it can be used as a radical tool for political analysis. (shrink)

In Archive Fever , Jacques Derrida deftly guides us through an extended meditation on remembrance, religion, time, and technology--fruitfully occasioned by a deconstructive analysis of the notion of archiving. Intrigued by the evocative relationship between technologies of inscription and psychic processes, Derrida offers for the first time a major statement on the pervasive impact of electronic media, particularly e-mail, which threaten to transform the entire public and private space of humanity. Plying this rich material with characteristic virtuosity, Derrida constructs a (...) synergistic reading of archives and archiving, both provocative and compelling. "Judaic mythos, Freudian psychoanalysis, and e-mail all get fused into another staggeringly dense, brilliant slab of scholarship and suggestion."-- The Guardian "[Derrida] convincingly argues that, although the archive is a public entity, it nevertheless is the repository of the private and personal, including even intimate details."-- Choice "Beautifully written and clear."--Jeremy Barris, Philosophy in Review "Translator Prenowitz has managed valiantly to bring into English a difficult but inspiring text that relies on Greek, German, and their translations into French."-- Library Journal. (shrink)

In this important volume Habermas outlines the views which form the basis of his critical theory of modern societies. The volume comprises five interlocking essays, which together define the contours of his theory of communication and of his substantive account of social change. ′What is Universal Pragmatics?′ is the best available statement of Habermas′s programme for a theoryof communication based on the analysis of speech acts. In the following two essays Habermas draws on the work of Kohlberg and others to (...) develop a distinctive account of moral consciousness and normative structures. ′Toward a Reconstruction of historical Materialsim′ takes these issues further, offering a wide–ranging reconstruction of Marx′s historical materialsim understood as a theory of social evolution. The final essay focuses on the question of legitimacy and on the legitimation problems faced by modern states. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the key questions of social and political theory today. (shrink)

Written after his return to Germany in 1949, the articles, essays, and radio talks included in this volume speak to the pressing political, cultural, and ...

Drawing together the ideas, practices, and techniques associated with the subject, this book puts them in historical context and demonstrates their relevance to ...

Yet recent thinkers have expressed deep reservations about the concept and the term has become marginalized in the humanities and social sciences.Eschewing this ...

Is there, today," asks Jacques Derrida, "another 'question of religion'?" Derrida's writings on religion situate and raise anew questions of tradition, faith, and sacredness and their relation to philosophy and political culture. He has amply testified to his growing up in an Algerian Jewish, French-speaking family, to the complex impact of a certain Christianity on his surroundings and himself, and to his being deeply affected by religious persecution. Religion has made demands on Derrida, and, in turn, the study of religion (...) has benefited greatly from his extensive philosophical contributions to the field. Acts of Religion brings together for the first time Derrida's key writings on religion, along with two new essays translated by Gil Anidjar that appear here for the first time in any language. These texts are organized around the secret holding of links between the personal, the political, and the theological. In these texts, Derrida's reflections on religion span from negative theologyto the limits of reason and to hospitality. Acts of Religion will serve as an excellent introduction to Derrida's remarkable contribution to religious studies. (shrink)

After half a century exploring dialectical thought, renowned cultural critic Fredric Jameson presents a comprehensive study of a misrepresented, vital strain in Western philosophy. The dialectic, the concept of the evolution of an idea through internal contradiction and conflict, transformed two centuries of Western philosophy. To Hegel, who dominated nineteenth-century thought, it was a metaphysical system. In the works of Marx, the dialectic became a tool for materialist historical analysis, a theoretical maneuver that his critics derided and his descendants on (...) the Left have wrestled with ever since. Jameson brings a theoretical scrutiny to bear on the questions that have arisen in the history of this philosophical tradition, contextualizing the debate with essays on commodification and globalization, and with reference to the work of Rousseau, Fichte, Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, and Lacan. Through rigorous, erudite examination, Valences of the Dialectic charts a movement toward the innovation of a "spatial" dialectic, culminating in a remarkable meditation on globalization, through a study of Paul Ricoeur. Jameson presents a new synthesis of thought that revitalizes dialectical thinking for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In this essay the visual arts of the machine age morph into literature and theory and then back again to images, gestures, and thought.

Introduction: on not giving interviews -- Interview with Leonard Green, Jonathan Culler, and Richard Klein -- Interview with Anders Stephanson -- Interview with Paik Nak-Chung -- Interview with Sabry Hafez, Abbas Al-Tonsi, and Mona Abousenna -- Interview with Stuart Hall -- Interview with Michael Speaks -- Interview with Horacio Machín -- Interview with Sara Danius and Stefan Jonsson -- Interview with Xudong Zhang -- Interview with Srinivas Aravamudan and Ranjana Khanna.

Can love really be considered another form of technology? Dominic Pettman says it can - although not before carefully redefining technology as a cultural challenge to what we mean by the "human" in the information age. Using the writings of such important thinkers as Giorgio Agamben, Jean-LucNancy, and Bernard Stiegler as a springboard, Pettman explores the "techtonic" movements of contemporary culture, specifically in relation to the language of eros. Highly ritualized expressions of desire - love, in other words - always (...) reveal an era's attitude toward what it means to exist as a selfamong others. For Pettman, the articulation of love is a technique of belonging: a way of responding to the basic plurality of everyone's identity, a process that becomes increasingly complex as the forms of mediated communication, from cell phone and text messaging to the mass media, multiply andmesh together.Wresting the idea of love from the arthritic hands of Romanticism, Pettman demonstrates the ways in which this dynamic assemblage - "the stirrings of the soul" - have always been a matter of tools, devices, prosthetics, and media. Love is, after all, something we make. And, love, this book argues,is not eternal, but external. (shrink)

This book critically interrogates the work of David Harvey, one of the world’s most influential geographers, and one of its best known Marxists. Considers the entire range of Harvey’s oeuvre, from the nature of urbanism to environmental issues. Written by contributors from across the human sciences, operating with a range of critical theories. Focuses on key themes in Harvey’s work. Contains a consolidated bibliography of Harvey’s writings.

This book questions the book itself, archivization, machines for writing, and the mechanicity inherent in language, the media, and intellectuals. Derrida questions what takes place between the paper and the machine inscribing it. He examines what becomes of the archive when the world of paper is subsumed in new machines for virtualization, and whether there can be a virtual event or a virtual archive. Derrida continues his long-standing investigation of these issues, and ties them into the new themes that governed (...) his teaching and thinking in the past few years: the secret, pardon, perjury, state sovereignty, hospitality, the university, animal rights, capital punishment, the question of what sort of mediatized world is replacing the print epoch, and the question of the “wholly other.” Derrida is remarkable at making seemingly occasional pieces into part of a complexly interconnected trajectory of thought. (shrink)

Introduction -- Karl Marx's concept of alienation -- Objectification, alienation, and estrangement -- Other origins of alienation and objectification -- Marx's account of alienation : from early to late -- The alienated object of production : commodity fetishism -- The alienated means of production : machine fetishism -- Machines and the transformation of work -- Marx's energeticist turn -- The first law of thermodynamics -- From arbeit to arbeitskraft -- The second law of thermodynamics -- Machines in the communist future (...) -- Technology and the boundaries of nature -- Material wealth and value : the Grundrisse's fragment on machines -- The strife between technology and capital : the fall in the rate of profit -- Enjoyment not value : challenging the logic of exhaustion -- Man himself as fixed capital -- Class kinship and the redistribution of the means of production -- Machines in the capitalist reality -- Between thermodynamics and humanism : approaching capital -- Machinery as an historical category of production -- Machines, trains, and other capitalist monsters -- Rough, foul-mouthed boys : women's monstrous laboring bodies -- Wage labor and race -- Wage labor and sexuality -- Machinery and revolution -- Alienation beyond Marx -- Science and technology in Marx's excerpt notebooks -- Karl Marx and Charles Babbage -- Machines and temporality : the treadmill effect and free time -- Technophobia and technophilia -- Technophobia and twentieth-century theory. (shrink)

An intellectual genealogy of the postmodern spirit, this book shows that postmodernism's infatuation with fascism has been widespread and not incidental. It calls into question postmodernism's claim to have inherited the mantle of the left - and suggests that postmodern thought has long been smitten with the opposite end of the political spectrum.

Postcolonialism offers challenging and provocative ways of thinking about colonial and neocolonial power, about self and other, and about the discourses that perpetuate postcolonial inequality and violence. Much of the seminal work in postcolonialism has been shaped by currents in philosophy, notably Marxism and ethics. "Understanding Postcolonialism" examines the philosophy of postcolonialism in order to reveal the often conflicting systems of thought which underpin it. In so doing, the book presents a reappraisal of the major postcolonial thinkers of the twentieth (...) century.Ranging beyond the narrow selection of theorists to which the field is often restricted, the book explores the work of Fanon and Sartre, Gandhi, Nandy, and the Subaltern Studies Group, Foucault and Said, Derrida and Bhabha, Khatibi and Glissant, and Spivak, Mbembe and Mudimbe. A clear and accessible introduction to the subject, "Understanding Postcolonialism" reveals how, almost half a century after decolonisation, the complex relation between politics and ethics continues to shape postcolonial thought. (shrink)

Introduction -- Towards a critical theory of society -- The public sphere -- Communicative action and reason -- Discourse ethics -- Deliberative democracy -- The new political constellation.

Postcolonialism offers challenging and provocative ways of thinking about colonial and neocolonial power, about self and other, and about the discourses that perpetuate postcolonial inequality and violence. Much of the seminal work in postcolonialism has been shaped by currents in philosophy, notably Marxism and ethics. "Understanding Postcolonialism" examines the philosophy of postcolonialism in order to reveal the often conflicting systems of thought which underpin it. In so doing, the book presents a reappraisal of the major postcolonial thinkers of the twentieth (...) century.Ranging beyond the narrow selection of theorists to which the field is often restricted, the book explores the work of Fanon and Sartre, Gandhi, Nandy, and the Subaltern Studies Group, Foucault and Said, Derrida and Bhabha, Khatibi and Glissant, and Spivak, Mbembe and Mudimbe. A clear and accessible introduction to the subject, "Understanding Postcolonialism" reveals how, almost half a century after decolonisation, the complex relation between politics and ethics continues to shape postcolonial thought. (shrink)

In an exciting study of ideas accompanying the rise of the West, Thomas McCarthy analyzes the ideologies of race and empire that were integral to European-American expansion. He highlights the central role that conceptions of human development played in answering challenges to legitimacy through a hierarchical ordering of difference. Focusing on Kant and natural history in the eighteenth century, Mill and social Darwinism in the nineteenth, and theories of development and modernization in the twentieth, he proposes a critical theory of (...) development which can counter contemporary neoracism and neoimperialism, and can accommodate the multiple modernities now taking shape. Offering an unusual perspective on the past and present of our globalizing world, this book will appeal to scholars and advanced students of philosophy, political theory, the history of ideas, racial and ethnic studies, social theory, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Nearly forty years after its first publication in French, this collection of Sartre’s writings on colonialism remains a supremely powerful, and relevant, polemical work. Over a series of thirteen essays Sartre brings the full force of his remarkable intellect relentlessly to bear on his own country’s conduct in Algeria, and by extension, the West’s conduct in the Third World in general. Whether one agrees with his every conclusion or not, _Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism_ shows a philosopher passionately engaged in using philosophy (...) as a force for change in the world. An important influence on postcolonial thought ever since, this book takes on added resonance in the light of the West’s most recent bout of interference in the non-Western world. (shrink)

_Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism_ is a classic critique of France's policies in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s and inspired much subsequent writing on colonialism, post-colonialism, politics, and literature. It includes Sartre's celebrated preface to Fanon's classic _Wretched_ _of the Earth. Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism _ had a profound impact on French intellectual life, inspiring many other influential French thinkers and critics of colonialism such as Jean-Francois Lyotard, Frantz Fanon, Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida.

The question concerning technology.--The turning.--The word of Nietzsche: "God is dead."--The age of the world picture.--Science and reflection.

Here, for the first time in English, is volume one of Jurgen Habermas's long-awaited magnum opus: The Theory of Communicative Action. This pathbreaking work is guided by three interrelated concerns: to develop a concept of communicative rationality that is no longer tied to the subjective and individualistic premises of modern social and political theory; to construct a two-level concept of society that integrates the 'lifeworld' and 'system' paradigms; and to sketch out a critical theory of modernity that explains its sociopathologies (...) in a new way. Habermas approaches these tasks through a combination of conceptual analyses, systematic reflections, and critical reconstructions of such predecessors as Marx and Weber, Durkheim and Mead, Horkheimer and Adorno, Schutz and Parsons. Reason and the Rationalization of Society develops a sociological theory of action that stresses not its means-ends or teleological aspect, but the need to coordinate action socially via communication. In the introductory chapter Habermas sets out a powerful series of arguments on such foundational issues as cultural and historical relativism, the methodology of Verstehen, the inseparabilty of interpretation from critique. In addition to clarifying the normative foundations of critical social inquiry, this sets the stage for a systematic appropriation of Weber's theory of rationalization and its Marxist reception by Lukacs, Horkheimer and Adorno. This is an important book for degree students of philosophy, sociology and related subjects. (shrink)

Are the “culture wars” over? When did they begin? What is their relationship to gender struggle and the dynamics of class? In her first full treatment of postcolonial studies, a field that she helped define, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the world’s foremost literary theorists, poses these questions from within the postcolonial enclave. “We cannot merely continue to act out the part of Caliban,” Spivak writes; and her book is an attempt to understand and describe a more responsible role for (...) the postcolonial critic. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason tracks the figure of the “native informant” through various cultural practices—philosophy, history, literature—to suggest that it emerges as the metropolitan hybrid. The book addresses feminists, philosophers, critics, and interventionist intellectuals, as they unite and divide. It ranges from Kant’s analytic of the sublime to child labor in Bangladesh. Throughout, the notion of a Third World interloper as the pure victim of a colonialist oppressor emerges as sharply suspect: the mud we sling at certain seemingly overbearing ancestors such as Marx and Kant may be the very ground we stand on. A major critical work, Spivak’s book redefines and repositions the postcolonial critic, leading her through transnational cultural studies into considerations of globality. (shrink)

I. Nature as a System of Production and Reproduction 1. Animal Sociology and a Natural Economy of the Body Politic 2. The Past Is the Contested Zone 3. The Biological Enterprise II. Contested Readings: Narrative Natures 4. In the Beginning Was the Word 5. The Contest for Primate Nature 6. Reading Buchi Emecheta III. Differential Politics of Innappropriate/d Others 7. ’Gender’ for a Marxist Dictionary 8. A Cyborg Manifesto 9. Situated Knowledges 10. The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies.

We are spurred into action by our troubles and fears; but all too often our action fails to address the true causes of our worries. When trying to make sense of our lives, we tend to blame our own failings and weaknesses for our discomforts and defeats. And in doing so, we make things worse rather than better. Reasonable beings that we are, how does this happen and why does it go on happening? These are the questions addressed in this (...) new book by Zygmunt Bauman - one of the most original and perceptive social thinkers writing today. For Bauman, the task of sociology is not to censor or correct the stories we tell of our lives, but to show that there are more ways in which our life stories can be told. By bringing into view the many complex dependencies invisible from the vantage point of private experience, sociology can help us to link our individual decisions and actions to the deeper causes of our troubles and fears - to the ways we live, to the conditions under which we act, to the socially drawn limits of our imagination and ambition. Sociology can help us to understand the processes that have shaped the society in which we live today, a society in which individualization has become our fate. And sociology can also help us to see that if our individual but shared anxieties are to be effectively tackled, they need to be addressed collectively, true to their social, not individual, nature. The Individualized Society will be of great interest to students of sociology, politics and the social sciences and humanities generally. It will also appeal to a broader range of readers who are interested in the changing nature of our social and political life today. (shrink)

The word "globalization" is used to convey the hope and determination of order-making on a worldwide scale. It is trumpeted as providing more mobility--of people, capital, and information--and as being equally beneficial for everyone. With recent technological developments--most notably the Internet--globalization seems to be the fate of the world. But no one seems to be in control. As noted sociologist Zygmunt Bauman shows in this detailed history of globalization, while human affairs now take place on a global scale, we are (...) not able to direct events; we can only watch as boundaries, institutions, and loyalties shift in rapid and unpredictable ways. Who benefits from the new globalization? Are people in need assisted more quickly and efficiently? Or are the poor worse off than ever before? Will a globalized economy shift jobs away from traditional areas, destroying time-honored national industries? Who will enjoy access to jobs in the new hierarchy of mobility? From the way the global economy creates a class of absentee landlords to current prison designs for the criminalized underclass, Bauman dissects globalization in all its manifestations: its effects on the economy, politics, social structures, and even our perceptions of time and space. In a chilling analysis, Bauman argues that globalization divides as much as it unites, creating an ever-widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots. Rather than the hybrid culture we had hoped for, globalization is creating a more homogenous world. Drawing on the works of philosophers, social historians, architects, and theoreticians such as Michel Foucault, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Alfred J. Dunlap, and Le Corbusier, Globalization presents a historical overview of the methods employed to create and define human spaces and institutions, from rural villages to sprawling urban centers. Bauman shows how the advent of the computer translates into the decline of truly public space. And he explores the dimensions of a world in which--through new technologies--time is accelerated and space is compressed, revealing how we have arrived at our current state of global thinking. Bauman's incisive methods of inquiry make Globalization an excellent antidote to the exuberance expressed by those who stand to benefit from the new pace and mobility of the modern life. (shrink)

Critiquing Habermas, this volume bring fresh perspectives and ideas to bear on debates about the public sphere. Engages in different ways with Jürgen Habermas’s seminal study, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Moves beyond Habermas by reflecting on current social processes and events, such as anti-corporate protests and the emergence of the Internet. Considers alternative theories by Bakhtin, Bourdieu and Honneth, among others. Combines work by established commentators and new researchers.

First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Originally published in 1982. Aside from Jacques Derrida's own references to the "possible articulation" between deconstruction and Marxism, the relationship between the two has remained largely unexplored. In Marxism and Deconstruction, Michael Ryan examines that multifaceted relationship but not through a mere comparison of two distinct and inviolable entities. Instead, he looks at both with an eye to identifying their common elements and reweaving them into a new theory of political practice. To accomplish his task, Ryan undertakes a detailed comparison (...) of deconstruction and Marxism, relating deconstruction to the dialectical tradition in philosophy and demonstrating how deconstruction can be used in the critique of ideology. He is a forceful critic of both the politics of deconstruction and the metaphysical aspect of Marxism (as seen from a deconstructionist perspective). Besides offering the first book-length study of Derrida in this context, Ryan makes the first methodic attempt by an American scholar to apply deconstruction to domains beyond literature. He proposes a deconstructive Marxism, one lacking the metaphysical underpinnings of conservative "scientific" Marxist theory and employing deconstructive analysis both for Marxist political criticism and to further current anti-metaphysical developments within Marxism. Marxism and Deconstruction is an innovative and controversial contribution to the fields of literary criticism, philosophy, and political science. (shrink)

An account of the emergence and disintegration of.

On Being With Others is an outstanding and compelling work that uncovers one of the key questions in philosophy: how can we claim to have knowledge of minds other than our own? Simon Glendinning's fascinating analysis of this problem argues that it has polarized debate to such an extent that we do not know how to meet Wittgenstein's famous challenge that "to see the behavior of a living thing is to see its soul". This book sets out to discover whether (...) Wittgenstein's remark can be justified by drawing on both the analytic and continental traditions. (shrink)

A number of genealogical lines of influence are being drawn, connecting the work of the three figures most associated with the emergence of postcolonial theory–Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, and Gayatri Spivak–to an earlier generation of ...

[In this book, the author] examines the history of the concept of sovereignty, engaging with the work of Bodin, Hobbes, Rousseau, Schmitt, and others. [He] provides unflinching and hard-hitting assessments of current democratic realities, and these essays are highly engaged with the current political events of the post-9/11 world. -Back cover.

He proposes, in his characteristically allusive and intriguing way, a politics of gestureOCoa politics of means without end.Among the topics Agamben takes up are the properly political paradigms of experience, as well as those generally not ...