When “revolution” becomes a recurring theme in mainstream culture, where do we look for the tools for a critical engagement with the present? Addressing the link between allegory and cultural critique in contemporary culture and resisting the thematic abstraction of sexy, fast, revolutionary content, this book suggests that one way is to pay attention not so much to content as to form.Culture Control Critique provides an analysis of how representations of political systems in conte...

Gilles Deleuze, the person and philosopher, was both singular and multifaceted. Frida Beckman traces Deleuze’s remarkable intellectual journey, mapping the encounters from which his life and work emerged. She considers how his life and philosophical developments resonate with historical, political and philosophical events, from the Second World War to the student uprisings in the 1960s, the opening of the experimental University of Paris VIII and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Although ...

Why does it seem like our everyday life is shadowed by something menacing? This book identifies and illuminates paranoia as a significant feature of contemporary American society and culture. Centering on what it identifies as three key dimensions – power, truth, and identity – in three different contexts – society, literature, and critique – the book explores and explains the increasing influence of paranoid thinking in American society during the second half of the twentieth century and ...

Theory Conspiracy provides a state-of-the-art collection that takes stage on the meeting and/or battlegrounds between conspiracy theory and theory-asconspiracy. By deliberately scrambling the syntax—conspiracy theory cum theory conspiracy—it seeks to open a set of reflections on the articulation between theory and conspiracy that addresses how conspiracy might rattle the sense of theory as such. In this sense, the volume also inevitably stumbles on the recent debates on postcritiq...

Rhetorically charged debates over theory have divided scholars of the humanities for decades. In Elegy for Theory, D. N. Rodowick steps back from well-rehearsed arguments pro and con to assess why theory has become such a deeply contested concept. Far from lobbying for a return to the "high theory" of the 1970s and 1980s, he calls for a vigorous dialogue on what should constitute a new, ethically inflected philosophy of the humanities.Rodowick develops an ambitiously cross...

Postmodernism has been a buzzword in contemporary society for the last decade. But how can it be defined? In this Very Short Introduction Christopher Butler challenges and explores the key ideas of postmodernists, and their engagement with theory, literature, the visual arts, film, architecture, and music. He treats artists, intellectuals, critics, and social scientists 'as if they were all members of a loosely constituted and quarrelsome political party' - a party which includes such memb...

The Posthuman offers both an introduction and major contribution to contemporary debates on the posthuman. Digital 'second life', genetically modified food, advanced prosthetics, robotics and reproductive technologies are familiar facets of our globally linked and technologically mediated societies. This has blurred the traditional distinction between the human and its others, exposing the non-naturalistic structure of the human. The Posthuman starts by exploring the exte...

Since its first publication in English in 1985, Mieke Bal's Narratology has become the international classic and comprehensive introduction to the theory of narrative texts. Narratology is a systematic account of narrative techniques, methods, their transmission, and reception, in which Bal distills years of study of the ways in which we understand both literary and non-literary works. In this third edition, Bal updates the book to include more analysis of film narrati...

Understand Postmodernism is an indispensable guide to this sometimes challenging domain. Using contemporary examples to further your understanding, it takes a broad look at theorists in a range of disciplines. Whether you're encountering postmodernism for the first time, or you need a quick reference to support your studies, this guide offers a comprehensive introduction to the key ideas in this thought-provoking philosophy.NOT GOT MUCH TIME?One, five and ten-minute introdu...