The Task of Cultural Critique
Published on 1. July 2009
Book
Hardback
232 pages
978-0-252-03434-3 (ISBN)
Description
In this study, Teresa L. Ebert makes a spirited, pioneering case for a new cultural critique committed to the struggles for human freedom and global equality. Demonstrating the implosion of the linguistic turn that isolates culture from historical processes, The Task of Cultural Critique maps the contours of an emerging materialist critique that contributes toward a critical social and cultural consciousness.
Through groundbreaking analyses of cultural texts, Ebert questions the contemporary Derridian dogma that asserts ""the future belongs to ghosts."" Events-to-come are not spectral, she contends, but the material outcome of global class struggles. Not ""hauntology"" but history produces cultural practices and their conflictive representations--from sexuality, war, and consumption to democracy, torture, globalization, and absolute otherness. With close readings of texts from Proust and Balzac to ""Chick Lit,"" from Lukacs, de Man, Deleuze, and Marx to Derrida, Zizek, Butler, Kollontai, and Agamben, the book opens up new directions for cultural critique today.
Through groundbreaking analyses of cultural texts, Ebert questions the contemporary Derridian dogma that asserts ""the future belongs to ghosts."" Events-to-come are not spectral, she contends, but the material outcome of global class struggles. Not ""hauntology"" but history produces cultural practices and their conflictive representations--from sexuality, war, and consumption to democracy, torture, globalization, and absolute otherness. With close readings of texts from Proust and Balzac to ""Chick Lit,"" from Lukacs, de Man, Deleuze, and Marx to Derrida, Zizek, Butler, Kollontai, and Agamben, the book opens up new directions for cultural critique today.
Reviews / Votes
"A valuable and timely critique of the political bankruptcy and logical manipulations of many influential contemporary theories that continue to have a stranglehold on Truth in the academic and cultural marketplace."--Science and Society"A stimulating, path-breaking text that stands out as both an anti-text in the arena of cultural studies and as a classic Marxist analysis of the field of cultural critique. It will explode the field."--Peter McLaren, author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution
"This powerful book confirms that Teresa L. Ebert is one of the most significant Marxist theorists currently writing about the humanities."--Barbara Foley, author of Spectres of 1919: Class and Nation in the Making of the New Negro
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Baltimore
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-252-03434-3 (9780252034343)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Teresa L. Ebert
The Task of Cultural Critique
E-Book
08/2009
University of Illinois Press
€20.49
Available for download
Person
Teresa L. Ebert is a professor of cultural theory at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Her works include Class in Culture and Ludic Feminism and After: Postmodernism, Desire, and Labor in Late Capitalism.
Content
CoverTitle PageCopyright PageContentsPreface: The Critique of Interpretive ReasonPART 1: ANATOMY OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL CRITIQUE1. The Spectral Concrete2. The Abstract of Transformative Critique3. Desiring SurfacesPART 2: THE WORK OF CRITIQUE4. Affective Pedagogy and Feminist Critique5. Chick Lit: "Not Your Mother's Romance Novels"6. Red Love7. Globalization, the "Multitude," and Cynical Critique8. Reading Ideology: Marx, de Man, and CritiqueCoda: Reclaiming TotalityBibliographyIndex