Introducing Critical Theory
A Graphic Guide
Published on 5. June 2014
176 pages
978-1-84831-780-2 (ISBN)
Description
What might a 'theory of everything' look like? Is science an ideology? Who were Adorno, Horkheimer or the Frankfurt School? The decades since the 1960s have seen an explosion in the production of critical theories. Deconstructionists, poststructuralists, postmodernists, second-wave feminists, new historicists, cultural materialists, postcolonialists, black critics and queer theorists, among a host of others, all vie for our attention. Stuart Sim and Borin Van Loon's incisive graphic guide provides a route through the tangled jungle of competing ideas and provides an essential historical context, situating these theories within tradition of critical analysis going back to the rise of Marxism. They present the essential methods and objectives of each theoretical school in an incisive and accessible manner, and pay special attention to recurrent themes and concerns that have preoccupied a century of critical theoretical activity.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
04/2009
Icon Books
€11.50
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Persons
Borin Van Loon has worked on numerous Introducing titles. He is a freelance illustrator, surrealist painter and collagist who produced the comic strip 'The Severed Head' for The Chap magazine.
Content
- Intro
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- The Theory of Everything
- The Grand Narrative of Marxism
- The Politics of Criticism
- The Synthetic or Magpie Approach
- Bringing Theory to the Surface
- Hidden Agendas and Ideologies
- Theoretical Reflexivity
- Science Studies: the Paradigm Model
- Postmodernism and Science
- The Sokal Scandal
- In Defence of Big Science
- Origins of Marxism
- Absolute Spirit: the Logic of History
- The Communist Manifesto
- Infra- and Super-structures
- Economic Determinism
- The Hidden Text
- Mapping the Origins of Critical Theory
- Reflection Theory
- Zhdanovite Socialist Realism
- The Battle for Class Consciousness
- Lukácsian Theories of the Novel
- A Critical Realist View of Alienation
- The Theory of Hegemony
- Cultural Criticism
- The Frankfurt School's Critical Theory
- The Progress of Irrationalism
- One-dimensional or "Non-oppositional" Society
- The Alternative or "New Left"
- The Politics of Avant-garde Art
- Against Totality - and Totalitarianism
- Theory of the Aura
- In Combat with Tradition
- Brecht's Epic Theatre
- Russian Formalism
- The Grammar of Narrative
- Shklovsky's Defamiliarization
- Bakhtin's Plural or Dialogic Meanings
- Intertextuality or Heteroglossia
- Jakobson's Semiotic Linguistics
- The Psychoanalytic Unconscious
- Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory
- Structuralism and Critical Theory
- What is Structuralism?
- The Structuralist Unconscious
- Lacan and Structuralist Psychoanalysis
- Lacan's Imaginary and Symbolic Realms
- Barthes and the Empire of Signs
- The Common Structure of Narratives
- The Death of the Author
- Readerly versus Writerly Texts
- The "Death of Man"
- Intertextuality and the Symbolic Order
- Eco's Labyrinth
- The Structuralist Marxism of Althusser
- Structuralist Marxism and Literary Criticism
- Genetic Structuralism
- Reader-Response Theory
- Poststructuralism: the Breakdown of Sign-Systems
- Poststructuralist Deconstruction
- Différance and Meaning
- Deconstructing "Binary Oppositions"
- The Order of Things
- The Rise of Scientific Discipline
- Uncovering the Hidden Discourse
- The End of Humanism
- Lyotard's "Differends"
- The Postmodern Condition
- Postmodern Science
- Scientific Narrative and Relativism
- The Enlightenment, "Unfinished Project"
- The Problem of Value Judgement
- Paganism or Benthamism
- Postmodernism in the Service of Capitalism
- The "Case-by-Case" Event
- Techno-science and the human
- A Feminist Response to the Inhuman
- The Sociology of Seduction
- Against the Marxist Fetishism of Production
- A World of Hyperreal Simulacra
- Disneyworld America
- When Did Postmodernism Begin?
- The Double-Coding of Postmodernism
- Postmodern Pastiche and Irony
- Anti-Oedipus and Schizoanalysis
- Anti-Oedipal Networks of Communication
- Stay Sane - Keep Moving
- Post-Marxism: The Breakdown of Marxism
- A Post-Marxist Answer to Capitalism
- The Failures of Marxian Theory
- Beyond Doctrinaire Marxism
- The Spectre of Marx
- A Plural Marx
- The "End of History"
- Our Complicity in Ideology
- The New Historicism
- Cultural Materialism
- A Politicized Shakespeare
- The Theory of Postcolonialism
- Fanon's Anti-Colonialism
- Poststructuralist Hybridity
- Subaltern Studies
- Theory as Sexual Politics
- A Feminist Literary Canon
- Feminism and Marxism
- Post-Marxist Feminism
- The Theory of Gynocriticism
- Against Patriarchy
- The Surplus Woman
- Against the Male Canon
- "Heroinism" in Women's Literature
- French Feminism: écriture féminine
- The Undecidable of écriture féminine
- Does Difference Lead to Separatism?
- Two Champions of Modern Feminism
- Postfeminism and Positive Womanhood
- A Parallel with Post-Marxism
- Queer Theory and Sexual Identity
- Black Criticism
- Black Feminist Criticism
- Theory is Power
- Critical Theory and a Pluralist World
- Further Reading
- Glossary
- Index
