What is the relationship between contemporary intellectual culture and the European Enlightenment? In Consequences of Enlightenment, Anthony Cascardi revisits the arguments advanced in Horkheimer and Adorno's seminal work Dialectic of Enlightenment. Cascardi argues that postmodern culture does not reject Enlightenment beliefs and explores the link between aesthetics and politics in thinkers as diverse as Habermas, Derrida, Arendt, Nietzsche, Hegel and Wittgenstein. He reverses the tendency to see art simply in terms of the worldly practices among which it is situated. Aesthetic objects, he...

This is the first book to explore Lacan's theory of poetry and its relationship to his understanding of the subject and historicity. Gilbert Chaitin's lucid and accessible study of this famously complex thinker shows how Lacan moves beyond the traditionally hostile polarities of poetics and philosophy. For Lacan, the subject is a complex interplay among psychoanalysis, rationality and history, a combination that enabled him to illuminate literature's role in the creation of selfhood. The ambiguities, contradictions and singularities in Lacan are explored in this definitive account of the...

In Chronoschisms Ursula Heise explores the way developments in communication and information technology have led to the emergence of a new culture of time in Western societies. Drawing on theories of postmodernism and narratology, she shows how postmodern narratives break up the concept of plot into a spectrum of contradictory story lines that allow new conceptions of history and posthistory to emerge. This wide-ranging study offers new readings of postmodernist theory and fresh insight into the often vexing relationship between literature and science.

Throughout the twentieth century, the epistemological status of literature, the problem of language's claim to true representation, has challenged our received notions of ontology and being itself. In Singularities, Thomas Pepper addresses the relationship among text, philosopical value and critical difficulty through a rich sequence of nuanced close readings of especially demanding texts. Singularities addresses key moments in the work of seminal twentieth-century theorists, and by offering a critique of the very process of thematic reading, questions the whole direction of contemporary...

Theory has become a common language in the humanities in recent years, but its practical application as a pedagogical aid has yet to be fully addressed. In The Practice of Theory, Michael Bernard-Donals examines the connection between theory and pedagogy at the level of practice. He argues that though rhetoric links pedagogy with theory, this tradition must also connect with other human and natural sciences. A materialistic rhetoric can, he claims, reinvigorate the link between theory, teaching and practice. This book offers a sustained reflection on the production of knowledge across a range...

Tom Cohen questions the way history, ideology and politics are invoked in contemporary cultural studies. Enlisting the work of three seminal figures in literary theory--Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man, and M. Bakhtin--Cohen argues for a new politics of memory that moves beyond what he sees as our current paralyzing preoccupation with the present, and also for a new approach to the reading and analysis of cultural texts that breaks with the mimetic premises of traditional criticism.

Is it possible for postmodernism to offer viable, coherent accounts of ethics? Or are our social and intellectual worlds too fragmented for any broad consensus about the moral life? These issues have emerged as some of the most contentious in literary and philosophical studies. In this text philosophers and literary scholars address the reconceptualizations involved in the turn towards ethics. An important feature of this has been a renewed interest in the literary text as a focus for the exploration of ethical issues. Exponents of this trend include Charles Taylor, Bernard Williams, Iris...

In Theorizing the Avant-Garde Richard Murphy mobilizes theories of the postmodern to challenge our understanding of the avant-garde and assesses its importance for the debates among theorists of postmodernism such as Jameson, Eagleton, Lyotard and Habermas. Murphy reconsiders the classic formulations of the avant-garde and investigates the relationship between art and politics via a discussion of Marcuse, Adorno and Benjamin. Combining close textual readings of a wide range of films as well as works of literature, this interdisciplinary project will appeal to all those interested in...

In Theorizing the Avant-Garde Richard Murphy mobilizes theories of the postmodern to challenge our understanding of the avant-garde and assesses its importance for the debates among theorists of postmodernism such as Jameson, Eagleton, Lyotard and Habermas. Murphy reconsiders the classic formulations of the avant-garde and investigates the relationship between art and politics via a discussion of Marcuse, Adorno and Benjamin. Combining close textual readings of a wide range of films as well as works of literature, this interdisciplinary project will appeal to all those interested in...

Historians have long ignored the military aspect of the French wars of religion. In contrast, The King's Army--a meticulously researched analysis of the royal army during the early civil wars--brings warfare back to the center of the picture. The King's Army makes an important contribution to the history of military forces, warfare, religion and society in France, and will be of great interest to those engaged in the debate over the "Military Revolution" in early modern Europe.