Deconstruction and Critical Theory

- Surveys the main schools and theorists of Deconstruction
- Establishes their philosophical roots
- Traces their intellectual development
- Analyses their contribution to the understanding of literature and ideology
- Compares their critical value
- Explores the critical reaction to Deconstruction and its limitations

This is the ideal text for students who wish to understand how and why Deconstruction has become the dominant tool of the humanities.

Modern/Postmodern: Society, Philosophy, Literature offers new definitions of modernism and postmodernism by presenting an original theoretical system of thought that explains the differences between these two key movements. Taking a contrastive approach, Peter V. Zima identifies three key concepts in the relationship between modernism and postmodernism - ambiguity, ambivalence and indifference.

Zima defines modernism and postmodernism as problematics, as opposed to aesthetics, stylistics or ideologies. Unlike modernism, which is grounded in an increasing ambivalence towards...

Subjectivity and Identity is a philosophical and interdisciplinary study that critically evaluates critically the most important philosophical, sociological, psychological and literary debates on subjectivity and the subject. Starting from a history of the concept of the subject from modernity to postmodernity - from Descartes and Kant to Adorno and Lyotard - Peter V. Zima distinguishes between individual, collective, mythical and other subjects.

Most texts on subjectivity and the subject present the topic from the point of view of a single discipline: philosophy, sociology,...