This introductory textbook provides students and other readers with an accessible basic guide to key figures in 'The Tradition of Critique' - critical post-Enlightenment European thinking.The intellectual tradition covered by the book is broadly the Continental philosophy and theory which has had a significant impact on many theoretical innovations in the humanities and social sciences. Yet many students and non-philosophers have little understanding of the tradition on which such thinking draws. The book therefore covers those thinkers whose work serves as the background for many...

This authoritative guide introduces the key figures in contemporary critical theory for the beginning student. The critical theory covered in the volume includes: semiotics and discourse analysis; structuralism and post-structuralism; ideology critique; deconstruction; feminism; queer theory; psychoanalysis; postcolonialism; postmodernism; and the descendents of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. Levinas; Kristeva; Irigaray; Cixous; Foucault; Lyotard; Deleuze; Baudrillard; and Guattari; Bourdieu; Habermas; Jameson; and Said. thinker's intellectual context, an explanation of key concepts, an...

Images: A Reader provides a key resource for students, academics, practitioners and other readers engaged in the critical, theoretical, and practical study of images. The Reader is concerned with the notion of the 'image' in all its theoretical, critical and practical contexts, uses and history. It provides a map of the differences and similarities between the various disciplinary approaches to images, breaking the ground for a new interdisciplinary study of images, in the arts and humanities and beyond. The selection of over 80 key readings, across the domains of philosophy, art, literature,...

If contemporary culture is an image culture, how should we understand and analyze the vast range of images among which we live? Images: A Reader provides a key resource for students, academics, practitioners and other readers engaged in the critical, theoretical and practical study of images. The Reader is concerned with the notion of the 'image' in all its theoretical, critical and practical contexts, uses and history. It provides a map of the differences and similarities between the various disciplinary approaches to images, breaking the ground for a new interdisciplinary study of images,...

This authoritative guide introduces the key figures in contemporary critical theory to the beginning student. Important topics in critical theory which are covered in this volume include semiotics and discourse analysis, deconstruction, feminism, queer theory, and postmodernism. There are individual chapters on each of the following theorists: Lacan, Althusser, Barthes, Derrida, Levinas, Kristeva, Irigaray, Cixous, Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari, Baudrillard, Bourdieu, Habermas, Jameson, and Said. Each chapter provides biographical information and details about the thinker's...