Critical Theory Now
Author: Philip Wexler
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2003-05-20
Total Pages: 433
ISBN-13: 1135386978
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFirst Published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Posts
Critical Theory Today
Author: Lois Tyson
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-09-10
Total Pages: 486
ISBN-13: 1136615563
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCritical Theory Today is the essential introduction to contemporary criticial theory. It provides clear, simple explanations and concrete examples of complex concepts, making a wide variety of commonly used critical theories accessible to novices without sacrificing any theoretical rigor or thoroughness. This new edition provides in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today: feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, reader-response theory, new criticism, structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction, new historicism, cultural criticism, lesbian/gay/queer theory, African American criticism, and postcolonial criticism. The chapters provide an extended explanation of each theory, using examples from everyday life, popular culture, and literary texts; a list of specific questions critics who use that theory ask about literary texts; an interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby through the lens of each theory; a list of questions for further practice to guide readers in applying each theory to different literary works; and a bibliography of primary and secondary works for further reading.
Left Hemisphere
Author: Razmig Keucheyan
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2013-07-02
Total Pages: 356
ISBN-13: 1781682313
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAs the crisis of capitalism unfolds, the need for alternatives is felt ever more intensely. The struggle between radical movements and the forces of reaction will be merciless. A crucial battlefield, where the outcome of the crisis will in part be decided, is that of theory. Over the last twenty-five years, radical intellectuals across the world have produced important and innovative ideas. The endeavour to transform the world without falling into the catastrophic traps of the past has been a common element uniting these new approaches. This book – aimed at both the general reader and the specialist – offers the first global cartography of the expanding intellectual field of critical contemporary thought. More than thirty authors and intellectual currents of every continent are presented in a clear and succinct manner. A history of critical thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is also provided, helping situate current thinkers in a broader historical and sociological perspective.
Using Critical Theory
Author: Lois Tyson
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-11-16
Total Pages: 369
ISBN-13: 1136645683
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExplaining both why theory is important and how to use it, Lois Tyson introduces beginning students of literature to this often daunting area in a friendly and approachable style. The new edition of this textbook is clearly structured with chapters based on major theories that students are expected to cover in their studies. Key features include: coverage of major theories including psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, lesbian/gay/queer theories, postcolonial theory, African American theory, and a new chapter on New Criticism (formalism) practical demonstrations of how to use these theories on short literary works selected from canonical authors including William Faulkner and Alice Walker a new chapter on reader-response theory that shows students how to use their personal responses to literature while avoiding typical pitfalls new sections on cultural criticism for each chapter new ‘further practice’ and ‘further reading’ sections for each chapter a useful "next step" appendix that suggests additional literary titles for extra practice. Comprehensive, easy to use, and fully updated throughout, Using Critical Theory is the ideal first step for students beginning degrees in literature, composition and cultural studies.
EBOOK: Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now
Author: Paul Taylor
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
Published: 2007-12-16
Total Pages: 263
ISBN-13: 033523528X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"This is a welcome critical corrective to complacent mainstream accounts of the media's cultural impact". Prof. Slavoj Zizek, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London "A powerful and highly engaging re-assessment of past critical thinkers (including those not normally thought of as critical) in the light of today's mediascape". Jorge Reina Schement, Distinguished Professor of Communications, Penn State University With the exception of occasional moral panics about the coarsening of public discourse, and the impact of advertising and television violence upon children, mass media tend to be viewed as a largely neutral or benign part of contemporary life. Even when criticisms are voiced, the media chooses how and when to discuss its own inadequacies. More radical external critiques are often excluded and media theorists are frequently more optimistic than realistic about the negative aspects of mass culture. This book reassesses this situation in the light of both early and contemporary critical scholarship and explores the intimate relationship between the mass media and the dis-empowering nature of commodity culture. The authors cast a fresh perspective on contemporary mass culture by comparing past and present critiques. They: Outline the key criticisms of mass culture from past critical thinkers Reassess past critical thought in the changed circumstances of today Evaluate the significance of new critical thinkers for today's mass culture The book begins by introducing the critical insights from major theorists from the past - Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor Adorno, Marshall McLuhan and Guy Debord. Paul Taylor and Jan Harris then apply these insights to recent provocative writers such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek, and discuss the links between such otherwise apparently unrelated contemporary events as the Iraqi Abu Ghraib controversy and the rise of reality television. Critical Theories of Mass Media is a key text for students of cultural studies, communications and media studies, and sociology.
Critical Theory Now
Author: Philip Wexler
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2003-05-20
Total Pages: 273
ISBN-13: 1135386986
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFirst Published in 1991. The first wave of North American critical theory was at once both academic and political. Interest in the works of the early Frankfurt School may have belonged to a more general renaissance of academic social theory that occurred in North America during the late 1960s and early 1970s. There is a new voice that comes through the historic political struggles of a student movement, of feminism, and of anti-racist and ecological social movements. It is a voice also schooled in a sensitivity to the theories of social disintegration or an ‘implosion’ that characterizes the post-modernist moment. The authors represented in this reader are neither scholastic nor dogmatic. They do not eschew postmodernism for hackneyed slogans, nor do they embrace theory as an aesthetic substitute for theory as a socially transformative practice. They are committed both to social theory and social practice, and it is this which unifies the papers which follow. The authors are a new generation of North American critical theorists who do not retreat to European humanism in the face of social, cultural and self transformation.
Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Stephen Eric Bronner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2017-09-22
Total Pages: 161
ISBN-13: 0190692693
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCritical theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, the circle of German-Jewish academics who sought to diagnose -- and, if at all possible, cure -- the ills of society, particularly fascism and capitalism. In this book, Stephen Eric Bronner provides sketches of leading representatives of the critical tradition (such as George Lukács and Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas) as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations. This Very Short Introduction sheds light on the cluster of concepts and themes that set critical theory apart from its more traditional philosophical competitors. Bronner explains and discusses concepts such as method and agency, alienation and reification, the culture industry and repressive tolerance, non-identity and utopia. He argues for the introduction of new categories and perspectives for illuminating the obstacles to progressive change and focusing upon hidden transformative possibilities. In this newly updated second edition, Bronner targets new academic interests, broadens his argument, and adapts it to a global society amid the resurgence of right-wing politics and neo-fascist movements.
Critical Theory
Author: Max Horkheimer
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 1972-01-01
Total Pages: 313
ISBN-13: 0826400833
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThese essays, written in the 1930s and 1940s, represent a first selection in English from the major work of the founder of the famous Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Horkheimer's writings are essential to an understanding of the intellectual background of the New Left and the to much current social-philosophical thought, including the work of Herbert Marcuse. Apart from their historical significance and even from their scholarly eminence, these essays contain an immediate relevance only now becoming fully recognized.
The Idea of a Critical Theory
Author: Raymond Geuss
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1981-10-30
Total Pages: 118
ISBN-13: 9780521284226
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe purpose of this series is to help make contemporary European philosophy intelligible to a wider audience in the English-speaking world, and to suggest its interest and importance in particular to those trained in analytical philosophy.
Critique and Praxis
Author: Bernard E. Harcourt
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2020-08-11
Total Pages: 730
ISBN-13: 0231551452
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCritical philosophy has always challenged the division between theory and practice. At its best, it aims to turn contemplation into emancipation, seeking to transform society in pursuit of equality, autonomy, and human flourishing. Yet today’s critical theory often seems to engage only in critique. These times of crisis demand more. Bernard E. Harcourt challenges us to move beyond decades of philosophical detours and to harness critical thought to the need for action. In a time of increasing awareness of economic and social inequality, Harcourt calls on us to make society more equal and just. Only critical theory can guide us toward a more self-reflexive pursuit of justice. Charting a vision for political action and social transformation, Harcourt argues that instead of posing the question, “What is to be done?” we must now turn it back onto ourselves and ask, and answer, “What more am I to do?” Critique and Praxis advocates for a new path forward that constantly challenges each and every one of us to ask what more we can do to realize a society based on equality and justice. Joining his decades of activism, social-justice litigation, and political engagement with his years of critical theory and philosophical work, Harcourt has written a magnum opus.
