Books in the Post-Contemporary Interventions series

Suitable for students and scholars of modernism, Chinese literature and history, film studies, and cultural studies, this book offers both a historical narrative and a critical analysis of the cultural visions and experiences of China's post-Mao era.

Argues for understanding Badiou's thought as a revival of dialectical materialism

How is history produced? How do individuals write or rewrite their parts while engaged in the production of history? This book takes the example of the Iran-contra hearings to explore these questions.

This thoroughgoing reevaluation of Louis Althusser's philosophical project shows that the theorist was intensely engaged with the work of his contemporaries, particularly Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Lacan.

American literary historians have viewed Ralph Waldo Emerson’s resignation from the Unitarian ministry in 1832 in favor of a literary career as emblematic of a main current in American literature. That current is directed toward the possession of a self that is independent and fundamentally opposed to the “accoutrements of society and civilization” and expresses a Transcendentalist antipathy toward all institutionalized forms of religious observance.In the ongoing revision of American literary history, this traditional reading of the supposed anti-institutionalism of the Transcendentalists has been duly detailed and continually supported. Richard A. Grusin challenges both traditional and revisionist interpretations with detailed contextual studies of the hermeneutics of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Theodore Parker. Informed by the past two decades of critical theory, Grusin examines the influence of the higher criticism of the Bible—which focuses on authorship, date, place of origin, circumstances of composition, and the historical credibility of biblical writings—on these writers. The author argues that the Transcendentalist appeal to the authority of the “self” is not an appeal to a source of authority independent of institutions, but to an authority fundamentally innate.

An anthology of Chicano literary criticism, with essays on a range of texts, both old and new, drawing on diverse perspectives in contemporary literary and cultural studies - from ethnographic to postmodernist, from Marxist to feminist, from cultural materialist to new historicist.

In Dangerous Supplements expert legal scholars employing a variety of theoretical perspectives—feminism, poststructuralism, semiotics, and Marxism—challenge predominating views in jurisprudence. Prevailing notions of the nature of the law, they argue, have failed to recognize the law’s dependence on social constructs and the indeterminance of language. The contributors further claim that proponents of traditional notions have borrowed knowledge from other fields, only to reject that knowledge as ultimately subversive and dangerous in its ramifications.Taking as a point of departure H. L. A. Hart’s The Concept of the Law, Peter Fitzgerald shows how Hart adopted Wittgenstein’s linguistic theory to overthrow J. L. Austin’s “simple” conception of rules and habits in law, only to jettison this theory in order to locate the essence of law in its evolution from a “primal scene.” Other chapters examine the way in which the setting of English law above social relations has masked an imperial mission; how the philosophies of Hayek and Marx, as well as the discourses of liberalism, feminism, semiotics, and poststructuralism, have been assiduously marginalized and rendered inessential to jurisprudence.

Controversy over what role "the great books" should play in college curricula and questions about who defines "the literary canon" are at the forefront of debates in higher education. This study offers a defence of educational reform in response to attacks by academic traditionalists.

A strikingly original analysis of the rhetorical patterns underlying Western linguistic thought

Considers the fate of the people and institutions that constituted Soviet culture.

"This important collection of essays begins to develop a coherent history of copyright and intellectual property doctrine and the place of both in organizing and policing cultural production. This volume should be read by everyone in cultural studies interested either in the history of authorship or in the ways electronic production is changing how we think about the processes of artistic creation."--Janice Radway, Duke University

This anthology explores the provocative intersection between feminist, literary, and legal theories. Written by feminist thinkers from law and literature, discourses that each produce culturally powerful representations of women, these essays contest the boundaries that usually separate these disciplines and thereby alter the possibilities of those representations that have traditionally disempowered women. Beginning with an exploration of the ways in which women are represented—how they either tell or have their stories told in literature, in the law, in a courtroom—this collection demonstrates the interrelatedness of the legal and the literary. Whether considering the status of medieval women readers or assessing the effectiveness and extent of contemporary rape law reform, the essays show that power first comes with telling one’s own story, and that the degree and effect of that power are determined by the cultural significance of the forum in which the story is presented. But telling the story is not enough. One must also be aware of how the story is contained within traditional constructs or boundaries and is thus limited in its effects, as Carol Sanger’s essay on mothers and legal/sexual identity makes clear. One must also recognize how a story might perpetuate an ideological agenda that is not in the best interests of the storyteller, as Elizabeth Butler Cullingford shows in her reading of Yeats’s "Leda and the Swan" and one must know the historical context of a story and of its telling, as Anne B. Goldstein’s essay on lesbian narratives discloses.Breaking down the boundaries between law and literature, this anthology makes evident the ways in which the effect of women’s stories has been constrained and expands the range of possibilities for those who represent women, tell women’s stories, or present women’s issues. Representing Women makes the retelling of old stories about women compelling and the telling of new ones both necessary and possible.Contributors. Kathryn Abrams, Linda Brodkey, Rita Copeland, Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, Margaret Anne Doody, Susan B. Estrich, Michelle Fine, Anne B. Goldstein, Angela P. Harris, Susan Sage Heinzelman, Christine L. Krueger, Martha Minow, Carol Sanger, Judy Scales-Trent

Offers an international perspective on the aesthetics of socialist realism - an aesthetic that, contrary to expectations, survived the death of its originators and the demise of its original domain. This edition discusses socialist realism as it appears across genres in art, architecture, film, and literature and across geographic divides.

Global in scope, but refusing a familiar totalising theoretical framework, this title demonstrates how localised and resistant social practices - including anti-colonial and feminist struggles, peasant revolts, labour organising, and various cultural movements - challenge contemporary capitalism as a highly differentiated mode of production.

Although long considered the most distinctive American contribution to philosophy, pragmatism - with its problem-solving emphasis and its contingent view of truth - lost popularity in mid-century after the advent of World War II, the horror of the Holocaust, and the dawning of the Cold War. This work provides an introduction to pragmatism.

Approaching translation as a symbolic or material exchange among peoples and civilisations - and not as a purely linguistic or literary matter, this book includes essays that focuses on China and its interactions with the West to historicise an economy of translation.

A definite look at the state of science fiction studies today that surveys the field from Hugo Gernsbach to the present.

"Nothing that Stanley Fish writes can be ignored. In this latest work, he explodes all our comforting notions of unbiased, uninflected judgment in the pursuit of interpretation."--Annette Kolodny

A sophisticated theoretical reconsideration of Latin American studies, critiquing past work and proposing new frameworks for the discipline.

Offers an analysis of the complex relationships between history, literature, and nation-building in the modern Latin American context and also takes crucial steps toward the development of a truly comparative inter-American cultural criticism.

This monograph aims to present a new view of the history of postructuralism (heterology) and the origins of postmodernism by analyzing three French theorists: Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard and Jean-Francois Lyotard.

Views the body and media such as television, film, and the Internet, as cultural formations that operate on multiple registers of sensation beyond the reach of the reading techniques founded on the standard rhetorical and semiotic models.