The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader

The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader PDF Author: Sandra G. Harding
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415945011
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Theory of the Subject

Theory of the Subject PDF Author: Alain Badiou
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826496733
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 824

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Book Description
Badiou is widely considered to be France's most important and exciting contemporary thinker. Much of Badiou's earlier work (including Being and Event) can only be fully understood with a clear grasp of Theory of the Subject, one of his most important works.

Lacanian Theory of Discourse

Lacanian Theory of Discourse PDF Author: Mark Bracher
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814712991
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
This collection introduces and develops Lacanian thought concerning the relations among language, subjectivity, and society. Lacanian Theory of Discourse provides an account of how language both interacts with and constitutes structures of subjectivity, producing specific attitudes and behaviors as well as significant social effects.

Death and Mastery

Death and Mastery PDF Author: Benjamin Y. Fong
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542615
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
The first philosophers of the Frankfurt School famously turned to the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud to supplement their Marxist analyses of ideological subjectification. Since the collapse of their proposed "marriage of Marx and Freud," psychology and social theory have grown apart to the impoverishment of both. Returning to this union, Benjamin Y. Fong reconstructs the psychoanalytic "foundation stone" of critical theory in an effort to once again think together the possibility of psychic and social transformation. Drawing on the work of Hans Loewald and Jacques Lacan, Fong complicates the famous antagonism between Eros and the death drive in reference to a third term: the woefully undertheorized drive to mastery. Rejuvenating Freudian metapsychology through the lens of this pivotal concept, he then provides fresh perspective on Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse's critiques of psychic life under the influence of modern cultural and technological change. The result is a novel vision of critical theory that rearticulates the nature of subjection in late capitalism and renews an old project of resistance.

Signifiers and Acts

Signifiers and Acts PDF Author: Ed Pluth
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791479374
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
In Signifiers and Acts, Ed Pluth examines Lacan's views on language and sexuality to argue that Lacan's theory of the subject is best read as a theory of freedom and agency—a theory that is especially compelling precisely because of its structuralist and seemingly antihumanist framework. Presenting new aspects of Lacan's work and commenting extensively on the important yet unpublished seminars that still make up the majority of his contribution to contemporary thought, the book aims to make a Lacanian intervention into contemporary theory. In addition to Saussure, Sartre, Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Nancy, Pluth discusses works in political theory and identity theory by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, and Slavoj Zðizûek.

Feeling in Theory

Feeling in Theory PDF Author: Rei Terada
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674044290
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Because emotion is assumed to depend on subjectivity, the "death of the subject" described in recent years by theorists such as Derrida, de Man, and Deleuze would also seem to mean the death of feeling. This revolutionary work transforms the burgeoning interdisciplinary debate on emotion by suggesting, instead, a positive relation between the "death of the subject" and the very existence of emotion. Reading the writings of Derrida and de Man--theorists often seen as emotionally contradictory and cold--Terada finds grounds for construing emotion as nonsubjective. This project offers fresh interpretations of deconstruction's most important texts, and of Continental and Anglo-American philosophers from Descartes to Deleuze and Dennett. At the same time, it revitalizes poststructuralist theory by deploying its methodologies in a new field, the philosophy of emotion, to reach a startling conclusion: if we really were subjects, we would have no emotions at all. Engaging debates in philosophy, literary criticism, psychology, and cognitive science from a poststructuralist and deconstructive perspective, Terada's work is essential for the renewal of critical thought in our day.

Language and Materialism

Language and Materialism PDF Author: Rosalind Coward
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134997248
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
First published in 1977, this book presents a comprehensive and lucid guide through the labyrinths of semiology and structuralism — perhaps the most significant systems of study to have been developed in the twentieth century. The authors describe the early presuppositions of structuralism and semiology which claim to be a materialist theory of language based on Saussure’s notion of the sign. They show how these presuppositions have been challenged by work following Althusser’s development of the Marxist theory of ideology, and by Lacan’s re-reading of Freud. The book explains how the encounter of two disciplines — psychoanalysis and Marxism — on the ground of their common problem —language — has produced a new understanding of society and its subjects. It produces a critical re-examination of the traditional Marxist theory of ideology, together with the concepts of sign and identity of the subject.

Transitional Subjects

Transitional Subjects PDF Author: Amy Allen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231544782
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Critical social theory has long been marked by a deep, creative, and productive relationship with psychoanalysis. Whereas Freud and Fromm were important cornerstones for the early Frankfurt School, recent thinkers have drawn on the object-relations school of psychoanalysis. Transitional Subjects is the first book-length collection devoted to the engagement of critical theory with the work of Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and other members of this school. Featuring contributions from some of the leading figures working in both of these fields, including Axel Honneth, Joel Whitebook, Noëlle McAfee, Sara Beardsworth, and C. Fred Alford, it provides a synoptic overview of current research at the intersection of these two theoretical traditions while also opening up space for further innovations. Transitional Subjects offers a range of perspectives on the critical potential of object-relations psychoanalysis, including feminist and Marxist views, to offer valuable insight into such fraught social issues as aggression, narcissism, “progress,” and torture. The productive dialogue that emerges augments our understanding of the self as intersubjectively and socially constituted and of contemporary “social pathologies.” Transitional Subjects shows how critical theory and object-relations psychoanalysis, considered together, have not only enriched critical theory but also invigorated psychoanalysis.

Alain Badiou: Live Theory

Alain Badiou: Live Theory PDF Author: Oliver Feltham
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441148787
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Alain Badiou is undoubtedly the most exciting and influential voice in contemporary French philosophy and one of the most important theorists at work today. His impact on continental philosophy and the wider philosophy community, politics and the arts in the last twenty years has been immense. Alain Badiou: Live Theory offers a concise and accessible introduction to his work and thought, laying out the central themes of his major works, including his magnum opus, Being and Event, and its long-awaited sequel, Logics of Worlds. Oliver Feltham explores the fundamental questions through which Badiou's philosophy constantly evolves, identifies the key turning points in his ideas, and makes a clear case for the coherence and powerful singularity of his thought when employed in the analysis of political and artistic situations. Feltham examines the thinkers and theorists with whom Badiou has engaged and who have engaged with him, arguing that Badiou's work is compelling precisely because it opens up new genealogies and new polemics in the intellectual landscape. The book includes a brand new interview with Badiou, in which he discusses his current concerns and future plans. This is the ideal companion to study for students and readers encountering this fascinating thinker for the first time.

Agent, Person, Subject, Self

Agent, Person, Subject, Self PDF Author: Paul Kockelman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199926980
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
This book offers both a naturalistic and critical theory of signs, minds, and meaning-in-the-world. It provides a reconstructive rather than deconstructive theory of the individual, one which both analytically separates and theoretically synthesizes a range of faculties that are often confused and conflated: agency (understood as a causal capacity), subjectivity (understood as a representational capacity), selfhood (understood as a reflexive capacity), and personhood (understood as a sociopolitical capacity attendant on being an agent, subject, or self). It argues that these facilities are best understood from a semiotic stance that supersedes the usual intentional stance. And, in so doing, it offers a pragmatism-grounded approach to meaning and mediation that is general enough to account for processes that are as embodied and embedded as they are articulated and enminded. In particular, while this theory is focused on human-specific modes of meaning, it also offers a general theory of meaning, such that the agents, subjects and selves in question need not always, or even usually, map onto persons. And while this theory foregrounds agents, persons, subjects and selves, it does this by theorizing processes that often remain in the background of such (often erroneously) individuated figures: ontologies (akin to culture, but generalized across agentive collectivities), interaction (not only between people, but also between people and things, and anything outside or in-between), and infrastructure (akin to context, but generalized to include mediation at any degree of remove).

The Subject of Change

The Subject of Change PDF Author: Alain Badiou
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780988517028
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
Alain Badiou occupies the place of the teacher whose primary responsibility rests on the transmission of tradition. The transmission occurs as a consequence of the teacher, the master, the professor, or, as it happens, the old man. Clearly, Badiou occupies all of these roles. However, what concerns us today is that he is an old man and that the old man is the man who is approaching death. In fact, he does not shy away from this designation. Rather, he acknowledges this point with a smile: "Do not say that I am really a young man because it is not true. I know that I am seventy-five years old." Our teacher is fully aware that he is at the "beginning of the last straight line of life." The possibility of the death of the old man necessitates a thinking about the preservation of the transmission of the future. The Subject of Change is a sustained engagement with the concept of change. The questions it asks include: what is a change?, what is a true change?, is change better than immobility?, what are the different types of change?, and, finally, what is the localization of change?