Authors: Madan Sarup
ISBN-13: 9780820315317, ISBN-10: 0820315311
Format: Paperback
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Date Published: June 1993
Edition: Second Edition
Madan Sarup taught at the South Bank University, London. His publications include The Politics of Multiracial Education (1986), Education and the Ideologies of Racism (1991), and Jacques Lacan (1992).
Madan Sarup has now revised his accessible and popular introduction to post-structuralist and postmodern theory. A new introductory section discusses the meaning of such concepts as modernity, postmodernity, modernization, modernism, and postmodernism. A section on feminist criticism of Lacan and Foucault has been added, together with a new chapter on French feminist theory focusing on the work of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva.
The chapter on postmodernism has been significantly expanded to include a discussion of Lyotard's language games and his use of the category "sublime." This chapter ends with a discussion of the relationship between feminism and postmodernism. A further chapter has been added on the work of Jean Baudrillard, a cult figure on the current postmodernist scene, whose ideas have attained a wide currency. The chapter includes a new section on postmodern cultural practices as revealed in architecture, TV, video, and film. Suggestions for further reading are now listed at the end of each chapter and are upgraded and annotated.
In tracing the impact of post-structuralist thought not only on literary criticism but on such disciplines as philosophy, politics, psychoanalysis, the social sciences, and art, this book will be essential reading for those who want a clear and incisive introduction to the theories that continue to have widespread influence.
Preface to the second edition | ||
Acknowledgements | ||
Introduction | 1 | |
1 | Lacan and psychoanalysis | 5 |
Self and language | 10 | |
Self and identity | 12 | |
Freud and Lacan | 14 | |
Hegel and Lacan | 17 | |
The sense of loss | 21 | |
The imaginary, the symbolic and the real | 24 | |
Some criticisms of Lacan | 26 | |
2 | Derrida and deconstruction | 32 |
The instability of language | 32 | |
Phonocentrism-logocentrism | 34 | |
Rousseau and Levi-Strauss | 38 | |
Freud and Lacan | 42 | |
Nietzsche and metaphor | 45 | |
Understanding metaphor | 47 | |
The politics of metaphor | 48 | |
Deconstruction and Marxism | 50 | |
3 | Foucault and the social sciences | 58 |
Introduction: Foucault's view of history | 58 | |
Reason and unreason | 59 | |
A struggle over meaning | 65 | |
Disciplinary power | 66 | |
Technical rationality | 69 | |
Sexuality and power | 70 | |
Power and knowledge | 73 | |
Foucault and Althusser | 75 | |
Foucault's critique of Marxism | 78 | |
Some criticisms of Foucault's work | 80 | |
4 | Some currents within post-structuralism | 90 |
Nietzsche contra Hegel | 90 | |
Deleuze and Guattari: the return to the imaginary | 93 | |
Prisoners of discourse | 97 | |
The celebration of intensity | 99 | |
The 'new philosophers' | 101 | |
5 | Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: French feminist theories | 109 |
Helene Cixous | 109 | |
Luce Irigaray | 116 | |
Julia Kristeva | 122 | |
6 | Lyotard and postmodernism | 129 |
Introduction: meanings and characteristics | 129 | |
Postmodernism | 131 | |
The postmodern condition | 132 | |
Narrative knowledge and scientific knowledge | 135 | |
The mercantilization of knowledge | 138 | |
Bourgeois art and its function in society | 139 | |
The main features of the avant-garde | 141 | |
Modernism and postmodernism | 143 | |
The main features of postmodernism | 144 | |
Totality or fragmentation | 147 | |
On language games and the sublime | 150 | |
Some criticisms of Lyotard's work | 152 | |
Feminism and postmodernism | 155 | |
7 | Baudrillard and some cultural practices | 161 |
Baudrillard | 161 | |
Some postmodernist cultural practices | 168 | |
Conclusion | 178 | |
Notes | 188 | |
Index | 202 |