Criticism of contemporary art is split by an opposition between activism and the critical function of form. Yet the deeper, more subterranean terms of art-judgment are largely neglected on both sides. These essays combine a re-examination of the terms of judgement of contemporary art with critical interpretations of individual works and exhibitions by Luis Camnitzer, Marcel Duchamp, Matias Faldbakken, Anne Imhof and Cady Noland. The book moves from philosophical issues, via the lingering shadows of medium-specificity (in photography and art music), and the changing states of museums, to analyses of the peculiar ways that works of art relate to time.To give artistic form to crisis, it is suggested, one needs to understand contemporary art's own constitutive crisis of form.

Psychoanalysis, the Body, and the Oedipal Plot is a new radical departure in psychoanalytic exposition. An attempt is made to convey, in a language accessible for people from different disciplines, some of the most difficult processes that conform our subjectivity and our concept of difference and alterity. Containing both significant theoretical material and applications of the theory to clinical psychoanalytic practice, this book offers the latest thinking on the importance of the body in psychoanalytic theory. Psychoanalysis, the Body, and the Oedipal Plot will be of interest to psychoanalysts, philosophers, and cultural theorists.

Is violent self-defense ethical? In the history of colonialism, racism, sexism, capitalism, there has long been a dividing line between bodies "worthy of defending" and those who have been disarmed and rendered defenseless. In 1685, for example, France's infamous "Code Noir" forbade slaves from carrying weapons, under penalty of the whip. In nineteenth-century Algeria, the colonial state outlawed the use of arms by Algerians, but granted French settlers the right to bear arms. Today, some lives are seen to be worth so little that Black teenagers can be shot in the back for appearing "threatening" while their killers are understood, by the state, to be justified. That those subject to the most violence have been forcibly made defenseless raises, for any movement of liberation, the question of using violence in the interest of self-defense. Here, philosopher Elsa Dorlin looks across the global history of the left - from slave revolts to the knitting women of the French Revolution and British suffragists' training in ju-jitsu, from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to the Black Panther Party, from queer neighborhood patrols to Black Lives Matter - to trace the politics, philosophy, and ethics of self defense. In this history she finds a "martial ethics of the self": a practice in which violent self defense is the only means for the oppressed to ensure survival and to build a liveable future. In this sparkling and provocative book, drawing on theorists from Thomas Hobbes to Fred Hampton, Frantz Fanon to Judith Butler, Michel Foucault to June Jordan, Dorlin has reworked the very idea of modern governance and political subjectivity. Translated from the French by Kieran Aarons.

The Dimensions of Difference departs from traditional takes on feminist film criticism, and in particular from the psychoanalytical focus on the gaze, to examine the question of sexual difference through three axes: space, time, and bodies. These are some of the most fundamental elements of cinema, which deploys the bodies of actors through space and time, for instance, through camerawork and editing. While this approach may not at first sight seem to be related to questions of gender and sexuality, Caroline Godart demonstrates its relevance to feminist film studies by weaving together careful analyses of space, time, and bodies in women's cinema with close readings of the same concepts in the works of three philosophers: Luce Irigaray, Henri Bergson, and Gilles Deleuze. The book investigates how certain films generate a cinematic experience of sexual difference, and frames this analysis within a careful philosophical inquiry into the notion of alterity itself. These tools provide fruitful resources for feminist inquiry, giving insights into sexual difference as it operates within film aesthetics and, beyond cinema, in the world at large. The result is a compelling reflection on feminism, film form, and continental philosophy.

Human Capital in Gender and Development addresses timely feminist debates about the relationship between feminism, neoliberalism, and international development. The book engages with human capital theory, a labour economics theory associated with the Chicago School that now animates a wide range of political and economic governance. The book argues that human capital theory has been instrumental in constructing an economistic vision of gender equality as a tool for economic growth, and girls and women of the global South as the quintessential entrepreneurs of the post-global financial crisis era. The book's critique of human capital theory and its role in Gender and Development gives insights into the kinds of development interventions that typify the 'Gender Equality as Smart Economics' agenda of the World Bank and other international development institutions. From the World Bank, to NGOs, and private businesses, discourses about the economic benefits of gender equality and women's empowerment underpin a range of development interventions that aim to unlock the 'untapped' potential of the world's women. Its implications are both conceptual and material, producing more interventionist forms of development governance, increased power by private sector actors in development, and de-politicization of gender equality issues. Human Capital in Gender and Development will be of particular interest to feminist scholars in Politics, International Relations, Development Studies, and Human Geography. It will also be a useful resource for teaching key debates about feminism, neoliberalism, and international development.

Jean-Luc Nancy stands as one of the great French theorists of "deconstruction." His writings on philosophy, politics, aesthetics, and religion have significantly contributed to the development of contemporary French thought and helped shape and transform the field of continental philosophy. Through Nancy's immense oeuvre, which covers a wide range of topics such as community, freedom, existence, sense/ touch, democracy, Christianity, the visual arts and music, and writing itself, we have learned to take stock of the world in a more nuanced fashion. In this collection, contemporaries of Nancy and eminent scholars of continental philosophy, including Giorgio Agamben, Etienne Balibar, Ginette Michaud, Georges Van Den Abbeele, Gregg Lambert and Ian James, have been invited to reflect on the force of Nancy's "deconstruction" and how it has affected, or will affect, the ways we approach many of the most pertinent topics in contemporary philosophy. The collection also includes Jean-Luc Nancy's previously unpublished 'Dialogue Beneath the Ribs', where he reflects, twenty years after, on his heart transplant. Nancy Now will be of critical interest not only to scholars working on or with Nancy's philosophy, but also to those interested in the development and future of French thought.

It has been nearly two centuries since Marx famously turned Hegel on his head in order to repurpose dialectics as a revolutionary way of thinking about the internal contradictions of our social relations. Despite critiques from post-structuralists, post-colonialists, and others, there has been a resurgence of dialectical thought among political theorists as of late. This resurgence has coincided with a rise in the mention of words like class warfare, socialism, and communism among the general public on the streets of Seattle in 1999, in Cairo's Tahrir Square, in the actions of the Greek anarchists and the Spanish indignados, and in the rallying cry of "we are the 99%" of the Occupy Movement, and in academia. This book explores how it is that dialectical thought might respond to the critiques brought forth by those on the left who are critical of Marxism's universalizing and authoritarian legacy. Brian C. Lovato singles out Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as the key interlocutors in this ongoing conversation between Marxism and post-structuralism. Laclau and Mouffe argue that Marxist theory is inherently authoritarian, cannot escape a class-reductionist theory of revolutionary subjectivity, and is bound by a closed Hegelian ontology. Lovato argues the opposite by turning to two heterodox Marxist thinkers, Raya Dunayevskaya and C. L. R. James, in order to construct a radically democratic, dynamic, and open conceptualization of dialectical thought. In doing so, he advances a vision of Marxist theory that might serve as a resource to scholars and activists committed not only to combatting capitalism, but also to fighting against colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and heteronormativity. The writings of Dunayevskaya and James allow for Marxism to become relevant again in these tumultuous early years of the 21st century.

Foucault lived in Tunisia for two years and travelled to Japan and Iran more than once. Yet throughout his critical scholarship, he insisted that the cultures of the "Orient" constitute the "limit" of Western rationality. Using archival research supplemented by interviews with key scholars in Tunisia, Japan and France, this book examines the philosophical sources, evolution as well as contradictions of Foucault's experience with non-Western cultures. Beyond tracing Foucault's journey into the world of otherness, the book reveals the personal, political as well as methodological effects of a radical conception of cultural difference that extolled the local over the cosmopolitan.

The aim at the core of this book is a synthesis of increasingly popular and culturally significant forms of digital literature on the one hand, and established literary and critical theory on the other: reading digital texts through the lens of canonical theory, but also reading this more traditional theory through the lens of digital texts and related media. In a field which has often regarded the digital as apart from traditional literature and theory, this book highlights continuities in order to analyse digital literature as part of a longer literary tradition. Using examples from social media to video games and works particularly by postmodern and poststructuralist theorists, Digital Literature and Critical Theory contextualises digital forms among their analogue precursors and traces ongoing social developments which find expression in these cultural phenomena, including power dynamics between authors and readers, the individual in (post-)modernity, consumerism, and the potential for intersubjective exchange.

This edited volume brings together leading international researchers from across the social sciences to examine the theoretical premises, methodological options and critical potentials of the Essex School of discourse analysis, founded on the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. In doing so, it presents a clear picture of a poststructuralist and post-foundational research program to postdisciplinary discourse research. Divided into three parts, it begins by elaborating the ontological, theoretical and methodological foundations of the Essex School's approach to discourse analysis. The second part provides empirical case studies showing how the Essex School research program informs and instructs empirical discourse research. In the concluding third part authors explain how and with what possible consequences this strand of discourse research contributes to social practices of critique. It offers a crucial contribution to the further methodologization and operationalization of the Essex School's approach so as to make it a viable alternative to discourse-analytical approaches that take dominant positions in today's 'field of discourse studies'. The book's transdisciplinary focus will attract readers who use discourse analysis in all areas of the social sciences and humanities, particularly applied linguistics, cultural anthropology, sociology, philosophy and history.

This collection brings together the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and the rich tradition of American pragmatist thought, taking seriously the commitment to pluralism at the heart of both. Contributors explore in novel ways Deleuze's explicit references to pragmatism, and examine the philosophical significance of a number of points at which Deleuze's philosophy converges with, or diverges from, the work of leading pragmatists. The papers of the first part of the volume take as their focus Deleuze's philosophical relationship to classical pragmatism and the work of Peirce, James and Dewey. Particular areas of focus include theories of signs, metaphysics, perspectivism, experience, the transcendental and democracy. The papers comprising the second half of the volume are concerned with developing critical encounters between Deleuze's work and the work of contemporary pragmatists such as Rorty, Brandom, Price, Shusterman and others. Issues addressed include antirepresentationalism, constructivism, politics, objectivity, naturalism, affect, human finitude and the nature and value of philosophy itself. With contributions by internationally recognized specialists in both poststructuralist and pragmatist thought, the collection is certain to enrich Deleuze scholarship, enliven discussion in pragmatist circles, and contribute in significant ways to contemporary philosophical debate.

The Anti-Oedipus Complex critically explores the post-'68 dramatic developments in Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis and cultural theory. Beginning with the decline of patriarchy and the master, exemplified by Freud's paean for the Father, the revolutionary path was blown wide open by anti-psychiatry, schizoanalysis and radical politics, the complex antinomies of which are traced here in detail with the help of philosophers such as Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Levinas, Steiner, Zizek, Badiou, Derrida and Girard, as well as theologians, analysts, writers, musicians and film makers. In this book, Rob Weatherill, starting from the clinic, considers the end of hierarchies, the loss of the Other, new subjectivities, so-called 'creative destruction', the power of negative thinking, revolutionary action, divine violence and new forms of extreme control. Where does this leave the psychoanalytic clinic - adrift in postmodern indifference? Does the engagement of the Radical Orthodoxy movement offer some hope? Or should we re-situate psychoanalysis within a 'genealogy of responsibility' (Patocka / Derrida) as it emerges out of the sacred demonic, via Plato and Christianity? The Anti-Oedipus Complex will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, counsellors, social workers and scholars in critical theory, philosophy, cultural theory, literary theory and theology.

Reading Architecture with Freud and Lacan methodically outlines key concepts in psychoanalytic discourse by reading them against key modern and post-modern architects. It begins with what is arguably, the central concept for each discipline, by putting the unconscious in a dialectic relation to space. The text is cyclical, episodic, cloudlike, rather than expository; the intention is not simply to explain the concept of the unconscious but, to different degrees, perform it in the text. Psychoanalysis is one of the great humanist discourses of the 20th Century. This book will be of interest to the humanist in architects, planners, social scientists, whether they are students, professionals, or amateurs.

Reading Architecture with Freud and Lacan methodically outlines key concepts in psychoanalytic discourse by reading them against key modern and post-modern architects. It begins with what is arguably, the central concept for each discipline, by putting the unconscious in a dialectic relation to space. The text is cyclical, episodic, cloudlike, rather than expository; the intention is not simply to explain the concept of the unconscious but, to different degrees, perform it in the text. Psychoanalysis is one of the great humanist discourses of the 20th Century. This book will be of interest to the humanist in architects, planners, social scientists, whether they are students, professionals, or amateurs.

Del Loewenthal's career has been wide-ranging, spanning existentialism, psychoanalysis, critical psychotherapy, humanism, postmodernism, phototherapy, cognitive behaviour therapy and childhood studies. This collection combines new and recent works with earlier writings, drawing together his outstanding research and contribution to existential theory, practice and research. Containing chapters and papers chosen by Loewenthal himself, the book is divided into the following sections: * Existentialism after postmodernism and the psychological therapies * Practice, ideologies and politics: Now you see it, now you don't! * Practice, practice issues and the nature of psychotherapeutic knowledge * Practice and theory: Implications not applications * Thoughtful practice and research * Conclusion: Hopefully unending, continually changing and astonishing After an introduction to the overall book, each section is accompanied by the author's exploration of his further thoughts on the pieces, his own subsequent learning and his comments on developments in the field since the time of writing. Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling after Postmodernism will be inspiring reading for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, counsellors, other mental health professionals in general, and existential therapists in particular.

Few studies of Foucault have examined his thought from a sustained interdisciplinary perspective. Through the interpretative prism of the concept of the 'Totality of Reason', this book suggests an original analytical reading of Foucault's thought. This book addresses Foucault's characterizations of the Enlightenment, asking whether the developmental history of the modern conception of knowledge - from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment - warrants the conclusion he draws. From the perspective of a critical evaluation of Foucault's thesis on 'the crisis of modernity', the book examines whether Foucault, the philosophical and social critic, truly belongs to those intellectual trends known as a 'deconstruction' and 'post-modernism' that advocate a wholesale rejection of the project of modernity, demonstrating how a classification of this kind contributes to an impoverishment of our understanding of Foucault's thought. This book will attract the attention of readers interested in Foucault, and what is broadly perceived to be the 'crisis of modernity'. It will appeal to scholars and advanced students of sociology, political philosophy and political science, psychology, philosophy, interdisciplinary studies and cultural studies.

In recent years, the terms "ethics," "politics," "performativity," and "experience" have proliferated throughout the discourse of the humanities. However, it is rarely noted that their contemporary understanding has been shaped by the works of Jacques Derrida, who has employed all these concepts since the mid-1960s. The aim of this book is to present the lesser discussed topics of Derrida's thought - not only as the creator of a specific mode of interpretation called "deconstruction" but also as an initiator of recent ethical and political reflection, a pioneer of performatics, and a precursor of current research on experience. At the same time, the book provides a panorama of the most important changes in the humanities of the last thirty years, and in particular - the ethical, performative, and empirical turns.

Systems of Life offers a wide-ranging revaluation of the emergence of biopolitics in Europe from the mid- eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. In staging an encounter among literature, political economy, and the still emergent sciences of life in that historical moment, the essays collected here reopen the question of how concepts of animal, vegetable, and human life, among other biological registers, had an impact on the Enlightenment project of thinking politics and economics as a joint enterprise. The volume's contributors consider politics, economics, and the biological as distinct, semi-autonomous spheres whose various combinations required inventive, sometimes incomplete, acts of conceptual mediation, philosophical negotiation, disciplinary intervention, or aesthetic representation.

Jacques Derrida's final seminars were devoted to animal life and political sovereignty-the connection being that animals slavishly adhere to the law while kings and gods tower above it and that this relationship reveals much about humanity in the West. David Farrell Krell offers a detailed account of these seminars, placing them in the context of Derrida's late work and his critique of Heidegger. Krell focuses his discussion on questions such as death, language, and animality. He concludes that Heidegger and Derrida share a commitment to finding new ways of speaking and thinking about human and animal life. -- Indiana University Press

The 'theological turn' in continental philosophy and the 'turn to Paul' in political philosophy have occasioned a return to radical theology, a tradition whose philosophical heritage can be traced to the death of God announced in the work of Nietzsche and Hegel. John D. Caputo's deconstructive theology and Slavoj Zizek's materialist theology are two radical theologies that explore what it might mean to pass through the death of God and to abandon this experience as specifically Christian. Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity demonstrates how these theologies are transforming everyday religious practices through an examination of the work of Peter Rollins and Kester Brewin, two figures at the radical margins of a contemporary expression of Western religiosity called emerging Christianity. The author uses her analysis of all four figures to argue that deconstructive practices can enable religious communities to become part of a wider materialist collective in which the death of God continues to resonate. Pushing the methodological boundaries of philosophy of religion by examining religious practices as the site of philosophical signification, the book challenges scholars and practitioners alike to a new and more demanding dialogue between theory and practice.

In Australia, the US, England, Scotland, Italy, France and in Egypt there have been repetitive calls to legislate against the practices of female circumcision described as female genital mutilation. But in western countries where anti-female genital mutilation legislation has been passed there has been little or no consultation with the communities in which the practices occur: documents are published only in English, and community responses are ignored or simply deemed biased or irrelevant. Opportunities for dialogue quickly turn into opportunities for education and legislation about the unacceptability of the practices. But why are communities denied their capacity to speak and influence political opinion and legal decision making? Why in an era of human rights, which heralds the importance of self-determination, freedom of expression and women's participation in political arenas, are women from these communities unable to engage in dialogue on this practice? Law's Cut on the Body of Human Rights considers how such assertive legislative responses, and this lack of curiosity and consultation with communities, points to a particular liberal investment the practices called female genital mutilation and what they signify. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, Juliet Rogers examines the language of recent statutes and, where relevant, some of the accompanying policies and broader media debates, Female genital mutilation, she argues, elicits such a singular legal response insofar as it embodies that subjectivity against which the very subject of liberal law is imagined - and only imagined - to exist: in a state of non-mutilation, non-prohibition or, in a psychoanalytic idiom, non-castration.

This is a semiotic study of a corpus of texts that Kumarajiva (344-413 CE), Paramartha (499~569 CE) and Xuanzang (599~664 CE) transmitted from India to China, featuring a critical reading of the Dazhidu Lun (T1509, Maha-Prajnaparamita-upadeua-Uastra), San Wuxing Lun (T1617, Try-asvabhava-prakara.na), and Guangbai Lun (T1571, Catu.huataka-uastra-karika). Focusing its attention on the Mahayana Buddhist notion of samata, it identifies a Buddhist semiotics which anticipates Derrida's invocation of the notion of the Same in his deconstruction of binary oppositions.

Originally published in English in 1971, structuralism was an increasingly important method of analysis in disciplines as diverse as mathematics, physics, biology, psychology, linguistics, sociology, anthropology and philosophy. Piaget here offers both a definitive introduction to the method and a brilliant critique of the principal structuralist positions. He explains and evaluates the work of the main people at work in the field - Claude Levi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, Talcott Parsons, Noam Chomsky - and concludes that structuralism has a rich and fruitful future ahead of it. An indispensable work for serious students and working scholars in almost every field, the book is also an important addition to Piaget's life-long study of the relationship of language and thought.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.