Critical Theory And The Classical World

This book radically re-examines Europe’s imaginaries of its origin in the ancient Greek world. Extracting central concepts of critical theory in its widest sense - beyond the Frankfurt School - like the human, force, spirit and domination, it allies them to characters, mythologies and motifs in ancient thought. Just as the stories of Achilles, Helen and Odysseus have become central to our modes of self-understanding, so we can also examine the roots and routes of the concepts of social theory out of the ancient earth and its myths. An important book for scholars and students of critical theory, social theory, aesthetic theory and the history of the human sciences, it alerts us to the catastrophe that we are facing in the 21st century - a catastrophe of domination and ecological collapse that has its origins in the ancient world and the ways in which it began to define a certain sense of humanness. Considering the artistic production of the ancient world in relation to the thought of Adorno, Critical Theory and the Classical World argues that it is only by understanding the persistence of the haunted motifs of the past into the present that we can begin to re-forge our critical theory of society and re-found our social formations on a new basis.

In recent decades the study of literature in Europe and the Americas has been profoundly influenced by modern critical theory in its various forms, whether Structuralism or Deconstructionism, Hermeneutics, Reader-Response Theory or Rezeptionsästhetik, Semiotics or Narratology, Marxist, feminist, neo-historical, psychoanalytical or other perspectives. Whilst the value and validity of such approaches to literature is still a matter of some dispute, not least among classical scholars, they have had a substantial impact on the study both of classical literatures and of the mentalité of Greece and Rome. In an attempt to clarify issues in the debate, the eleven contributors to this volume were asked to produce a representative collection of essays to illustrate the applicability of some of the new approaches to Greek and Latin authors or literary forms and problems. The scope of the volume was deliberately limited to literary investigation, broadly construed, of Greek and Roman authors. Broader areas of the history and culture of the ancient world impinge in the essays, but are not their central focus. The volume also contains a separate bibliography, offering for the first time a complete bibliography of classical studies which incorporate modern critical theory.

Critical Social Theory and the End of Work examines the development and sociological significance of the idea that work is being eliminated through the use of advanced production technology. Granter’s engagement with the work of key American and European figures such as Marx, Marcuse, Gorz, Habermas and Negri, focuses his arguments for the abolition of labour as a response to the current socio-historical changes affecting our work ethic and consumer ideology. By combining history of ideas with social theory, this book considers how the 'end of work' thesis has developed and has been critically implemented in the analysis of modern society. This book will appeal to scholars of sociology, history of ideas, social and cultural theory as well as those working in the fields of critical management and sociology of work.

This book treads new paths through the labyrinths of our human thought. It meanders through the darkness to encounter the monsters at the heart of the maze: Minotaurs, Centaurs, Automata, Makers, Humans. One part of our human thought emerges from classical Ionia and Greek civilisation more generally. We obsessively return to that thought, tread again its pathways, re-enact its stories, repeat its motifs and gestures. We return time and time again to construct and re-construct the beings which were part of its cosmology and mythology - stories enacted from a classical world which is itself at once imaginary and material. The "Never Never Lands" of the ancient world contain fabulous beasts and humans and landscapes of desire and violence. We encounter the rioting Centaurs there and never again cease to conjure them up time and time again through our history. The Centaur mythologies display a fascination with animals and what binds and divides human beings from them. The Centaur hints ultimately at the idea of the genesis of civilisation itself. The Labyrinth, constructed by Daedalus, is itself a prison and a way of thinking about making, designing, and human aspiration. Designed by humans it offers mysteries that would be repeated time and time again - a motif which is replicated through human history. Daedalus himself is an archetype for creation and mastery, the designer of artefacts and machines which would be the beginning of forays into the total domination of nature. Centaurs, Labyrinths, Automata offer clues to the origins and ultimately the futures of humanity and what might come after it. Martyn Hudson is the coordinator of the Co-Curate North East digital archives and machines project at Newcastle University in the School of Arts and Cultures, as well as a Lecturer in Art and Design History. He has published widely in landscape, history, music, and archives. His book The Slave Ship, Memory and the Origin of Modernity was published by Routledge in 2016, and he has two other books forthcoming from Routledge: Ghosts, Landscapes and Social Memory and Species and Machines: The Human Subjugation of Nature.

This 2005 book is a critical examination of Michel Foucault's relation to ancient Greek thought, in particular his famous analysis of Greek history of sexuality. Wolfgang Detel offers an understanding of Foucault's theories of power and knowledge based on modern analytical theories of science and concepts of power. He offers a complex reading of the texts which Foucault discusses, covering topics such as Aristotle's ethics and theory of sex, Hippocratic dietetics, the earliest treatises on economics, and Plato's theory of love. The result is a philosophically rich and probing critique of Foucault's later writings, and a persuasive account of the relation between ethics, power and knowledge in classical antiquity. His book will have a wide appeal to readers interested in Foucault and in Greek thought and culture.

The study of women in Graeco-Roman antiquity has a long history but many recent developments-prominent among which are the rise of feminist theory and theoretical and interpretive work in material culture-have transformed approaches to the study of women's lived experiences in antiquity. This four-volume collection brings together the best scholarship that has both established the field and moved it forward. The articles collected here are interdisciplinary, bringing into conversation the full range of evidence for women in the classical world: historical, literary, legal, medical, inscriptional, mythic, artistic (e.g., sculpture, frescoes, paintings, terracottas), and the material found in archaeological excavations, including evidence from burials, finds from houses, and the remains of food processing and textile production. Ideology is relevant to each volume, as both Greek and Roman societies had highly developed ideologies and cultural ideals that exercised profound and pervasive influence over women's lives. Social class is implicated in these ideologies in ways that are made evident in every genre of source material. Edited by two of the leading scholars in the field, this set presents in one reference source a complete picture of women in Ancient Greece and Rome, based on a vast of array of sources. This material has not been collected together in one place before.

First published in 1957, Literary Criticism: A Short History traces our aesthetic heritage from its classical origins up to the contemporary state of criticism in the English-speaking world. Divided into four volumes, each book adopts a fair and objective position in the presentation of various critical positions, and each critical theory is considered not only in competition with other critical theories, but also in vital dialectic with the creative literature of its own time. Volume One focuses on Classical criticism, exploring Socrates and the Rhapsode, poetry as structure, tragedy and comedy, Roman classicism, and some Medieval themes.

By offering fluent, accurate translations of extracts and fragments from a wide assortment of ancient texts, this volume allows a comprehensive overview of ancient Greek and Roman concepts of otherness, as well as Greek and Roman views of non-Greeks and non-Romans. A general introduction, thorough annotation, maps, a select bibliography, and an index are also included.