Literary Theory S Future S

In this book, first published in 1989, twenty-give eminent critics and theorists write about different aspects of literary theory. These essays represent leading research in psychoanalytic criticism, new historicism, Continental theory, feminism, Afro-American studies, philosophy, cybernetics, aesthetics, and other theoretical inflections. The result is a collective statement on the course that lies ahead for criticism in the humanities, and will be of interest to students of literary theory.

Reinvigorating critical theory by extending its range and its intellectual trajectories through strategies of inclusiveness that respect and build on parallel traditions, the authors reinterpret Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Heidegger in relation to central figures and themes of critical theory.

This study presents a critique of social constructionist identity politics, which is distinguished from specific identity-based political positions, from within and with social constructionist commitments. Gupta examines the institutionalization of social constructionist identity politics in literary studies, considering the notions of canonicity.

This collection analyses the future of ‘trauma theory’, a major theoretical discourse in contemporary criticism and theory. The chapters advance the current state of the field by exploring new areas, asking new questions and making new connections. Part one, History and Culture, begins by developing trauma theory in its more familiar post-deconstructive mode and explores how these insights might still be productive. It goes on, via a critique of existing positions, to relocate trauma theory in a postcolonial and globalized world, theoretically, aesthetically and materially, and focuses on non-Western accounts and understandings of trauma, memory and suffering. Part two, Politics and Subjectivity, turns explicitly to politics and subjectivity, focussing on the state and the various forms of subjection to which it gives rise, and on human rights, biopolitics and community. Each chapter, in different ways, advocates a movement beyond the sort of texts and concepts that are the usual focus for trauma criticism and moves this dynamic network of ideas forward. With contributions from an international selection of leading critics and thinkers from the US and Europe, this volume will be a key critical intervention in one of the most important areas in contemporary literary criticism and theory.

Theory After Theory provides an overview of developments in literary theory after 1950. It is intended both as a handbook for readers to learn about theory and an intellectual history of the recent past in literary criticism for those interested in seeing how it fits in with the larger culture. Accessible but rigorous, this book provides a wealth of historical and intellectual context that allows the reader to make sense of the movements in recent literary theory.

This book retraces the formation of modern English Studies by departing from philological scholarship along two lines: in terms of institutional histories and in terms of the separation of literary criticism and linguistics.

New Critical Theory surveys contemporary leftist thought while introducing the tenets of this new form of critical theory. Beginning with an exploration of the relationship between Marxism, Habermas, and the politics of identity, William S. Wilkerson and Jeffrey R. Paris present a collection that critiques the globalization of capital. The development of personality appears as subject to socialized standards in an age of global capitalism. Only after scrutinizing the effects of such a system can liberation be found. The essays within join Critical Theory with postmodern insights on language and subjectivity to provide a more comprehensive view of emancipatory social theory. Through this and other refelctions on critical race, gender, and queer theories, Wilkerson and Paris emerge with an encompassing volume defining New Critical Theory.