Transcending Postmodernism

Contemporary philosophy is torn between a reliance on the pragmatic meanings of designated objects and a foundation based on formal theory. This book shows that philosophical knowledge, which no more has a terminal state than an infinite set has a last term, advances when the dialectical relationship between the two approaches is synthesized. The choice of designations is intimately related to theory and the form of theory is intimately related to the character of designated objects. The intimate dialectical relationship between theory and meaning is explored in detail in the area of international theory. The recent emphasis on realism rests on a regressive misunderstanding of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice that loses Newton's acute understanding of it, an understanding that underlies the great advances of physics, and that is lost in the contemporary social sciences.

Transcending the Postmodern: The Singular Response of Literature to the Transmodern Paradigm gathers an introduction and ten chapters concerned with the issue of Transmodernity as addressed by and presented in contemporary novels hailing from various parts of the English-speaking world. Building on the theories of Transmodernity propounded by Rosa María Rodríguez Magda, Enrique Dussel, Marc Luyckx Ghisi and Irena Ateljevic, inter alia, it investigates the links between Transmodernity and such categories as Postmodernity, Postcolonialism and Transculturalism with a view to help define a new current in contemporary literary production. The chapters either follow the main theoretical drives of the transmodern paradigm or problematise them. In so doing, they branch out towards various issues that have come to inspire contemporary novelists, among which: the presence of the past, the ascendance of new technologies, multiculturalism, terrorism, and also vulnerability, interdependence, solidarity and ecology in a globalised context. In so doing, it interrogates the ethics, aesthetics and politics of the contemporary novel in English.

This is the first bibliography of Postmodernism to take account of work published in all subject areas and in all languages. Deborah Madsen has identified a new first occurrence of the term in 1926, preceding by more than twenty years the first occurence documented by the Oxford English Dictionary. In a chronological listing, books, articles, notes, letters and working papers on Postmodernism are described with full bibliographical details. Reviews of major books are documented and full contents listings are given for special issues of journals devoted to Postmodernism. An appendix includes books on Postmodernism announced for publication in 1995. This bibliography brings together in one place all secondary material published on Postmodernism. All disciplines are included, from anthropology to zoology: architecture, cultural studies, dance, drama, feminism, fiction, geography, history, legal studies, literary theory, mathematics, medicine, music, pedagogical theory, philosophy, photography and film, poetry, politics, religion, sociology, the visual and plastic arts, and others. The bibliography also documents items in a range of languages other than English: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Slovanian, Spanish, and the Scandinavian languages. Access to the information contained in the bibliography is made easy with a comprehensive index providing guidance according to author, subject, language, and key words. Postmodernism: A Bibliography, 1926-1994 is an essential reference text for anyone working in the area of contemporary culture studies.

The Cinema of Wim Wenders: The Celluloid Highway is a new study of the films of this most prominent of German directors, and penetrates the seductive sounds and images for which he is best known. The book analyses the individual films in the context of a preoccupation central to all of Wenders' work and writings: why modern cinema - a recording art, solely composed of sounds and images - naturally developed into a primarily narrative medium, a domain traditionally associated with words and sentences? With its emphasis on analysing the films themselves, this book identifies and critically elucidates Wenders' chief artistic motivation: that the act of seeing can constitute a creative act in its own right.

An account of the relationship between theology and post-modernity. For use by academics, postgraduate and advanced undergraduates across a wide range of subject areas: philosophy, literature, cultural studies, language, as well as theology and religious studies.

Fredric Jameson is one of the most influential literary and cultural critics writing today. He is a theoretical innovator whose ideas about the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences. Bringing together ten interviews conducted between 1982 and 2005, Jameson on Jameson is a compellingly candid introduction to his thought for those new to it, and a rich source of illumination and clarification for those seeking deeper understanding. Jameson discusses his intellectual and political preoccupations, most prominently his commitment to Marxism as a way of critiquing capitalism and the culture it has engendered. He explains many of his key concepts, including postmodernism, the dialectic, metacommentary, the political unconscious, the utopian, cognitive mapping, and spatialization. Jameson on Jameson displays Jameson’s extraordinary grasp of contemporary culture—architecture, art, cinema, literature, philosophy, politics, psychoanalysis, and urban geography—as well as the challenge that the geographic reach of his thinking poses to the Eurocentricity of the West. Conducted by accomplished scholars from United States, Egypt, Korea, China, Sweden, and England, the interviews elicit Jameson’s reflections on the broad international significance of his ideas and their applicability and implications in different cultural and political contexts, including the present phase of globalization. The volume includes an introduction by Jameson and a comprehensive bibliography of his publications in all languages. Interviewers Mona Abousenna Abbas Al-Tonsi Srinivas Aravamudan Jonathan Culler Sara Danius Leonard Green Sabry Hafez Stuart Hall Stefan Jonsson Ranjana Khanna Richard Klein Horacio Machin Paik Nak-chung Michael Speaks Anders Stephanson Xudong Zhang

Self-Action Leadership (Volumes 1 and 2) provides the first, and only, books of their kind in the academic world today. This two volume set single-handedly carves out a new and unique scholarly niche by providing the first comprehensive and secular manual to holistically address society’s universal need for personal leadership and character education. Its single-minded aim is the global promotion and proliferation of leadership, character, and life skills education in nations, communities, organizations, schools, homes, and individual lives everywhere. The concept of Self-Action Leadership (SAL) is rooted in 30 years of extensive research spanning the fields of self-leadership, leadership, action research, character education, and autoethnography. In addition to drawing on the scholarship of these extant fields, SAL simultaneously builds upon them by introducing an original theory and model that executives, administrators, scholars, teachers, and practitioners alike can universally utilize to their own advantages and to the benefit of their colleagues, subordinates, and students. Volume I—The Self-Action Leadership Theory—contains prefacing material for the combined texts. It also includes the first four book sections of the two volume set.