A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader [Paperback]

Antony Easthope (Editor), Kate McGowan (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 22, 1992 | ISBN-10: 0802074162 | ISBN-13: 978-0802074164

The "death of literature" and the rise of post-structuralist theory has breached the traditional opposition between the literary canon and popular culture, both in principle and in academic practice. This reader contains essays and extracts for the study of high and popular culture, together with writing by Saussure, Barthes, Lacan, Kristeva, Foucault, Derrida and Cixous. For easy reference, the reader is divided into sections including: semiology, ideology, subjectivity, difference, gender and postmodernism. It concludes with a section of "cultural documents" with extracts from Leavis, Adorno, Williams and Tzara. With the concerns of students in mind, each section is introduced and each piece of writing summarized in the notes.

Product Details

• Paperback: 270 pages
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press (August 22, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802074162
• ISBN-13: 978-0802074164
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,819,708 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent introduction to contemporary theory, July 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader (Paperback)

Despite the rather tongue-in-cheek review by the student from Boston, this is a well-edited and thoughtful collection. It provides context for selections from Marx, Saussure, Barthes, Foucault, Freud and others. As a professor who has taught widely about critical theory, I highly recommend this intelligent book.

13 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A practical guide to academic tomfoolery., April 11, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader (Paperback)

When this book popped up on my list of textbooks for a seminar class I was taking, I gave it nary a thought. I simply purchased the book, like the diligent student that I am, and went on my merry way. As the course picked up, we spent more and more time discussing the contents of this little collection of thoughts. Deconstructing to our hearts content, we flew through the pages. Our fabulously postmodern, poststructuralist ideas overflowed from the container that was our classroom. Swimming in the discursive bliss that is this book, we lapped up the sweet elixir of its signifiers. Yet, always lurking in the back of our minds were threats of delegitimation. Where were we to go? What were we to do--plagued in this postmodern, capitalist utopia we like to call the United States of America, wallowing in one of its academic institutions no less? Clutching our readers we walk the streets, the strong winds of the anti-revolution revolution beating against our frail student bodies. Weaving our way through the carceral network of our lives, accumulating a gaunt identity of pastiche we walk smack into the inevitable wall--the wall that is our own knowledge limited; the wall that is truth or its abscene. And so, we turn back, open our reader, and meditate.