The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory is the most comprehensive available survey of the state of theory in the 21st century. With chapters written by the world’s leading scholars in ...their field, this book explores the latest thinking in traditional schools such as feminist, Marxist, historicist, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial criticism and new areas of research in ecocriticism, biopolitics, affect studies, posthumanism, materialism, and many other fields. In addition, the book includes a substantial A-to-Z compendium of key words and important thinkers in contemporary theory, making this an essential resource for scholars of literary and cultural theory at all levels.
Dead Theory Di Leo, Jeffrey R
2015, 2016, 2016-05-19
eBook
What is the legacy of Theory after the deaths of so many of its leading lights, from Jacques Derrida to Roland Barthes? Bringing together reflections by leading contemporary scholars, Dead Theory ...explores the afterlives of the work of the great theorists and the current state of Theory today. Considering the work of thinkers such as Derrida, Deleuze, and Levinas, the book explores the ways in which Theory has long been haunted by death and how it might endure for the future.
This article argues that it is only possible to teach without dread today if one does not value academic freedom. For these people, it is perfectly acceptable to be told what course they will teach, ...the content of those courses, and the modality of instruction. If one does not care about such things, then neoliberal academe with regard to teaching is not a house of dread. But for those who do not want to be told how to teach their course; who want to have a strong role in the shape of the curriculum; who want the ability to choose their preferred modality of instruction; and want to have a reasonable amount of choice in what they teach; for these people, higher education today has become and is a house of teaching dread. The persistence of teaching under such conditions can only be explained by an increase in neurotic dread in academe.
Why are vinyl records making a comeback? How is their resurgence connected to the political economy of music? Vinyl Theory responds to these and other questions by exploring the intersection of vinyl ...records with critical theory. In the process, it asks how the political economy of music might be connected with the philosophy of the record. The young critical theorist and composer Theodor Adorno’s work on the philosophy of the record and the political economy of music of the contemporary French public intellectual, Jacques Attali, are brought together with the work of other theorists in order to understand the fall and resurrection of vinyl records. The major argument of Vinyl Theory is that the very existence of vinyl records may be central to understanding the resiliency of neoliberalism. This argument is made by examining the work of Adorno, Attali, Friedrich Nietzsche, and others on music through the lens of Michel Foucault’s biopolitics.
It is unusual for a movement in the humanities to have a theme song. This particular theme song was written in 1968 by Mark James, who also released it the same year. It begins, "We're caught in a ...trap / I can't walk out / Because I love you too much baby." The song, "Suspicious Minds," became famous the following year when it was covered by Elvis Presley. In 1969, it would become his last number one single in the United States. Its chorus, "We can't go on together / With suspicious minds / And we can't build our dreams / On suspicious minds" perfectly foreshadows the heated debate of late over the role of "suspicious reading" in the humanities. The question upon which the fate of the humanities appears to be hanging in the balance-and to which "Suspicious Minds" is the unofficial theme song-is whether suspicion is the proper way for students to read texts.
Di Leo discusses the importance of the work of contemporary theorist Brian Massumi and others on affect theory, considering its potential for interesting and innovative work on a "politics" of music. ...Contemporary theorists like Brian Massumi explore affect as both a philosophical and a political problem, drawing material for their inquiries from philosophy, political theory, and everyday life. To engage music in a dialogue with power, life, and death is to engage it at a level where it becomes both a facet of biopower and a feature of biopolitics.
Wagering on Happiness DI LEO, JEFFREY R.
The Comparatist,
10/2021, Letnik:
45, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
...following the early nineteenth century Danish philosophy and theologian, Søren Kierkegaard, Badiou also argues that a certain dose of despair is the condition of real happiness. ...for Badiou, we ...can change the world simply by being happy. The literary analogue to Badiou's happiness is exemplified in the late literature of Samuel Beckett, where characters enveloped in dull and dreary existences find happiness. ...we will turn here to one of Beckett's last and most beautiful literary works, III Seen III Said, which was first published in 1981. Most importantly, it is a universe where the gods are no longer present. ...they have no role in transcendentally conferring meaning on the universe.
The New New Criticism DI LEO, JEFFREY R.
The Comparatist,
10/2020, Letnik:
44, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
...the contemporary depiction of text can be said to have the following four main characteristics: (1) Non-Autonomy-the contemporary text is regarded as co-extensive or integrated with the whole of ...signification; (2) Non-Stability-the contemporary text is unstable and changing; (3) Non-Coherence-the contemporary text exemplifies a total lack of coherence and definability; and (4) Non-Identity-the contemporary text has an indeterminate identity. Even if a text contained a high degree of ambiguity, the self-same text for the New Critic was also regarded as a coherent, unified, organic whole. ...the unified, organic whole of the New Criticism functions as their "god-term," wherein to a certain extent, these critics "exchange the inerrancy of the biblical word for that of the poetic word" with ambiguity along with metaphor and irony becoming "the holy trinity of New Critical reading" (Duvall, New Criticism 594). ...the identity and meaning of the literary object does not have any relation to the intention of the author, who for the New Critics, only functions as a critical diversion from the real object of attention: the text. According to the New Critics, the nature and limits of literature and the literary are always decidable on exclusively textual grounds; there is never any need to draw on context (e.g. history, biography, politics, etc.) in the analysis and understanding of literature.
The humanities are in peril. Declining numbers of majors, reductions in financial support, and an overall lack of understanding of the nature and value of the humanities are opening the door to a ...more vocationally-centered vision of higher education. In a political economy and academic environment wherein educational values are determined by market-share, majors and courses that cannot be directly connected to marketable skills and job attainment are regarded as expendable. As a result, the humanities are losing students and energy at an alarming rate. This has humanities scholars scrambling for solutions. Some have responded to this situation by criticizing the neoliberal educational practices that are allegedly deepening the problems facing the humanities. But is this necessarily the case? Will it be enough to renew the humanities? More importantly, is halting the rise of the neoliberal university even a realistic proposal to save the humanities from demise? Or is it just naïve optimism? Pessimism with regard to halting the rise of the neoliberal university finds its opposite in the joyful optimism of those who believe that embracing neoliberal academe is the solution to the problems facing the humanities.Rather than resisting neoliberal academe as a way to resolve the woes of the humanities, some believe that embracing neoliberalism is the best way to rescue the humanities from their perilous condition.
