Critical Theory

Big ideas that just might save the world. the Guardian A serious book on an important subject. Without imagination, where are we? Sir Quentin Blake What if we took play seriously? What if we considered imagination vital to our health? What if we...

Based on the BBC television series, John Berger's Ways of Seeing is a unique look at the way we view art, published as part of the Penguin on Design series in Penguin Modern Classics.'Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it...

One of America's leading political theorists analyzes the nihilism degrading-and confounding-political and academic life today. Through readings of Max Weber's Vocation Lectures, she proposes ways to counter nihilism's devaluations of both knowledge and...

'Fabulous.' Dan Richards, author of Holloway 'Terrifically strange and thrilling.' Melissa Harrison, author of All Among the Barley 'A modern-day bard.' Madeline Miller, author of Circe This is a book of literary activism - an antidote to the...

The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era? Where do we create the space to explore our identity? How can we come together and create...

Written between 1944 and 1947, Minima Moralia is a collection of rich, lucid aphorisms and essays about life in modern capitalist society. Adorno casts his penetrating eye across society in mid-century America and finds a life deformed by capitalism...

Modern audiovisual media have spawned a 'plague of fantasies', electronically inspired phantasms that cloud the ability to reason and prevent a true understanding of a world increasingly dominated by abstractions-whether those of digital technology or...

Walter Benjamin is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic intellectual figures of this century. Not only was he a thinker who made an enormous impact with his critical and philosophical writings, he shattered disciplinary and stylistic conventions...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781788360623Author Nikos SotirakopoulosFormat PaperbackImprint Imprint AcademicPublisher Imprint AcademicWeight(grams) 250gDimensions(mm) 210mm * 135mm *...

Across the West, hard-right leaders are surging to power on platforms of ethno-economic nationalism, Christianity, and traditional family values. Is this phenomenon the end of neoliberalism or its monstrous offspring?In the Ruins of Neoliberalism casts...

Marginalized by the scientific age the lessons of the senses have been overtaken by the dominance of language and the information revolution. With The Five Senses Serres traces a topology of human perception, writing against the Cartesian tradition and...

Liberate yourself by understanding and mastering power dynamics All social relations are laden with power. Getting out from under dominant power relations and mastering power dynamics is perhaps the most essential skill for change agents across all...

'You may even find that you have the last word in arguments at home and in school, thanks to this introduction to logic and reasoning.' TESSome people have something to say in any conversation and can spot the hidden angles of completely unrelated...

At the outset of the twentieth century, Lenin argued that materialism has to change its form with each new scientific discovery. Today, argues Slavoj Zizek in this major new work, we should apply this stricture to Lenin himself. Philosophical materialism...

Timothy Morton argues that ecological awareness in the present Anthropocene era takes the form of a strange loop or Moebius strip, twisted to have only one side. Deckard travels this oedipal path in Blade Runner (1982) when he learns that he might be the...

From two times number one Sunday Times bestselling author, James Smith, comes HOW TO BE CONFIDENT – the third instalment in James’ no-nonsense guides to gaining the tools to empower your decision-making and change your life. Now, more than ever, we are...

Critical theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, the circle of German-Jewish academics who sought to diagnose -- and, if at all possible, cure -- the ills of society, particularly fascism and capitalism. In this book, Stephen...

Seyla Benhabib's ongoing work has expanded the range and scope of critical theory beyond its origins to address questions of gender, migration, and difference. This book brings together an ensemble of leading theorists and younger voices to explore new...

Achille Mbembe is one of the world's most profound critics of colonialism and its consequences, a major figure in the emergence of a new wave of French critical theory. His writings examine the complexities of decolonization for African subjectivities...

The philosophy of Raymond Ruyer was an important if subterranean influence on twentieth-century French thought, and explicitly engaged with by figures such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Georges Canguilhem, Gilbert Simondon, and Gilles Deleuze. The Genesis of...

In this landmark text by one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Gilles Deleuze takes the paintings of Francis Bacon as his object of his study. The book presents a deep engagement with Bacon's work and the nature of art...

The wide-ranging work of Rahel Jaeggi, a leading voice of the new generation of critical theorists, demonstrates how core concepts and methodological approaches in the tradition of the Frankfurt School can be updated, stripped of their dubious...

Since its publication in 1968, Difference and Repetition, an exposition of the critique of identity, has come to be considered a contemporary classic in philosophy and one of Gilles Deleuze's most important works. The text follows the development of two...

In Black Enlightenment Surya Parekh reimagines the Enlightenment from the position of the Black subject. Parekh examines the works of such Black writers as the free Jamaican Francis Williams (1697-1762), Afro-British thinker Ignatius Sancho (1729?-1780),...

In Speculation as a Mode of Production: Forms of Value Subjectivity in Art and Capital, Marina Vishmidt offers a new perspective on one of the main categories of capitalist life in the historical present. Writing not under the shadow but in the spirit of...

A challenging reappraisal of the history of antipsychotics, revealing how they were transformed from neurological poisons into magical cures, their benefits exaggerated and their toxic effects minimized or ignored.About the AuthorJoanna Moncrieff is a...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781685900045Author Amilcar CabralFormat PaperbackPage Count 296Imprint Monthly Review Press,U.S.Publisher Monthly Review Press,U.S.Weight(grams)...

Religion, Theory, Critique is an essential tool for learning about theory and method in the study of religion. Leading experts engage with contemporary and classical theories as well as non-Western cultural contexts. Unlike other collections, this...

While Theodor Adorno has continued to be influential since his death in 1969, his very centrality has led to the left simplifying his ideas while the right placed him at the center of a myriad of wild conspiracy theories, all of them filed under the...

First published in 1974, Libidinal Economy is a major work of twentieth century continental philosophy. In it, Lyotard develops the idea of economies driven by libidinal 'energies' or 'intensities' which he claims flow through all structures, such as...

'When we claim to have been injured by language, what kind of claim do we make?' - Judith Butler, Excitable SpeechExcitable Speech is widely hailed as a tour de force and one of Judith Butler's most important books. Examining in turn debates about hate...

In recent years, we have witnessed a surge of interest in Marx's work in the effort to understand the origins of our current predicament. For nearly forty years, David Harvey has written and lectured on Capital, becoming one of the world's most foremost...

Instead of treating art as a unique creation that requires reason and refined taste to appreciate, Elizabeth Grosz argues that art-especially architecture, music, and painting-is born from the disruptive forces of sexual selection. She approaches art as...

Axel Honneth has been instrumental in advancing the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, rebuilding their effort to combine radical social and political analysis with rigorous philosophical inquiry. These eleven essays reclaim the relevant...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781900565950Author Georges BatailleFormat HardbackPage Count 480Imprint Atlas PressPublisher Atlas PressDimensions(mm) 228mm * 170mm * 30mm

Second Wave feminism emerged as a struggle for women's liberation and took its place alongside other radical movements. But feminism's subsequent immersion in identity politics coincided with a decline in its utopian energies and the rise of...

'Fabulous.' Dan Richards, author of Holloway 'Terrifically strange and thrilling.' Melissa Harrison, author of All Among the Barley 'A modern-day bard.' Madeline Miller, author of Circe This is a book of literary activism - an antidote to the...

The Beginning of Knowledge brings together almost all of Gadamer's essays on the Presocratics. In each of the essays Gadamer discusses the origins of knowledge in the western philosophical tradition. Beginning with a hermeneutical and philological...

Walter Benjamin was fascinated by the impact of new technology on culture, an interest that extended beyond his renowned critical essays. From 1927 to '33, he wrote and presented something in the region of eighty broadcasts using the new medium of...

Toward a Concrete Philosophy explores the reactions of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse to Martin Heidegger prior to their dismissal of him once he turned to the Nazi party in 1933. Mikko Immanen provides a fascinating glimpse of the...