This book retraces the emergence of conceptions of authorship in late-eighteenth-century Germany by studying the material form of Immanuel Kant's 1785 essay, 'On the Wrongfulness of Reprinting'. Drawing upon book history, media theory, and literary studies, Benjamin Goh analyses the essay's paratexts as indices of literary production in the German Enlightenment. Far from being an idealist proponent of intellectual property, Kant is shown to be a media theorist and practitioner, whose criti...

The tsunami of information unleashed by digitization is threatening to overwhelm us, drowning us in a sea of frenzied communication and disrupting many spheres of social life, including politics. Election campaigns are now being waged as information wars with bots and troll armies, and democracy is degenerating into infocracy.In this new book, Byung-Chul Han argues that infocracy is the new form of rule characteristic of contemporary information capitalism. Whereas the disciplinary...

How to transform a thesis into a publishable work that can engage audiences beyond the academic committee.When a dissertation crosses my desk, I usually want to grab it by its metaphorical lapels and give it a good shake. "You know something!" I would say if it could hear me. "Now tell it to us in language we can understand!"Since its publication in 2005, From Dissertation to Book has helped thousands of young academic authors get their books beyond the thesi...

Comparative Literature is both the past and the future of literary studies. Its history is intimately linked to the political upheavals of modernity: from colonial empire-building in the nineteenth century, via the Jewish diaspora of the twentieth century, to the postcolonial culture wars of the twenty-first century, attempts at 'comparison' have defined the international agenda of literature. But what is comparative literature? Ambitious readers looking to stretch themselves are usually i...

"Magisterial…a frequently surprising treatment of major political thinkers."— Perspectives on PoliticsFrom Plato through the nineteenth century, the West could draw on comprehensive political visions to guide government and society. Now, for the first time in more than two thousand years, Tracy B. Strong contends, we have lost our foundational supports. In the words of Hannah Arendt, the state of political thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centurie...

The academic caveat Publish or Perish is not a new one, and for over a quarter of a century, The Thesis and the Book has come to the aid of graduate students in their quest for publication. The doctoral dissertation, usually the first book-length study completed by a scholar, is, however, only rarely publishable as a book. Understanding the differences between the two forms is a crucial part of one's education as a scholar and is equally important in appreciating the endeavours of...

Critical theory has many faces; its complexities and nuances present a challenge to those seeking to engage with its thought. In order to understand critical theory today, we must first understand its origins, its development, and its consequences.To Change All Worlds: Critical Theory from Marx to Marcuse by Carl R. Trueman is an accessible introduction to the history and development of critical theory. From Hegel and Marx, to Korsch and Lukács, to the Frankfurt School, t...

The range of Adorno's achievement, and the depth of his insights, is breathtaking and daunting. His work on literary, artistic, and musical forms, his devastating indictment of modern industrial society, and his profound grasp of Western culture from Homer to Hollywood have made him one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century thought.As one of the main philosophers of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, Adorno’s influence on literary theory, cultural studies, and ...

Analytic philosophy is the leading form of philosophy in the English-speaking world. What explains its continued success? Christoph Schuringa argues that its enduring power can only be understood by examining its social history. Analytic philosophy tends to think of itself as concerned with eternal questions, transcending the changing scenes of history. It thinks of itself as apolitical. This book, however, convincingly shows that the opposite is true.The origins of analytic philos...

In this book Jürgen Habermas offers a wide-ranging reflection on his life and work and on the factors that shaped the development of his thought. He discusses the motives behind his work, the circumstances under which it emerged and the changes it has undergone over the course of his long and productive career. He speaks about the events and the texts that played a decisive role in his thinking and he recounts key encounters with colleagues. The image that emerges is that of a richly inter...

For all of the recent debates over the methods and theoretical underpinnings of the historical profession, scholars and laypeople alike still frequently think of history in terms of storytelling. Accordingly, historians and theorists have devoted much attention to how historical narratives work, illuminating the ways they can bind together events, shape an argument and lend support to ideology. From ancient Greece to modern-day bestsellers, the studies gathered here offer a wide-ranging an...

Why did Karl Marx want to exclude politics and the market from his vision of a future socialism? In Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason, Allan Megill begins with this question. Megill's examination of Marx's formative writings casts new light on Marx's relation to philosophy and reveals a hitherto largely unknown "rationalist" Marx. In demonstrating how Marx's rationalism permeated his attempts to understand politics, economics, and history generally, Megill forces the reader to rethi...