Post-Theories in Literary and Cultural Studies focuses on the shifting paradigms in literary and cultural studies. Prompted by the changes and problems on the global scale, the last two decades have seen a resurgence of scholarly interest in theories which are more embedded in the social realities and human condition. This volume shows that theory can reinvent theory and re-define criticism according to the demands of the new millennium. In this context, it examines new ways of co...

Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism is a major reference work on the paradigm emerging from the challenges to humanism, humanity, and the human posed by the erosion of the traditional demarcations between the human and nonhuman. This handbook surveys and speculates on the ways in which the posthumanist paradigm emerged, transformed, and might further develop across the humanities. With its focus on the posthuman as a figure, on posthumanism as a social discourse, and on pos...

In literary studies and beyond, ‘theory’ and its aftermaths have arguably been over-influenced by US- and UK-based institutions, publishers, journals, and academics. Yet the influence of theory in its Anglo-American forms has remained reliant on Continental European ideas. Similar patterns can be discerned within the latest theoretical paradigm – posthumanism. European ideas influence posthumanism’s challenge to established understandings of humanism, anthropomorphism, and anthropocentrism...

Understand Postmodernism is an indispensable guide to this sometimes challenging domain. Using contemporary examples to further your understanding, it takes a broad look at theorists in a range of disciplines. Whether you're encountering postmodernism for the first time, or you need a quick reference to support your studies, this guide offers a comprehensive introduction to the key ideas in this thought-provoking philosophy.NOT GOT MUCH TIME?One, five and ten-minute introdu...

Beginning theory has been helping students navigate through the thickets of literary and cultural theory for over two decades. This new and expanded fourth edition continues to offer readers the best single-volume introduction to the field.The bewildering variety of approaches, theorists and technical language is lucidly and expertly unravelled. Unlike many books which assume certain positions about the critics and the theories they represent, Beginning theory all...

What does it mean to think beyond humanism? Is it possible to craft a mode of philosophy, ethics, and interpretation that rejects the classic humanist divisions of self and other, mind and body, society and nature, human and animal, organic and technological? Can a new kind of humanities—posthumanities—respond to the redefinition of humanity’s place in the world by both the technological and the biological or “green” continuum in which the “human” is but one life form among many?

An apparently contradictory yet radically urgent collection of texts tracing the genealogy of a controversial current in contemporary philosophy.Accelerationism is the name of a contemporary political heresy: the insistence that the only radical political response to capitalism is not to protest, disrupt, critique, or détourne it, but to accelerate and exacerbate its uprooting, alienating, decoding, abstractive tendencies.#Accelerate presents a gen...

Justice Koolhaas's Essays on Modern Art are reproduced alongside at least one of each artist's works that she owned. Unusually, these works were discards; even more unusually, she obtained them on condition that each artist signed a statement disowning them as artworks.Her theory work, a refusenikism written in deliberate opacity, is inspired by her collection of art refuse.Twombly is explored through Walter Benjamin, Deleuze & Guattari and Stéphane Mallarmé. The painter's in...

Popular Great Philosopher's Series.An accessible overview of the work of one of our most influential living philosophers, as part of the popular Great Philosophers series. Richard Rorty is often cited as the most prominent philosophical defender of postmodernism. Best known for his unusually readable books and articles on philosophy - most notably Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989) - Rorty has for some years now...

This volume has been brought together to generate new ideas and provoke discussion about what constitutes arts education in the twenty-first century, both within the institution and beyond. Art, Artists and Pedagogy is intended for educators who teach the arts from early childhood to tertiary level, artists working in the community, or those studying arts in education from undergraduate to Masters or PhD level.From the outset, this book is not only about arts in practice b...

Literary theory has now become integral to how we produce literary criticism. When critics write about a text, they no longer think just about the biographical or historical contexts of the work, but also about the different approaches that literary theory offers. By making use of these, they create new interpretations of the text that would not otherwise be possible. In your own reading and writing, literary theory fosters new avenues into the text. It allows you to make informed comments...

New Materialisms brings into focus and explains the significance of the innovative materialist critiques that are emerging across the social sciences and humanities. By gathering essays that exemplify the new thinking about matter and processes of materialization, this important collection shows how scholars are reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges. In the...