A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader: Second Edition

Book Overview

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. When first published in 1992, The Critical and Cultural Theory Reader served the growing need for a collection of essays and extracts for the study of both high and popular culture together. Now, the second and expanded edition of this highly...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080203800X
• ISBN13: 9780802038005
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.7" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

An excellent introduction to contemporary theory

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.

A practical guide to academic tomfoolery.

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.