Politics and Culture: Working Hypotheses for a Post-Revolutionary Society

by Michael Ryan and Ryan M

Book Overview

A political sociology textbook which examines the impact of political thought on a society's culture, and theorizes on the attitudes a post-revolutionary society would adopt towards such subjects as feminism, the arts and ideology.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1349070351
• ISBN13: 9781349070350
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Length: 250 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

ATTN: fans of Toni Negri

Michael Ryan's book of essays follows his ground-breaking study,'Marxism and Deconstruction', which Derrida himself has praised as an influential book. In this book, Ryan explores the intersections and contributions of a variety of politically-committed western theorists and philosophers in the late twentieth-century, beginning with the confrontations between the mostly-French poststructuralists and materialists (represented by Ryan himself as well as Derrida, Jonathan Culler, Delueze, et al) and the German structuralists and rationalists (represented by Habermas). Then in Chapter 2, Ryan provides a very useful and unique critical analysis and bibliographic history of Toni Negri and the Italian autonomy movement. This chapter might be particularly interesting for the many readers who just discovered Negri through his and Michael Hardt's amazingly-popular book, 'Empire.' Indeed, if you are intrigued by Negri, I recommend checking out this book.For more by and about Negri, see the collection of his early works (many of which have been superseded by his more recent works) in the Red Notes publication, 'Revolution Retrieved'. For in-depth analyses on many of Empire's most important topics, see Negri's 'Politics of Subversion' plus Negri and Hardt's 'Labor of Dionysus' as well as Negri and Guattari's 'Communists Like Us'. If you up to the challenge, read his 'Marx Beyond Marx' alongside Marx's 'Grundrisse'. See too, his book 'Insurgencies' and his articles in 'Marxism Beyond Marxism', 'Radical Italian Thought', 'Readme!' and 'Ghostly Demarcations'. Analyses *about* Negri include the introductions and bibliographic essays in some of the above-listed books, like 'Marx Beyond Marx' and 'Politics of Subversion'; plus the concluding chapter Marcia Landy's 'Film, Politics and Culture' (entitled "Gramsci Beyond Gramsci"); the double-issue of 'Rethinking Marxism' devoted to Empire, to be published in early 2002, as well as some earlier articles in Rethinking Marxism, including an excellent introduction by Jason Read. Note: Thanks to 'Empire's success, more works about Negri are surely forthcoming.