One of the simplest—and the best—was suggested by the philosopher John Campbell: “Thinking in slow motion.” But, for most people, slow motion is only appealing in small doses. A whole movie in slow-mo would be one for the art gallery, not the multiplex. This is the problem that faces those who want to write about philosophy for a broad readership: a certain amount of fast-forward is needed, but if you go too fast you’ll stop doing philosophy altogether.John D Caputo’s entertaining investigation into the nature of truth gets the balance right. His project is to show how postmodernism can help us think through contemporary debates about religion, relativism and the legacy of the Enlightenment. Rather than dividing the world into strict categories such as the rational and irrational, Caputo’s postmodern approach tries to widen our understanding of truth. He is not a naive relativist, however. “I am not arguing against the truth of propositions,” he says. “I am arguing that truth cannot be confined to propositions.” This means taking seriously the truths one encounters in novels, say, as well as religious narratives.As this last idea suggests, there is plenty in Truth to annoy Richard Dawkins, as well as many contemporary analytic philosophers—but the book is better off for its boldness. Rather than pre-empting every counter-attack, Caputo sets out his case confidently, enlisting Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Derrida as his allies. (His explanation of Derrida’s thought is one of the clearest that I’ve read.) This book does not claim to be the final word on truth—indeed Caputo believes the quest for an ultimate and unchanging definition of truth is doomed to failure—but it might be the starting point for a more sophisticated discussion.

    Addressing some of the key questions of film theory, spectatorship, and narrative, Laura Mulvey here argues that such technologies, including home DVD players, have fundamentally altered our relationship to the movies. According to Mulvey, new media technologies give viewers the ability to control both image and story, so that movies meant to be seen collectively and followed in a linear fashion may be manipulated to contain unexpected and even unintended pleasures. The individual frame, the projected film’s best-kept secret, can now be revealed by anyone who hits pause. Easy access to repetition, slow motion, and the freeze-frame, Mulvey argues, may shift the spectator’s pleasure to a fetishistic rather than a voyeuristic investment in film. By exploring how technology can give new life to old cinema, Death 24x a Second offers an original reevaluation of film’s history and its historical usefulness.

    This book offers a beginners guide to his thought, including his views on: * technology* primitivism* reworking Marxism* simulation and hyperreality* America and postmodernism.Richard Lane places Baudrillard's key ideas in the context of French and postmodern thought and examines the ongoing impact of his work. Concluding with an extensively annotated bibliography of the original texts, this is the perfect companion for any student approaching the work of Jean Baudrillard.

    What impact do these images and ideas have on people's identities?The new edition of Media, Gender and Identity is a highly readable introduction to the relationship between media and gender identities today. Fully revised and updated, including new case studies and a new chapter, it considers a wide range of research and provides new ways for thinking about the media's influence on gender and sexuality.David Gauntlett discusses movies such as Knocked Up and Spiderman 3, men's and women's magazines, TV shows, self-help books, YouTube videos, and more, to show how the media play a role in the shaping of individual self-identities.The book includes:a comparison of gender representations in the past and today, from James Bond to Ugly Bettyan introduction to key theorists such as Judith Butler, Anthony Giddens and Michel Foucault an outline of creative approaches, where identities are explored with video, drawing, or Lego bricks a Companion Website with extra articles, interviews and selected links, at: www.theoryhead.com.

    His work creatively adapts the ideas of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire for North American classrooms. In Empowering Education Shor offers a comprehensive theory and practice for critical pedagogy. For Shor, empowering education is a student-centered, critical and democratic pedagogy for studying any subject matter and for self and social change. It takes shape as a dialogue in which teachers and students mutually investigate everyday themes, social issues, and academic knowledge. Through dialogue and problem-posing, students become active agents of their learning. This book shows how students can develop as critical thinkers, inspired learners, skilled workers, and involved citizens. Shor carefully analyzes obstacles to and resources for empowering education, suggesting ways for teachers to transform traditional approaches into critical and democratic ones. He offers many examples and applications for the elementary grades through college and adult education.

    The debate was sparked by the 1979 publication of Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Relations, which systematized realism as a coherent, deductive theory. This volume provides a unique summary of current thinking on neorealism. Ideal for course use, it presents key portions of Waltz's book along with the most significant critical evaluations of the topic by other leading scholars.Neorealism's supporters stress how much we can learn by focusing rigorously on the level of the international system, particularly by examining the effects of the distribution of power among states. Critics point out what they feel are neorealism's shortcomings: continuing ambiguities in the concepts of power and balance of power, the importance of internal determinants of foreign policy, difficulties of neorealist theory accounting for change, and what some regard as its tendency to ignore both history and the material conditions on which any international system rests. These issues are not merely of abstract interest, but relate to fundamental values as well as to the question of how humanity can survive in today's nuclear world.Neorealism and Its Critics addresses these and other vital questions in its critiques of the theory, and of Waltz's book in particular. Featuring contributions by John Ruggie, Robert Cox, Richard Ashley, and Robert Gilpin, with an introductory essay by Keohane and a concluding chapter by Waltz, this book is essential reading for both students and scholars as an up-to-date assessment of neorealism.

    This guide to teaching writing and to major theoretical issues includes a brief anthology of scholarly essays and new coverage of construct-ing successful assignments using visual, oral, and electronic texts; teaching multilingual writers; and using technology in the writing classroom.

    The relationship between civil society and public life is in the forefront of contemporary discussion. No single scholarly voice informs this discussion more than that of J�rgen Habermas. His contributions have shaped the nature of debates over critical theory, feminism, cultural studies, and democratic politics. In this book, scholars from a wide range of disciplines respond to Habermas's most directly relevant work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. From political theory to cultural criticism, from ethics to gender studies, from history to media studies, these essays challenge, refine, and extend our understanding of the social foundations and changing character of democracy and public discourse.ContributorsHannah Arendt, Keith Baker, Seyla Benhabib, Harry C. Boyte, Craig Calhoun, Geoff Eley, Nancy Fraser, Nicholas Garnham, J�rgen Habermas, Peter Hohendahl, Lloyd Kramer, Benjamin Lee, Thomas McCarthy, Moishe Postone, Mary P. Ryan, Michael Schudson, Michael Warner, David Zaret

    By tracing the historical progression of rhetoric from the Greek Sophists of the 5th Century B.C. to contemporary studies--such as the rhetoric of science and feminist rhetoric--this concise yet comprehensive text helps students better understand what rhetoric is and what unites differing rhetorical theories throughout history.

    Lacan for Beginners introduces readers to a largely chronological development of Lacan's theories and their relation to clinical practice.

    Each essay is written by an experienced teacher/scholar and describes one of the major pedagogies employed today: process, expressive, rhetorical, collaborative, feminist, critical, cultural studies, community service, and basic writing. Writing centers, writing across the curriculum, and technology and the teaching of writing are also discussed. The essays are composed of personal statements on pedagogical applications and bibliographical guides that aid students and new teachers in further study and research. Contributors include Christopher Burnham, William A. Covino, Ann George, Diana George, Eric H. Hobson, Rebecca Moore Howard, Susan C. Jarratt, Laura Julier, Susan McLeod, Charles Moran, Deborah Mutnick, Lad Tobin, and John Trimbur. An invaluable tool for graduate students and new teachers, A Guide to Composition Pedagogies provides an exceptional introduction to composition studies and the extensive range of pedagogical approaches used today.

    One of the most important philosophical works of our time, a work that has had tremendous influence on philosophy, literature, and psychology, and has literally changed the intellectual map of the modern world.

    The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate.

    One of his last writings, "Body, Brain, and Culture" links cerebral neurology and anthropology studies in a fascinating interface.

    Of the various English translations of Freud's major works to appear in his lifetime, only one was authorized by Freud himself: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud under the general editorship of James Strachey.Freud approved the overall editorial plan, specific renderings of key words and phrases, and the addition of valuable notes, from bibliographical and explanatory. Many of the translations were done by Strachey himself; the rest were prepared under his supervision. The result was to place the Standard Edition in a position of unquestioned supremacy over all other existing versions.Newly designed in a uniform format, each new paperback in the Standard Edition opens with a biographical essay on Freud's life and work —along with a note on the individual volume—by Peter Gay, Sterling Professor of History at Yale.