Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism


Hayden White - 1978
    Vico, Croce, Derrida, and Foucault are among the figures he assesses in this work, which also offers original interpretations of a number of literary themes, including the Wild Man and the Noble Savage. White's commentary ranges from a reappraisal of Enlightenment history to a reflective summary of the current state of literary criticism.

Facing The Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps


Tzvetan Todorov - 1991
    Drawing on a striking array of documents, Tzvetan Todorov reconstructs a vivid portrait of the conduct of those who ran the camps and those who suffered their outrages. Challenging the widespread view that moral life was extinguished in the extreme circumstances of the camps, he uncovers instead a rich moral universe, composed not of grand acts of heroism but of ordinary gestures of dignity and care, compassion and solidarity.A complex and profound study, Facing the Extreme restores a lost dimension to this anguished history, even as it offers an eloquent plea for the recognition of everyday virtues as a basis for contemporary morality.

States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity


Wendy Brown - 1995
    Whether one is dealing with the state, the Mafia, parents, pimps, police, or husbands, writes Brown, the heavy price of institutionalized protection is always a measure of dependence and agreement to abide by the protector's rules. True democracy, she insists, requires sharing power, not regulation by it; freedom, not protection.Refusing any facile identification with one political position or another, Brown applies her argument to a panoply of topics, from the basis of litigiousness in political life to the appearance on the academic Left of themes of revenge and a thwarted will to power. These and other provocations in contemporary political thought and political life provide an occasion for rethinking the value of several of the last two centuries' most compelling theoretical critiques of modern political life, including the positions of Nietzsche, Marx, Weber, and Foucault.

The Undefended Self: Living the Pathwork of Spiritual Wholeness


Susan Thesenga - 1994
    In a schema not unlike the id, ego, and superego, Pathworkn incluidas.

Semiotics: The Basics


Daniel Chandler - 2002
    Along the way, the reader will find out: * What is a sign?* Which codes do we take for granted?* What is a text?* How can semiotics be used in textual analysis?* Who were Saussure, Peirce, Barthes and Jakobson - and why are they important?Features include a glossary of key terms and realistic suggestions for further reading. There is also a highly-developed and long-established online version of the book at: www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B.

Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction


Elizabeth Grosz - 1990
    Discussing previous attempts to give a feminist reading of his work, she argues for women's autonomy based on an indifference to the Lacanian phallus.

A Concise Biography of Adolf Hitler


Thomas Fuchs - 2000
    "Four Stars." --West Coast Review of Books"Fascinating reading." --Booklist"An engrossing book...excellent." --Oahu Sun Press

Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays


Louis Althusser - 1968
    A rebel against the Catholic tradition in which he was raised, Althusser studied philosophy and later joined both the faculty of the Ecole normal superieure and the French Communist Party in 1948. Viewed as a "structuralist Marxist," Althusser was as much admired for his independence of intellect as he was for his rigorous defense of Marx. The latter was best illustrated in For Marx (1965), and Reading Capital (1968). These works, along with Lenin and Philosophy (1971) had an enormous influence on the New Left of the 1960s and continues to influence modern Marxist scholarship. This classic work, which to date has sold more than 30,000 copies, covers the range of Louis Althusser's interests and contributions in philosophy, economics, psychology, aesthetics, and political science. Marx, in Althusser's view, was subject in his earlier writings to the ruling ideology of his day. Thus for Althusser, the interpretation of Marx involves a repudiation of all efforts to draw from Marx's early writings a view of Marx as a "humanist" and "historicist." Lenin and Philosophy also contains Althusser's essay on Lenin's study of Hegel; a major essay on the state, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," "Freud and Lacan: A letter on Art in Reply to Andr� Daspre," and "Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract." The book opens with a 1968 interview in which Althusser discusses his personal, political, and intellectual history.

Li Na: My Life


Li Na - 2012
    Now read her life story. Li Na claimed an unprecedented victory at the 2011 French Open at age twenty-nine, and became the first player from an Asian country to win a Grand Slam singles title. Outspoken and likeable, the 'late-blooming' Chinese tennis superstar is one of the world's top ten players, and has championships on grass, clay and hard courts to her name.Li Na is a tennis player few forget. She claimed an unprecedented victory at the 2011 French Open at age twenty-nine, and became the first player from an Asian country to win a Grand Slam singles title. Outspoken and likeable, the 'late-blooming' Chinese tennis superstar is one of the world's top ten players, and has championships on grass, clay and hard courts to her name.Beyond the rankings and million-dollar endorsements is a life just as remarkable as her success. Li Na grew up within a rigid national sports system, living away from home and training six days a week, and spent years struggling to believe in herself. Her outstanding feats in a sport she grew to love, recovering from three knee surgeries and conquering her own demons, are nothing short of inspirational.Told with honesty and humour, Li Na: My Life is the moving story behind an extraordinary sporting icon.

Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely


Bruce Fink - 2004
    And this is precisely what Bruce Fink does in this ambitious book, a fine analysis of Lacan's work on language and psychoanalytic treatment conducted on the basis of a very close reading of texts in his Icrits: A Selection.As a translator and renowned proponent of Lacan's works, Fink is an especially adept and congenial guide through the complexities of Lacanian literature and concepts. He devotes considerable space to notions that have been particularly prone to misunderstanding, notions such as "the sliding of the signified under the signifier,"or that have gone seemingly unnoticed, such as "the ego is the metonymy of desire." Fink also pays special attention to psychoanalytic concepts, like affect, that Lacan is sometimes thought to neglect, and to controversial concepts, like the phallus.From a parsing of Lacan's claim that "commenting on a text is like doing an analysis," to sustained readings of "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious," "The Direction of the Treatment," and "Subversion of the Subject" (with particular attention given to the workings of the Graph of Desire), Fink's book is a work of unmatched subtlety, depth, and detail, providing a valuable new perspective on one of the twentieth century's most important thinkers.Bruce Fink is a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst, analytic supervisor, and professor of psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He is the author of A Clinical Introduction to LacanianPsychoanalysis (1997) and The Lacanian Subject (1995). He has coedited three volumes on Lacan's seminars and is the translator of Lacan's Seminar XX, On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge (1998), Icrits: A Selection (2002), and Icrits: The Complete Text (forthcoming).

Jacques Lacan, Past and Present: A Dialogue


Alain Badiou - 2012
    He explains in depth the tools Lacan gave him to navigate the extremes of his other two philosophical "masters," Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser. Élisabeth Roudinesco supplements Badiou's experience with her own perspective on the troubled landscape of the French analytic world since Lacan's death—critiquing, for example, the link (or lack thereof) between politics and psychoanalysis in Lacan's work. Their exchange reinvigorates how the the work of a pivotal twentieth-century thinker is perceived.

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays


Albert Camus - 1942
    Influenced by works such as Don Juan, and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide: the question of living or not living in an absurd universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Camus posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity.

Politics and the English Language


George Orwell - 1946
    The essay focuses on political language, which, according to Orwell, "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Orwell believed that the language used was necessarily vague or meaningless because it was intended to hide the truth rather than express it.

No Logo


Naomi Klein - 2000
    First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, this is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing, and the anti-corporate movement.As global corporations compete for the hearts and wallets of consumers who not only buy their products but willingly advertise them from head to toe—witness today's schoolbooks, superstores, sporting arenas, and brand-name synergy—a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. In this provocative, well-written study, a front-line report on that battle, we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labor, how teenaged McDonald's workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters, and how "culture jammers" utilize spray paint, computer-hacking acumen, and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads (as in "Joe Chemo" for "Joe Camel").No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology, economics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing."This book is not another account of the power of the select group of corporate Goliaths that have gathered to form our de facto global government. Rather, it is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate rule, and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made the emergence of that opposition inevitable." —Naomi Klein, from her Introduction

Shhh! Don't Talk About Mental Health


Arjun Gupta - 2019
    Follow the journey of Yashasvi and millions of other people who are tormented by their own minds. This is not a self-help book. Mental health is no longer just about helping yourself. It is a movement against an invisible crisis that breeds inside our minds. A crisis that makes you question the voice in your head. Yes, the same voice that is reading this out to you.True stories, research, statistics, and facts. This book will convince you why mental health cannot be just about self-help anymore, and why people like Yashasvi need our help.