Books

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Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge

June 2017

Critical theory and epistemology

The politics of modern thought and science

by Anastasia Marinopoulou. Series edited by Darrow Schecter

This volume in the Critical Theory and Contemporary Society series explores the arguments between critical theory and epistemology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Focusing on the first and second generations of critical theorists and Luhmann's systems theory, the book examines how each approaches epistemology. It opens by looking at twentieth-century epistemology, particularly the concept of lifeworld (Lebenswelt). It then moves on to discuss structuralism, poststructuralism, critical realism, the epistemological problematics of Foucault's writings and the dialectics of systems theory. This unique work takes a comparative look at structuralism and post-structuralism's epistemological theory with special reference to scientific reason. It also investigates Luhmann's works in epistemology. The aim is to explore whether the focal point for epistemology and the sciences remain that social and political interests actually form a concrete point of concern for the sciences as well.

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Humanities & Social Sciences

September 2008

National Missile Defence and the politics of US identity

A poststructural critique

by Natalie Bormann

Why adopt a poststructural lens for the reading of the military strategy of national missile defence (NMD)? No doubt, when contemplating an attack on US territory by intercontinental ballistic missiles, consulting Michel Foucault and critical international relations theory scholars may not seem the obvious route to take. The answer to this lies in another question: why has there been so much interest and continuous investment in NMD deployment when there is such ambiguity surrounding the status of threat to which it responds, controversy over its technological feasibility and concern about its cost? Posed in this manner, the question cannot be answered on its own terms - the terms given in official accounts of NMD that justify the system's significance on the basis of strategic feasibility studies and conventional threat predictions guided by worst-case scenarios. Instead, this book argues that the preferences leading to NMD deployment must be understood as satisfying requirements beyond strategic approaches and issues. In turning towards the interpretative modes of inquiry provided by critical social theory and poststructuralism, this book contests the conventional wisdom about NMD and suggests reading the strategy in terms of US identity. Presented as an analysis of discourses on threats to national security, around which the need for NMD deployment is predominantly framed, this book is an effort to let the two fields of critical international relations theory and US foreign policy speak directly to each other. It seeks to do so by showing how the concept of identity can be harnessed to an analysis of a contemporary military-strategic practice. ;

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Humanities & Social Sciences

June 2019

Critical theory and epistemology

by Anastasia Marinopoulou, Darrow Schecter

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Humanities & Social Sciences

March 2025

Hand of the prince

How diplomacy writes subjects, territory, time, and norms

by Pablo de Orellana

This book is dedicated to how diplomacy makes, develops, and trades in knowledge. It proposes an approach to examine how diplomatic knowledge production describes what diplomats see, how these descriptions develop, and whether they were convincing to one's own policymakers or even those of other actors. These descriptions are vital: actors can be inserted into global categories Communism or Terrorism that beget significant security, relational and policy consequences. Diplomacy and policy constitute the world we inhabit based on what policymakers made of descriptions, assessments, and analysis. Such is the power of knowing who we and the others are.

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The Arts

September 2024

Cases of citation

On literature in art

by Chloe Julius, Michael Green, Matthew Holman

Cases of citation presents a history of artists who incorporated literary references into their work from the 1960s onwards. Through a series of object-focused chapters that each take up a singular 'case of citation', the collection considers how literary citation emerged as a viable and urgent strategy for artists during this period. It surveys eleven artworks by a diverse group of artists - including David Wojnarowicz, Lis Rhodes, Romare Bearden and Silvia Kolbowski - whose citations draw on works as varied as Karl Marx's Das Kapital and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The book also features an interview with pioneering feminist artist Elaine Reichek that discusses her career-long commitment to working with text. Together, the artworks and cited texts are approached from various critical angles, with each author questioning and complicating the ways in which we can 'read' textual citations in art.

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Humanities & Social Sciences

January 2024

Constructing Foucault's ethics

by Mark Olssen

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The Arts

February 2022

Counterpractice

by Rakhee Balaram, Marsha Meskimmon

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The Arts

January 2019

Joseph Losey

by Colin Gardner

The career of Wisconsin-born Joseph Losey spanned over four decades and several countries. A self-proclaimed Marxist and veteran of the 1930s Soviet agit-prop theater, he collaborated with Bertholt Brecht before directing noir B-pictures in Hollywood. A victim of McCarthyism, he later crossed the Atlantic to direct a series of seminal British films such as "Time Without Pity," "Eve," "The Servant," and "The Go-Between," which mark him as one of the cinema's greatest baroque stylists. His British films reflect on exile and the outsider's view of a class-bound society in crisis through a style rooted in the European art house tradition of Resnais and Godard. Gardner employs recent methodologies from cultural studies and poststructural theory, exploring and clarifying the films' uneasy tension between class and gender, and their explorations of fractured temporality.

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Education

Talk about Careers in Science

by Roth, W.-M.

Non scholae sed vitae discimus, we learn for life rather than for school. In this Roman saying, the ultimate reason for school is recognized as being a preparation for life. High school science, too, is a preparation for life, the possible careers students identify, and for defining possible future Selves. In this book, the contributors take one dataset as their object of scholarship informed by discursive psychology, Bakhtin, and poststructural positions to investigate the particulars of the language used in interviews about possible careers conducted both before and after an internship in a university science laboratory. Across this collection, some contributors focus on data driven analyses in which the authors present more macro-perspectives on the use of language in science career talk, whereas others see the data using particular lenses that provide intelligible and fruitful perspectives on what and how students and interviewer talk careers in science. Other contributors propose to transform the database into different representations that allows researchers to single out and demonstrate particular dimensions of discourse. Thus, these contributions roughly fall into three categories that are treated under the sections entitled “Discourse Analyses of Career Talk,” “Discursive Lenses and Foci,” and “Innovations in Theory, Method, and Representation of Career Talk Research.”

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Education

New Curriculum History

by Baker, B.

Rereading the historical record indicates that it is no longer so easy to argue that history is simply prior to its forms. Since the mid-1990s a new wave of research has formed around wider debates in the humanities and social sciences, such as decentering the subject, new analytics of power, reconsideration of one-dimensional time and three-dimensional space, attention to beyond-archival sources, alterity, Otherness, the invisible, and more. In addition, broader and contradictory impulses around the question of the nation - transnational, post-national, proto-national, and neo-national movements – have unearthed a new series of problematics and focused scholarly attention on traveling discourses, national imaginaries, and less formal processes of socialization, bonding, and subjectification. New Curriculum History challenges prior occlusions in the field, building upon and departing from previous waves of scholarship, extending the focus beyond the insularity of public schooling, the traditional framework of the self-contained nation-state, and the psychology of the schooled individual. Drawing on global studies, historical sociology, postcolonial studies, critical race theory, visual culture theory, disability studies, psychoanalytics, Cambridge school structuralisms, poststructuralisms, and infra- and transnational approaches the volume holds together not despite but because of differences and incommensurabilities in rereading historical records. Audience: Scholars and students in curriculum studies, history, education, philosophy, and cultural studies will be interested in these chapters for their methodological range, their innovations and their deterritorializations.

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Education

Invoking Mnemosyne

Art, Memory, and the Uncertain Emergence of a Feminist Embodied Methodology

by Clark Keefe, K.

What would it mean to map out the possibilities of a social scientific inquiry that makes the relational, creative, and embodied dimensions of storied knowledge and its production prominent? How might researchers engage memory, affect, and the arts in order to intentionally and meaningfully blend the cognitive acts of discursively conveying and receiving story with the somatic states of both the researcher and participants? Across this volume, readers encounter the author’s qualitative inquiry into the lives of women academics, including herself, who originated from working-class or poverty-class backgrounds. Unconventionally conveyed, these encounters take shape as a self-speculative critique of the author’s feminist research practice, moving readers into the folds of the work to consider what constructivist, poststructural, and material feminist theories and methodologies do to the story she was able to tell at the time that she told it. Art is implicated throughout as a site for provocation, theorization, and encounter, with nine original works of visual art, including the book’s cover image, accompanying the text. Written in a tone that is at once rigorous and accessible, the book expands theoretical perspectives about the role of bodies and creativity during the social scientific process generally and about identity research specifically. Invoking Mnemosyne will be an important text for faculty who teach and/or conduct social research, as well as graduate students and advanced undergraduates taking courses in sociology of science, philosophy of science, ethnography, feminist methodology, women and gender studies, and qualitative research in education and related social science fields.

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Humanities & Social Sciences

January 2014

De-stereotyping Indian Body and Desire

by Editor(s): Kaustav Chakraborty

Stereotypes result in deceptive generalizations about groups and are held in a manner that renders them as derogatory. As such, this volume advocates an active, goal-oriented effort in order to reduce prejudice through contact. Deconstructing the motivated ‘otherizing’ of the marginalized, the book offers an alternative reading of the representations of Indian body and desire, in both literature and media, that are often politically inscribed as ‘abnormal’ and ‘unnatural’ due to their non-conformity. Poststructural and postcolonial theories have argued that the body is a cultural construct rather than a natural entity. This argument is based on the assumption that there is no unalloyed body with any singular signification, but there are bodies onto which a multiplicity of meanings are inscribed and enforced. The responsibility of this ‘inscription’ lies with the agencies that hold power in a culture, and the infused meanings will consequently facilitate the ideologies of such agencies. In other words, the bodies of a certain culture are the ‘embodiment’ of the ideas of those who hold power in that culture. The corporality of the body, in this sense, is a cultural site in which the subtle political ideologies are deftly imposed, and, accordingly, ‘correct’ and ‘sanctioned’ desire is expected to germinate. Consequently, it may be argued that apparently unified or non-contradictory bodies of ‘normal’ desire should be suspected of having subtle hegemonic mechanisms in their formation. As a corollary to this, an investigation into such ‘abnormal’ bodies with ‘unnatural’ desires may have the effect of subverting such a power structure. Today’s world believes in de-stereotyped thinking and stereotyped living. Language has already been declared as a means more of camouflage than of revelation. As a result, there is a need to deconstruct the so-called ‘radical’ representations and expose the undercurrent of the norm. Otherization through stereotyping agencies and ideologies motivates racist, sexist and other de-humanizing positions and perspectives. This book, which is the outcome of the UGC-sponsored National Seminar organised by the Department of English at Southfield College, Darjeeling, is an endeavour to demystify the politics behind stereotyping, and to advocate the justification of de-stereotyping. As such, it represents a significant contribution to numerous disciplines including subaltern studies, women and gender studies, queer studies and minority discourse.

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Education

Counter-Hegemonic Teaching

Counter-Hegemonic Perspectives for Teaching Social Studies, the Foundations, Special Education Inclusion, and Multiculturalism

by Fleischer, L. E.

Comments on Counter-Hegemonic Teaching Peter M. Taubman, Professor and Head of Adolescence and Secondary Education, Brooklyn College, City University of New York: “Employing post-structural, psychoanalytic and critical theory to illuminate teacher education and the current state of secondary public schooling, Lee Fleischer offers us a counter-hegemonic theory of teaching. This is a far-ranging and scholarly study of current educational practices.” Greg Seals, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Social Studies, The College of Staten Island, City University of New York: “Lee Fleischer’s Counter-Hegemonic Teaching expresses wisdom gained in career-long efforts to conscientize and radicalize the author’s own encounter with schooling as well as the schooling experiences of an amazing array of students, teachers, and colleagues. Theory and practice meld in the book as poststructural theory becomes articulated in ways that make it useable and useful for teachers generally; but social studies teachers in particular. The brilliant use of student-created political cartoons to assess understanding of and promote development of the ideas of Freire is, literally, a lesson for all of us interested in issues of social justice in education.” David D. Avdul, Professor of Education of School Leadership and Administration, former Dean of the School of Education at Pace University, New York City: “Lee Fleischer’s Counter-Hegemonic Teaching looks at the familiar in unfamiliar ways. He challenges traditional practices of hierarchical schooling with an audacity which dares to imagine leadership in schools as a phenomenon of power sharing, necessarily empowering teachers whose pedagogy must necessarily empower students. Fleischer acknowledges that a uniqueness of being human is our ability to work in concert with others; he offers teachers a glimpse into a world of educational leadership which is inclusive, equitable, caring, and authentically democratic. This book challenges educators to work in concert with each other. To engage in constructive uses of power, all aimed at creating a culture of counter-hegemonic teaching.” Karel Rose, Professor of Foundations of Education, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Doctoral Program, CUNY Graduate Center: “The times may be just right and new spaces are opening for the counter-hegemonic struggle to thrive in a unique way. Given the political and economic failures of the early 21st century…. educators need the vision and guidance to take advantage of an unparalleled opportunity for change. Lee Fleischer is in the forefront, ahead of the pack and his timing is just perfect.”

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May 2011

The Jewel-Hinged Jaw

Notes on the Language of Science Fiction

by Samuel R. Delany, other Matthew Cheney

An indispensable work of science fiction criticism revised and expanded

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March 2010

Done into Dance

Isadora Duncan in America

by Ann Daly

The larger-than-life story of an American dance icon.

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July 2012

Starboard Wine

More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction

by Samuel R. Delany, other Matthew Cheney

The long-awaited reissue of a classic work of criticism -- revised and expanded

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October 2013

A Guide to Poetics Journal

Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982â€“1998

by Edited by Lyn Hejinian, edited by Barrett Watten

An anthology of key texts in the development of contemporary poetics

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March 2011

Silent Interviews

On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comicsâ€”A Collection of Written Interviews

by Samuel R. Delany

A collection of substantial written interviews.

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The politics of modern thought and science

by Anastasia Marinopoulou. Series edited by Darrow Schecter

A poststructural critique

by Natalie Bormann

by Anastasia Marinopoulou, Darrow Schecter

How diplomacy writes subjects, territory, time, and norms

by Pablo de Orellana

On literature in art

by Chloe Julius, Michael Green, Matthew Holman

by Mark Olssen

by Rakhee Balaram, Marsha Meskimmon

by Colin Gardner

by Roth, W.-M.

by Baker, B.

Art, Memory, and the Uncertain Emergence of a Feminist Embodied Methodology

by Clark Keefe, K.

by Editor(s): Kaustav Chakraborty

Counter-Hegemonic Perspectives for Teaching Social Studies, the Foundations, Special Education Inclusion, and Multiculturalism

by Fleischer, L. E.

Notes on the Language of Science Fiction

by Samuel R. Delany, other Matthew Cheney

Isadora Duncan in America

by Ann Daly

More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction

by Samuel R. Delany, other Matthew Cheney

Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982â€“1998

by Edited by Lyn Hejinian, edited by Barrett Watten

On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comicsâ€”A Collection of Written Interviews

by Samuel R. Delany

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