Overview
A selection of Martin Jay's recent writings on contemporary thought and culture, this is a book about ideas that matter - and about why ideas matter. Borrowing from Flaubert's notion of a dictionary of "received ideas" and Raymond Williams's explorations of the "keywords" of the modern age, Jay investigates some of the central concepts by which we currently organize our thoughts and lives. His topics range from "theory" and "experience" to the meaning of "multiculturalism" and the dynamics of cultural "subversion." Among the thinkers he engages are Bataille and Foucault, Adorno and Lacoue-Labarthe, Benjamin, Lyotard, and Christa Wolf. By looking closely at what "words do and perform," Jay makes us aware of the extent to which the language we use mediates and shapes our experience. By helping to distance us from much that we now take for granted, he makes it difficult for us to remain comfortably certain about what we think we know.Synopsis
A selection of Martin Jay's recent writings on contemporary thought and culture, this is a book about ideas that matter - and about why ideas matter. Borrowing from Flaubert's notion of a dictionary of "received ideas" and Raymond Williams's explorations of the "keywords" of the modern age, Jay investigates some of the central concepts by which we currently organize our thoughts and lives. His topics range from "theory" and "experience" to the meaning of "multiculturalism" and the dynamics of cultural "subversion." Among the thinkers he engages are Bataille and Foucault, Adorno and Lacoue-Labarthe, Benjamin, Lyotard, and Christa Wolf. By looking closely at what "words do and perform," Jay makes us aware of the extent to which the language we use mediates and shapes our experience. By helping to distance us from much that we now take for granted, he makes it difficult for us to remain comfortably certain about what we think we know.
Booknews
Dedicated to literary critic Bill Readings, the first essay, "For Theory," traces the vicissitudes of one of the most hotly contested keywords of our time, paying special attention to the often contradictory ways in which "theory" has been evoked by exponents or critics of its various usages. Other essays explore multiculturalism, the debate over , the limits of limit-experience, the dynamics of cultural subversion, the aesthetic alibi, mimesis and mimetology, the academic woman as performance artist, modernism and psychologism, postmodern paganism, and the manacles of Gavrilo Princip. Paper edition (unseen), $16.95. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.