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The institutions of meaning : a defense of anthropological holism
Holism maintains that a phenomenon is more than the sum of its parts. Yet analysis--a mental process crucial to comprehension--involves dismantling the whole to grasp it piecemeal and relationally. Wading through such quandaries, Vincent Descombes guides readers to a deepened appreciation of the entity that enables understanding: the human mind.
eBook
Cold War criticism and the politics of skepticism
In Cold War Criticism, Tobin Siebers claims that modern criticism is a Cold War criticism. Postwar literary theory has absorbed the scepticism, suspicion and paranoia of the Cold War mentality, and it plays them out in debates about the divided self, linguistic indeterminacy, the metaphysics of presence, multiculturalism, canon formation, power, cultural literacy and the politics of literature. The major critical movements of the postwar age, Siebers argues, belong to three dominant phases of the Cold War era. The age of charismatic leadership (Churchill, FDR, Stalin, and Hitler) lies behind the preoccupation with “intention”, “effect” and “impersonality” found in the New Criticism. The age of propaganda motivates the fascination with the guiles of language, undecidability and deconstruction. The age of superpowers provides the dominant metaphor in the new historicism’s analysis of the technology of power. All three ages of criticism reflect Cold War Scepticism as it has impaired the ability of literary theorists to talk effectively about the politics of criticism. Supporting his claims with polemical readings from such figures as Arendt, Bloom, deMan, Lyotard, Siebers offers a new and often surprising vision of what theory must do if it is to enter the post Cold War era successfully.
eBook
Wittgenstein reads freud
Did Freud present a scientific hypothesis about the unconscious, as he always maintained and as many of his disciples keep repeating? This question has long prompted debates concerning the legitimacy and usefulness of psychoanalysis, and it is of utmost importance to Lacanian analysts, whose main project has been to stress Freud's scientific grounding. Here Jacques Bouveresse, a noted authority on Ludwig Wittgenstein, contributes to the debate by turning to this Austrian-born philosopher and contemporary of Freud for a candid assessment of the early issues surrounding psychoanalysis. Wittgenstein, who himself had delivered a devastating critique of traditional philosophy, sympathetically pondered Freud's claim to have produced a scientific theory in proposing a new model of the human psyche. What Wittgenstein recognized--and what Bouveresse so eloquently stresses for today's reader--is that psychoanalysis does not aim to produce a change limited to the intellect but rather seeks to provoke an authentic change of human attitudes. The beauty behind the theory of the unconscious for Wittgenstein is that it breaks away from scientific, causal explanations to offer new forms of thinking and speaking, or rather, a new mythology. Offering a critical view of all the texts in which Wittgenstein mentions Freud, Bouveresse immerses us in the intellectual climate of Vienna in the early part of the twentieth century. Although we come to see why Wittgenstein did not view psychoanalysis as a science proper, we are nonetheless made to feel the philosopher's sense of wonder and respect for the cultural task Freud took on as he found new ways meaningfully to discuss human concerns. Intertwined in this story of Wittgenstein's grappling with the theory of the unconscious is the story of how he came to question the authority of science and of philosophy itself. While aiming primarily at the clarification of Wittgenstein's opinion of Freud, Bouveresse's book can be read as a challenge to the French psychoanalytic school of Lacan and as a provocative commentary on cultural authority.
eBook
Farewell to matters of principle : philosophical studies
This book is the latest addition to the Odéon series, a multidisciplinary series devoted to original works and translations by European writers in the areas of literature, criticism, philosophy, history and politics.
eBook