A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory

Now thoroughly updated and revised, this new edition of the highly acclaimed dictionary provides an authoritative and accessible guide to modern ideas in the broad interdisciplinary fields of cultural and critical theory

• Updated to feature over 40 new entries including pieces on Alain Badiou, Ecocriticism, Comparative Racialization , Ordinary Language Philosophy and Criticism, and Graphic Narrative
• Includes reflective, broad-ranging articles from leading theorists including Julia Kristeva, Stanley Cavell, and Simon Critchley
• Features a fully updated bibliography
• Wide-ranging content makes this an invaluable dictionary for students of a diverse range of disciplines

The new edition reflects recent developments in the field; original contributions have been fully revised and over 40 new entries have been added. The bibliography – a major resource for the study of cultural and critical theory, has been thoroughly updated, as have the suggestions for further reading at the end of each section. The Dictionary reflects the remarkable crossing of many of the traditional boundaries separating disciplines of study, with all major strands of theory represented.

Entries include theoretical movements, such as deconstruction; the work of individual theorists, such as Noam Chomsky, Raymond Williams, Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva and Virginia Woolf; as well as important concepts, with a number of speculative or polemical essays. Lively in style and with a wide variety of content, this Dictionary is invaluable for students of literature, cultural studies, philosophy, and many related disciplines.

 "Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through graduate students." (Choice, 1 May 2011)

"Thoughtfully structured and containing an impressive array of generally well-written entries, this book will be a welcome addition to the shelves of many reference collections." Reference Reviews

Michael Payne is Professor of English Emeritus at Bucknell University, USA. He is general editor for The Bucknell Lectures in Literary Theory (with Harold Scheizer, 12 vols., 1990–1995); author of Reading Theory: An Introduction to Lacan, Derrida, and Kristeva (1993) and Reading Knowledge:  An Introduction to Barthes, Foucault, and Althusser (1997); and editor of Renaissance Literature: An Anthology (with John Hunter, 2003), and The Greenblatt Reader (with Stephen Greenblatt, 2005) all published by Wiley-Blackwell.

Jessica Rae Barbera is a doctoral candidate in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh. Her areas of specialization include Cultural and Critical Theory, British Modernism, Psychoanalysis, Literatures of Medicine and Science, Illness Narratives, and Memoir. She is the recipient of the 2009−2010 Andrew Mellon Fellowship, and is currently at work on her dissertation, The Medicalization of Pain: The Human in the 20th Century.

FULL EBOOK - Kristeva (Key Contemporary Thinkers)

Kristeva - Key Contemporary Thinkers




Julia Kristeva is one of the most creative and prolific writers to address the personal, social, and political trials of our times. Linguist, psychoanalyst, social and cultural theorist, and novelist, Kristeva's broad interdisciplinary appeal has impacted areas across the humanities and social sciences.

S. K. Keltner's book provides the first comprehensive introduction to the breadth of Kristeva's work. In an original and insightful analysis, Keltner presents Kristeva's thought as the coherent development and elaboration of a complex, multidimensional threshold constitutive of meaning and subjectivity. The ‘threshold' indicates Kristeva's primary sphere of concern, the relationship between the speaking being and its particular social and historical conditions; and Kristeva's interdisciplinary approach. Kristeva's vision, Keltner argues, opens a unique perspective within contemporary discourses attentive to issues of meaning, subjectivity, and social and political life. By emphasizing Kristeva's attention to the permeable borders of psychic and social life, Keltner offers innovative readings of the concepts most widely discussed in Kristeva scholarship: the semiotic and symbolic, abjection, love, and loss. She also provides new interpretations of some of the most controversial issues surrounding Kristeva's work, including Kristeva's conceptions of intimacy, social and cultural difference, and Oedipal subjectivity, by contextualizing them within her methodological approach and oeuvre as a whole.

Julia Kristeva: Thresholds is an engaging and accessible introduction to Kristeva's theoretical and fictional works that will be of interest to both students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.

"Keltner's book is highly original, insightful, and promises to change the way scholars have traditionally read Kristeva's work."
Kelly Oliver, Vanderbilt University

"The book represents an engaging and original interpretation of the entire spectrum of Kristeva's work, including her often overlooked fiction. There are real gems in this manuscript, in particular a terrific and highly original interpretation of Kristeva's theory of intimacy, Oedipus, temporality, as well as of the phenomenological and ontological dimensions of her work, often disregarded by her interpreters. In short, Kristeva is a remarkable intellectual achievement."
Ewa Ziarek, University at Buffalo

"Keltner deftly demonstrates how Kristeva extends phenomenological insights in radically new directions. Her fresh, probing analysis decisively tackles the social and historical significance of Kristeva's Freudian and aesthetic standpoint. A tour de force of Kristeva's highly faceted portrait of Oedipus supports Keltner's excellent and timely elucidation of 'intimate revolt.'"
Sara Beardsworth, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, author of Julia Kristeva: Psychoanalysis and Modernity

Body/text in Julia Kristeva: religion, women, and psychoanalysis

Julia Kristeva works at a crucial intersection of contemporary disciplines: psychoanalysis, linguistics, semiotics, literary criticism, feminism, postmodern philosophy, and religious studies. This volume examines this rich body of work and the ways in which its interdisciplinary style gives insight into problems in understanding religion. Special attention is given to two related themes: the understanding of woman in relation to religion and the role of mother (especially of mother's body) in the formation of self and of a religious discourse.

Issues recurrent in the essays include the problem of ethics; the relation between discourse and the life of the body; the formation and sublimation of narcissism; the pre-Oedipal function of the father; the functions of fantasy, imagination, and art; the relation of religion to the negation of woman; and the possibility of positive and playful religion.

The themes of the relation between the symbolic structures of language and a pre-symbolic semiotics of the infant body, of the split and decentered subject, and of the opposition between desire and Jouissance (ecstatic enjoyment).participate in organizing the discussion. Abjection and sacrifice in religion, the dynamics of Christian love and faith, the relation between the doctrine of the Virgin Mary and the experience of motherhood, and the question of feminism and its sometimes quasi-religious forms are also thematic.

"What I like most about this book is that it provides a useful corrective to the overwhelming tendency to dismiss French feminism as essentialist. None of the contributors to this volume assume Kristeva is an essentialist. Some assume that she is not, while others for the most part argue for a more sympathetic and less biologically reductionist view of her work. Given the centrality of the essentialism/anti-essentialism controversy to recent feminist debates, the book presents a valuable addition to and extension of that debate, clarifying what the issues are but not assuming a common consensus." -- Tina Chanter, Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change, University of Virginia

David Crownfield is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Northern Iowa. He is co-editor of Lacan and Theological Discourse, also published by SUNY Press.

Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End by Barbara Herrnstein Smith

In Poetic Closure, distinguished literary scholar Barbara Herrnstein Smith explores the provocative question: How do poems end? To answer it, Smith examines numerous individual poems and examples of common poetic forms in order to reveal the relationship between closure and the overall structure and integrity of a poem. First published in 1968, Smith’s book remains essential reading in poetic theory.

“Ranging from Elizabethan lyric through free and syllabic verse and concrete poetry, Poetic Closure is a learned, witty, and richly illustrated study of the behavior of poems. . . . It can be read, enjoyed, studied by people who like reading poetry, including—I would suspect—poets.”—Richard M. Elman, New York Times Book Review

Barbara Herrnstein Smith is distinguished professor of English at Brown University and the Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Duke University, where she is also director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory. 

Edward Said: A Critical Introduction (Key Contemporary Thinkers)

Edward Said is one of the foremost thinkers writing today. His work as a literary and cultural critic, a political commentator, and the champion of the cause of Palestinian rights has given him a unique position in western intellectual life. This new book is a major exploration and assessment of his writings in all these main areas.

Focusing on Said's insistence on the connection between literature, politics and culture, Kennedy offers an overview and assessment of the main strands of Said's work, drawing out the links and contradictions between each area. The book begins with an examination of Orientalism, one of the founding texts of post-colonial studies. Kennedy looks at the book in detail, probing both its strengths and weaknesses, and linking it to its sequel, Culture and Imperialism. She then examines Said's work on the Palestinian people, with his emphasis on the need for a Palestinian narrative to counter pro-Israeli accounts of the Middle East, and his searing criticisms of US, Israeli, and even Arab governments. The book closes with an examination of Said's importance in the field of post-colonial studies, notably colonial discourse analysis and post-colonial theory, and his significance as a public intellectual.

This book will be of great interest to anyone studying post-colonialism, literary theory, politics, and the Middle East, as well as anyone interested in Said's writings.

"A valuable introduction to the vision and ability of an individual and influential thinker."
Ethnic Conflict Research Digest