Culture and Identity: Critical Theories`Ross Abbinnett brings a keen and subtle philosophical mind to bear on themes and debates that have become commonplace in sociology. This is a sinuously written book which casts new light on pressing contemporary issues. It is required reading for everyone who wants to think seriously and with an open mind about the terrain of the present′ - Keith Tester, Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth This incisive and timely book provides a concise and reliable guide to the debate on modernity and postmodernity. In particular the work of Lyotard, Beck, Bauman, Baudrillard, Giddens, Jameson and Derrida is critically reviewed. Culture and Identity provides: a thorough and accessible discussion of the main themes in the modernity-postmodernity debate; a shrewd and penetrating account of how these themes address everyday life; a novel account of how technology is altering our perceptions of the `human′; and a balanced account of the hope for radical politics and radical critique to correct the excesses of capitalism. What emerges most forcefully from the book is the error of dismissing postmodernism as a self-indulgent and ultimately, dangerous piece of ideology. Abbinnett provides a pertinent reminder of the continuing importance of the themes and challenges raised in the `postmodern moment′. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 53
... remains inadequate to the ideals of universal recognition . The concrete historical form of this culture therefore , can only produce the essentially mutilated identity of the slave ( for the product of his worldly activity is always ...
... remains ' incomplete ' in the sense that the rationalizing demand of Enlightenment philosophy has been confined to the instrumental organization of social relations . However , unlike Adorno and Horkheimer's account of the failure of ...
... remains indifferent to the real dilemmas and contradictions of the political . Thus , as long as postmodernist theory refuses to acknowledge the structural deformations of communicative activity that lay at the foundation of the ...
... remains an adaptive strategy of capital : a cultural form whose transformations of the established structure of economic conformity and political obedience , are riven with acute economic and political contradictions . This attempt to ...
... remains to be thought . Now , if this axiomatic withdraws , from instant to instant , from one ray of the searchlight to another ... this is because darkness is falling on the value of value , and hence on the very desire for an ...
Contents
15 | |
25 | |
35 | |
Postmodernism and the Aesthetic | 43 |
Deconstruction and Identity | 53 |
Technology Ideology and the Culture Industry | 73 |
Information Simulation and the Silent Majorities | 96 |
The Postmodern and the Sublime | 112 |
Culture Politics Différance | 125 |
Derrida Fukuyama and the New World Order | 137 |
Science Technology and Catastrophe | 159 |
Capitalism Globalization and Cosmopolitanism | 190 |
Bibliography | 217 |