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
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... transcendent , infinitely foreign ; his face in which his epiphany is produced and which appeals to me breaks with the world that can be common to us , whose virtualities are inscribed in our nature and developed by our existence ...
... transcendent command whose call exceeds every established organization of responsibility . It is the relationship ... transcendence of the face . This transcendental demand , however , is not just my setting aside the ' objective and ...
... transcendent , illimitable demand . It is in this sense that the obligation sustained through the proximity of the ... transcendence of Being therefore , depends upon the experience of mortality as radical individuation , as a falling ...
... transcendent demand inscribed in the face of the other , we must constantly return to it in order to redeem the ... transcendence . Both Lyotard and Derrida have questioned the possibility of an ethical relation that transcends the ...
... transcendence of the face . Thus , while Foucault's genealogies of sexual , psychological , medical and carceral knowledge do , according to Bauman , present a compelling history of modern disciplinary space , the aesthetic practices ...
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 |