This book proposes the necessity of a new critical attitude appropriate to a post-enlightenment social and political condition. Theory - the intellectual and his or her knowledge - has been institutionalised and tamed; the critic interested in praxis must find a new means of establishing an effective intellection. After Theory argues the demand for a post-theoretical or ana-theoretical attitude which will recondition and regenerate critique under the aegis of a philosophical and austere postmarxism. The 'waking' of theory advanced here ranges eclectically over twentieth-century practice in philosophy, literature, painting, music, dance, architecture, film and photography, breaking theory from its institutionalised bonds.
This book proposes the necessity of a new critical attitude appropriate to a post-enlightenment social and political condition. Theory - the intellectual and his or her knowledge - has been institutionalised and tamed; the critic interested in praxis must find a new means of establishing an effective intellection. After Theory argues the demand for a post-theoretical or ana-theoretical attitude which will recondition and regenerate critique under the aegis of a philosophical and austere postmarxism. The 'waking' of theory advanced here ranges eclectically over twentieth-century practice in philosophy, literature, painting, music, dance, architecture, film and photography, breaking theory from its institutionalised bonds.
Part 1 Getting going: postmodernism. Part 2 Excess and extravagance: theory, enlightenment, violence; photography as modern cartography. Part 3 Clews and webs: representing postmodernism; postmodern (dis)simulation. Part 4 Aural labyrinth: listening; deterritorialization; "list, list, O list...". Part 5 Conclusion going on: post-Marxism.
Thomas Docherty is professor of English at the University of Kent, Canterbury.
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