David Macey

Accessing the huge and often bewildering subject of Critical Theory can be an intimidating experience. This acclaimed dictionary provides the ideal introduction to the range of theories and theorists on offer and will prove an invaluable and authoritative resource to all students. * Incisive overviews of the work of key figures from Arendt and Artaud to Winnicott, Wittgestein and Woolf * Powerful summaries of the crucial debates on desire and deconstruction, object relations and Orientalism, postcolonial theory and postmodernism * Clear explanations of both the links and the disagreements between different thinkers and schools.

The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory

In the most comprehensive study of Jacques Lacan yet to be published in English, David Macey challenges many of the assumptions that have come to surround Lacan’s work. He shows that key elements of Lacanian thought relate not to structuralism, as is often claimed, but to surrealism, Bataille and the early French phenomenologists. The famous “return to Freud” is shown to mask Lacan’s adherence to a psychiatric tradition and to trends within French psychoanalysis which were opposed by Freud himself. A detailed and challenging reading of work by Lacan and his associates on femininity reveals its reliance upon a virulently sexist discourse and upon an iconography derived from surrealism. The view that Lacanian psychoanalysis has a positive contribution to make to feminism and to theories of gender and sexual difference is contested. As well as providing a new and provocative reading of Lacan’s work, Lacan in Contexts is an important contribution to psychoanalytic history and to the history of French intellectual life.

Lacan in Contexts

When he died of an AIDS-related condition in 1984, Michel Foucault had become the most influential French philosopher since the end of World War II. His powerful studies of the creation of modern medicine, prisons, psychiatry, and other methods of classification have had a lasting impact on philosophers, historians, critics, and novelists the world over. But as public as he was in his militant campaigns on behalf of prisoners, dissidents, and homosexuals, he shrouded his personal life in mystery. In The lives of Michel Foucault -- written with the full cooperation of Daniel Defert, Foucault's former lover -- David Macey gives the richest account to date of Foucault's life and work, informed as it is by the complex issues arising from his writings.

The Lives of Michel Foucault

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), author of The Wretched of the Earth, was one of the great figures of the Third World revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s. His angry and eloquent writings on race, racism, psychiatry and anti-colonialism have become respectable in the academies of the developed world in the form of 'post-colonial studies'. ..Born in Martinique, Fanon trained as a psychiatrist in France before taking up a post in colonial Algeria. He had already experienced racism as a soldier in the Free French Army. In Algeria, he came into contact with the Front de Liberation National which was fighting a bitter war of independence. Forced to flee Algeria when he resigned his post, Fanon subsequently worked with the FLN as a propogandist and ambassador but also continued to work as a psychiatrist. ..Based on extensive and original research, this is the first complete and objective biography of Fanon. It goes beyond the myths that have grown up around the revolutionary hero and reveals Fanon to be a complex figure, infinitely more interesting than the theorist of anti-colonial violence celebrated by the left in the 1960s.

A Life

Frantz Fanon

Comprehensive and eloquent account of Fanon’s personal, intellectual and political life. Born in Martinique, Frantz Fanon (1925–61) trained as a psychiatrist in Lyon before taking up a post in colonial Algeria. He had already experienced racism as a volunteer in the Free French Army, in which he saw combat at the end of the Second World War. In Algeria, Fanon came into contact with the Front de Libération Nationale, whose ruthless struggle for independence was met with exceptional violence from the French forces. He identified closely with the liberation movement, and his political sympathies eventually forced him out the country, whereupon he became a propagandist and ambassador for the FLN, as well as a seminal anticolonial theorist. David Macey’s eloquent life of Fanon provides a comprehensive account of a complex individual’s personal, intellectual and political development. It is also a richly detailed depiction of postwar French culture. Fanon is revealed as a flawed and passionate humanist deeply committed to eradicating colonialism. Now updated with new historical material, Frantz Fanon remains the definitive biography of a truly revolutionary thinker.

A Biography

Alain Touraine

In this book, a leading French social thinker grapples with the gap between the tendency toward globalization of economic relations and mass culture and the increasingly sectarian nature of our social identities as members of ethnic, religious, or national groups. Though at first glance, it might seem as if the answer to the question Can we live together? is that we already do live togetherwatching the same television programs, buying the same clothes, and even using the same language to communicate from one country to anotherthe author argues that in important ways, we are farther than ever from belonging to the same society or the same culture. Our small societies are not gradually merging into one vast global society; instead, the simultaneously political, territorial, and cultural entities that we once called societies or countries are breaking up before our eyes in the wake of ethnic, political, and religious conflict. The result is that we live together only to the extent that we make the same gestures and use the same objectswe do not communicate with one another in a meaningful way or govern ourselves together. What power can now reconcile a transnational economy with the disturbing reality of introverted communities? The author argues against the idea that all we can do is agree on some social rules of mutual tolerance and respect for personal freedom, and forgo the attempt to forge deeper bonds. He argues instead that we can use a focus on the personal life-projectthe construction of an active self or subjectultimately to form meaningful social and political institutions. The book concludes by exploring how social institutions might be retooled to safeguard the development of the personal subject and communication between subjects, and by sketching out what these new social institutions might look like in terms of social relations, politics, and education.

Equality and Difference

Can We Live Together?

David Macey's biography of Frantz Fanon is acclaimed not only for its eloquence and its comprehensive account of Fanon's personal, intellectual and political life, but also for its rich depiction of postwar French culture. Frantz Fanon, now updated with new historical material, remains the definitive biography of the iconic thinker who inspired countless revolutions.

Frantz Fanon: A Biography (Second Edition)

When he died of an AIDS-related condition in 1984, Michel Foucault had become the most influential French philosopher since the end of World War II. His powerful studies of the creation of modern medicine, prisons, psychiatry, and other methods of classification have had a lasting impact on philosophers, historians, critics, and novelists the world over. But as public as he was in his militant campaigns on behalf of prisoners, dissidents, and homosexuals, he shrouded his personal life in mystery.In The Lives of Michel Foucault written with the full cooperation of Daniel Defert, Foucault's former lover David Macey gives the richest account to date of Foucault's life and work, informed as it is by the complex issues arising from his writings. In this new edition, Foucault scholar Stuart Elden has contributed a new postface assessing the contribution of the biography in the light of more recent literature.

Born in Martinique, Frantz Fanon (1925–61) trained as a psychiatrist in Lyon before taking up a post in colonial Algeria. He had already experienced racism as a volunteer in the Free French Army, in which he saw combat at the end of the Second World War. In Algeria, Fanon came into contact with the Front de Libération Nationale, whose ruthless struggle for independence was met with exceptional violence from the French forces. He identified closely with the liberation movement, and his political sympathies eventually forced him out the country, whereupon he became a propagandist and ambassador for the FLN, as well as a seminal anticolonial theorist. David Macey’s eloquent life of Fanon provides a comprehensive account of a complex individual’s personal, intellectual and political development. It is also a richly detailed depiction of postwar French culture. Fanon is revealed as a flawed and passionate humanist deeply committed to eradicating colonialism. Now updated with new historical material, Frantz Fanon remains the definitive biography of a truly revolutionary thinker.

John King

Zachary Lazar

Adam Peterson

Chris Tarry

Michael Thurston

Andrew McKay

Shane McCrae

Meghan O'Rourke

Alex Stein

Jeffrey Yang

Sesshu Foster

Robert Polito

Tamas Dobozy

H. L. Hix

James Richardson

Cole Swensen

Tom Sleigh

Judith Skillman

Josh Billings

Jeffery Allen

Sarah Barber

Dan Beachy-Quick

Priscilla Becker

Callista Buchen

Drew Calvert

James Capozzi

Kelly Cherry

Ruth Curry

Weston Cutter

Steve Davenport

Laura Engel

Avital Gad-Cykman

Kathleen Graber

Myronn Hardy

Henry Israeli

Jeanne-Marie Jackson

Yahia Lababidi

Laurie Lamon

Kevin Lutz

John Marvin

Diane Mehta

Kathryn Nuernberger

Fani Papageorgiou

Elahzar Rao

F. Daniel Rzicznek

Craig Teicher

Jacob White

Wyatt Williams

Paul-Victor Winters

Marion Wyce

The Rat's Nest

The classic biography of the radical French philosopher with a new afterword by acclaimed Foucault scholar Stuart Elden. When he died of an AIDS-related condition in 1984, Michel Foucault had become the most influential French philosopher since the end of World War II. His powerful studies of the creation of modern medicine, prisons, psychiatry, and other methods of classification have had a lasting impact on philosophers, historians, critics, and novelists the world over. But as public as he was in his militant campaigns on behalf of prisoners, dissidents, and homosexuals, he shrouded his personal life in mystery. In The Lives of Michel Foucault -- written with the full cooperation of Daniel Defert, Foucault's former lover -- David Macey gives the richest account to date of Foucault's life and work, informed as it is by the complex issues arising from his writings. In this new edition, Foucault scholar Stuart Elden has contributed a new afterword assessing the contribution of the biography in the light of more recent literature.

With Michel Foucault, Reaktion Books introduces an exciting new series that brings the work of major intellectual figures to general readers, illuminating their groundbreaking ideas through concise biographies and cogent readings. There is no better thinker than Foucault with which to begin the "Critical Lives" series. Though reticent about his personal life for most of his career, Foucault, in the last years of his life, changed his stance on the relationship between the personal and the intellectual and began to speak of an "aesthetics of existence" in which "the life" and "the work" become one. David Macey, a renowned expert on Foucault, demonstrates that these contradictions make it possible to relate Foucault's work to his life in an original and exciting way. Exploring the complex intellectual and political world in which Foucault lived and worked, and how that world is reflected in his seminal works, Macey paints a portrait of Foucault in which the thinker emerges as a brilliant strategist, one who-while fiercely promoting himself as a maverick-aligned himself with particular intellectual camps at precisely the right moments. Michel Foucault traces the philosopher's career from his comfortable provincial background to the pinnacle of the French academic system, paying careful attention to the networks of friendships and the relations of power that sustained Foucault's prominence in the academy. In an interview in 1966, Foucault said, "One ought to read everything, study everything. In other words, one must have at one's disposal the general archive of a period at a given moment." It is precisely this archive that Macey restores here, accessibly relating Foucault's works to the particular context in which they were given form.

Michel Foucault

A concise bio-critical account of the life and work of Michael Foucault.

Born in Martinique, then as now a departement of France, Frantz Fanon (l925-61) trained as a psychiatrist in Lyons before taking up a post in colonial Algeria. He had already experienced racism as a soldier in the Free French Army, for which he had volunteered and in whose ranks he saw combat during the liberation of France. In Algeria, he came into contact with the Front de Liberation National whose ruthless struggle for an independent Algeria was met with quite exceptional violence by the French Army. Fanon identified completely with the FLN and soon became a marked man. Forced to flee Algeria when he resigned his post, Fanon subsequently worked with the FLN as a propagandist and ambassador. Based on extensive and original research, this is the most compete and objective biography of Fanon yet written. It sweeps away the myths that have grown up around him and reveals Fanon to be a complex figure, infinitely more interesting than the theorist of anti-colonial violence celebrated by the left in the 60s. Macey shows Fanon to have been a man formed in the context of the French Caribbean, with its history of slavery and racism, and traces Fanon's intellectual career as a political thinker and psychiatrist with great care, setting it against the background of post-war French culture. David Macey has done justice for the first time to the extraordinary life of a complex figure, flawed in some respects but fundamentally a humanist committed to the eradication of colonialism, a man whose angry and eloquent writings are still of fierce relevance today.

David Macey

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