Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Why are vinyl records making a comeback? How is their resurgence connected to the political economy of music? Vinyl Theory responds to these and other questions by exploring the intersection of vinyl records with critical theory. In the process, it asks how the political economy of music might be connected with the philosophy of the record. The young critical theorist and composer Theodor Adorno's work on the philosophy of the record and the political economy of music of the contemporary French public intellectual, Jacques Attali, are brought together with the work of other theorists in order to understand the fall and resurrection of vinyl records. The major argument of Vinyl Theory is that the very existence of vinyl records may be central to understanding the resiliency of neoliberalism. This argument is made by examining the work of Adorno, Attali, Friedrich Nietzsche, and others on music through the lens of Michel Foucault's biopolitics.

Vinyl Theory

Sophia A. Mcclennen

The alt-right movement in the United States has actively been endorsing the use of left theory to achieve its ends—and with varying degrees of success. Tracing occasions where figures on the alt-right reference left theory, this volume asks if the alt-right’s reference of left theory is just bad reading, or are there troubling ways that certain types of left theory encourage such interpretations? What if the connections between left theory and the alt-right lie in the shared disdain for certain types of institutions, structures of power, and the status quo? Are there lessons to be learned in what can often appear as an overlapping desire to deconstruct concepts like truth, justice, freedom, and democracy? Drawing on the longer history of right-wing readings of left theory, this volume seeks to unpack these recent developments and consider their impact on the future of theory.

Left Theory and the Alt-Right

It’s not what you know, but who you know. It’s not what you do, but where you do it. Underlying such facile assertions, there lies at least a little truth—and, for academics, a complex web of relationships. Academic affiliations confer value and identity on individuals, disciplines, and institutions. They have a formative and formidable role in determining the status and self-image of academics and institutions. The subtleties and implications of such a system—in personal and professional terms—are the subject of this timely and thought-provoking volume. Here writers from all walks of academic life interweave personal experiences and critical insights to reveal the inner workings of affiliation in contemporary academic culture. These essays take up topics ranging from scholars’ attitudes toward their affiliated institutions to publishing in academic journals, from the phenomenon of the academic star system to activism among tenured professors, from the perils of crossing disciplinary boundaries to the merits of mentoring through affiliation. Together they offer a frank, firsthand view of the ways and means and the uses and abuses of affiliation in higher education today—a view that is sure to provoke discussion throughout academia.

Identity in Academic Culture

Affiliations

This book introduces the reader to the ways in which happiness has been explored in philosophy and literature for thousands of years, in order to understand the newest theoretical approaches to happiness. Jeffrey R. Di Leo draws on its long and rich history as a window into our present obsession with happiness. Each of the four chapters of this book provides a substantially different literary-theoretical account of how and why literature matters with respect to considerations of happiness. From the neoliberal happiness industry and the psychoanalytic rejection of happiness to aesthetic hedonism and revolutionary happiness, literature viewed from the perspective of happiness becomes a story about what is and is not the goal of life. The multidisciplinary approach of this book will appeal to a variety of readers from literary studies, critical theory, philosophy and psychology and anyone with an interest in happiness and theories of emotion.

Happiness

What is the legacy of Theory after the deaths of so many of its leading lights, from Jacques Derrida to Roland Barthes? Bringing together reflections by leading contemporary scholars, Dead Theory explores the afterlives of the work of the great theorists and the current state of Theory today. Considering the work of thinkers such as Derrida, Deleuze, and Levinas, the book explores the ways in which Theory has long been haunted by death and how it might endure for the future.

Derrida, Death, and the Afterlife of Theory

Dead Theory

Christian Moraru

Disciplines from literary studies to environmentalism have recently undergone a spectacular reorientation that has refocused entire fields, methodologies, and vocabularies on the world and its sister terms such as globe, planet, and earth. The Bloomsbury Handbook of World Theory examines what “world” means and what it accomplishes in different zones of academic study. The contributors raise questions such as: What happens when “world” is appended to a particular form of humanistic or scientific inquiry? How exactly does “worlding” bear on the theoretical operating system and the history of that field? What is the theory or theoretical model that allows “world” to function in a meaningful way in coordination with that knowledge domain? With contributions from 38 leading theorists from a vast range of fields, including queer studies, religion, and pop culture, this is the first large reference work to consider the profound effect, both within and outside the academy, of the worlding of discourse in the 21st century.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of World Theory

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory is the most comprehensive available survey of the state of theory in the 21st century. With chapters written by the world's leading scholars in their field, this book explores the latest thinking in traditional schools such as feminist, Marxist, historicist, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial criticism and new areas of research in ecocriticism, biopolitics, affect studies, posthumanism, materialism, and many other fields. In addition, the book includes a substantial A-to-Z compendium of key words and important thinkers in contemporary theory, making this an essential resource for scholars of literary and cultural theory at all levels.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory

R. M. Berry

Fiction writers and critics engage the aesthetic, political, philosophical, and cultural dimensions of contemporary fiction.

Fiction's Present

Why are vinyl records making a comeback? How is their resurgence connected to the political economy of music? Vinyl Theory responds to these and other questions by exploring the intersection of vinyl records with critical theory. In the process, it asks how the political economy of music might be connected with the philosophy of the record. The young critical theorist and composer Theodor Adorno’s work on the philosophy of the record and the political economy of music of the contemporary French public intellectual, Jacques Attali, are brought together with the work of other theorists to in order to understand the fall and resurrection of vinyl records. The major argument of Vinyl Theory is that the very existence of vinyl records may be central to understanding the resiliency of neoliberalism. This argument is made by examining the work of Adorno, Attali, Friedrich Nietzsche, and others on music through the lens of Michel Foucault’s biopolitics.

Peter Hitchcock

What are the theoretical parameters that produce the category public intellectual? By pondering the conceptual elements that inform the term, this book offers not just a political critique, but a sense of the new challenges its meanings present. This collection complicates the notion of public intellectual while arguing for its continued urgency in communities formal and informal, institutional and abstract. While it is not quite accurate to say public intellectuals have disappeared entirely, it is clear they function differently in an age of global neoliberalism and techno-digital overdrive. Today the idea of the public intellectual bears only the slightest resemblance to what it was fifty or even twenty-five years ago. The essays in this collection provide a number of different ways to imagine the fate of public intellectuals and offers a thorough exploration of the commonplace ideologies and politics associated with them.

Politics, Theory, and the Public Sphere

The New Public Intellectual

What does it mean to consider philosophy as a species of not just literature but world literature? The authors in this collection explore philosophy through the lens of the "worlding" of literature--that is, how philosophy is connected and reconnected through global literary networks that cross borders, mix stories, and speak in translation and dialect. Historically, much of the world's most influential philosophy, from Plato's dialogues and Augustine's confessions to Nietzsche's aphorisms and Sartre's plays, was a form of literature--as well as, by extension, a form of world literature. Philosophy as World Literature offers a variety of accounts of how the worlding of literature problematizes the national categorizing of philosophy and brings new meanings and challenges to the discussion of intersections between philosophy and literature.

Philosophy as World Literature

A comprehensive examination of one of the twentieth century's most innovative writers and critics.

Innovation, Theory, and the Holocaust

Federman's Fictions

Walter R. Jacobs

Where does learning take place? In this collection of passionately argued essays, leading educators and theorists explore the "where" of pedagogy - how pedagogical processes are influenced by local conditions. Understanding this dynamic just may be the single most important ingredient to successful teaching.Classrooms Matter presents some of the best known voices in critical pedagogy--Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Stanley Aronowitz, Carol Becker, Peter McLaren--alongside essays by such well-known scholars as Mark Poster, Sharon O'Dair, David Trend, Jacqueline Bobo, and others. These thinkers explore the sensitive balance between technology, physical space, economic developments, political events, and the goals of teaching--a balance we must constantly renegotiate if classrooms are to matter at all.

Progressive Visions of Educational Environments

If Classrooms Matter

Presenting different ways to imagine criticism without critique, this collection provides a survey of both the difficult times facing ideological critique and the ways in which literary criticism and aesthetics have been affected by changing attitudes toward critique.

Aesthetics, Literature, and the Political

Criticism after Critique

For better or worse, America lives in the age of “worlded” literature. Not the world literature of nations and nationalities considered from most powerful and wealthy to the least. And not the world literature found with a map. Rather, the worlded literature of individuals crossing borders, mixing stories, and speaking in dialect. Where translation struggles to be effective and background is itself another story. The “worlded” literature of the multinational corporate publishing industry where the global market is all. The essays in this collection, from some of the most distinguished figures in American studies and literature, explore what it means to consider American literature as world literature.

American Literature as World Literature

Over the course of the past twenty-five years, anthologies have shifted from playing a relatively minor role in academic culture to a position of dominance. The essays in this collection explore the significant intellectual, economic, political, pedagogical, and creative resonance of anthologies through all levels of academic life. They show that anthologies have consequences and are grounded in commitments. Striving to articulate these consequences and commitments is a priority in higher education today. Most of the contributors to this volume are editors of anthologies, and they draw on personal experiences to provide a rare glimpse into the economics and logic of anthology publication. Their essays illustrate the ways in which editing an anthology involves negotiation and compromise between intellectual ideal and realistic practice. On Anthologies includes discussion of a wide range of anthologies used and produced by teachers and scholars. Though the emphasis is on literature and theory anthologies, the insights in this volume speak to professionals in all areas of academic life. Collectively, these essays establish the foundation for continuing critical analysis of anthology production and consumption in all disciplines.

Jeffrey R. Di Leo

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