John Lechte

Lechte focuses on both the developers of structuralist theory and key thinkers opposed to this tendency. For each entry, he provides biographical information and suggests further reading. He aims to show that 20th-century thought emphasizes the relational

From Structuralism to Postmodernity

Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers

A leading literary critic and psychoanalyst, Julia Kristeva is one of the most significant French thinkers writing today. In this up-to-date survey of her work, John Lechte outlines fully and systematically her intellectual development. He traces it from her work on Bakhtin and the logic of poetic language in the 1960s, through her influential theories of the ‘symbolic’ and the ‘semiotic’ in the 1970s, to her analyses of horror, love, melancholy and cosmopolitanism in the 1980s. He provides an insight into the intellectual and historical context which gave rise to Kristeva’s thought, showing how thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Emile Benviste and Georges Bataille have been important in stimulating her own reflections. He concludes with an overall assessment of Kristeva’s work, looking in particular at her importance for feminism and postmodern thought in general. Essential reading for all those who wish to extend their understanding of this important thinker, this first full-length study of Kristeva’s work will be of interest to students of literature, sociology, critical theory, feminist theory, French studies and psychoanalysis.

Julia Kristeva (RLE Feminist Theory)

من البنيوية إلى ما بعد الحداثة

خمسون مفكراً أساسياً معاصراً

Mary Zournazi

This in-depth critical assessment of the work of French psychoanalyst and literary theorist, Julia Kristeva, brings together for the first time readings both classical and new. Kristeva's writing on literature and psychoanalysis, language and social issues, as well as her fiction, are all considered. Each reading confronts questions raised by Kristeva's thought and contributes to giving an overview of her concerns. Chapters written especially for this volume take the reader into the most recent work of this most eminent thinker of the post-War era. Essays Address: yKristeva's writings in the 1960s and 1970s on the semiotic and on poetic language yThe implications for feminism, art, psychoanalysis and cultural difference of the works of the 1980s yKristeva's theory of revolt and the feminine genius in the writings of the 1990sBoth the non-specialist reader and the Kristeva scholar will find this to be an essential collection of criticism. Key Features yFull coverage of Kristeva's thought and writings yExplanatory and contextualising headnotes at the beginning of each reading yPrimary bibliography of Kristeva's works and a secondary bibliography of works cited yGlossary of key terms.

The Kristeva Critical Reader

Maria Margaroni

This innovative introductory text not only clearly explains Kristeva's most difficult ideas, but also provides new insights into her work. All Kristeva's key concepts are clearly explained, and new interpretations are offered of the "chora," "Oedipus" and "abjection," as well as "revolt" and the "feminine genius." Kristeva's intellectual development is set in historical and political context and the creative power of her work is also highlighted. Finally, the original interview reveals Kristeva's true intellectual and political aspirations.

Julia Kristeva: Live Theory

Julia Kristeva

Why is it important to consider the human today? Exploring this question John Lechte takes inspiration from the interplay of two of Giorgio Agamben's concepts: 'ways of life' and 'bare life'. Stateless people, those who do not have a political community, such as asylum seekers and refugees, are no less human. However the European tradition, represented most clearly in Hannah Arendt's thinking of the opposition between the oikos, as the satisfaction of basic needs, and the polis, as the realm of freedom and glory, proposes the opposite of this. Arendt's famous phrase, 'the right to have rights', means that freedom and full human potential can only be realised in the context of civil society; in short, that only citizens can be fully human. Because Arendt's view is so influential, yet often not acknowledged, it is necessary to undertake a full investigation of the nature and meaning of the human to establish that it is not reducible to the citizen, but is always characterised by a 'way of life' – life mediated by language. The human is never reducible to 'bare life' – a life with no other significance than physical survival. The implications of 'bare life' are investigated through important themes in relation to the human, such as: freedom and necessity, the animal, animality as nature, inclusion and exclusion in politics, the sacred, death and dying, technics and nature, the Same and the Other, the everyday as extraordinary. Journeying through Agamben, Arendt, Bataille, Derrida, Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl, Levinas, Schelling, Simondon, and Stiegler, this is a profound search to reveal the truly human.

Bare Life and Ways of Life

The Human

Human rights are in crisis today. Everywhere one looks, there is violence, deprivation, and oppression, which human rights norms seem powerless to prevent. This book investigates the roots of the current crisis through the thought of Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. Human rights theory and practice must come to grips with key problems identified by Agamben &quote; the violence of the sovereign state of exception and the reduction of humanity to 'bare' life. Any renewal of human rights today must involve breaking decisively with the traditional coordinates of Western political thought and instead affirm a new understanding of life and political action.

Statelessness, Images, Violence

Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights

This revised second edition from our bestselling Key Guides includes brand new entries on some of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth- and twenty-first century: Zizek, Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger, Butler and Haraway. With a new introduction by the author, sections on phenomenology and the post-human, full cross-referencing and up-to-date guides to major primary and secondary texts, this is an essential resource to contemporary critical thought for undergraduates and the interested reader.

From Structuralism to Post-Humanism

An essential roadmap to the key concepts which frame our understanding of society and culture. From cybernetics to quantum theory, from ideology to power, from aesthetics to mimesis, this book spans a range of disciplines to provide an insight into the current scientific and intellectual state of society.

From Abjection to Zeno's Paradox

Key Contemporary Concepts

Taking Agamben's critique as a starting point, the authors reveal the paradoxes central to the politics of human rights by exploring questions of statelessness, exclusion and the visual representation of refugees and illegal migrants in the media.

John Lechte

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