Critical theory Books

Throughout his career, Martin Heidegger read and reinterpreted his own writings. This was part of the entirely self-critical orientation of the journey in the landscape of thought.On My Own Publications is the first English-language translation of volume...

This book provides the first analysis of the reception and development of Lacanian psychoanalysis in Italy, offering a comprehensive account of the relevance and contributions of Italian Lacanians. It examines Italian Lacanianism through its distinctive...

The myth of good AI offers a bold new approach to understanding artificial intelligence and its implications for human security. Dismantling the 'good AI' narrative pedalled by tech giants, the book exposes the full extent of AI's nefarious impact on...

Western civilization is over. So begins Jan Zwicky's trenchant exploration of the root of global cultural and ecological collapse: a way of thinking that is also linked to some of the West's most noted achievements.The Renaissance merged imperial...

Drawing upon a wide variety of authors, approaches, and ideological contexts, this book offers a comprehensive and detailed critique of the distinct and polemical senses in which the concept of ressentiment (and its cognate 'resentment') is used today.

Roads to Decolonisation: An Introduction to Thought from the Global South is an accessible textbook that provides undergraduate students with a vital introduction to theory from the Global South and key issues of social justice.

This book examines the rise of a new form of emergency capitalism in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, exploring the Left's abandonment of its self-understanding as a critical force against unfettered capital accumulation, social discrimination and...

Kordela steps beyond extant commentaries on Marx's theory of commodity fetishism to show that in capitalism value is the manifestation of the homology between thought and being, while their other aspect-power-becomes the object of biopower. 　 

In this book, Richard Amesbury brings recent developments in Anglo-American philosophy into engagement with dominant currents in contemporary European social theory in order to articulate a pragmatic account of moral criticism. Presented in a lively and...

This book examines the issue of philosophical skepticism in the light of its relevance for the critique of modernity associated with the Frankfurt School. It situates the problem of skepticism in the context of the history of philosophy and explores its...

Drawing on Husserlian resources and existentialist and hermeneutical approaches, this book argues that critique is largely a question of method. It shows that phenomenological discussions of social and political problems draw from a tradition of...

This book examines transmissibility to remind us why the vitality and epistemic significance of an artwork is anachronistic and futural. Transmissibility: Writing Aesthetic History performs a transdisciplinary philosophy of aesthetic history via the work...

"Systemic Racism" is the centerpiece of the Progressive Left's ("Ruling Elites") Woke Identity Marxist's' "long march through the institutions." Systemic Racism promotes the notion that America's, and Western Culture's, "original sin" is racism that is,...

I wrote Auto-Immune Heresy out of a need to speak. To give voice to an experience that has been mine, and is infinitely larger than me.I am speaking about sickness. Long-lived, recurrent, and entangled with the entire 21st century into which I was born...

The author passes along scenarios he developed over the years--ponderings and writings trying to help himself think more critically--not to have you agree or disagree with him, but to encourage you to develop your own reasons to some of life’s most...

Psychiatry has to be taken seriously. An ever-increasing proportion of the population are prescribed long-term, powerful psychiatric drugs on opinions only, with no evidence of brain pathology. People who have broken no laws can be taken from their...

Reviving Nietzsches use of the ancient gods Apollo and Dionysus as notions for seeing the emergence, growth, and imminent and final decay of Western culture, Carlos Wiggen goes through the historical process by way of selected interpretations of this...

This book explores the reception of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment. It examines a variety of perspectives on the text, supplied by e.g. American critical theorists, British New Leftists, Transatlantic Cultural Studies...

Das Buch befasst sich mit bislang unbekannten Kontexten von Theodor W. Adornos Kritik der Psychoanalyse, darunter vor allem die versuchte „Arisierung" durch die Neoanalyse im Göring-Institut der NS-Zeit. Wolfgang Bock nimmt dazu einen wichtigen...

This collection emphasizes a cross-disciplinary approach to the problem of scale, with essays ranging in subject matter from literature to film, architecture, the plastic arts, philosophy, and scientific and political writing. Its contributors consider a...

This book outlines the most important points of intersection between early phenomenology and critical theory. It develops extensive analyses' of specific instruments of the phenomenological method such as eidetic intuition and the procedures of genetic...

This book addresses the manifold crisis of current societies and understands it as a failure of normative social structuration. As an exemplar for this development, it analyses the decline of welfare state models and the corresponding societal compromise...

This book offers a conceptual map of Habermas' philosophy and a systematic introduction to his work. It does so by systematically examining six defining themes-modernity, discourse ethics, truth and justice, public law and constitutional...

This book analyzes the implication of secular/liberal values in Western and human rights law and its impact on Muslim women. It offers an innovative reading of the tension between the religious and secular spheres. The author does not view the two as...

Critique and Affirmation in Erich Fromm explores the relations between Erich Fromm's theory and practice in politics and the psychoanalytic clinic - their points of continuity and contradiction.

This important and topical volume is composed around the debt and migration crisis in Europe in 2015 (known as the Greece crisis), and written almost concurrently as the two crises developed in quick succession. The central argument here is that Europe's...

Christian Köhlers Buch ist eine komplexe und vielschichtige Arbeit über Peter Greenaways Film Properos Bücher (NL/UK 1991). Der englische Maler und Regisseur experimentierte in seiner Adaption von Shakespeares Theaterstück Der Sturm von 1611 mit einer...

This book presents detailed discussions from leading intercultural philosophers, arguing for and against the priority of immanence in Chinese thought and the validity of Western interpretations that attempt to import conceptions of transcendence. The...

This book identifies a new methodological strategy for the interpretation of film philosophizing. Many recent works in film philosophy, adopting the approach identified with the term film as philosophy, have considered film as capable of doing philosophy...

This volume explores Andrew Feenberg's work in critical theory.  Feenberg is considered one of the key 'second generation' critical theorists, with a keen interest in philosophy of technology. He has made a vital contribution to critical theory in...

"You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on." These are some of the most quoted lines written by Samuel Beckett, which speak to the impulse of persevering in times of crisis and impossibility. Yet few readers of Beckett agree about what this paradoxical...

This book extends the approach that Murray and Schuler develop in their companion volume, False Moves in Philosophy and Social Theory: Losing Public Purpose. The chapters form a connected inquiry into consequences of capital, a far-reaching social...

This volume is an inquiry into the history of political philosophy by way of the general theme of education. Each contributor addresses the relationship between a particular political philosopher's broad teaching on the best political order and that...

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, in 1923, this book aims at shedding light on the archives of some of the key thinkers of Critical Theory of Society, also well...

This book proposes a new interpretation of Claude Lefort's thought focusing on his phenomenological method. Although all scholars recognize the influence of Merleau-Ponty, so far no one has demonstrated the fundamental coherence between Merleau-Ponty's...

The work reimagines emancipatory possibilities in the face of reified capitalist modernity. The enlightenment resulted in a 'disenchanted' world, stripped of 'anthropomorphised' meaning and purpose. This world, in its capitalistic figuration, alienates...

This book critically analyzes the current historical conjuncture of neoliberal capitalism with an eye to its emergent alternatives. Can democracy and capitalism thrive together? Is socialism a viable and a desirable alternative? What are the forms of...

This book considers whether critical theory is up to the task of addressing our contemporary crises, including the question of 'post-truth' discourse, psycho-social pathologies, the rise of right-wing populism, the Covid-19 pandemic, the anticolonial...

This new book gathers together essays concerning the strategic modes of appropriation that Bourdieu practiced with regard to Marx, together with their various outcomes. It is especially devoted to the practice of critique that both thinkers...