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Roland Barthes, a leading exponent of semiology in literary and cultural theory, became notorious for his provocative announcement, 'The Death of the Author', in 1968. 'Barthes and the Empire of Signs' follows him in exploring the nature of 'representation' itself. Is it possible to reconcile appearance and reality? Or imaginative recreation and fact? How do we understand the meaning of the world we experience around us? And, what does this imply
...In a sense, we do not believe in the Year 2000', says French thinker Jean Baudrillard. Still more disturbing was his claim that the millennium might not take place. Baudrillard's analysis of 'Y2K' reveals a repentant culture intent on storing, mourning and laundering its past, and a world from which even the possibility of the 'end of history' has vanished. Yet behind this bleak vision of integrated reality, Baudrillard identifies enigmatic possibilities
...Noam Chomsky, hailed by some as the 'Einstein of modern linguistics', is equally well known to others as an uncompromising political dissident and social critic. This book examines Chomsky's libertarian views on global economic hegemony and the new world order. His position is an unusual one. Though global free trade is today widely celebrated as a path to universal prosperity and a solution to the Third World's economic problems, its advent has
...Derrida's critique of Fukuyama's claim that history "as we know it" has ended is highlighted as one of his most valuable contributions to the postmodern cultural debate. This book places Derrida's rejection of Fukuyama's claim within the context of a wider tradition of 'endist' thought.
Genetically modified food has become in the past few years a portent symbol of the dangers inherent in technology and science and their commitment to "progress". The issues that have been raised foreshadow a greater ethical problem and fundamental philosophical impasse that is likely to arise, as science fact becomes more and more to resemble science fiction. Donna Haraway has taken in her work the implications involved for humanity, and for feminism
...In 1979 Jean-Francois Lyotard claimed to have laid the 'grand narrative' to rest. Yet the ecological disasters of recent years Myerson argues, herald a return of the big story, and in a new way are a legitmation, after all, of science. Once again, the minutiae of the everyday are simultaneously part of the bigger picture...
Edward Said's work has contributed substantially to contemporary debates on Orientalism, discourse analysis, dissident politics and postcolonialism. Having spent most of his life in exile from his homeland Palestine, he is acutely aware of the role that dominant ideologies play in cultural imperialism. Said argued that the study of the Orient became a recognised discipline at the very peak of nineteenth-century colonial expansion, creating a body
...Michel Foucault is the most gossiped-about celebrity of French poststructuralist theory. The homophobic insult 'queer' is now proudly reclaimed by some who once called themselves lesbian or gay. What is the connection between the two? This is a postmodern encounter between Foucault's theories of sexuality, power and discourse and the current key exponents of queer thinking who have adopted, revised and criticised Foucault. Our understanding of
...Since about 1992, an astonishingly fierce scientific, professional and legal controversy has arisen around the allegation that psychotherapists may sometimes have fostered false memories of childhood sexual abuse. Some have blamed Freud for this, arguing that he sowed the seeds of 'false memory syndrome' 100 years ago. He has been accused by some critics of abandoning, out of professional cowardice, his original recognition of the prevalence of
...Stephen Hawking has achieved a unique position in contemporary culture, combining eminence in the rarefied world of theoretical physics with the popular fame usually reserved for film stars and rock musicians. Yet Hawking's technical work is so challenging, both in its conceptual scope and in its mathematical detail, that proper understanding of its significance lies beyond the grasp of all but a few specialists. How, then, did Hawking-the-scientist
...Global mobile telephony is at the cutting edge of the communications revolution. Humanity, for Martin Heidegger, is 'the entity that talks'; Jurgen Habermas is a passionate advocate of authentic human interaction. Both are key thinkers in this encounter between alien visions of communication and the utopianism of the 20th and 21st centuries.
For Jean-Francois Lyotard, the cyborg is a symbol of fear Mankind must be aware that it has transgressed the boundaries between the organic and technological, inhabiting a world which views machine implantation in humans as normal and necessary. It implies a future, Lyotard warns, which may dangerously negate the value of humanity itself.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) has exerted a huge influence on 20th century philosophy and literature - an influence that looks set to continue into the 21st century. Nietzsche questioned what it means for us to live in our modern world. He was an 'ant-philosopher' who expressed grave reservations about the reliability and extent of human knowledge. His radical skepticism disturbs our deepest-held beliefs and values. For these reasons, Nietzsche
...We live in a knowledge economy. Competition now straddles the world, and competitive advantage will be produced from now on by knowledge and creativity. Acquiring and managing knowledge better has become a political imperative. And yet - what is knowledge? The arguments have changed little since Plato. Arguing against sceptics who claim we have no knowledge at all, philosophers have focused on knowledge of facts, on how to distinguish true knowledge
...David Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt, an American academic for defamation in a high-profile case and lost, the judge stating that Irving 'persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence'. This book explains and explores the contentious issues at stake in the Irving trial. Some historians believe, as Lipstadt claimed, that postmodern ideas lead to phenomena such as Holocaust denial. Others maintain that the relativism
...Best known for postmodernist fiction like 'The Name of the Rose', Umberto Eco, the Sherlock Holmes of semiotics, is constantly blurring the boundaries between high and low culture. Here we see football as a metaphor, a motif and a vehicle for interpreting the human fascination with ideals.
Sigmund Freud and Ludwig Wittgenstein were contemporaries. Freud created psychoanalysis, and Wittgenstein was perhaps the greatest 20th century philosopher. Both thinkers are essentially concerned with our inveterate tendency to deceive ourselves. Freud approaches this problem from a psychiatric angle - the cure of neurosis, psychosis, perversion and so on. He assumes that his readers can see through the self-deceptions of the neurotics he describes.
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