Author Archives
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Key Theories of Jean Francois Lyotard
A French philosopher of the post-structuralist school, Jean Francois Lyotard (1925-1998) is perhaps best known for his book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979). In that work, Lyotard attempted to define the principle aspects of postmodernity in the wake… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Georg Lukacs
The Hungarian philosopher and literary critic Gyorgy (or Georg) Lukacs (1885-1971) had a major influence on the development of Western Marxism (that is to say, the largely Hegelian Marxism developed in Western Europe), while also being the most sophisticated literary… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) came to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the publication of Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967) and Margins of Philosophy (1972). Derrida’s name is inextricably linked with the term ‘deconstruction‘. Largely because… Read More ›
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Noam Chomsky’s Approach to Linguistics
American linguist, whose work was fundamental to the development of modern approaches to the study of language. In addition to his research in linguistics he has a sustained role in political activism and reflection, and has written copiously from an… Read More ›
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The Sociology of Emile Durkheim
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) French sociologist, regarded as one of the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology. His early work developed a theory of society as a transcendent reality that constrained individuals, and proposed the methodology necessary to study that reality. His work… Read More ›
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The Philosophy of Rene Descartes
French philosopher, scientific theorist and mathematician Rene Descartes (1596-1650) was a student at the Jesuit College in La Fleche and then studied law at Poitiers, graduating in 1616. Shortly afterwards he became a member of the Duke of Bavaria’s army,… Read More ›
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Cornelius Castoriadis: An Introduction
Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997) was an Economist, Psychoanalyst, Philosopher and social thinker, a founding and leading member of the French revolutionary journal Socialisme ou Barbarie, and author of numerous books and articles. In his The Imaginary Institution of Society, Castoriadis (1987)… Read More ›
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The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
French cultural anthropologist and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), whose work, characterised as it is by an equal commitment to empirical as well as theoretical research, has embraced the ethnography of Algerian peasant communities (Bourdieu 1979), the sociology of culture (1977b, 1990) and… Read More ›
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Ernst Bloch and Utopian Marxist Philosophy
German Marxist philosopher, whose interest in Utopian thought has perhaps had as much, if not more, influence on theology (Moltmann 1967) than on philosophy or cultural theory. It is perhaps only a slight exaggeration to suggest that Ernst Bloch’s (1885-1977)… Read More ›
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Walter Benjamin and Cultural Theory
The German literary theorist Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was associated with what is known as the Frankfurt School of German critical theory (although he was never a member of its institutional body, the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research). His work is… Read More ›
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Benedict Ruth and Cultural Anthropology
American cultural anthropologist who developed what is known as the configurational approach to anthropology, exploring the way in which the diverse institutions, activities and traits of a given culture are integrated into a patterned whole (or Gestalt). Patterns of Culture… Read More ›
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Roland Barthes as a Cultural Theorist
French literary critic, Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was a key figure both in the development of structuralism — in particular in the application of techniques derived from semiology to the analysis of everyday life and popular (as well as high) culture… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher whose work has exerted an important influence upon a wide range of philosophical, literary, cultural and political movements in the twentieth century. Nietzsche (1844-1900) was born near the city of Leipzig, attended the famous Pforta School and subsequently… Read More ›
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Key Concepts of Georges Bataille
French philosopher, novelist, poet and essayist. Georges Bataille‘s (1897-1962) work is antisystematic and hence defies summary, but a number of important themes predominate within it. These themes include an obsessive concern with the erotic, myth, sacrifice, the nature of excess,… Read More ›
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Literary Criticism of Aristotle
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Disciple of Plato Teacher of Alexander the Great. Major Works: Poetics, Rhetoric Poetics, incomplete, 26 chapters Mainly concerned with tragedy, which was in his day, the most development form of poetry. Disagreeing with much else that Plato… Read More ›
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Literary Criticism of Plato
Plato was the most celebrated disciple of Socrates. By his time the glory of Athenian art and literature, illustrated in the works of artists like Phidias and Polygnotus and writers like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, was on the wane,… Read More ›
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Literary Criticism of Sir Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92) was an eighteenth-century painter. His Discourses on Art, published in 1797, though they focus on painting, present ideas about representation which were central to the discussions of literary aesthetics and criticism going on during this period…. Read More ›
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Literary Criticism of Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BCE–8 BCE ), more commonly known as Horace, was a Roman poet, best known for his satires and his lyric odes. His letters in verse, particularly his Ars Poetica: Epistle to the Pisos, outline his beliefs… Read More ›
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The Philosophical Concept of Rhizome
Rhizome comes from the Greek rhizoma . Rhizome is often taken as being synonymous with “root”; in botany, a rhizome is a plant structure that grows underground and has both roots (commonly, the part that grows down into the ground)… Read More ›
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Narrative Theory
Modern Narrative Theory begins with Russian Formalism in the 1920s, specifically with the work of Roman Jakobson, Yury Tynyanov, and Viktor Shklovsky. Tynyanov combined his skills as a historical novelist with Formalism to produce, with Jakobson, Theses on Language (1928),… Read More ›
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