Author Archives
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Postmodernism and Advertisement
The postmodern condition entails the treatment of time and space as finite or tied to the social context of their use. They are, from a postmodern perspective, no longer unproblematic media whose neutrality permits comparison and communications across diverse boundaries…. Read More ›
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Postmodernism and Feminism
[Feminism] should persist in seeing itself as a component or offshoot of Enlightenment modernism, rather than as one more ‘exciting’ feature (or cluster of features) in a postmodern social landscape. (Sabina Lovibond, in T. Docherty, ed., Postmodemism: A Reader (1993).)… Read More ›
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Postmodernism and Architecture
While motoring across the Californian desert, a young woman encounters a young male student engaged in the militant activities of May 1968. He is later shot by the police. Thanks to this encounter, her eyes are opened as to the… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Claude Levi Strauss
Claude Levi Strauss was born into a Belgian Jewish family in 1908. Both his parents were artists, and so while he was learning to read and write, the future anthropologist had a paintbrush or crayon in his hand. Although he… Read More ›
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Christian Metz and Film Theory
Born in 1931 in Beziers in the south of France, Christian Metz died tragically at the end of 1993. Metz opened the way in the 1960s to the establishment of film theory as a new intellectual discipline. Indeed, articles (written… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes was born at Cherbourg in 1915. Barely a year later, his father died in naval combat in the North Sea, so that the son was brought up by the mother and, periodically, by his grandparents. Before completing his… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Louis Hjelmslev
The Danish linguist and semiotician, Louis Hjelmslev, was born in 1899 and died on 30 May 1965. Hjelmslev, who founded the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle, attempted to render more rigorous and clear Saussure’s general theory of language and semiotics. In particular, Hjelmslev… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Ferdinand de Saussure
Before 1960, few people in academic circles or outside had heard the name of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). But after 1968, European intellectual life was a-buzz with references to the father of both linguistics and structuralism. That Saussure was as… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Judith Butler
Judith Butler (b.1956) received a PhD in philosophy from Yale in 1984, with a thesis on Hegelian influences in France. She is the Maxine Elliot professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California at… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben (b.1942) is a philosopher of Italian origin who, since the World Trade Centre attacks in September 2001, has challenged the wide use of emergency measures for people control. Indeed, while en route to give lectures at New York University… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou (b. 1937) was born in Rabat, Morocco. With a father an agrégé, like himself, in philosophy, and a mother agre´ge´e in French, Badiou is also a product of the E´ cole Normale Superieure (ENS) (rue d’Ulm). It was… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Jürgen Habermas
Jurgen Habermas (b. 1929) is the most renowned member of the second generation of the Frankfurt School of Social Research. Born in 1929 in Dusseldorf, Habermas wrote his Ph.D dissertation (published in 1954) on the conflict between the Absolute and… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Maurice Blanchot
In the 1983 edition of the Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thinkers there are entries for Francois Mitterand and Michel Foucault (as well as for Marilyn Monroe), but no entry for Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003), one of France’s foremost post-war writers and… Read More ›
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Key Theories of James Joyce
In his book on Ulysses and Finnegans Wake (Derrida 19871) Jacques Derrida relates how James Joyce (1882–1941) was present in his very first book, the Introduction to Husserl’s Origin of Geometry (1962), and present again in a key essay, Plato’s Pharmacy,… Read More ›
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ANSWER KEY HSST ENGLISH
ANSWER KEY PSC HSST ENGLISH EXAM CONDUCTED ON 28 FEBRUARY 2018. Prepared by Nasrullah Mambrol 1 The sub-title of “Windhover” is A) From Christ our lord B) Submit befer you O! Lord C) To Christ our Lord D) O!… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) is one of France’s most important and interesting intellectual figures. She excelled at being a writer, filmmaker and dramatist. After the Second World War she also worked for a number of years as a journalist for France-Observateur…. Read More ›
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Key Theories of Jean Baudrillard
In a society dominated by production, Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) argues, the difference between use-value and exchange-value has some pertinence. Certainly, for a time, Marx was able to provide a relatively plausible explanation of the growth of capitalism using just these… Read More ›
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Franz Kafka and Postmodernity
The uniqueness of Franz Kafka (1883–1924) stems, in large measure, from the intersection of writing and lived experience. Born into a Jewish family in Prague in 1883, Franz Kafka was the son of a prosperous self-made businessman. Although his parents… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Michel Serres
Michel Serres (1 September 1930 – 1 June 2019) was born at Agen in France, son of a bargeman. In 1949, he went to naval college and subsequently, in 1952, to the E´ cole Normale Supe´rieure (rue d’Ulm). In 1955,… Read More ›
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Key Theories of Paul Virilio
Paul Virilio (b.1932) is the theorist of the effects of increasing speed in post or late-modernity. Of particular importance for him, in this regard, are information technology and technologies of vision, such as cinema and photography, especially in time of… Read More ›
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