This volume offers a critical re-assessment of the thought of Ernst Bloch, best known for his groundbreaking study The Principle of Hope and one of the most significant European thinkers and public intellectuals of the twentieth century. It explores Bloch’s life, work and reception; his debt to Marx and Hegel; his central concepts of hope and utopia; his affinities with philosophers such as Gramsci and Žižek; and his radical reframing of our understanding of history, society and culture. Above all, this volume examines the relevance of Bloch’s ideas today, in a world still shot through with economic inequality and social injustice. Contributors are: Agata Bielik-Robson, Ivan Boldyrev, Henk de Berg, Sam Dolbear, Vincent Geoghegan, Holger Glinka, Loren Goldman, Douglas Kellner, Cat Moir, Jan Rehmann, Nina Rismal, Johan Siebers and Peter Thompson

Brought together for the first time - the seminal writing on architecture by key philosophers and cultural theorist of the twentieth century. Issues around the built environment are increasingly central to the study of the social sciences and humanities. The essays offer a refreshing take on the question of architecture and provocatively rethink many of the accepted tenets of architecture theory from a broader cultural perspective. The book represents a careful selection of the very best theoretical writings on the ideas which have shaped our cities and our experiences of architecture. As such, Rethinking Architecture provides invaluable core source material for students on a range of courses.

Over five hundred years since it was named, utopia remains a vital concept for understanding and challenging the world(s) we inhabit, even in – or rather because of – the condition of ‘post-utopianism’ that supposedly permeates them. In Rethinking Utopia David M. Bell offers a diagnosis of the present through the lens of utopia and then, by rethinking the concept through engagement with utopian studies, a variety of ‘radical’ theories and the need for decolonizing praxis, shows how utopianism might work within, against and beyond that which exists in order to provide us with hope for a better future. He proposes paying a ‘subversive fidelity’ to utopia, in which its three constituent terms: ‘good’ (eu), ‘place’ (topos), and ‘no’ (ou) are rethought to assert the importance of immanent, affective relations. The volume engages with a variety of practices and forms to articulate such a utopianism, including popular education/critical pedagogy; musical improvisation; and utopian literature. The problems as well as the possibilities of this utopianism are explored, although the problems are often revealed to be possibilities, provided they are subject to material challenge. Rethinking Utopia offers a way of thinking about (and perhaps realising) utopia that helps overcome some of the binary oppositions structuring much thinking about the topic. It allows utopia to be thought in terms of place and process; affirmation and negation; and the real and the not-yet. It engages with the spatial and affective turns in the social sciences without ever uncritically being subsumed by them; and seeks to make connections to indigenous cosmologies. It is a cautious, careful, critical work punctuated by both pessimism and hope; and a refusal to accept the finality of this or any world.

Periodisation is an ever-present feature of the grammar of history-writing. As with all grammatical rules, the order it imposes can both liberate and stifle. Though few historians would consider their period boundaries as anything more than useful guidelines, heuristic artifice all too easily congeals into immovable structure, blinkering the historical gaze. Researchers of literature are, of course, challenged by similar dilemmas. Here, too, the neatness of periodisation can obscure the cultural output of awkward individuals that do not fit the right chronological corset, whilst also creating unfounded expectations of shared experience and expression. Rather than discard periodisation altogether, in this cross-disciplinary volume an international group of historians and literary scholars presents different ways in which accepted period boundaries in modern European history can be challenged and rethought. To do so, they explore unnoticed continuities, and instances of delayed cultural transfer that defy easy periodisation; adopt the perspective of social groups that standard periodisation schemes have ignored; and consider how historical actors themselves divide up history and how this can affect their actions.

These original essays reconceive the place of religion for critical thought following the recent 'turn to religion' in Continental philosophy, framing new issues for exploration, including questions of justice, anxiety, and evil; the sublime, and of the soul haunting genetics; how reason may be reshaped by new religious movements and by ritual and experience. Contributors: Pamela Sue Anderson, Gary Banham, Bettina Bergo, John Caputo, Clayton Crockett, Jonathan Ellsworth, Philip Goodchild, Matthew Halteman, Wayne Hudson, Grace Jantzen, Donna Jowett, Greg Sadler, Graham Ward, and Edith Wyschogrod.

In this collection of provocative essays, historians and literary theorists assess the influence of Michel Foucault, particularly his History of Sexuality, on the study of classics. Foucault's famous work presents a bold theory of sexuality for both ancient and modern times, and yet until now it has remained under-explored and insufficiently analyzed. By bringing together the historical knowledge, philological skills, and theoretical perspectives of a wide range of scholars, this collection enables the reader to explore Foucault's model of Greek culture and see how well his interpretation accounts for the full range of evidence from Greece and Rome. Not only do the essays bring to light the assumptions, ideas, and practices that constituted the intimate lives of men and women in the ancient Mediterranean world, but they also demonstrate the importance of the History of Sexuality for fields as diverse as Greco-Roman antiquity, women's history, cultural studies, philosophy, and modern sexuality. The essays include "Situating The History of Sexuality" (the editors), "Taking the Sex Out of Sexuality: Foucault's Failed History" (Joel Black), "Incipit Philosophia" (Alain Vizier), "The Subject in Antiquity after Foucault" (Page duBois), "This Myth Which Is Not One: Construction of Discourse in Plato's Symposium" (Jeffrey S. Carnes), "Foucault's History of Sexuality: A Useful Theory for Women?" (Amy Richlin), "Catullan Consciousness, the 'Care of the Self,' and the Force of the Negative in History" (Paul Allen Miller), "Reversals of Platonic Love in Petronius' Satyricon" (Daniel B. McGlathery), and an essay from Dislocating Masculinity (Lin Foxhall).

Introduction -- The arts and social change -- The power of utopian thinking -- Transforming society -- Music education and utopia -- Conclusion.

This volume contains contributions to the "systematic study of knowledge." They suggest both an extension and a new path for classical epistemology. The topics in the first volume are the following: concepts and forms of knowledge, epistemic perspectivism, knowledge and world-views, perceptual knowledge, scientific knowledge, models in science, distributed and integrated knowledge, interaction of forms of knowledge, and relation between forms of knowledge and forms of representation.

Over the last twenty years, Jeff Malpas' research has involved his engagement with architects and other academics around the issues of place, architecture and landscape and particularly the way these practitioners have used the work of Martin Heidegger. In Rethinking Dwelling, Malpas' primary focus is to rethink of these issues in a way that is directly informed by an understanding of place and the human relation it. With essays on a range of architectural and design concerns, as well as engaging with other thinkers on topics including textuality in architecture, contemporary high-rise construction, the significance of the line, the relation between building and memory and the idea of authenticity in architecture, this book departs from the traditional phenomenological focus and provides students and scholars with a new ontological assessment of landscape and architecture. As such, it may also be used on other 'spatial' or 'topographic' disciplines including geography, sociology, anthropology, and art in which the 'spatial turn' has been so important.