Addresses one of the central crises in critical theory today: how to theorise the subject as both a construct of oppressive discourse and a dialogical agent.

In this book Katherine Kearns explores the relationship of history to narrative. She combines psychoanalysis with recent feminist theory to reveal the hidden assumptions behind the construction of any historical narrative. Her alternative approach, one she labels psychohistoriography, rejects the notion that certain historical categories are inalienably given. By introducing insights derived from psychoanalysis and critical theory, Kearns expands our conception of what can legitimately count as historical evidence.

Anyone conducting qualitative research in education will be heartened and inspired by this collection, and will also find in it invaluable guidance.

This book recuperates the narrative of Andrew Jeptha, a Cape Town-born boxer who was the first black fighter to win a British welterweight title in 1907. As a result of that victory, Jeptha was permanently blinded, and took to preparing a book titled A South African Boxer in Britain (1910). This volume explores the relationship between the life of a pugilist and his textual production, and locates the complex negotiations of a pugilist by situating Jeptha in a larger arc of the ‘care of the self’, extending from Greco-Roman aesthetics to the present. In the process, it investigates the strategies of care that were integral to opposing, confronting and living in the increasingly racialised world of the early 1900s.

Afew years ago globalism seemed to be both a known and inexorable phenomenon. With the end of the Cold War, the opening of the Chinese economy, and the ascendancy of digital technology, the prospect of a unified flow of goods and services and of people and ideas seemed unstoppable. Yes, there were pockets of resistance and reaction, but these, we were told, would be swept away in a relentless tide of free markets and global integration that would bring Hollywood, digital fi nance, and fast food to all. Nonetheless, we have begun to experience the backlash against a global world founded on digital fungibility, and the perils of appeals to nationalism, identity, and authenticity have become only too apparent. The anxieties and resentments produced by this new world order among those left behind are oft en manifested in assertions of xenophobia and particularity. The “other” is coming to take what is ours, and we must defend ourselves! Digitalizing the Global Text is a collection of essays by an international group of scholars that situate themselves squarely at this nexus of forces. Together they examine how literature, culture, and philosophy in the global and digital age both enable the creation of these simultaneously utopian and dystopian worlds and offer resistance to them.

This book is designed to introduce readers to the language of contemporary rhetorical studies. The book format is an alphabetized glossary (with appropriate cross listings) of key terms and concepts in contemporary rhetorical studies. An introductory chapter outlines the definitional ambiguities of the central concept of rhetoric itself. The primary emphasis is on the contemporary tradition of rhetorical studies as it has emerged in the discipline of speech communication. Each entry in the glossary ranges in length from a few paragraphs to a short essay of a few pages. Where appropriate, examples are provided to further illustrate the term or concept. Each entry will be accompanied by a list of references and additional readings to direct the reader to other materials of possible interest.

The Encyclopedia of Postmodernism provides comprehensive and authoritative coverage of academic disciplines, critical terms and central figures relating to the vast field of postmodern studies. With three cross-referenced sections, the volume is easily accessible to readers with specialized research agendas and general interests in contemporary cultural, historical, literary and philosophical issues. Since its inception in the 1960s, postmodernism has emerged as a significant cultural, political and intellectual force that many scholars would argue defines our era. Postmodernism, in its various configurations, has consistently challenged concepts of selfhood, knowledge formation, aesthetics, ethics, history and politics. This Encyclopedia offers a wide-range of perspectives on postmodernism that illustrates the plurality of this critical concept that is so much part of our current intellectual debates. In this regard, the volume does not adhere to a single definition of postmodernism as much as it documents the use of the term across a variety of academic and cultural pursuits. The Encyclopedia of Postmodernism, it must be noted, resists simply presenting postmodernism as a new style among many styles occuring in the post-disciplinary academy. Documenting the use of the term acknowledges that postmodernism has a much deeper and long-lasting effect on academic and cultural life. In general, the volume rests on the understanding that postmodernism is not so much a style as it is an on-going process, a process of both disintegration and reformation.

To broaden the interpretive scope of critical theory and increase its usefulness, this text draws tradition-based views of language and anti-humanistic theories from their abstract frameworks into the field of cultural studies. It examines major thinkers and contemporary writers.

Merleau-Ponty's categories of the visible and the invisible are investigated afresh and with originality in this penetrating collection of literary and philosophical inquiries. Going beyond the traditional and current references to the mental and the sensory, mind and body, perceptual content and the abstract ideas conveyed in language, etc., these studies range from the `hidden spheres of reality', to the play of the visible and the invisible left as traces in works of human genius, the origins of intellect and language, the real and the imaginary in literature, and the `hidden realities' in the philosophy of the everyday world. These literary and philosophical probings collectively reveal the role of this disjoined/conjoined pairing in the ontopoietic establishment of reality, that is, in the manifestation of the logos of life. In tandem they bring to light the hidden play of the visible and the invisible in the emergence of our vital, societal, intimate, intellectual, and creative involvements.

McGee explores the political significance of aesthetic analysis in the context of cultural studies, and asks how political responsibility can be reconciled with the concept of the university as a democratic institution.