Calvin Thomas

Ten Lessons in Theory (eBook, PDF)

A New Introduction to Theoretical Writing

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

A thoroughly updated edition of the witty and engaging exploration of the history, application, and tenets of literary theory.

The first edition of Ten Lessons served as a "literary" introduction to theoretical writing, a strong set of pedagogical prose poems unpacking Lacanian psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, Marxism, cultural studies, feminism, gender studies, and queer theory. Here Calvin Thomas returns to these ten "lessons," each based on an axiomatic sentence selected from the canons of theory, each exploring the basic assumptions and motivations of theoretical writing. But while every lesson explains the working terms and core tenets of theory, each also attempts to exemplify theory as a "liberatory practice" (bell hooks), to liberate theory as a "practice of creativity" (Foucault) in and of itself.

The revised, updated, and expanded second edition, featuring 25% new material, still argues for theoretical writing as a genre of creative writing, a way of engaging in the art of the sentence, the art of making sentences that make trouble, that desire to make radical changes in very fabrication of social reality.

Features:
- Critical keywords bolded for easy reference
- Expanded footnotes with detailed discussion of key concepts
- Anti-racist overhaul of each lesson in the wake of Trumpism, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo
- Urgent emphasis on Afropessimism, critical race theory, and other developments in postcolonial Black cultural production
- Designed to cross-reference with:
Adventures in Theory: A Compact Anthology, edited by Calvin Thomas
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory, edited by Jeffrey R. Di Leo
The Bloomsbury Handbook to 21st Century Feminist Theory, edited by Robin Truth Goodman

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
• Seitenzahl: 384
• Erscheinungstermin: 27. Juli 2023
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781501383977
• Artikelnr.: 68125927

Autorenporträt

Calvin Thomas is Professor of English at Georgia State University in Atlanta, USA. He is the author of Masculinity, Psychoanalysis, Straight Queer Theory: Essays on Abjection in Literature, Mass Culture, and Film (Palgrave Macmillan 2008) and Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line (University of Illinois Press, 1996). He is the editor of Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality (University of Illinois Press, 2000).

Inhaltsangabe

Prologue to the Second Edition: Bad Timing, Good Trouble Preface to the
Second Edition: "Something (still) worth reading": Theory and/as the Art of
the Sentence Introductory Matters: What Theory Does, Why Theory Lives Part
1. Antiphysis: Five Lessons in Textual Anthropogenesis Lesson One: "The
world must be made to mean"-or, in(tro)ducing the subject of human reality
Lesson Two: "Meaning is the polite word for pleasure"-or, how the beast in
the nursery learns to read Lesson Three: "Language is by nature fictional"-
or, why the word for moonlight can't be moonlight Lesson Four: "Desire must
be taken literally"-a few words on death, sex, and interpretation Lesson
Five: "You are not yourself"-or, I (think, therefore I) is an other Part 2.
Extimacy: Five Lessons in the Utter Alterity of Absolute Proximity Lesson
Six: "This restlessness is us"-or, the least that can be said about Hegel
Lesson Seven: "There is no document of civilization that is not at the same
time a document of barbarism"-or, the fates of literary formalism Lesson
Eight: "The unconscious is structured like a language"-or, invasions of the
signifier Lesson Nine: "There is nothing outside the text"-or, fear of the
proliferation of meaning Lesson Ten: "One is not born a woman"-on making
the world queerer than ever Reference Matters Index