Cultural Theory: An Anthology

Cultural Theory: An Anthology presents a comprehensive collection of the essential readings that have shaped and defined the field of contemporary cultural theory. The editors have selected readings from key theorists and authors, including Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault and Fredric Jameson, whose ideas remain most relevant to the analysis and study of culture today. The concepts discussed cross several disciplines, with sections covering subjects such as power, ideology, the organization of space and time, and the production of subjectivity. The readings presented in this carefully chosen compilation reflect the most influential ideas that have emerged in each of these areas –– ideas that have been put to use in myriad ways in the study and critical assessment of modern culture. Brief introductions to each thematically–linked section summarize the readings and their context, making the anthology accessible to the student reader as well as to faculty and researchers.

Acknowledgments. Introduction. Part 1 Reforming Culture. Introduction to Part I. 1. Matthew Arnold, "Sweetness and Light" (1869). 2. Thorstein Veblen, "Conspicuous Consumption" (1899). 3. Herbert Marcuse, "The Affirmative Character of Culture" (1937). 4. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry" (1944). 5. Raymond Williams, "Culture Is Ordinary" (1958). 6. Fredric Jameson, "Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture" (1979). 7. Stuart Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing ′the Popular′" (1981). 8. Pierre Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital" (1986). Additional Readings. Part 2 Power. Introduction to Part 2. 9. Karl Marx, Preface to "A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy" (1859). 10. Carl Schmitt, "Definition of Sovereignty" (1922). 11. Frantz Fanon, "The Trials and Tribulations of National Consciousness" (1961). 12. Michel Foucault, "Society Must Be Defended, 17 March 1976" (1976). 13. Michel Foucault, "Method" (1976). 14. Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control" (1992). 15. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, "Biopolitical Production" (2000). Additional Readings. Part 3 Ideology. Introduction to Part 3. 16. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "The German Ideology" (1845). 17. Georg Lukács, "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat" (1923). 18. Antonio Gramsci, "Hegemony" (1929). 19. Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (1970). 20. Stuart Hall, "Recent Developments in Theories of Language and Ideology" (1980). 21. Slavoj Zizek, "The Spectre of Ideology" (1989). Additional Readings. Part 4 Space and Scale. Introduction to Part 4. 22. Dick Hebdige, "The Function of Subculture" (1979). 23. Michel de Certeau, "Walking in the City" (1980). 24. Benedict Anderson, "Imagined Communities" (1983). 25. Arjun Appadurai, "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy" (1990). 26. Doreen Massey, "Politics and Space/Time" (1992). 27. David Harvey, "The Body as an Accumulation Strategy" (2000). 28. Mike Davis, "Planet of Slums" (2004). Additional Readings. Part 5 Temporality. Introduction to Part 5. 29. Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" (1977). 30. Raymond Williams, "Dominant, Residual, and Emergent" (1977). 31. Jean–Francois Lyotard, "Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism?" (1979). 32. Fernand Braudel, "History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée" (1980). 33. Fredric Jameson, "Periodizing the 60s" (1984). 34. Roberto Schwarz, "Brazilian Culture: Nationalism by Elimination" (1992). 35. Ranajit Guha, "A Dominance without Hegemony and Its Historiography" (1997). Additional Readings. Part 6 Subjectivity. Introduction to Part 6. 36. Frantz Fanon, "The Lived Experience of the Black Man" (1952). 37. Jacques Lacan, "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason since Freud" (1957). 38. Luce Irigaray, "This Sex Which Is Not One" (1977). 39. Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto" (1985). 40. Judith Butler, "Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire" (1990). 41. Paul Gilroy, "It Ain′t Where You′re From, It′s Where You′re At" (1990). 42. Eve Sedgwick, "Axiomatic" (1990). Additional Readings. Glossary of Terms. Sources. Index.

Imre Szeman is Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is the author of Zones of Instability: Literature, Postcolonialism and the Nation (2003); co–author of Popular Culture: A User′s Guide (2004, 2009); and co–editor of Pierre Bourdieu: Fieldwork in Culture (2000), the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (2005), and Canadian Cultural Studies: A Reader (2009). Timothy Kaposy is Assistant Professor in the Cultural Studies Program at George Mason University, Virginia.

"Even if it does not engage this question of the animal, Cultural Theory constitutes a valuable resource for scholars, as well as a springboard for fur¬ther discussion." (Snell Review, 2011)