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190 books match the query 'Critical theory' and 5 start with m

cover of Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture

Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture

Edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg

University of Illinois Press, 1988

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cover of Mechanicity: The Material Force of Code in International Politics

Mechanicity

The Material Force of Code in International Politics

Vic Castro

University of Michigan Press, 2027

Despite their seeming relegation to the digital world, code and software can have material, large-scale, and even violent effects. In just one example, the NotPetya ransomware paralyzed one-fifth of world maritime trade in 2017. Mechanicity is a philosophical investigation of what happens when the force of language merges with material force, and what this means for the great ideas of politics: political action, international anarchy, and the very concept of sovereign state.

In this book, Vic Castro returns to Thomas Hobbes’s idea of the mechanical as a force both determinate and unruly, just like machines and software, and examines the human body—both in Hobbes’s political philosophy and in mishaps of genetic code—as that which brings together language and materiality in political society. To develop the framework of mechanicity, Castro also revives the Copenhagen School’s poststructuralist realism, the Derridian approach to traditional International Relations, and particularly actor-network theory (ANT). Using the case studies on Apple’s 2016 encrypted iPhone and NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, Mechanicity shows how software is not just constrained to immaterial cyberspace; it also reshapes the physical world and the politics possible therein.

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cover of Modern Social Imaginaries

Modern Social Imaginaries

Charles Taylor

Duke University Press, 2004

One of the most influential philosophers in the English-speaking world, Charles Taylor is internationally renowned for his contributions to political and moral theory, particularly to debates about identity formation, multiculturalism, secularism, and modernity. In Modern Social Imaginaries, Taylor continues his recent reflections on the theme of multiple modernities. To account for the differences among modernities, Taylor sets out his idea of the social imaginary, a broad understanding of the way a given people imagine their collective social life.

Retelling the history of Western modernity, Taylor traces the development of a distinct social imaginary. Animated by the idea of a moral order based on the mutual benefit of equal participants, the Western social imaginary is characterized by three key cultural forms—the economy, the public sphere, and self-governance. Taylor’s account of these cultural formations provides a fresh perspective on how to read the specifics of Western modernity: how we came to imagine society primarily as an economy for exchanging goods and services to promote mutual prosperity, how we began to imagine the public sphere as a metaphorical place for deliberation and discussion among strangers on issues of mutual concern, and how we invented the idea of a self-governing people capable of secular “founding” acts without recourse to transcendent principles. Accessible in length and style, Modern Social Imaginaries offers a clear and concise framework for understanding the structure of modern life in the West and the different forms modernity has taken around the world.

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cover of Mundus Imaginalis: World Literatures After Phantom Empires

Mundus Imaginalis

World Literatures After Phantom Empires

Hamid Dabashi

Duke University Press, 2027

In Mundus Imaginalis, Hamid Dabashi exposes the Eurocentric worldview underlying the concept of World Literature and maps an alternative vision grounded in a centerless, pluralist world. Drawing on comparisons to the Persian literary tradition, Dabashi shows how imperial pasts cast a long and distorting shadow on cultural presents. Imperial imaginations outlast empires themselves, leaving “phantom empires” that perpetuate particular geographies of the world and arbitrate the literary. The Eurocentric idea of World Literature domesticates and provincializes alternative ideas and conceptions, casting them as national allegories precisely at a time when Europe itself has been exposed for its own provinciality. Drawing on the classical Persian notion of the “imaginal world,” or mundus imaginalis, Dabashi retrieves a metaphysical foregrounding of worldly literature, charting a trajectory of thinkers whose literary imagination does not align with political desires for conquest, calculation, and consumption. Mundus Imaginalis shows how this imaginal world, which gives root to all aesthetic acts, maps an entirely distinct world of creative imagination.
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cover of Mutual Integration in Immigration Society: An Epistemic Argument

Mutual Integration in Immigration Society

An Epistemic Argument

Bodi Wang

Campus Verlag, 2023

A compelling argument for adopting the concept of “mutual integration” to overcome injustice and enhance social solidarity.

The public culture of the receiving society and the dominant understanding of belonging and political membership can influence the social participation of immigrants as much as immigration law. However, current discussions of integration focus primarily on the distribution of rights and neglect the role of tacit knowledge. Through a systematical and philosophical analysis of identity’s role in policymaking, governance, and social practice, Bodi Wang shows how a one-sided understanding of integration resembles “assimilation” and why integration should be expected from locals as well. This argument weaves together extensive findings in sociology, history, critical race theory, and Chinese philosophy with ethics and migration studies.
 
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