Culture/power/history: A Reader in Contemporary Social TheoryNicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, Sherry B. Ortner The intellectual radicalism of the 1960s spawned a new set of questions about the role and nature of "the political" in social life, questions that have since revolutionized nearly every field of thought, from literary criticism through anthropology to the philosophy of science. Michel Foucault in particular made us aware that whatever our functionally defined "roles" in society, we are constantly negotiating questions of authority and the control of the definitions of reality. Such insights have led theorists to challenge concepts that have long formed the very underpinnings of their disciplines. By exploring some of the most debated of these concepts--"culture," "power," and "history"--this reader offers an enriching perspective on social theory in the contemporary moment. |
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... construction of the subject is always , at least in part , a form of " subjection , " then the theoretical exploration of the subject as an ac- tive agent must be concerned , at least in part , with the question of resisting or at least ...
... construction . This " discursive " move — from the assumption of an objective " society " to the study of how the category of " the social " was formed — can be repeated for other areas too . Class may be similarly deconstructed as a ...
... constructions of working - class interest . Moreover , the discursive field of working - class inter- ests is not reducible to a single essential contradiction between capital and labor . So far from such a contradiction's being ...
... the social fabric in any given society at any given time . Biological sex , sexuality , and reproduction , in other words , form only a hazy and ambiguous backdrop against which cultural constructions are built 34 INTRODUCTION .
... construction to the project of historicist critique . For many historians , Scott's theoretical pack- age required a double turn , toward both feminism and " culture , " and the pill was perhaps harder to swallow than it was in ...
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Culture/power/history: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory Nicholas B. Dirks,Geoff Eley No preview available - 1994 |