{"title":"Thinking Theory","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the world of Thinking Theory, a collection designed to challenge perspectives and ignite intellectual curiosity. Explore diverse ideas and expand your understanding with these thought-provoking reads.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"fates-of-the-performative-book-jeffrey-t-nealon-9781517910860","title":"Fates of the Performative","description":"A powerful new examination of the performative that asks “what’s next?” for this well-worn concept   From its humble origins in J. L. Austin’s speech-act theory of the 1950s, the performative has grown to permeate wildly diverse scholarly fields, ranging from deconstruction and feminism to legal theory and even theories about the structure of matter. Here Jeffrey T. Nealon discovers how the performative will remain vital in the twenty-first century, arguing that it was never merely concerned with linguistic meaning but rather constitutes an insight into the workings of immaterial force.  Fates of the Performative takes a deep dive into this “performative force” to think about the continued power and relevance of this wide-ranging concept. Offering both a history of the performative’s mutations and a diagnosis of its present state, Nealon traces how it has been deployed by key writers in the past sixty years, including foundational thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, and Judith Butler; contemporary theorists such as Thomas Piketty and Antonio Negri; and the “conceptual poetry” of Kenneth Goldsmith.  Ultimately, Nealon’s inquiry is animated by one powerful question: what’s living and what’s dead in performative theory? In deconstructing the reaction against the performative in current humanist thought, Fates of the Performative opens up important conversations about systems theory, animal studies, object-oriented ontology, and the digital humanities. Nealon’s stirring appeal makes a necessary declaration of the performative’s continued power and relevance at a time of neoliberal ascendancy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742178943249,"sku":"NGR9781517910860","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50387505381649,"sku":"CIN1517910862VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1517910862.jpg?v=1764844541"},{"product_id":"essay-for-ezra-book-grant-farred-9781517911805","title":"An Essay for Ezra","description":"An intensely personal, and philosophical, account of why white America’s racial unconscious is not so unconscious  An Essay for Ezra is a critique of terror that begins but by no means ends with the presidency of Donald J. Trump. A father addresses his son and a boy shares his observations in a dynamic dialogistic exchange that is a commentary of and for its time, taking the measure of racial terror and of white supremacy both in our moment and as a historical phenomenon.  Framed through the experiences of the author’s biracial son, An Essay for Ezra is intensely personal while also powerfully universal. Drawing on the social and political thought of James Baldwin and Martin Luther King, Grant Farred examines the temptation and the perils of essentialism and the need to discriminate-to engage the black mind as much as the black body. With that dialectic as his starting point, Farred engages the ideas of Jameson, Barthes, Derrida, Adorno, Kant, and other thinkers to derive an ethics of being in our time of social peril. His antiessentialist racial analysis is salient, especially when he deploys Dave Chappelle as a counterpoint to Baldwin-and Chappelle’s brilliant comic philosophic voice jabs at both racial and gender identity.  Standing apart for its willingness to explore terror in all its ambivalence, this theoretical reflection on racism, knowledge, ethics, and being in our neofascist present brings to bear the full weight of philosophical inquiry and popular cultural critique on black life in the United States.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742250311953,"sku":"NGR9781517911805","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50387512623377,"sku":"CIN151791180XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53451003330833,"sku":"CIN151791180XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/151791180X.jpg?v=1764845174"},{"product_id":"thinking-theory-book-two-american-edition-book-nicola-cantan-9781913000035","title":"Thinking Theory Book Two (American Edition)","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51055252996369,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51055255519505,"sku":"NIN9781913000035","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52595461062929,"sku":"NLS9781913000035","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1913000036.jpg?v=1751250195"},{"product_id":"thinking-theory-book-three-american-edition-book-nicola-cantan-9781913000042","title":"Thinking Theory Book Three (American Edition)","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51055276196113,"sku":"NIN9781913000042","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52595973226769,"sku":"NLS9781913000042","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1913000044.jpg?v=1751218825"},{"product_id":"thinking-theory-prep-book-american-edition-book-nicola-cantan-9781913000028","title":"Thinking Theory Prep Book (American Edition)","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51055339995409,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51055342518545,"sku":"NIN9781913000028","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52594427166993,"sku":"NLS9781913000028","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1913000028.jpg?v=1751187231"},{"product_id":"thinking-theory-book-one-american-edition-book-nicola-cantan-9781913000004","title":"Thinking Theory Book One (American Edition)","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51055356772625,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51055359623441,"sku":"NIN9781913000004","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52593986142481,"sku":"NLS9781913000004","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1913000001.jpg?v=1751412701"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/thinking-theory-book-series.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}