{"title":"Geoffrey Harpham","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"humanities-and-the-dream-of-america-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780226316994","title":"The Humanities and the Dream of America","description":"In this bracing and original book, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that the humanities - the academic disciplines that study the potential of the human - represent a 'dream of America.' They were, Harpham contends, invented after World War II as an expression of American culture and character, and were advanced by their supporters as an instrument of American national interests. Although the humanities are struggling to retain their status in America today, the concept has spread to many other parts of the world and remains one of America's most distinctive and attractive contributions to higher education. \"The Humanities and the Dream of America\" explores a number of linked problems: the role, at once inspiring and disturbing, played by modern philology in the discipline's formation; the reasons behind the humanities' perpetual state of crisis; and, the new possibilities for literary study afforded by the subject of pleasure. Framed by essays that draw on Harpham's pedagogical experiences abroad and as a lecturer at the US Air Force Academy, as well as his vantage as director of the National Humanities Center, this book provides an essential perspective on the history, ideology, and future of the humanities.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50169536905489,"sku":"CIN0226316998G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51606027895057,"sku":"CIN0226316998VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0226316998.jpg?v=1751005258"},{"product_id":"language-alone-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780415942195","title":"Language Alone","description":"How did the concept of language come to dominate modern intellectual history? In Language Alone, Geoffrey Galt Harpham provides at once the most comprehensive survey and most telling critique of the pervasive role of language in modern thought. He shows how thinkers in such diverse fields as philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and literary theory have made progress by referring their most difficult theoretical problems to what they presumed were the facts of language. Through a provocative reassessment of major thinkers on the idea of language-Saussure, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Rorty, and Chomsky, among them-and detailed accounts of the discourses of ethics and ideology in particular, Harpham demonstrates a remarkable consensus among intellectuals of the past century and beyond that philosophical and other problems can best be understood as linguistic problems. And furthermore, that a science of language can therefore illuminate them. Conspicuously absent from this consensus, he shows, is any consideration of contemporary linguistics, or any awareness of the growing agreement among linguists that the nature of language as such cannot be known. Ultimately, Harpham argues, the thought of language has dominated modern intellectual history because of its singular capacity to serve as a proxy for a host of concerns, questions, and anxieties-our place in the order of things, our rights and obligations, our nature or essence-that resist a strictly rational formulation. Language Alone will interest literary critics, philosophers, and anyone with an interest in the uses of language in contemporary thought.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50232854348049,"sku":"CIN0415942195VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50351846523153,"sku":"CIN0415942195A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51477331378449,"sku":"GOR014295845","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0415942195.jpg?v=1751457175"},{"product_id":"ascetic-imperative-in-culture-and-criticism-book-geoffrey-galt-harpham-9780226316925","title":"The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism","description":"In this bold interdisciplinary work, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that asceticism has played a major role in shaping Western ideas of the body, writing, ethics, and aesthetics. He suggests that we consider the ascetic as \"the 'cultural' element in culture,\" and presents a close analysis of works by Athanasius, Augustine, Matthias, Grünewald, Nietzsche, Foucault, and other thinkers as proof of the extent of asceticism's resources. Harpham demonstrates the usefulness of his findings by deriving from asceticism a \"discourse of resistance,\" a code of interpretation ultimately more generous and humane than those currently available to us.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50235859435793,"sku":"CIN0226316920VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0226316920.jpg?v=1751133198"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-geoffrey-harpham.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}