Cultural Semantics by Martin Jay

Cultural Semantics by Martin Jay

A selection of Martin Jay's recent writings on contemporary thought and culture, this is a book about ideas that matter-and about why ideas matter. Borrowing from Flaubert's notion of a dictionary of received ideas and Raymond Williams's explorations of the keywords of the modern age, Jay investigates some of the central concepts by which we currently organize our thoughts and lives. His topics range from theory and experience to the meaning of multiculturalism and the dynamics of cultural subversion. Among the thinkers he engages are Bataille and Foucault, Adorno and Lacoue-Labarthe, Walter Benjamin, Christa Wolf, and Jean-Fran ois Lyotard. By looking closely at what words do and perform, Jay makes us aware of the extent to which the language we use mediates and shapes our experience. By helping to distance us from much that we now take for granted, he makes it difficult for us to remain comfortably certain about what we think we know. Elegantly written and richly insightful, this is a work of cultural criticism and intellectual analysis of the first order.

Martin Jay is professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. His books include The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research, 1923-1950; Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukacs to Habermas; and Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781558491168
ISBN 10	1558491163
Title	Cultural Semantics
Author	Martin Jay
Series	Critical Perspectives On Modern Culture
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University of Massachusetts Press
Year published	2012-08-30
Number of pages	272
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.