3.30.2007
Critical Theory Reading List
Not being very familiar with critical theory stuff, I'd like to ask the critical theory people: What critical theory texts (either "classic" or contemporary) do you think are most relevant to politics today? What would you recommend I read, and why? You can put Das Kapital on the list, but I'd also like to see some things I might actually have the time to read and understand.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
All these would probably be
Man, this shit's all fucked up right now; just ate my response. Trying again:
Most of would probably be "classics" of the genre:
Bataille, "the Accursed Share" vol. 1. A fascinating book that's actually very readable (at least up to the last couple chapters).
Bataille was a big influence on Deleuze, who, along with Felix Guattari, wrote Anti-Oedipus, which is a great, though very tough book. I had to read a primer before tackling the book itself. But the effort was worth it; especially good if you're interested in or work in the mental health field. I made a go at their other famous book, A Thousand Plateaus, but it was too much for me. Manuel DeLanda, in A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History, develops and explains a lot of the ideas from A Thousand Plateaus in a very interesting and approachable way, by grounding them in real concrete examinations of a couple different fields (linguistics, urban developement and one other I can't recall).
Of course you've got to get some Foucault under your belt if you're going to claim any critical theory knowledge. I guess they're all good, though Discipline and Punish was my favorite.
Let's see...Never could get through Derrida; Haven't read any Benjamin since second year college (the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in that Aesthetics class with Sevin Koont).
I really liked Jurgen Habermas' The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, which takes a pretty critical stance towards critical theory, and touches pretty directly on some of the pragmatism vs. aesthetic politics discussions that we've been having. It's also a fairly easy read, as far as these things go.
A lighter read, and a really good book on music, is the Sex Revolts: Gender and Rock 'n' Roll by Simon Reynolds and Joy Press, which references a lot of French psychoanalytic/feminist theory.
I'm sure the other's will have plenty of suggestions for you as well.
Post a Comment