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"... the essays in [this volume] question the inflated claims, facile slogans, and political pretensions that have in our time turned theory into a ubiquitous orthodoxy. [This is a] ... collection of essays that returns sanity and rationality to literary criticism, rescuing it from the esotericism, jargon, and delusions under which it had been buried by the "theorizers." -Back cover.
Not too long ago, literary theorists were writing about the death of the novel and the death of the author; today many are talking about the death of Theory. Theory, as the many theoretical ism's (among them postcolonialism, postmodernism, and New Historicism) are now known, once seemed so exciting but has become ossified and insular. This iconoclastic collection is an excellent companion to current anthologies of literary theory, which have embraced an uncritical stance toward Theory and its practitioners. Written by nearly fifty prominent scholars, the essays in Theory's Empire question the ideas, catchphrases, and excesses that have let Theory congeal into a predictable orthodoxy. More than just a critique, however, this collection provides readers with effective tools to redeem the study of literature, restore reason to our intellectual life, and redefine the role and place of Theory in the academy.
As the Theory Era draws to a close, we need more than ever intelligent rumination and debate over what it all meant. THEORY'S EMPIRE was an important step in that direction. Framing THEORY'S EMPIRe carries on the conversation with sophistication and flair. -Denis Dutton
Theories of Empire, 1450-1800 draws upon published and unpublished work by leading scholars in the history of European expansion and the history of political thought. It covers the whole span of imperial theories from ancient Rome to the American founding, and includes a series of essays which address the theoretical underpinnings of the Spanish, Portuguese, French, British and Dutch empires in both the Americas and in Asia. The volume is unprecedented in its attention to the wider intellectual contexts within which those empires were situated - particularly the discourses of universal monarchy, millenarianism, mercantalism, and federalism - and in its mapping of the shift from Roman conceptions of imperium to the modern idea of imperialism.
Examines how “Indianness” has propagated U.S. conceptions of empire
The Empire of Civil Society mounts a compelling critique of the orthodox "realist" theory of international relations and provides a historical-materialist approach to the international system. Opening with an interrogation of a number of classic realist works, the book rejects outright the goal of theorizing geopolitical systems in isolation from wider social structures. In a series of case studies—including Classical Greece, Renaissance Italy and the Portuguese and Spanish empires—Justin Rosenberg shows how the historical-materialist analysis of societies is a surer guide to understanding geopolitical systems than the technical theories of realist international relations. In each case, he draws attention to the correspondence between the form of the geopolitical system and the character of the societies composing it. In the final section of the book, the tools forged in these explorations are employed to analyze the contemporary international system, with striking results. Rosenberg demonstrates that the distinctive properties of the sovereign-states system are best understood as corresponding to the social structures of capitalist society. In this light, realism emerges as incapable of explaining what it has always insisted is the central feature of the international system—namely, the balance of power. On the other hand, it is argued that Marx’s social theory of value, conventionally regarded as an account of hierarchical class domination, provides the deepest understanding of the core international relations theme of “anarchy.” Provocative and unconventional, The Empire of Civil Society brilliantly turns orthodox international relations on its head.
Overextension is the common pitfall of empires. Why does it occur? What are the forces that cause the great powers of the industrial era to pursue aggressive foreign policies? Jack Snyder identifies recurrent myths of empire, describes the varieties of overextension to which they lead, and criticizes the traditional explanations offered by historians and political scientists.He tests three competing theories—realism, misperception, and domestic coalition politics—against five detailed case studies: early twentieth-century Germany, Japan in the interwar period, Great Britain in the Victorian era, the Soviet Union after World War II, and the United States during the Cold War. The resulting insights run counter to much that has been written about these apparently familiar instances of empire building.
Queer Theory: Law, Culture Empire takes up the instability of the label 'queer' in order to consider what queer theory can bring to an exploration of the confines and openings provided by law, culture, and empire.
Arising from cultural anthropology in the late 1980s and early 1990s, postcolonial translation theory is based on the observation that translation has often served as an important channel of empire. Douglas Robinson begins with a general presentation of postcolonial theory, examines current theories of the power differentials that control what gets translated and how, and traces the historical development of postcolonial thought about translation. He also explores the negative and positive impact of translation in the postcolonial context, reviewing various critiques of postcolonial translation theory and providing a glossary of key words. The result is a clear and useful guide to some of the most complex and critical issues in contemporary translation studies.
Why, Timothy Melley asks, have paranoia and conspiracy theory become such prominent features of postwar American culture? In Empire of Conspiracy, Melley explores the recent growth of anxieties about thought-control, assassination, political indoctrination, stalking, surveillance, and corporate and government plots. At the heart of these developments, he believes, lies a widespread sense of crisis in the way Americans think about human autonomy and individuality. Nothing reveals this crisis more than the remarkably consistent form of expression that Melley calls "agency panic"—an intense fear that individuals can be shaped or controlled by powerful external forces. Drawing on a broad range of forms that manifest this fear—including fiction, film, television, sociology, political writing, self-help literature, and cultural theory—Melley provides a new understanding of the relation between postwar American literature, popular culture, and cultural theory. Empire of Conspiracy offers insightful new readings of texts ranging from Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to the Unabomber Manifesto, from Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders to recent addiction discourse, and from the "stalker" novels of Margaret Atwood and Diane Johnson to the conspiracy fictions of Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, Don DeLillo, and Kathy Acker. Throughout, Melley finds recurrent anxieties about the power of large organizations to control human beings. These fears, he contends, indicate the continuing appeal of a form of individualism that is no longer wholly accurate or useful, but that still underpins a national fantasy of freedom from social control.