Author: Ed Pluth File Type: pdf Situates Lacans theory of the subject within contemporary philosophical debates over freedom and agency.From the Back CoverIn Signifiers and Acts, Ed Pluth examines Lacans views on language and sexuality to argue that Lacans theory of the subject is best read as a theory of freedom and agency--a theory that is especially compelling precisely because of its structuralist and seemingly antihumanist framework. Presenting new aspects of Lacans work and commenting extensively on the important yet unpublished seminars that still make up the majority of his contribution to contemporary thought, the book aims to make a Lacanian intervention into contemporary theory. In addition to Saussure, Sartre, Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Nancy, Pluth discusses works in political theory and identity theory by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, and Slavoj Zizek.This highly original volume will leave an indelible mark on the rapidly developing field of Lacanian studies. Pluth has an excellent knowledge of both published and unpublished Lacanian sources, and he manages to integrate Lacanian theory and current philosophical thinking without sacrificing discursive clarity and scholarly rigor. Apart from demonstrating the ongoing relevance of Lacans work for a wide variety of topical debates, Pluth also succeeds in showing how influential philosophical paradigms such as those formulated by Deleuze, Badiou, Nancy, and Zizek cannot be understood without reference to Lacan. -- Dany Nobus, author of Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of PsychoanalysisAbout the AuthorEd Pluth is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State University at Chico. In Signifiers and Acts, Ed Pluth examines Lacan s views on language and sexuality to argue that Lacan s theory of the subject is best read as a theory of freedom and agency a theory that is especially compelling precisely because of its structuralist and seemingly antihumanist framework. Presenting new aspects of Lacan s work and commenting extensively on the important yet unpublished seminars that still make up the majority of his contribution to contemporary thought, the book aims to make a Lacanian intervention into contemporary theory. In addition to Saussure, Sartre, Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Nancy, Pluth discusses works in political theory and identity theory by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, and Slavoj Zizuek.

Author: W. K. Wimsatt File Type: pdf These ten essays, written over a period from 1950 to 1962, are bound together by their common concern with questions of the meaning of criticism and the larger meaning of literature itself. These difficult questions W.K. Wimsatt treats with characteristic wit and penetration, ranging easily from a broad consideration of principles to incisive comment on individual writers and works. The first part of the book is devoted to a discussion of literary theory. Wimsatt reviews the development of critical dialectic from the German romanticism of Schelling and the Schlegels to the mythopeic bravura of Northrop Frye. Himself a classical ironist, he nevertheless exposes here some of the extravagances of the ironic principle as flourished by the systematic Prometheans. The second and third parts contain essays on more particular topics the meaning of symbolism, Aristotles doctrines of the tragic plot and catharsis, the theory of comic laughter, and the objective reading of English meters. Here too are extended comment on particular writersa study of the imagination of James Boswell, an analysis of the comedy of T. S. Eliot in The Cocktail Party, and a contrast in the handling of similar themes by Tennyson and Eliot. The fourth part is a comprehensive statement of the demands and opportunities confronting the critic in his or her role as teacher. **