Synopses & Reviews
This shrinkwrapped set contains twelve Verso Radical Thinkers volumes at a discounted price:
- In Search of Wagnerby Theodor W. Adorno
- The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomenaby Jean Baudrillard
- War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perceptionby PaulVirilio
- Reading Capitalby LouisAlthusser and EtienneBalibar
- The Origin of German Tragic Dramaby WalterBenjamin
- The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998by FredricJameson
- WalterBenjamin, Or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism by TerryEagleton
- Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity: Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French Thought by SimonCritchley
- Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thoughtby GeorgLukács
- Panegyricby GuyDebord
- Hegel Contra Sociologyby GillianRose
- The Democratic Paradoxby ChantalMouffe
Review
"An astonishing book, comparable only to the later Wagner tracts by Nietzsche . . . essential reading for anyone seriously involved with the composer, and now we can read it thanks to a superior translation by Rodney Livingstone." New York Review of Books
Review
"A volume of Adorno is equivalent to a whole shelf of books on literature." Susan Sontag
Synopsis
The most brilliant exponent of Frankfurt School Critical Theory subtly interweaves aesthetics and ideology in this probing analysis of the controversial composer"s oeuvre.
'An astonishing book' essential reading' a superior translation.' --New York Review of Books
Synopsis
Written in exile from Germany, this potent study of Europe’s most controversial composer explodes the frontiers of musical and cultural analysis. Measuring key elements of Wagner’s oeuvre with patent musical dexterity, Adorno sheds light on a nineteenth-century bourgeois figure whose operas betray the social gestures and high-culture fantasies that helped plant the seeds of the modern Culture Industry. A foreword by Slavoj Zizek situates Adorno’s reflections within present debates over Wagner’s anti-Semitism and the moral status of his work, proving why this book remains one of the most important character studies of the twentieth century.
Synopsis
“Verso’s beautifully designed Radical Thinkers series, which brings together seminal works by leading left-wing intellectuals, is a sophisticated blend of theory and thought.”—Ziauddin Sardar, New Statesmen
Synopsis
“Verso’s beautifully designed Radical Thinkers series, which brings together seminal works by leading left-wing intellectuals, is a sophisticated blend of theory and thought.”—Ziauddin Sardar, New Statesmen
Synopsis
The most brilliant exponent of Frankfurt School Marxism subtly interweaves aesthetics and ideology in this probing analysis of the controversial composer's oeuvre.
About the Author
Theodor Adornowas director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt from 1956 until his death in 1969. His works include In Search of Wagner; Aesthetic Theory; Negative Dialectics; and (with Max Horkheimer) Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Louis Althusserwas born in Algeria in 1918 and died in France in 1990. He taught philosophy for many years at the Ecole Normale Superieur in Paris, and was a leading intellectual in the French Communist Party. His books include For Marx; Reading Capital(with Etienne Balibar); Essays in Ideology; Politics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Marx; Machiavelli and Us; and The Spectre of Hegel.tienne Balibaris a French Marxist philosopher and the most celebrated student of Louis Althusser. He is also one of the leading exponents of French Marxist philosophy and the author of Spinoza and Politics, The Philosophy of Marxand co-author of Race, Nation and Classand Reading Capital.Jean Baudrillard(1929-2007) began teaching sociology at the Universit de Paris-X in 1966. He retired from academia in 1987 to write books and travel until his death in 2007. His many works include Simulations and Simulacra, America, The Perfect Crime, The System of Objects, Passwords, The Transparency of Evil, The Spirit of Terrorism, and Fragments, among others.Walter Benjaminwas a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and is the author of Illuminations, The Arcades Project, and The Origin of German Tragic Drama.Simon Critchleyis a professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research, and at the University of Essex, Colchester. His many books include Ethics-Politics-Subjectivityand, most recently, The Book of Dead Philosophers.Guy Debordwas born in Paris in 1931 and committed suicide in 1994. A Marxist theorist, French writer, poet, filmmaker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Letterist International and Situationist International, Debord is best known as the leading theoretician of the situationist movement. His works translated into English include The Society of the Spectacle, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, and Panegyric.Terry Eagletonis Professor of Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow, University of Manchester. His other books include Ideology; The Function of Criticism; Heathcliff and the Great Hunger; Against the Grain; Walter Benjamin; and Criticism and Ideology, all from Verso.
Fredric Jamesonis Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. The author of numerous books, he has over the last three decades developed a richly nuanced vision of Western culture's relation to political economy. He was a recipient of the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize. He is the author of many books, including Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, The Cultural Turn, A Singular Modernity, The Modernist Papers, Archaeologies of the Future, Brecht and Method, Ideologies of Theory,Valences of the Dialectic, The Hegel Variationsand Representing Capital.Georg Lukácswas a Marxist philosopher and literary critic and is widely considered to be the founder of the tradition of Western Marxism. He is the author of History and Class Consciousness, Lenin, and Theory of the Novel.Chantal Mouffeis a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster. Her books include The Return of the Political; Hegemony and Socialist Strategy(with Ernesto Laclau); The Dimensions of Radical Democracy; Gramsci and Marxist Theory; Deconstruction and Pragmatism; The Democratic Paradox; and The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, all from Verso.Gillian Rosewas a British philosopher and sociologist. She is the author of Paradiso, Mourning Becomes the Law, and Hegel Contra Sociology.Paul Viriliotrained as an artist in stainedglass, working with Braque and Matisse, as well as studying philosophyat the Sorbonne. In 1975 he was made director of the Ecole spécialed'architecture in Paris. He retired from teaching in 1998 and now works with private organizations on projects to house the homeless in Paris. He has written many books, including War and Cinema, Open Sky, and Ground Zero.