Labyrinths

Critical Perspectives on Modern Culture

by Richard Wolin

This book offers a series of probing reflections on issues at the heart of recent debates in philosophy, literary theory, and intellectual history. In ten powerfully articulated essays, Richard Wolin calls into question the implied radicalism of the so-called postmodern turn, exposes the unstated agenda of neoconservative cultural theory, and provides a major reinterpretation of Walter Benjamin's place in contemporary cultural studies.

At the center of the book lie the peculiar and troubling affinities between two groups of cultural critics usually seen as the radical conservative thinkers of Germany's Weimar Republic and the French poststructuralists who came to the prominence in the aftermath of the May 1968 uprising.

Wolin concludes the volume with a cogent reappraisal of "antihumanism" as a leitmotif of postwar French intellectual culture, along with a reassessment of the "de Man affair" and its implications for the poststructuralist interpretation of fascism.

Genres: Philosophy, History

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Paige McLoughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heavy on jargon and impenetrable prose. Sorry, but I have trouble deciphering continental philosophers and Postmodernists and frankly, I don't always see it as a good investment of time to try. I know it sounds mean and ignorant but I am not feeling charitable about postmodernism today.

[Gareth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found it an interesting read on all the people it covers, and some useful counter-points to many of the thinkers mentioned as provocation to think about them differently. Made me want to raed more about each of them, and more of Wolin's stuff.