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Critical Theory and Poststructuralism: In Search of a Context/Including 7 Charts
Book by Poster, Mark
184 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 21, 2011
The introduction hints at some kind of mutually-amending confrontation between critical theory and poststructuralism, but doesn't really deliver.
What the text does is presents a viable reading of Foucault, and measures it against the positions of Marx, Sartre, and Habermas. Other Marxists are mentioned, just as Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, and other Frenchies are noted in the margin. Adorno and Horkheimer make more than token appearances, but a rigorous examination of Frankfurt Marxism is not undertaken--"critical theory," then, must be taken to mean Marxism more generally.
There are pregnant remarks about developing a theory regarding the "mode of information," based in part on both Foucault and second generation Frankfurt ideas--but it's very schematic in this more or less pamphlet sized writing.
It's good work, for all that--but brief, and with a bizarre final chapter that is based on empirical work about child-rearing, connected to the foregoing discussions only in the most attenuated way.
Not really, also, a survey fit for novices, and perhaps a bit dated now--perhaps an update is in order, to reconcile the views herein with Facebook, Twitter, and other numbnuts media practices for which the text's categories are readily appropriate.
What the text does is presents a viable reading of Foucault, and measures it against the positions of Marx, Sartre, and Habermas. Other Marxists are mentioned, just as Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, and other Frenchies are noted in the margin. Adorno and Horkheimer make more than token appearances, but a rigorous examination of Frankfurt Marxism is not undertaken--"critical theory," then, must be taken to mean Marxism more generally.
There are pregnant remarks about developing a theory regarding the "mode of information," based in part on both Foucault and second generation Frankfurt ideas--but it's very schematic in this more or less pamphlet sized writing.
It's good work, for all that--but brief, and with a bizarre final chapter that is based on empirical work about child-rearing, connected to the foregoing discussions only in the most attenuated way.
Not really, also, a survey fit for novices, and perhaps a bit dated now--perhaps an update is in order, to reconcile the views herein with Facebook, Twitter, and other numbnuts media practices for which the text's categories are readily appropriate.
August 30, 2016
Review published in The French Review 64.3 (1991): 504-506.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews