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This title, first published in 1991, opens with an account by Gadamer of his own life and work and their relation to the achievements of hermeneutics. Building upon the key theme of dialogue, Gadamer and Hermeneutics provides a series of essays, either linked Gadamer to other major contemporary philosophers or focusing on a given Gadamerian theme. This book will be of interest to students of literary theory.

This book, first published in 1990, addresses the broad cultural phenomenon that is postmodernism. The first part of the book raises some general theoretical questions about postmodernism – its language and its politics, for example. The second section attends to particular ‘sites', namely the various arts themselves and the philosophical understanding of them. Here one finds specific readings of architecture, painting, literature, theatre, photography, film, television, dance and fashion.

Jean-Franois Lyotard, the highly influential twentieth-century philosopher of the postmodern, has had an enormous impact on the course and commitment of contemporary philosophy. Lyotard: Philosophy, Politics, and the Sublime is a thoroughgoing reassessment of his extraordinary legacy and contribution to contemporary cultural, political, ethical, and aesthetic theory, and an indispenable guide to key issues in his philosophy. Fifteen distinguished scholars have contributed new, original essays examining the main themes in Lyotard's work with a focus on the special intersections of philosophy, psychoanalysis, politics, and the experience of the sublime in art. The volume includes an up-to-date bibliography of works by and about Lyotard, previously unpublished photographs of Lyotard, and an incisive essay by Lyotard himself on the philosophical significance of Freud's case of Emma.

Subjects and Simulations presents essays focused on suffering and sublimity, representation and subjectivity, and the relation of truth and appearance in the twenty-first century. Inspired by the work of Jean Baudrillard, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and JeanLuc Nancy, sixteen authors study how the real reasserts itself in an age of every more fragmented media, and how art and literature give us access to forms of truth that elude philosophy. How does representation grant us access to the place once occupied by the subject? Is political life possible? Can plural thinking be retrieved? Will metaphor and simulation give us ways of being in an evanescent world? The volume engages discussions of French and Continental philosophy, post-structuralism, deconstruction, simulacra, aesthetics, existentialism, and media theory.

Philosophy and Desire, the seventh book in the well-known Continental Philosophy series, examines questions of desire--desire for another person, desire for happiness, desire for knowledge, desire for a better world, desire for the impossible, desire in text, desire in language and desire for desire itself. The theme of desire is explored through readings of contemporary figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Bataille, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Levinas, Irigaray, Barthes, Derrida, and Derrida. A hot, timely topic in philosophy today Expands the contemporary debates

Textualities is both an account of recent developments in Continental philosophy and a demonstration of philosophy as a distinctive theoretical practice of its own. It can be read as a presentation and evaluation of major figures from Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty to Focault and Derrida with detailed acconts of Nietzsche, Sartre, Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Blanchot and Kristeva.

The effects of Derrida's writings have been widespread in literary circles, where they have transformed current work in literary theory. By contrast Derrida's philosophical writings--which deal with the whole range of western thought from Plato to Foucault--have not received adequate attention by philosophers. Organized around Derrida's readings of major figures in the history of philosophy, Derrida and Deconstruction focuses on and assesses his specifically philosophical contribution. Contemporary continental philosophers assess Derrida's account of philosophical tradition, with each contributor providing a critical study of Derrida's position on a philosopher she or he has already studied in depth These figures include Plato, Meister Eckhart, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Foucault.

The continental tradition in philosophy has long focused its energies on the question of foundations. These ssays reopen conventional understandings of the classical themes on which philosophy has been based since its inception.

Cultural Semiosis traces the theoretical itinerary of the signifier in the continental tradition. Cultural semiosis provides links for cultural studies to the philosophical, the literary, the historical and the social. Understood semiotically, cultural signs and signifiers are inscribed in the fabric of cultural practices. Cultural semiosis enters the spaces of everyday language, visuality, sexuality and symbolization. These original essays interpret and provide tools for the understanding of cultural studies within a philosophical framework. Contributors: M. Alison Arnett, Debra Bergoffen, Peter Carravetta, Alessandro Carrera, Julia Kristeva, John Llewelyn, Michael Naas, Kelly Oliver, Adi Ophir, Francois Raffoul, Mark Roberts, Stephanie Sage, Hugh J. Silverman.