Modern European Thinkers

Alain Badiou is rapidly emerging as one of the most radical and influential philosophers of our time. Badiou opposes the contemporary reduction of philosophy to nothing but a matter of language and premature announcements of the end of philosophy and thus sets himself against both analytic and continental modes of philosophy. Setting the traditional platonic concerns of philosophy, truth and being, against the modern sophists of postmodernism, Badiou has articulated a powerful systematic philosophy with profound ethical and political consequences.

Hannah Arendt is one of the most famous political theorists of the twentieth century, yet in the social sciences her work has rarely been given the attention it deserves. This careful and comprehensive study introduces Arendt to a wider audience. Finn Bowring shows how Arendt's writings have engaged with and influenced prominent figures in the sociological canon, and how her ideas may shed light on some of the most pressing social and political problems of today. He explores her critique of Marx, her relationship to Weber, the influence of her work on Habermas and the parallels and discrepancies between her and Foucault. This is a clearly written and scholarly text which surveys the leading debates over Arendt's work, including discussions of totalitarianism, the public sphere and the nature of political responsibility. This book will bring new perspectives to students and lecturers in sociology and politics.

This is an introduction to the thought of the radical French thinker Félix Guattari. Guattari's main works were published in the 1970s and 1980s. His background was in psychoanalysis -- he was trained by Lacan and he practised as a psychoanalyst for much of his life. He developed a distinctive psychoanalytic method informed always by his revolutionary politics. Guattari was actively involved in numerous political movements, from Trotskyism to Autonomism, tackling ecological and sexual politics along the way. A true believer in collectivity, much of his work was written in collaboration, most famously with Gilles Deleuze. This is also an introduction to key concepts such as schizoanalysis, transversality, a-signifying semiotics and various kinds of machine.

Bruno Latour, the French sociologist, anthropologist and long-established superstar in the social sciences is revisited in this pioneering account of his ever-evolving political philosophy. Breaking from the traditional focus on his metaphysics, most recently seen in Harman's book Prince of Networks, the author instead begins with the Hobbesian and even Machiavellian underpinnings of Latour's early period encountering his shift towards Carl Schmitt then finishing with his final development into the Lippmann / Dewey debate. Harman brings these twists and turns into sharp focus in terms of Latour's personal political thinking. Along with Latour's most important articles on political themes, the book chooses three works as exemplary of the distinct periods in Latour's thinking: The Pasteurization of France, Politics of Nature, and the recently published An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence, as his conception of politics evolves from a global power struggle between individuals, to the fabrication of fragile parliamentary networks, to just one mode of existence among many others.

This is a guide to the life and work of the French intellectual Georges Bataille, best known as the author of the celebrated erotic novel, The Story of the Eye. Benjamin Noys introduces Bataille as a writer out of step with the dominant intellectual trends of his day - surrealism and existentialism - and shows that it was his very marginality that accounted in large part for his subsequent importance for the post-structuralists and the counterculture, in Europe and in the United States. Treating Bataille's work as a whole rather than focusing, as other studies have done, on aspects of his work (i.e. as social theory or philosophy), Noys' study is intended to be sensitive to the needs of students new to Bataille's work while at the same time drawing on the latest research on Bataille to offer new interpretations of Bataille's oeuvre for more experienced readers. This is the first clear, introductory reading of Bataille in English - challenging current reductive readings, and stressing the range of disciplines affected by Bataille's work, at a time when interest in Bataille is growing.

When capitalism is clearly catastrophically out of control and its excesses cannot be sustained socially or ecologically, the ideas of Herbert Marcuse become as relevant as they were in the 1960s. This is the first English introduction to Marcuse to be published for decades, and deals specifically with his aesthetic theories and their relation to a critical theory of society. Although Marcuse is best known as a critic of consumer society, epitomised in the classic One-Dimensional Man, Malcolm Miles provides an insight into how Marcuse's aesthetic theories evolved within his broader attitudes, from his anxiety at the rise of fascism in the 1930s through heady optimism of the 1960s, to acceptance in the 1970s that radical art becomes an invaluable progressive force when political change has become deadlocked. Marcuse's aesthetics of liberation, in which art assumes a primary role in interrupting the operation of capitalism, made him a key figure for the student movement in the 1960s. As diverse forms of resistance rise once more, a new generation of students, scholars and activists will find Marcuse's radical theory essential to their struggle.

Esther Leslie's path-breaking study of Walter Benjamin is unlike any other book presently available in English on Benjamin, in seeking to make a case for a more politicised reading of Benjamin's oeuvre. In looking at the entirety of Benjamin's work - rather than the four or five essays available in English which tend to form the Benjamin 'canon' - Leslie offers powerful new insights into a key twentieth-century political thinker, correcting the post-structuralist bias that has characterised so much Benjamin scholarship, and repositioning Benjamin's work in its historical and political context. In her examination of Benjamin's commentary on the politics and aesthetics of technology - from Benjamin's work on nineteenth-century industrial culture to his analyses of the Nazi deployment of the bomber - Esther Leslie re-contextualises Benjamin's writings in a lucid and cogently argued new study.

This beautifully written and lucidly argued study is the most persuasive account of Bourdieu's work yet to be published. Lane illuminates much that can puzzle a foreign readership by expertly situating Bourdieu within a French context. At the same time he points to those aspects of Bourdieu's writing which are of particular relevance to contemporary debates on questions of citizenship and globalisation. He gives a fascinating account of Bourdieu's astonishingly prescient analyses of the impact of the expansion of higher education, the influence of the mass media, the growth of the culture industries, and the changing nature of political and social elites, not just in France, but in the western world.' - Professor Jill Forbes, Queen Mary and Westfield, University of London

*Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book Prize, 2016* The wide-ranging and brilliant ideas of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) have had a major influence on modern thought. His 'followers' are loyal and legion. Yet his ideas are complex and densely conveyed. Lacan's detractors have accused him of obscurantism, pretentiousness and even incoherence, his psychoanalytic practice and his personal life were complicated - he was famous and contentious in equal measure. Martin Murray provides a lucid account of Lacan's key concepts, including the mirror stage, and his relationship to Freud's ideas, amongst many others. Tracing their origins in his diverse interests: art, psychiatry, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics and psychoanalysis. Murray also investigates Lacan's professional life, personal life and institutional influence in an attempt to understand the charismatic and controversial person he became.

When I read Ian Parker's manuscript, I experienced an underlying solidarity: despite obvious differences, we share the same basic political concerns and visions. And this makes his critical remarks always pertinent!' Slavoj Zizek 'This is not simply the best critical introduction to Zizek – in a much more radical sense, this is the only critical introduction to Zizek. Parker's study is much more than an important contribution to the ongoing debate: it redefines its very terms.' Yannis Stavrakakis, author of 'Lacan and the Political' 'A sharp, clear and radical analysis.' Christian Ingo Lenz Dunker, Professor of Psychoanalytic Theory and Lacanian Psychoanalyst, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Since the publication of his first book in English in 1989, Slavoj Zizek has quickly become one of the most widely read and contentious intellectuals alive today. With dazzling wit and tremendous creativity he has produced innovative and challenging explorations of Lacan, Hegel and Marx, and used his insights to exhilarating effect in analyses of popular culture. While Zizek is always engaging, he is also elusive and even contradictory. It can be very hard to finally determine where he stands on a particular issue. Is Zizek Marxist or Post-Marxist? How seriously should we take his recent turn to Christianity? Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction shows the reader a clear path through the twists and turns of Zizek's writings. Ian Parker takes Zizek's treatment of Hegel, Lacan and Marx in turn and outlines and assesses Zizek's interpretation and extension of these thinkers' theories. While Parker is never hastily dismissive of Zizek's innovations, he remains critical throughout, aware that the energy of Zizek's writing can be bewitching and beguiling as well as engaging and profound.

Gilles Deleuze is widely regarded as one of the major post-war proponents of Nietzschean thought in continental philosophy. Over a period of forty years, he presented what amounts to a philosophy of vitalism and multiplicity, bringing together concepts from thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche and Hume. In the first comprehensive English-language introduction to Deleuze, John Marks offers a lucid reading of a complex, abstract and often perplexing body of work. Marks examines Deleuze's philosophical writings – as well as the political and aesthetic preoccupation which underpinned his thinking – and provides a rigourous and illuminating reading of Deleuze's early studies of Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson and Spinoza, his collaborations with Felix Guattari, and the development of a distinctively 'Deleuzian' conceptual framework. Marks focuses on the philosophical friendship that developed between Deleuze and Foucault and considers the full range of Deleuze's fascinating writings on literature, art and cinema. This is a clear and concise guide to the work of one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers.