Synopses & Reviews
In May 1968 the French nation was shaken to its foundations by a series of student protests that rapidly escalated into a general strike. Yet the immediate upshot of the May events was a massive electoral victory for General de Gaulle and for the constitution of 1958. Logics of Failed Revolt uses the events of May '68 as a historical touchstone for examining the political ramifications for that body of literary, philosophical, and psychoanalytic work known as French theory. It explores the period's central influence within theoretical discourse, tracing the development of 'explanations' for the necessary failure of established modes of revolutionary action and the widespread notion that politics was now a dead end. The author examines the specifically cultural politics operative in the texts of Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous and Jacques Lacan.
Synopsis
Logics of Failed Revolt uses the events of May '68 as a historical touchstone for examining the political ramifications of that body of literary philosophical, and psychoanalytic work we in America have come to know as French theory. More precisely, it explores the strategically central role, within theoretical discourse of the period largely defined by May '68, of a constellation of commonplace 'explanations' for the necessary failure of established modes of revolutionary action, and hence of the widespread perception of politics proper as a dead end.
Synopsis
A Stanford University Press classic.
Synopsis
Using the events of May '68 as a historical touchstone, this book examines the political ramifications of the literary, philosophical, and psychoanalytic work known as French theory.
Synopsis
In May 1968 the French nation was shaken to its foundations by a series of student protests that rapidly escalated into a general strike. Yet the immediate upshot of the May events was a massive electoral victory for General de Gaulle and for the constitution of 1958. Logics of Failed Revolt uses the events of May '68 as a historical touchstone for examining the political ramifications for that body of literary, philosophical, and psychoanalytic work known as French theory. It explores the period's central influence within theoretical discourse, tracing the development of 'explanations' for the necessary failure of established modes of revolutionary action and the widespread notion that politics was now a dead end. The author examines the specifically cultural politics operative in the texts of Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous and Jacques Lacan.
Synopsis
“It is important and timely in the post-Cold War retreat of politics to have a historical assessment of how those politics, as well as certain stances inherited from the French Revolution ... were the original context around what we call ‘theory today.”—Juliet Flower MacCannell, University of California, Irvine