Synopses & Reviews
This volume brings together, for the first time, a variety of texts from Certeau's book and journal publications which have proved important in the various disciplines where Certeau has had an influence.
Synopsis
For the first time, a reader brings together a comprehensive selection of key texts by Michel de Certeau. The selection reflects the impressive breadth of the French theorist's work, which ranges from history, anthropology, and philosophy to semiotics, sociology, and psychology.
An introduction by editor Graham Ward outlines de Certeau's biography and places his work within the cultural context of his time, in terms of both French Catholicism and contemporary intellectual debates. It examines the major preoccupations of the philosopher's writings -- the other, spatiality, colonialism in its various forms, the body, and the relationship between discourse and oppression -- and locates them within the overall development of his thinking. Finally, Ward comments on the current rediscovery of de Certeau and its ramifications for Western thought.
About the Author
Graham Ward is Professor of Contextual Theology and Ethics at the University of Manchester. He is the author of numerous articles published throughout the world on theology, critical theory and literary theory. His previous books include Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology (1995), Theology and Contemporary Critical Theory (1996), The Postmodern God (Blackwell Publishers, 1997), Radical Orthodoxy (1998) and Balthasar at the End of Modernity (1999). He is also editor of the journal Literature and Theology.
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors.
Acknowledgments.
Introduction. (Graham Ward).
Part I Other Times: Historiography.
1 Introduction: Michael de Certeau on Histography.
2 Writings and Histories.
3 History: Science and Fiction.
Part II Other Cities: Cultural Politics.
4 Introduction. (Tom Conley).
5 A Symbolic Revolution.
6 The Social Architecture of Knowledge.
7 The Indian Long March.
Part III Other People: Ethnorgraphy and Social Practice.
8 Introduction. (Ian Buchannan).
9. Walking in the City.
10. Believing and Making People Believe.
11. Ethno-Graphy, Speech, or the space of the Other. (Jean de Lery).
Part IV Other Languages: Speech and Writing.
12. Introduction. (Jeremy Ahearne).
13. The Scriptural Economy.
14. The World of the Vowel.
15. Mystic Speech.
Part V Other Beliefs: Theology.
16. Introduction: Michel de Certeau, Theologst. (Frederick Bauerschmidt).
17. The Weakness of Believing. From the Body to Writing a Christian Transit.
Select Bibliography.
Index.