An influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Various analyses in the book concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioural structure that marks the limits of enlightenment.

This text contains two of Walter Benjamin's essays, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction , and Theses on the Philosophy of History , as well as others on the art of translation, Kafka, storytelling, Baudelaire, Brecht's epic theatre, Proust, and book collecting.

Foucault shows the development of the Western system of prisons, police organizations, administrative and legal hierarchies for social control - and the growth of disciplinary society as a whole.

Here, one of France's greatest intellectuals explores the evolving social, economic and political forces that have shaped our attitudes to sex. Foucault describes how we are in the process of making a science of sex which is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase of pleasure.

Possibly one off the most significant yet most overlooked works of the twentieth century, it was The Order of Things that established Foucault's reputation as an intellectual giant.

A classic of twentieth century thought, this work is Adorno's literary and philosophical masterpiece.

This book is an unrivalled indictment of the banality of mass culture - Adorno's finest essays are collected here, offering the reader unparalleled insights into Adorno's thoughts on culture.

A series of essays in which Barthes seeks to tear away masks and demystify the signs, signals, gestures and messages through which western society sustains, sells, identifies and yet obscures itself.

Defines our understanding of colonialism and empire.

Focusing on the arcades of 19th-century Paris, the glass-roofed rows of shops, Benjamin presents a montage of quotations from, and reflections on, hundreds of published sources, arranging them in 36 categories with descriptive rubrics such as Fashion , Boredom or Prostitution .

In this classic account of madness, Michel Foucault shows once and for all why he is one of the most distinguished European philosophers since the end of World War II.

Theodor Adorno is the foremost thinker of the Frankfurt School, the extraordinarily influential group of German thinkers that fled to the US in the 1930s. This book is his classic discussion of the sublime, the ugly and the beautiful 'Art is the sedimentation of human misery'.

A history of the Frankfurt School and its impact during its early years in Germany and the United States. This edition includes a new preface which reflects on the continuing relevance of the work of the Frankfurt School.

In the 1960s a radical concept emerged from the great French thinker Jacques Derrida. Read the book that changed the way we think; read Writing and Difference, the classic introduction.

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Examines the theoretical and philosophical contours of the modern era. The book traces the contemporary critiques of modernity back to their philosophical origins in the work of Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger and others.

Marcuse's classic study of Freudian thought.

Fontana Press. Roland Barthers reissue with new jacket.

Addresses developments in literary studies, including 'the growth of a kind of anti-theory', and the idea that literary theory has been institutionalized.