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.

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.

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

Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, this book questions the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. It considers gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality.

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.

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.

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.

This corrected edition of Derrida's De la grammatologie adds a new index of the philosophers cited in the text, and makes the work more accessible and usable.

Examines the creation and function of the imagined communities of nationality and the way these communities were in part created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism and printing and the birth of vernacular languages in early modern Europe.

What is Literary Theory? Is there a relationship between literature and culture? Addressing such questions, this book offers insights into theories about the nature of language and meaning, and outlines the ideas behind a number of different schools: deconstruction, semiotics, postcolonial theory, and structuralism amongst them.

Offers an introduction to Foucault's thought.

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.

This anthology of critical writing ranges from Gorgias and Plato to Sigmund Freud and Mikhail Bakhtin. Each of the 147 contributions has a headnote introducing the writer and making connections to other critics, theorists and movements. An introduction surveys the history of theory and criticism.

Contains essays that reveal Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) - known in the West largely through his studies of Rabelais and Dostoevsky - as a philosopher of language, a cultural historian, and a major theoretician of the novel. This work features four selections from Voprosy literatury i estetiki , published in Moscow in 1975.

Beginning theory has been helping students navigate through the thickets of literary and cultural theory for well over a decade. This volume focuses on literary theory. It offers students and readers introduction to the field.

Is the first volume of the landmark philosophical project, Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Together with the second volume, A Thousand Plateaus, it is widely regarded as the single most brilliant work of Continental philosophy of the last forty years.

A look at the history, meaning, and art of comics and cartooning. Using comics to examine the medium itself, the author takes the form of a cartoon character and explains the structure, meaning, and appeal of comics, and provides a running analysis of comics as art, literature, and communication.

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.