Empire Burlesque

The Fate of Critical Culture in Global America

AvDaniel T. O'Hara

Häftad, Engelska, 2003

Del i serien New Americanists

697 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 3-6 vardagar. Fri frakt över 249 kr.

Beskrivning

Empire Burlesque traces the emergence of the contemporary global context within which American critical identity is formed. Daniel T. O’Hara argues that globalization has had a markedly negative impact on American cultural criticism, circumscribing both its material and imaginative potential, reducing much of it to absurdity. By highlighting the spectacle of its own self-parody, O’Hara aims to shock U.S. cultural criticism back into a sense of ethical responsibility. Empire Burlesque presents several interrelated analyses through readings of a range of writers and cultural figures including Henry James, Freud, Said, De Man, Derrida, and Cordwainer Smith (an academic, spy, and classic 1950s and 1960s science fiction writer). It describes the debilitating effects of globalization on the university in general and the field of literary studies in particular, it critiques literary studies’ embrace of globalization theory in the name of a blind and vacant modernization, and it meditates on the ways critical reading and writing can facilitate an imaginative alternative to institutionalized practices of modernization. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalytical theory, it diagnoses contemporary American Studies as typically driven by the mindless abjection and transference of professional identities.A provocative commentary on contemporary cultural criticism, Empire Burlesque will inform debates on the American university across the humanities, particularly among those in literary criticism, cultural studies, and American studies.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2003-04-09
Mått:152 x 232 x 25 mm
Vikt:726 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:New Americanists
Antal sidor:392
Förlag:Duke University Press
ISBN:9780822330196

Utforska kategorier

Mer om författaren

Daniel T. O’Hara is Professor of English at Temple University. He has written and edited a number of books including Radical Parody: American Culture and Critical Agency after Foucault and Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation. He is review editor of the journal Boundary 2.

Recensioner i media

“In the spirit of Yeats, his tutelary figure, Daniel T. O'Hara gauges the state of America's imperial anarchy and puts forth an imaginative response, compounded from Foucault, Lacan, and Henry James. This is a defense of literature like no other.”-Jonathan Arac, Columbia University ”Empire Burlesque provides a unique perspective on how much the globalism that, properly, should be ‘post-American' is actually another (re)production of America. It is impressive work.”-Patrick O'Donnell, author of Latent Destinies: Cultural Paranoia and Contemporary U.S. Narrative

Innehållsförteckning

Preface viiAcknowledgments xiiiIntroduction: We Welcoming Others, or What's Wrong with the Global Point of View? 1I. Reading as a Vanishing Act 1. Edward W. Said and the Fate of Critical Culture 292. Why Foucault No Longer Matters 433. Lentricchia's Frankness and the Place of Literature 62II. Globalizing Literary Studies 4. Redesigning the Lessons of Literature 955. The Return to Ethics and the Specter of Reading 1146. Class in a Global Light: The Two Professions 136III. Analyzing Global America 7. Transference and Abjection: An Analytic Parable 1638. Ghostwork: An Uncanny Prospect for New Americanists 1839. Specter of Theory: The Bad Conscience of American Criticism 220IV. Reading Worlds 10. Empire Baroque: Becoming Other in Henry James 23711. Planet Buyer and the Catmaster: A Critical Future for Transference 301Notes 339Bibliography 357Index 365