Calvin Thomas - Böcker

Calvin Thomas's Male Mattersreveals the act and production of writing as a bodily, material processthat transgresses the boundaries of gender. Wise and quirky, sophisticatedand coarse, serious and hilarious, this look at male identity and creativityand dislocation at the end of the twentieth century definitely will notassuage male anxiety!"An excellent and importantbook. . . . By mixing high and low, by speaking candidly about what weusually keep in the (water) closet, while simultaneously engaging the'highest' philosophies of language and culture, Thomas calls the entireenterprise of criticism into question." -- Jeremy Earp, Journal of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Identity"A brave, indispensableexercise in writing the male body, and a tour de force of theoreticallyinformed close reading." -- Kevin Floyd, Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association"Both analyzes and performsour anxieties about masculinity. . . . This experiment in criticism transgressesboundaries of theory, gender, and academic taste in ways sure to delightand infuriate its readers." -- Gregory Jay, author of America the Scrivener: Deconstruction and the Subject of Literary History"Calvin Thomas is ableto hint at a way out of the prison-house, as he puts it, of straight maleidentity." -- Kathy Acker, author of In Memoriam to Identity

This engaging collection poses the question, Can straight people think queer?   Straight with a Twist offers a refreshing look at the relation between queer theory and critical examinations of the construction of heterosexuality. Seeking to proliferate the findings and insights of queer theory, contributors explore the issue of whether and how queer theory can speak for and include the straight.  In some of the ways that men have learned from feminism to interrogate the construction of masculinity, straights are learning from queer theory to interrogate constructions of straightness, to question their place in those constructions, and to make critical interventions into the institutional reproduction of the heterosexual norm. Straight with a Twist responds to the formulations of some of the leading figures in queer theory, considers demonstrations of the queer in television programs ("Seinfeld," for example) and contemporary films, and explores to what extent and in what ways literary texts from Shakespeare to Dorothy Allison are open to queer interpretation.  Committed to antihomophobic cultural analysis, Straight with a Twist aims to extend the reach of queer theory and humanize the world by making it "queerer than ever."

The purpose of art, according to the artist Banksy, is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. The purpose of that creative practice called “theory” is to disturb everyone—to perpetually unsettle all our staid assumptions, all our fixed understandings, all our familiar identities. An alternative to the typically large and unwieldy theory anthology, Adventures in Theory offers a manageably short collection of writings that have famously enacted the central purpose of theory.Adventures in Theory takes readers on a steadily unsettling tour, spanning the most significant thought provocations in the history of theoretical writing from Marx and Nietzsche through Foucault and Derrida to Butler, Zizek, and Edelman. Engagingly lean and enjoyably mean, this is a minimalist anthology with maximal impact.

The purpose of art, according to the artist Banksy, is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. The purpose of that creative practice called “theory” is to disturb everyone—to perpetually unsettle all our staid assumptions, all our fixed understandings, all our familiar identities. An alternative to the typically large and unwieldy theory anthology, Adventures in Theory offers a manageably short collection of writings that have famously enacted the central purpose of theory.Adventures in Theory takes readers on a steadily unsettling tour, spanning the most significant thought provocations in the history of theoretical writing from Marx and Nietzsche through Foucault and Derrida to Butler, Zizek, and Edelman. Engagingly lean and enjoyably mean, this is a minimalist anthology with maximal impact.

A thoroughly updated edition of the witty and engaging exploration of the history, application, and tenets of literary theory.The first edition of Ten Lessons served as a “literary” introduction to theoretical writing, a strong set of pedagogical prose poems unpacking Lacanian psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, Marxism, cultural studies, feminism, gender studies, and queer theory. Here Calvin Thomas returns to these ten “lessons,” each based on an axiomatic sentence selected from the canons of theory, each exploring the basic assumptions and motivations of theoretical writing. But while every lesson explains the working terms and core tenets of theory, each also attempts to exemplify theory as a “liberatory practice” (bell hooks), to liberate theory as a “practice of creativity” (Foucault) in and of itself.The revised, updated, and expanded second edition, featuring 25% new material, still argues for theoretical writing as a genre of creative writing, a way of engaging in the art of the sentence, the art of making sentences that make trouble, that desire to make radical changes in very fabrication of social reality.Features:- Critical keywords bolded for easy reference- Expanded footnotes with detailed discussion of key concepts- Anti-racist overhaul of each lesson in the wake of Trumpism, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo- Urgent emphasis on Afropessimism, critical race theory, and other developments in postcolonial Black cultural production- Designed to cross-reference with:Adventures in Theory: A Compact Anthology, edited by Calvin ThomasThe Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory, edited by Jeffrey R. Di LeoThe Bloomsbury Handbook to 21st Century Feminist Theory, edited by Robin Truth Goodman

A thoroughly updated edition of the witty and engaging exploration of the history, application, and tenets of literary theory.The first edition of Ten Lessons served as a “literary” introduction to theoretical writing, a strong set of pedagogical prose poems unpacking Lacanian psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, Marxism, cultural studies, feminism, gender studies, and queer theory. Here Calvin Thomas returns to these ten “lessons,” each based on an axiomatic sentence selected from the canons of theory, each exploring the basic assumptions and motivations of theoretical writing. But while every lesson explains the working terms and core tenets of theory, each also attempts to exemplify theory as a “liberatory practice” (bell hooks), to liberate theory as a “practice of creativity” (Foucault) in and of itself.The revised, updated, and expanded second edition, featuring 25% new material, still argues for theoretical writing as a genre of creative writing, a way of engaging in the art of the sentence, the art of making sentences that make trouble, that desire to make radical changes in very fabrication of social reality.Features:- Critical keywords bolded for easy reference- Expanded footnotes with detailed discussion of key concepts- Anti-racist overhaul of each lesson in the wake of Trumpism, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo- Urgent emphasis on Afropessimism, critical race theory, and other developments in postcolonial Black cultural production- Designed to cross-reference with:Adventures in Theory: A Compact Anthology, edited by Calvin ThomasThe Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory, edited by Jeffrey R. Di LeoThe Bloomsbury Handbook to 21st Century Feminist Theory, edited by Robin Truth Goodman