Radical Thinkers Set 04 – serie

Written in exile from Germany, this potent study of Europe's most controversial composer explodes the frontiers of musical and cultural analysis. Measuring key elements of Wagner's oeuvre with patent musical dexterity, Adorno sheds light on a nineteenth-century bourgeois figure whose operas betray the social gestures and high-culture fantasies that helped plant the seeds of the modern Culture Industry. A foreword by Slavoj Zizek situates Adorno's reflections within present debates over Wagner's anti-Semitism and the moral status of his work, proving why this book remains one of the most important character studies of the twentieth century.

Establishing a rigorous program of "symptomatic reading" that cuts through the silences and lacunae of Capital to reveal its philosophical core, Louis Althusser interprets Marx's structural analysis of production as a revolutionary break-the basis of a completely new science. Building on a series of Althussers's conceptual innovations that includes "overdetermination" and "social formation," Étienne Balibar explores the historical and structural facets of production as Marx understood them, scrutinizing many of the most fundamental points in Capital, as though for the first time.

Fredric Jameson, a leading voice on the subject of postmodernism, assembles his most powerful writings on the culture of late capitalism in this essential volume. Classic insights on pastiche, nostalgia, and architecture stand alongside essays on the status of history, theory, Marxism, and the subject in an age propelled by finance capital and endless spectacle. Surveying the debates that blazed up around his earlier essays, Jameson responds to critics and maps out the theoretical positions of postmodernism's prominent friends and foes.