The second edition of Cultural Studies and the New Humanities provides a comprehensive overview of issues in the humanities at the turn of the new millennium, providing historical background, defining key terms, and introducing the ideas of key thinkers. This second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, and new chapters have been added about the rise of visual cultures and the fierce contemporary debate between identity politics and queer theory.

The contemporary humanities--from "intertextuality" to "queer theory"--are a minefield of new theories and controversies. This book explores some of the new ways of thinking about the traditional arts and human sciences, providing historical background, defining key terms, and introducing the ideas of the important personalities.

Combining two distinct philosophical fields to the study of cinema, Patrick Fuery proposes the first study showing how phenomenology and psychoanalysis are explored through their commonalities rather than differences.

What do Lacan, Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, Cixous and Irigaray have in common? These giants of critical theory are all linked by their analyses of desire. Theories of Desire looks at the role of desire in the works of these writers, as well as examining other major issues and themes of post-structuralism. Fuery considers the place of desire in psychoanalysis, philosophy, literary studies and feminism. In a lucid and accessible manner, he highlights the connections between desire and the critical analysis (...) of subjectivity, language and culture. He examines the institutionalisation of desire, the relationship between language, discourse and desire, and notes the problems of dealing with women's desire in phallocentric contexts. For anyone seeking a comprehensible introduction to the arcane tangles of post-structuralism, this book will be an invaluable guide. (shrink)

Explores how absence, an unmarked characteristics, forms a key component in post-structural analysis and, as a concept, can unlock doors in understanding key principles of Western thought.