62 Reviews

Michele Le Doeuff, Hipparchia’s Choice Catherine Wilson Jonathan Bate, Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition Martin Ryle Axel Honneth, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory Thomas McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Contemporary Critical Theory Jane Braaten, Habermas’ s Critical Theory of Society Anthony Elliott Hubert […]

Lukács and the Marxist Criticism of Sociology

Lukacs aacl tbe MaJlxist Ca-iticislll of Sociology IanCraib This paper is situated in the context of three interrelated arguments. The first and central issue is epistemological, concerning the grounds upon which one theory of ‘point of view’ claims to be superior to others, to represent ‘the truth’, to be ‘scientific’, to produce ‘knowledge’. The last […]

The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty

him and to which he claims special access, nor ‘from a· source inside him, which he is ~ecially privileged to possess. The formula is presented to us at the start, and then it is worked upon, in front of us, in terms of sound and sight. The marve~lous feeling of release provided by the piece […]

Discussion: Merleau-Ponty’s Rejection of Marxism

inst~d of the insignificant and useless knowledge In sum radical philosophy’s attitude to both so often produced. And some research has clearly science and common sense is the same: where it been dangerous, e.g. in biological warfare and helps, use it; where it doesn ‘.t, criticize it; eugenics. where…;i.t gets in the way, remove it. […]

Ideology is everyday; Fractured community

Letters Ideology is everydayJohn Kraniauskasʼs ʻGlobalization is Ordinaryʼ (RP 90), on cultural studies and the recent Media, Culture and Identity series (OU course D318), provides a welcome synopsis of the trajectory of cultural studies, particularly in its emphasis on the problematic nature of a critical idea of culture. It is, however, difficult to understand why […]

Fanon, phenomenology, race

Fanon, phenomenology, race David macey ʻThe black man is not. Nor the white.ʼ [1] Thus Fanon in the concluding section of Peau noire, masques blancs (1952), in my translation. It is quite impossible to work with the existing versions, the most obvious index of that impossibility being the unfortunate decision to translate the title of […]

Towards a phenomenology of racial embodiment

When one realizes the indeterminacy of racial categories, their fluid borders and cultural variety, it is often tempting to adopt a nominalism about race: that race is no more real than phlogiston or witchcraft. In this essay, I resist this conclusion primarily on phenomenological grounds. Race is real, certainly more real than phlogiston, though like […]

Thinking politically with Merleau-Ponty

Merleau-Pontyʼs fertile and provocative approach to philosophy was abruptly terminated by his death in 1961. Paul Ricoeurʼs judgement that he was the greatest of the French phenomenologists1 has frequently been cited since then, yet a second demise occurred during the 1960s: this time at the hands of phenomenologyʼs structuralist and poststructuralist critics. Although their targets […]

Late Merleau-Ponty, revived

Late Merleau-Ponty, revived Eric matthews * Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, compiled and with notes by Dominique Séglard, trans. Robert Vallier, Northwestern University Press, Evanston IL, 2003. xx + 296 pp., £69.95 hb., £14.95 pb., 0 8101 1445 3 hb., 0 8101 1446 1 pb.; Mauro Carbone, The Thinking of […]

Who was Oscar Masotta?: Psychoanalysis in Argentina

Who was Oscar Masotta? Psychoanalysis in Argentina Philip derbyshire As Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s sardonic detective Pepe Carvalho ruefully observed, in a dictionary of Argentine clichés, psychoanalysis would have a crucial place, along with ‘tango and the disappeared’. [1] ‘One’ knows that along with Paris, Buenos Aires is one of the centres of psychoanalytic practice, and […]