Strategies for Theory

From Marx to Madonna

Edited by R. L. Rutsky & Bradley J. Macdonald

Subjects: Cultural Studies
Paperback : 9780791457306, 299 pages, June 2003
Hardcover : 9780791457290, 299 pages, May 2003

Table of contents

Introduction
From Marx to Madonna: Theory, Culture, Politics
R. L. Rutsky and Bradley J. Macdonald

PART I: FROM POLITICS TO THEORY

1. Piece-Work
Samuel Weber

2. Why the Time Is Out of Joint: Marx's Political Economy without the Subject
Teresa Brennan

3. Time Signatures: Post*. * Responsibilities
John P. Leavey Jr.

4. Building a New Left: An Interview with Ernesto Laclau
Strategies Collective

5. La Vi(ll)e en Rose: Reading Jameson Mapping Space
Donald Preziosi

6. Foucault's Fallacy
Michael Ryan

7. The Politics of Postmetaphysics
Keith Topper

PART II: FROM THEORY TO CULTURE

8. Rodney King and the Awkward Pause: Interpretation and Politics
William Chaloupka

9. The Making of "Derrida at the Little Bighorn": An Interview
Gregory L. Ulmer

10. All the Stupid "Sex Stuff"
Marilyn Manners

11. Migrant Landscapes
Iain Chambers

12. Leave It to Beaver: The Object of Pornography
Kelly Dennis

13. Heretical Marxism: Pasolini's Cinema Inpopulare
Kriss Ravetto

14. Missing Marx: Or, How to Take Better Aim
Laurence A. Rickels

Contributors

Index

Interdisciplinary essays on the role of high theory in politics and popular culture.

Description

Interdisciplinary in scope and often provocative in their choice of materials, the essays in this volume present new strategies for theorizing culture and politics. Not content simply to "apply" theory to political and cultural objects, they instead treat all three as complex, interconnected, and constantly evolving areas of inquiry. Drawn from the innovative work originally published in Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture and Politics, the essays collected here explore a variety of topics, ranging from considerations of Marx, Foucault, Jameson, and Rorty to investigations of Madonna, Pasolini, pornography, and vampires. Lively and inventive, Strategies for Theory goes beyond conventional cultural studies and cultural politics in order to suggest new approaches to both.

R. L. Rutsky teaches film and media studies at the University of California at Irvine and is the author of High Technē: Art and Technology from the Machine Aesthetic to the Posthuman. Bradley J. Macdonald teaches political theory at Colorado State University and is the author of William Morris and the Aesthetic Constitution of Politics.