Template: KeyGuides, Font: Bembo Date: 01/04/2015; 3B2 version: 10.0.1465/W Unicode (Dec 22 2011) (APS_OT) Dir: //integrafs1/kcg/2-Pagination/TandF/CTC_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/9780415695664_text.3d CRITICAL THEORY Critical Theory: The Key Concepts introduces over 300 widely used terms, categories and ideas drawing upon well-established approaches like New Historicism, postmodernism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and narratology as well as many new critical theories of the last 20 years such as Actor- Network Theory, Global Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Spec- ulative Realism. This book explains the key concepts at the heart of a wide range of influential theorists from Agamben to Žižek. Entries range from concise definitions to longer explanatory essays and include terms such as: Aesthetics Desire Dissensus Dromocracy Hegemony Ideology Intersectionality Late Capitalism Performativity Race Suture Featuring cross-referencing throughout, a substantial bibliography and index, Critical Theory: The Key Concepts is an accessible and easy-to- use guide. This book is an invaluable introduction covering a wide range of subjects for anyone who is studying or has an interest in critical theory (past and present). Dino Franco Felluga is Associate Professor of English at Purdue University. In addition to authoring and editing print books, he created the online Introductory Guide to Critical Theory and BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History (branchcollective.org). Template: KeyGuides, Font: Bembo Date: 01/04/2015; 3B2 version: 10.0.1465/W Unicode (Dec 22 2011) (APS_OT) Dir: //integrafs1/kcg/2-Pagination/TandF/CTC_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/9780415695664_text.3d This page intentionally left blank Template: KeyGuides, Font: Bembo Date: 01/04/2015; 3B2 version: 10.0.1465/W Unicode (Dec 22 2011) (APS_OT) Dir: //integrafs1/kcg/2-Pagination/TandF/CTC_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/9780415695664_text.3d CRITICAL THEORY The Key Concepts Dino Franco Felluga Add AddAdd Add Add Add Add AddAddAdd AddAdd AddAdd Template: KeyGuides, Font: Bembo Date: 01/04/2015; 3B2 version: 10.0.1465/W Unicode (Dec 22 2011) (APS_OT) Dir: //integrafs1/kcg/2-Pagination/TandF/CTC_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/9780415695664_text.3d First published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 Dino Franco Felluga The right of Dino Franco Felluga to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Felluga, Dino Franco, 1966- Critical theory : the key concepts / Dino Franco Felluga. -- First edition. pages cm. -- (Routledge key guides) 1. Critical theory. 2. Criticism. I. Title. B809.3.F44 2015 142--dc23 2014038955 ISBN: 978-0-415-69566-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-69565-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-71887-3 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books Template: KeyGuides, Font: Bembo Date: 01/04/2015; 3B2 version: 10.0.1465/W Unicode (Dec 22 2011) (APS_OT) Dir: //integrafs1/kcg/2-Pagination/TandF/CTC_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/9780415695664_text.3d CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi A note on use of this Key Concepts guide vii Introduction x List of Key Concepts xxvi Key Concepts 1 Bibliography 327 Index 353 v Template: KeyGuides, Font: Bembo Date: 01/04/2015; 3B2 version: 10.0.1465/W Unicode (Dec 22 2011) (APS_OT) Dir: //integrafs1/kcg/2-Pagination/TandF/CTC_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/9780415695664_text.3d ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have had the great honor of working with and being supported by a number of incredibly generous critical theorists who have taught and inspired me: as a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara; as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University; and as a faculty member at Purdue University. All of the following theorists appear in the pages of this book. I would like particularly to thank Andrew Elfenbein, Regenia Gagnier, Barbara Gelpi, Paul Hernadi, Linda Hutcheon, Alan Liu, Jerome McGann, Elaine Showalter, Garrett Stewart, Herbert F. Tucker, and Hayden White for their guidance and encouragement through the various stages of my career. A number of people have also helped me through the writing of this particular book, including Emily Allen, Barbara Leckie, Maren Linett, Aparajita Sagar, Ryan Schneider, Marjorie Stone, and Marlene Tromp. In particular, I would like to thank two former PhD students of mine, Kenneth Crowell and Adam Wat- kins, who read through the entire manuscript and helped to keep me clear and honest throughout. About 200 words of my “Note on the Use of this Key Concepts Guide” is drawn from my article, “Theory, Late and Latest,” published in European Romantic Review 18.2 (2007). A part of my definition of “simulacra” can be found in “The Matrix:Para- digm of Post-Modernism or Intellectual Poseur? (Part I)” in Glenn Yeffeth (ed.), 2003, Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix, Dallas: BenBella Books. I thank Taylor & Francis and BenBella Books for permission to use that material here. I reserve my final acknowledgements for the many undergraduate and graduate students that I have taught, first at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where my Guide to Theory began as a photocopied hand-out, then at Purdue University, where a Center for Undergraduate Instructional Excellence fellowship in the College of Liberal Arts and an Indiana Higher Education Telecommunication System grant afforded me the time to create the online Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. vi Template: KeyGuides, Font: Bembo Date: 01/04/2015; 3B2 version: 10.0.1465/W Unicode (Dec 22 2011) (APS_OT) Dir: //integrafs1/kcg/2-Pagination/TandF/CTC_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/9780415695664_text.3d A NOTE ON THE USE OF THIS KEY CONCEPTS GUIDE Upon reading of himself referred to as “the late Mark Twain,” Twain famously quipped that “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” And so it is with theory, which, over the last few years, has been pronounced dead over and over again. The reason often given for this premature postmortem is that no new theoretical schools have emerged in the last decade or two with the same force that attended the rise of theories discussed in this book, including Marxism, cultural materialism, feminism, deconstruction, narratology, queer theory, new historicism, postmodernism, and various manifestations of psychoanalysis (Freudian, Lacanian, screen theory, etc.). What has characterized the theoretical work of the last decade is less a declaration of a particular school of thinking or critical methodology than a general implementa- tion of many of the precepts and methods of critical theory in the examination and analysis of disparate cultural objects. Theory has become so much a part of the way critics understand culture and ideology that critics no longer feel the need to insist upon its life signs. Terry Eagleton puts it well in his provocatively titled After Theory (2003): “If theory means a reasonably systematic reflection on our guiding assumptions, it remains as indispensable as ever. But we are living now in the aftermath of what one might call high theory, in an age which, having grown rich on the insights of thinkers like Althusser, Barthes and Derrida, has also in some ways moved beyond them” (2). Where we have moved to is often called Cultural Studies, a wide- ranging examination of various cultural phenomena that had been largely ignored because they were considered “low” or overly marginal: pop music, television, and film; the history of science (especially super- seded technologies or now discredited forms of medicine like phrenology, alchemy, and quackery); past understandings of sex and desire; or any number of ephemera (Byron’s boots, Victorian wedding cakes, or early modern cartography, and so on).1 One thing that theory has done for vii Template: KeyGuides, Font: Bembo Date: 01/04/2015; 3B2 version: 10.0.1465/W Unicode (Dec 22 2011) (APS_OT) Dir: //integrafs1/kcg/2-Pagination/TandF/CTC_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/9780415695664_text.3d USING THE GUIDE scholars is to free them from the exclusive exploration of literary texts or “high” historical documents, opening their sights outward to the entire social world. High school and university classes have followed suit, so that a given survey of literature or history will now commonly include an examina- tion of debates in the sciences, an exploration of penal structures, or an overview of changing sexual mores. Surveys of literature will often include an expanded canon of “great writers” that introduces a plethora of new voices (female, lower class, colonial, queer, populist, and so on) as literary study has changed in response to the insights of feminism, Marxism, postcolonial studies, queer theory, and cultural studies. These changes are informed by