Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India2 reviews Ranajit Guha Duke University Press, 1999 a classic + A defining moment in social history Guha's Elementary Aspects--originally published in the early 1980s and then for an audience mainly limited to South Asian studies--is perhaps the most interesting work of social theory since Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish. It is also a model of a new way of writing history "from below." ...             Critique of Cynical Reason (Theory and History of Literature, Vol 40)4 reviews Peter Sloterdijk University of Minnesota Press, 1988 Fantastic Phenomenology of the Spirit, Like Hegel... + Parallels to Boethius' "Consolation of Philosophy" + Sloterdijk confronts nihilism--and has a better idea + Philosophy at its best.             At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now (Convergences: Inventories of the Present) Timothy Brennan Harvard University Press, 1997 From every quarter we hear of a new global culture, postcolonial, hybrid, announcing the death of nationalism, the arrival of cosmopolitanism. But under the drumbeat attending this trend, Timothy Brennan detects another, altogether different sound. Polemical, passionate, certain to provoke, his book exposes the drama being played out under the guise of globalism. A bracing critique of the ...             Grammars of Creation5 reviews George Steiner Yale University Press, 2002 Steiner and the "barbarism of specialization" + An Elegant Eulogy It seems to me that George Steiner is a sworn enemy of what Ortega (disparagingly) called the "barabarism of specialization." Although one may quibble that his work exhibits a lack of the "rigor" (as one reviewer put it) that comes with specialized knowledge, I submit the following thesis, which ...             Imperial Eyes: Studies in Travel Writing and Transculturation3 reviews Mary Louise Pratt Routledge, 1992 Seminal book in the field + Fantastic book While I understand this book presents a challenge to the reader, it is a seminal book in several fields: Mary Louise Pratt's prose is clear for a literary theorist and her vocabulary/jargon is appropriate to the subject. _Imperial Eyes_ takes the reader through several stages of European travel ...             The Lettered City (Post-Contemporary Interventions)2 reviews Angel Rama Duke University Press, 1996 Rama, reader of the Latin American culture + Good translation of an important work Angel Rama is peharps one of the most important critics of Latin America. The Lettered city is the perfect example. This book, written to explain the influence of the intelectuals of Latin America in the development of culture, is one of the brightest essays I've ever red. I fully recommend this ...             Illuminations: Essays and Reflections12 reviews Walter Benjamin Schocken, 1969 Just a quick note + Of Benjamin, Dwarfs and Angels + Clarity and Brilliance + Brilliance + Indispensable reading             We Have Never Been Modern5 reviews Bruno Latour Harvard University Press, 2008 a great, new work; serious social theory for scientists too + Engaging discussion of our views of culture and nature + of course some people wouldn't like this book For this reader, Bruno Latour's book is one of the most ambitious, original, and important reformulations of social theory since 1989. It is getting lots of attention among scholars, and deserves a wider public. The press reviews here don't do this book justice. Latour, for those of you who don't ...             Dictations: On Haunted Writing Avital Ronell University of Nebraska Press, 1993 Avital Ronell, author of Crack Wars and The Telephone Book , defies the undefiable. In Dictations she looks at Goethe, the dictator. A figure whose every word is treated with reverence by Germanists, Goethe is exemplary. But of what? As if teetering between life and death, Goethe was born in a legendary way: thought to be stillborn, he was brought to life by extraordinary efforts. ...             The Time of the Tribes (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)1 review Michel Maffesoli Sage Publications Ltd, 1996 Is French untranslatable? This is the second book I've read this month that's been "translated" from French. I couldn't get more than 20-30 pages into either, so it is a little misleading to say that I READ either of them. (The other, by the way, was Bourdieu's The Field of Cultural Production.) So, here's my ...             Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood (Warwick Studies in European Philosophy) Adrian Cavarero Routledge, 2000 Relating Narratives is a major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, the book presents a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing on a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition--from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, ...             Writing and Difference4 reviews Jacques Derrida University Of Chicago Press, 1980 Derrida all over the place + Cryptic and Wonderful + Reading Derrida.... + the difference that makes the difference             Humanism and Democratic Criticism (Columbia Themes in Philosophy)4 reviews Edward W. Said Columbia University Press, 2004 Beautiful and nuanced + Said's last offering to the World + A small book from my kind of scholar + An elegant last work             Truth and Method10 reviews Hans-Georg Gadamer Continuum International Publishing Group, 1989 Klassisch! + on truth and method + A mighty work on interpretation + Prejudice as Philosophy (in Spanish) + Very difficult -- although admittedly a classic.             Antigone's Claim10 reviews Judith Butler Columbia University Press, 2002 Butler (Miss Butler if ur nasty) is at is again... + very intelligent, ground-breaking book!!! + Very interesting book Judging from the reader reviews on this website, Judith Butler has yet again succeeded in provoking the outrage of several diehard and blue-in-the-face classics scholars. Those classicists who feel outraged by her work might consider her illuliminating comments on Hölderlin's own translation of ...             The Experience of Freedom (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) Jean-Luc Nancy Stanford University Press, 1994 The most systematic, radical, and lucid treatise on freedom that has been written in contemporary Continental philosophy, this book combats the renunciation of freedom attested in modern history by articulating the experience of freedom at work in thought itself.             Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West3 reviews Susan Buck-Morss The MIT Press, 2002 Daddy Stalin and Warbucks: Friends 'Til the End + Where's the Beast? + The Betrayal of History Buck-Morss's tale of the sputtering, guttering end of the modern Fordist disciplinary project both in the U.S.A and in the Soviet Union is a stunner. Most compelling are the historical insights -- told with particular elegance through the comparison of patriotic and advertising images -- that show ...             Three Critics of the Enlightenment2 reviews Isaiah Berlin Princeton University Press, 2000 "The Magus of the North" in THREE CRITICS My review is limited to the study of Johann Georg Hamann in the present volume, and the three star rating applies to it alone. Combining Isaiah Berlin's books on Vico, Hamann and Herder under one cover was a felicitous idea of Berlin's editor and literary executor Henry Hardy. The position ...             The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry9 reviews Harold Bloom Oxford University Press, USA, 1997 Poetomachia + Ignore the hysterical detractors + Yes and no + Greater than, you know? a book for people who read poetry.             The Sublime Object of Ideology (Phronesis)8 reviews Slavoj Zizek Verso, 1989 groundbreaking + THE best introduction to hegel, marx, freud, and lacan + A True First Step + Invigorating, diaphanous, decentered + Making Ideology fun