Update

Oxford Reference Browse

Narrow Your Choices

By Availability

Refine By Subject

By Content Set

By Illustrations

You are looking at 1-20 of 247 entries  for:

  • Type: Overview Page x
  • Literary theory and cultural studies x
clear all

View:

abject

abject  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
That which disturbs the self, by provoking either disgust, fear, loathing or repulsion. Belonging to the realm of the psychic, the abject is the excessive dimension of either a subject or an object ...
active and reactive

active and reactive  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (and after him French philosopher Gilles Deleuze) used these categories to describe two different ways of acting and—by extension—being in the world. An action ...
actor

actor  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
Any agent, perceptible at the level of discourse, who plays a part in a narrative. In contrast to the actant, the actor always refers to a specific individual person or thing—fate, for example, can ...
actual and virtual

actual and virtual  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
A modal distinction proposed by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze as a replacement for the problematic real-possible distinction more commonly used in philosophy. The possible is a bad concept ...
Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
(1937– )FrenchMarxist philosopher, novelist and playwright. Born in Rabat, Morocco, Badiou completed high school in Toulouse before moving to Paris for undergraduate studies at the prestigious École ...
Alain Touraine

Alain Touraine  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
(1925–)Frenchpost-Marxist sociologist with a strong interest in social movements and the possibility of people-led politics. Born in the wealthy seaside resort town of Hermanville-sur-Mer in ...
Alexandre Kojève

Alexandre Kojève  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
(1902–68)Russian-born French philosopher and political theorist. The nephew of the great Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, Kojève had a privileged upbringing in pre-revolutionary Russia. In 1918 he ...
Alexandre Koyré

Alexandre Koyré  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
(1892–1964)Russian-born French philosopher and science historian. The son of middle-class importers, Koyré was born in Taganrog in Southern Russia. As a teenager, he took part in the political ...
alternate modernity

alternate modernity  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
The theory in development studies and Postcolonialism that different parts of the world experienced modernity in their own fashion and at their own time. This theory is especially prominent in China ...
Anna Freud

Anna Freud  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
(1895–1982)Austrianpsychoanalyst and youngest daughter of the founder of psychoanalysisSigmund Freud. Close to her father, she recounted her dreams to him from a young age (many of which are analysed ...
anti-foundationalism

anti-foundationalism  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
A philosophical position which rejects foundationalism, i.e. it rejects the need to ground philosophy. Anti-foundationalist philosophers are often accused of being nihilists or moral relativists ...
Antonio Negri

Antonio Negri  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
(1933–)Italian*Marxistpolitical philosopher best known for his collaborative writings with Michael Hardt. A measure of his significance may be gauged from Michel Foucault's remark in 1980 that Negri ...
archaeology

archaeology  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
French historian Michel Foucault uses this term to describe his research methodology. It is characterized by the suspension of all established conventions for thinking and doing history and the ...
Arjun Appadurai

Arjun Appadurai  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
(1949–)Indian-born, US-based cultural anthropologist and co-founder of the important postcolonial theory journal Public Culture. Born and educated in Mumbai, Appadurai moved to the US in 1967, ...
art worlds

art worlds  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
Sociologist Howard S. Becker's concept for the milieu that artists create and require in order to produce art. Like that of Pierre Bourdieu, Becker's ultimate goal is to show that art is not the ...
aura

aura  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
According to Benjamin (1936), the distinctive singularity of an original work of art, the potency of which he attributed to its authenticity, presence, uniqueness, and historical context. He argued ...
axiomatic

axiomatic  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's term for the capitalist mode of production. An axiom is a proposition which cannot be proven true or false and from which one is able to construct a system of ...
bad faith

bad faith  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
A form of self-deception and avoidance of one's freedom. French existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir used this term (in subtly differing ways) to account for what they ...
bare life

bare life  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's concept for life that has been exposed to what he terms the structure of exception that constitutes contemporary biopower. The term originates in Agamben's ...
Benedict Anderson

Benedict Anderson  

Reference type:
Overview Page
Subject:
Literature, Literary theory and cultural studies
(1936–)BritishMarxist scholar specializing in South East Asian studies who came into prominence for his groundbreaking work on the origins of nationalism, Imagined Communities (1983). A regular ...

View: