Critical Practice from Voltaire to Foucault, Eagleton and Beyond

Download or read book Critical Practice from Voltaire to Foucault, Eagleton and Beyond written by John E. O'Brien and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the historical-materialist method to unravel the promise and limits of critical practice since the Revolutionary Age, John E. O’Brien investigates the problems and prospects of cultural criticism for the 21st century through absorbing studies of the contested perspectives of Voltaire, Friedrich Schiller, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Terry Eagleton and Hayden White. In spite of recurrent crises due to a flawed Western political-economy, why is there so much critical intellectual activity with so little effect? Framing his study with the early work by Max Horkheimer, Luc Boltanski and Teresa Ebert, O’Brien's investigation of resistance in America and Europe challenges the bourgeois philosophy of history, pointing to the urgency of critique as mode of analysis and intervention.