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"Haven in a heartless world or site of oppression and inequality? Such claims answer each other endlessly as the state and prospects of the family are debated. The end of the family is in sight, it is often said, and from the European Parliament to the heartlands of the Moral Majority the guardians of 'traditional values' prepare their last stand. On the left too, it is frequently argued--sometimes with regret more often with easy confidence--that the family is in decline. Yet the family continues to thrive, both as an institution and as an ideology. Our society is saturated with familialism. Welfare services take it as a natural point of reference. Trade unions still bargain on the basis of...
Despite much talk of its decline, the nuclear family persists as a structure central to contemporary society, a fact to be lamented, according to the ideas of Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh. The Anti-social Family dissects the network of household, kinship and sexual relations that constitute the family form in advanced capitalist societies to show how they reinforce conditions of inequality. This classic work explores the personal and social needs that the family promises to meet but more often denies, and proposes moral and political practices for more egalitarian caring alternatives.
The first full-length book by and about one of the most important performance artists working today, this collection brings together a 'best of' selection of the myriad articles written about Baker's work by various writers and academics including Marina Warner and Griselda Pollock.
Barrett locates Gramsci and Althusser as key figures in the breakdown of this model--Gramsci's work presaging the separation of class, politics and ideology found in Laclau and Mouffe, and Althusser's failing to deliver an adequate approach to subjectivity. Foucault--replacing Marxism's 'economics of untruth' with his own 'politics of truth'--is examined as an exemplar of post-structuralist critiques of ideology. The book ranges over contemporary debates in philosophy, psychoanalysis and literary theory as well as social theory.
In a world shrunk by modern transport and communication, Star Trek has maintained the values of western maritime exploration through the discovery of ‘strange new worlds’ in space. Throughout its fifty-year history, the ‘starry sea’ has provided a familiar backdrop to an ongoing interrogation of what it means to be human. This book charts the developing Star Trek story from the 1960s through to the present day. Although the core values and progressive politics of the series’ earliest episodes have remained at the heart of Star Trek throughout half a century, in other ways the story it tells has shifted with the times. While The Original Series and The Next Generation showed a faith...
In the past decade the central principles of western feminist theory have been dramatically challenged. many feminists have endorsed post-structuralism's rejection of essentialist theoretical categories, and have added a powerful gender dimension to contemporary critiques of modernity. Earlier 'women' have been radically undermined, and newer concerns with 'difference', 'identity', and 'power' have emerged. Destabilizing Theory explores these developments in a set of specially commissioned essays by feminist theorists. Does this change amount to a real shift within feminist theory, or will feminism's links with an emancipatory modernism reinstate an older political agenda? Can we transcend the common counterposition of equality and difference, or is feminism condemned to argue within the terms of this binary opposition?
Women's Oppression Today is a classic text in the debate about Marxism and feminism, exploring how gender, sexuality and the "family-household system" operate in relation to contemporary capitalism. In this updated edition, Michle Barrett surveys the social and intellectual changes that have taken place since the book's original publication, and looks back at the political climate in which the book was written. In a major new essay, she defends the central arguments of the book, at the same time addressing the way such an engagement would play out differently today, over thirty years later. A foreword by Kathi Weeks examines the importance of approaching all feminist theories as events whose repercussions stretch beyond the circumstances of their creation.
Imagination in Theory focuses on Michèle Barrett's long-standing interest in cultural questions and shows how it informs her analysis of current developments in social and feminist theory. Taking culture, theory, and writing as its themes, the book "translates" across the barriers between the humanities and social sciences, raising a number of important-and controversial-issues.
Tells about the countless thousands of men who lived as long-term casualties in the First World War - not of shrapnel and gas, but of the bleak trauma of the slaughter they escaped. This book uncovers the lives of five soldiers who endured the "war to end all wars," and how they dealt with its horrors, both at the front and after the war's end.
Women’s Oppression Today is a classic text in the debate about Marxism and feminism, exploring how gender, sexuality and the “family-household system” operate in relation to contemporary capitalism. In this updated edition, Michèle Barrett surveys the social and intellectual changes that have taken place since the book's original publication, and looks back at the political climate in which the book was written. In a major new essay, she defends the central arguments of the book, at the same time addressing the way such an engagement would play out differently today, over thirty years later. A foreword by Kathi Weeks examines the importance of approaching all feminist theories as events whose repercussions stretch beyond the circumstances of their creation.