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In Symbolism and Interpretation, Tzvetan Todorov examines two aspects of discourse: its production, which has traditionally been the domain of rhetoric, and its reception, which has always been the object of hermeneutics. He analyzes the diverse theories of symbolism and interpretation that have been elaborated over the centuries and considers their contribution to a general theory of verbal symbolism, discussing a wide range of thinkers, from the Sanskrit philosophers and Aristotle to the Germa...

It is often said that Lacan is the most radical representative of structuralism, a thinker of negativity and alienation, whereas Deleuze is pictured as a great opponent of the structuralist project, a vitalist and a thinker of creative potentialities of desire. It seems the two cannot be further apart. This volume of 12 new essays breaks the myth of their foreignness (if not hostility) and places the two in a productive conversation. By taking on topics such as baroque, perversion, death drive,...

In Gender and Biopolitics, Pınar Sarıgöl sheds new light on the life spheres of the woman as a means of examining neoliberal Islamic thinking about individuals and populations. Sarıgöl's exploration of the governmental rationality of post-2002 Turkey's Islamic neoliberalism is especially informed by Michel Foucault's critical perspective. The tenets and merits of Islamic neoliberalism bring moral and religious practices into the discussion regarding 'how' the social order should be in general, a...

First published in 1977, this book presents a comprehensive and lucid guide through the labyrinths of semiology and structuralism - perhaps the most significant systems of study to have been developed in the twentieth century. The authors describe the early presuppositions of structuralism and semiology which claim to be a materialist theory of language based on Saussure's notion of the sign. They show how these presuppositions have been challenged by work following Althusser's development of th...

This collection brings together original essays on a wide variety of topics in the broad area of `Nietzsche and Phenomenology'. Some of these papers take a thematic approach, thinking through key issues that connect or divide Nietzsche and phenomenology, while others approach the conjunction of the title via an encounter between Nietzsche and one of the central figures of the phenomenological tradition or other relevant philosophers. In either case, new and often surpising connections are uncove...

What and how should individuals resist in political situations? Chris Henry brings together the work of Althusser, Badiou and Deleuze in order to offer a new idea of political practice He develops a structural ontology that gives rise to non-idealist, non-dogmatic, yet ethical practices of resistance against the return of classical ontological dualities.

Nothing that can be said is independent of us. Whatever can be said is coloured by our dreams and aspirations, by the way our brain works, by human nature and human culture. Whoever claims to know or to observe is - according to the central constructivist assumption - inescapably biased. This book presents the views of the founders of constructivism and modern systems theory, who are still providing stimulating cues for international scientific debate. The conversations of Heinz von Foerster, Er...

Myth and Thought among the Greeks, first published in 1965, presents a collection of early essays by the distinguished French anthropologist Jean-Pierre Vernant. Focussing on Hellenism from the perspective of historical psychology, he applies structuralist ideas to Greek culture and myth with the purpose of discerning the contours of the ancient Greek personality. Vernant develops a structuralist analysis of Hesiod's myth of the races, then goes on to examine aspects of memory and time. He inve...

The Enigma of the Spiral Waves delves further into the workings of the number system with an inventive, equation-free approach to communicating advanced mathematical ideas, including the notorious Riemann Hypothesis, widely recognised as the Holy Grail of mathematics.

"Levi-Strauss continues his assault on the myth of the primitice as savage by turning to the phenomena of totemism an totoemix classification ... to show, contrary to this myth, that primitive thought rests upon a rich and complex conceptual structure." –  Commentary