Diverse Marxian intellectual cultures are having important effects on political struggles over the subjects of history and knowledge, international law, television, the state, democratic theories and institutions, bodies, sexuality, masculinity, environmentalism, postmodernism, labor, the meanings of the end of the USSR, children, archaeology, the meanings of Columbus, cartography, the North American economy, welfare, NAFTA, the Gulf War, higher education, and the many other topics discussed by the contributors to this important volume. These essays show readers how Marxism's continuing vitality derives from its profound allegiance to diverse struggles for social justice. At this moment we need progressive imaginaries alternative to the tired and ineffectual ones that have left us with enormous challenges and compelling questions on every aspect of contemporary social relations. Here, well-known thinkers are joined by important new voices in exploring fruitful directions for vision, analysis, and political action. This is without question the best collection of mediations so far on postorthodox Marxian tendencies in contemporary global cultures.

Seven essays from a symposium at the U. of Essex (no date noted) explore the viability of modern critical theories in illuminating the Renaissance, focusing especially on the plays of Shakespeare. Distributed in the US by St. Martin's Press. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The golden age of cultural theory (the product of a decade and a half, from 1965 to 1980) is long past. We are living now in its aftermath, in an age which, having grown rich in the insights of thinkers like Althusser, Barthes and Derrida, has also moved beyond them. What kind of new, fresh thinking does this new era demand? Eagleton concludes that cultural theory must start thinking ambitiously again - not so that it can hand the West its legitimation, but so that it can seek to make sense of the grand narratives in which it is now embroiled.

This book provides the first detailed account of Gramsci's work in the context of current critical and socio-cultural debates. Renate Holub argues that Gramsci was ahead of his time in offering a theory of art, politics and cultural production. Gramsci's achievement is discussed particularly in relation to the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, Bloch, Habermas), to Brecht's theoretical writings and to thinkers in the phenomenological tradition especially Merleau-Ponty. She argues for Gramsci's continuing relevance at a time of retreat from Marxist positions on the postmodern left. Antonio Gramsci is distinguished by its range of philosophical grasp, its depth of specialized historical scholarship, and its keen sense of Gramsci's position as a crucial figure in the politics of contemporary cultural theory.

This volume constitutes both an attack on modern left wing literary theory - the main product of the last Marxist renaissance in the past thirty years - and a defence of the one element of Marxism which, in the general collapse, modern theorists have been happiest to lose, its economic materialism. It traces Marxist theory from its beginnings in Hegelian idealism to its end in Althusser's structuralism, and concludes that while Marxist economics will not work, and the type of revolution prophesied was fantasy, the principle of historical materialism remains intact and defensible. This will be a key text in literary and cultural studies as well as being of interest to students on philosophy and sociology courses.

Antonio Gramsci was not only one of the most original and significant communist leaders of his time but also a creative thinker whose contributions to the renewal of Marxism remain pertinent today. In The Revolutionary Marxism of Antonio Gramsci, Frank Rosengarten explores Gramsci's writings in areas as diverse as Marxist theory, the responsibilities of political leadership, and the theory and practice of literary criticism. He also discusses Gramsci's influence on the post-colonial world. Through close readings of texts ranging from Gramsci's socialist journalism in the Turin years to his prison letters and Notebooks, Rosengarten captures the full vitality of the Sardinian communist's thought and outlook on life.