The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory

359 Pages·2013·2.551 MB·English

by  Paul Wake, Simon Malpas (eds.)

T R C
HE OUTLEDGE OMPANION TO
C C T
RITICAL AND ULTURAL HEORY
Now in a fully updated second edition, The Routledge Companion to Critical and
Cultural Theory is an indispensible guide to some of the most important theories in
the arts, humanities and social sciences. A series of introductory essays and an
accompanying dictionary of key names and terms explain and explore fundamental
concepts such as:
Marxism Gender and Queer Theory
Trauma Theory Structuralism
Ecocriticism Narrative
Psychoanalysis Postcolonialism
Feminism Deconstruction
Posthumanism Postmodernism
With new essays, updated further reading and a wealth of new dictionary entries, this
new edition is an invaluable guide for all students of theoretically informed disciplines.
Simon Malpas is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Edinburgh University. His
research interests include aesthetics, continental philosophy, literary theory and post-
modernism, and he is the author of The Postmodern (Routledge, 2006).
Paul Wake is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Manchester Metropolitan
University where he specializes in narrative and literary theory.
This page intentionally left balnk
T R C
HE OUTLEDGE OMPANION TO
C C T
RITICAL AND ULTURAL HEORY
Second edition
Edited by
Simon Malpas and Paul Wake
Second edition published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Simon Malpas and Paul Wake, editorial and selection matter;
individual entries, the contributors
The right of Simon Malpas and Paul Wake to be identi(cid:2) ed as authors of
the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual entries,
has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identi(cid:2) cation and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published 2006
by Routledge
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The Routledge companion to critical and cultural theory / edited by
Paul Wake and Simon Malpas. — 2nd edition.
pages cm. — (Routledge Companion Series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Originally published: New York : Routledge, 2006, under title
The Routledge companion to critical theory.
1. Criticism. 2. Criticism (Philosophy) I. Wake, Paul. II. Malpas, Simon.
PN81.R68 2013
801(cid:2).95--dc23
2012047978
ISBN: 978-0-415-66829-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-66830-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-52079-6 (ebk)
T ypeset in Times New Roman
by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
C
ONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Editors’ introduction to the (cid:2) rst edition viii
Editors’ introduction to the second edition xi
Part I Critical theory: introductory essays 1
1 Theory, history, context 3
Huw Jones
2 Structuralism and semiotics 12
Kate McGowan
3 Narrative and narratology 23
Paul Wake
4 Marxism 37
Glyn Daly
5 Poststructuralism 51
Catherine Belsey
6 Historicism 62
Simon Malpas
7 Psychoanalytic criticism 73
Rob Lapsley
8 Deconstruction 87
Andrew Benjamin
9 Feminism 96
Susan Hekman
10 Gender and queer theory 107
Donald E. Hall
v
CONTENTS
11 Postmodernism 120
Linda Hutcheon
12 Race and postcoloniality 131
Apollo Amoko
13 Posthumanism 144
Ivan Callus and Stefan Herbrechter
14 Green theory 154
Laurence Coupe
15 Trauma studies 167
Richard Crownshaw
Part II Names and terms 177
Bibliography 312
Index 334
vi
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank our colleagues in the Departments of English at Manchester
Metropolitan University and English Literature at Edinburgh University for their
support during the writing of this book. We would also like to acknowledge the
invaluable support of MMU’s English Research Institute, who created a research
post in the early stages of the project, without which it may never have got going.
The editors and readers at Routledge have offered invaluable advice and assistance
throughout the project, and, but for their enthusiasm, professionalism and encour-
agement, it is unlikely that this book would ever have been completed. Thanks too
must also go to all of the contributors who have made working on this book a real
pleasure and to whom its overall quality must be attributed, and to Mary Garland for
her help with the proofreading of the (cid:2) rst edition, and to Lisa Williams for her copy-
editing of the second edition.
We should also like to offer our thanks and gratitude for their patience to our long-
suffering partners, Erikka Askeland and Christine Kessler.
vii
E ’
DITORS INTRODUCTION

TO THE FIRST EDITION
STUDYING CRITICAL THEORY
To some students approaching it for the (cid:2) rst time, critical theory can appear obscure,
arcane, obfuscatory and even a distraction from what should be the real focus of
one’s interest – the literary texts, works of art, (cid:2) lms or television programmes,
historical periods or forms of behaviour and experience that one expected to discuss
on courses in literary criticism, history of art, media studies, history or psychology.
Theory is, however, none of these things.
Although theoretical writing can often appear to be very complex and to employ
vocabularies and ways of thinking that are different from those with which most of
us might be familiar, it engages with questions, ideas and issues that are crucial to our
experiences of identity, culture and society, and focuses precisely on the ways in
which literature, art, the media, history and individuals communicate and interact in
the world in which we live. Critical theory allows us to explore the cultural production
and communication of meanings in precise and nuanced ways, and from a range of
different perspectives. It questions the ways in which we might be used to making
sense of artistic, historical or cultural artefacts and prompts us to reconsider our
beliefs and expectations about the ways individuals interact with material things and
with each other. Put very simply, critical theory aims to promote self-re(cid:3) exive explo-
rations of the experiences we have and the ways in which we make sense of ourselves,
our cultures and the world.
Critical theory has become a necessary element of advanced study in the arts, the
humanities and the social sciences because of the now widely shared recognition that
meaning is neither natural nor immediate. Language is not a transparent medium
through which ideas can pass between minds without alteration. Rather, as almost all
of the essays and entries in this book acknowledge, it is a set of conventions that
in(cid:3) uence or even determine the sorts of ideas and experiences people are able to have.
Language is cultural (some thinkers even claim it is the essence of culture), and
therefore open to criticism and change. If linguistic meaning were naturally given, for
example, why would there be more than one language? A word does not mean what it
does ‘naturally’; rather meanings arise on the basis of complex linguistic and cultural
structures that differentiate between truth and falsity, reality and fantasy, and good
and evil, and are inextricably tied up with value judgements and political questions,
as well as with identity, experience, knowledge and desire. By exploring the processes
viii
EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION
by which texts, objects and even people come to be associated with particular sets of
meanings, critical theory sets out to question the legitimacy of common sense or tradi-
tional claims made about experience, knowledge and truth. On this basis, different
critical theories set out to explore our fundamental beliefs about existence and
question the guiding structures and suppositions that organize our interactions.
A similar thing goes for ideas about the meaning of a work of art, a literary text or a
(cid:2) lm. Since Hamlet was (cid:2) rst performed, there have been hundreds, even thousands, of
different analyses and discussions of the play, each approaching it from a different
perspective to generate a variety of arguments about its impact upon a reader or
audience. If there were a single ‘correct’ or ‘true’ reading, shouldn’t somebody have
found it by now? The fact that there is not a single correct reading of the play, that it
cannot be solved like a mathematical formula, is crucial to its continuing interest.
Hamlet, like any other artistic work or cultural artefact, can be read in many ways, from
a range of perspectives, in order to present different ideas and images about the ways
in which we live. The practice of literary study, like the practices of analysis in similar
disciplines, is necessarily open to rereading, reworking and continuing argument.
And this is why theory is so important for students of the arts, humanities and
social sciences. All of the multiple readings to which a work, text, artefact or event
are open will be based on a theory: a set of beliefs about what it means, what meaning
itself is, how communication takes place and how the world works. Each of us in our
day-to-day interactions with others and the world carries such, often implicit, beliefs
around in our heads. The point of studying theory is to make them explicit, and to
question them. This, of course, has had, and continues to have, a signi(cid:2) cant effect on
the subject areas themselves. In each disciplinary area, theory draws on ideas from
other disciplines (so, for example, literary theory imports ideas from philosophy,
history, linguistics, psychology and sociology, to name but a few) in order to think
about the ways in which text and reading interact with the world. The result of such
borrowings and interactions has often been a fundamental questioning of what is at
stake in a particular area of study, a reorganization of syllabi and canons of texts to
be studied, as well as signi(cid:2) cant redrawings of disciplinary boundaries as imported
ideas are reworked to develop new possibilities and modes of enquiry.
In recent years critical theory has become (cid:2) rmly established in many arts, human-
ities and social science disciplines as an object of study in its own right. Often
referred to simply as ‘theory’, it has transformed study in each of these areas in
myriad ways. And, if it has become less controversial as the practice of asking theo-
retical questions about disciplinary methodologies has become more widespread, it
has lost none of its excitement and potential to challenge. However, theory itself is
neither a homogeneous discipline nor a uni(cid:2) ed movement. Although it has broken
down many of the traditional boundaries between different disciplines, this does not
mean that a new meta-discipline of critical theory has emerged. Nor has theory
simply provided a set of clearly de(cid:2) ned rules and concepts which can simply be
learned like arithmetical formulae and then applied at will to grasp the truth about a
text, object or culture. The diverse schools, thinkers, ideas and concepts that fall
under the umbrella of critical theory have to be read and discussed in their own right,
ix