Ten Lessons in Theory: A New Introduction to Theoretical Writing - Softcover

Thomas, Calvin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501383949 ISBN 13: 9781501383946

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023

Synopsis

A thoroughly updated edition of the witty and engaging exploration of the history, application, and tenets of literary theory. The first edition of Ten Lessons served as a “literary” introduction to theoretical writing, a strong set of pedagogical prose poems unpacking Lacanian psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, Marxism, cultural studies, feminism, gender studies, and queer theory. Here Calvin Thomas returns to these ten “lessons,” each based on an axiomatic sentence selected from the canons of theory, each exploring the basic assumptions and motivations of theoretical writing. But while every lesson explains the working terms and core tenets of theory, each also attempts to exemplify theory as a “liberatory practice” (bell hooks), to liberate theory as a “practice of creativity” (Foucault) in and of itself. The revised, updated, and expanded second edition, featuring 25% new material, still argues for theoretical writing as a genre of creative writing, a way of engaging in the art of the sentence, the art of making sentences that make trouble, that desire to make radical changes in very fabrication of social reality. Features: - Critical keywords bolded for easy reference - Expanded footnotes with detailed discussion of key concepts - Anti-racist overhaul of each lesson in the wake of Trumpism, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo - Urgent emphasis on Afropessimism, critical race theory, and other developments in postcolonial Black cultural production - Designed to cross-reference with: Adventures in Theory: A Compact Anthology, edited by Calvin Thomas The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory, edited by Jeffrey R. Di Leo The Bloomsbury Handbook to 21st Century Feminist Theory, edited by Robin Truth Goodman

About this title

About the Author

Calvin Thomas is Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies in English at Georgia State University in Atlanta, USA. He is the author of Masculinity, Psychoanalysis, Straight Queer Theory: Essays on Abjection in Literature, Mass Culture, and Film (Palgrave Macmillan 2008) and Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line (University of Illinois Press, 1996). He is the editor of Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality (University of Illinois Press, 2000).

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1501383949
• ISBN 13: 9781501383946
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 380