A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader: Second Edition

The 'death of literature' and the rise of post-structuralist theory has breached the traditional opposition between the literary canon and popular culture, both in principle and in academic practice. When first published in 1992, The Critical and Cultural Theory Reader served the growing need for a collection of essays and extracts for the study of both high and popular culture together. Now, the second and expanded edition of this highly successful reader reflects the growing diversity of the field and includes thirteen new essays. Divided into six thematic sections – semiology, ideology, subjectivity, difference, gender and race, and postmodernism – the reader features an editors' introduction to the volume, introductions to each of the thematic sections, as well as invaluable summaries of each of the extracts.

The second edition includes excerpts from essential works of cultural theorists Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Homi K. Bhabha, Judith Butler, Hélène Cixous, Simone de Beauvoir, Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Frederick Engels, Franz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Jean-François Lyotard, Colin MacCabe, Pierre Macherey, Karl Marx, Kobena Mercer, Laura Mulvey, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Edward Said, and Slavoj Ži žek. It will prove indispensable to students of critical and cultural theory, as well as communications and popular culture.

The late Anthony Easthope was a professor in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Kate McGowan is a principal lecturer in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University.