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Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide
What might a ‘theory of everything’ look like? Is science an ideology? Who were Adorno, Horkheimer or the Frankfurt School?
The decades since the 1960s have seen an explosion in the production of critical theories. Deconstructionists, poststructuralists, cultural materialists, postcolonialists, black critics and queer theorists, among a host of others, all vie for our attention.
Stuart Sim and Borin Van Loon’s incisive graphic guide provides a route through the tangled jungle of competing ideas and provides an essential historical context, situating these theories within a tradition of critical analysis...
Philosophy: A Graphic Guide
Philosophers have always enjoyed asking awkward and provocative questions. Some of these include: What is the nature of reality? What are human beings really like? What is special about the human mind and consciousness? Are we free to choose who we are and what we do? Can we prove that God exists? Can we be certain about anything at all? What is truth? Does language provide us with a true picture of the world? How should we behave towards each other? Do computers think?
Written by Dave Robinson and illustrated by Judy Groves, Introducing Philosophy is a comprehensive and enjoyable graphic guide to philosophical thinking.
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Postmodernism: A Graphic Guide
What connects Marilyn Monroe, Disney World, The Satanic Verses and cyberspace?
Answer: postmodernism.
But what exactly is postmodernism?
This graphic guide explains clearly the maddeningly enigmatic concept that has been used to define the world's cultural condition over the last three decades.
Introducing Postmodernism tracks the idea back to its roots by taking a tour of some of the most extreme and exhilarating events, people and thought of the last hundred years: in art-constructivism, conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol; in politics and history – McCarthy's...
Modernism: A Graphic Guide
Modernism is usually thought of as a shock wave of innovations hitting art, architecture, music, cinema and literature – the work of Picasso, Joyce, Schoenberg, movements like Futurism and Dada, the architecture of Le Corbusier, T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland and the avant-garde theatre of Bertolt Brecht or Samuel Beckett.
But what really defines modernism? Why did it begin and how long did it last? Is Modernism over now?
This graphic tour through 20th-century culture interprets modernism as a set of responses to the phenomenon of modernity itself – the political and social upheavals presented by...
Descartes: A Graphic Guide
René Descartes is famous as the philosopher who was prepared to doubt everything – even his own physical existence. Most people also know that he said ‘I think, therefore I am’, even if they are not always sure what he really meant by it.
Introducing Descartes explains what Descartes doubted, and why he is usually called the father of modern philosophy. It is a clear and accessible guide to all the puzzling questions he asked about human beings and their place in the world. Dave Robinson and Chris Garratt give a lucid account of Descartes’ contributions to modern science, mathematics and the...