A Critical Reader

[Breogan Heflin]

Afterall, authors design texts for specific audiences, and becoming a member of the target audience makes it easier to get at the author's purpose. Learn about the author, the history of the author and the text, the author's anticipated audience; read introductions and notes.

Critical readers seek knowledge; they do not "rewrite" a work to suit their own personalities. Your task as an enlightened critical reader is to read what is on the page, giving the writer a fair chance to develop ideas and allowing yourself to reflect thoughtfully, objectively, on the text.

Over the course of his brief career, Melvin Dixon (1950-1992) became an important critical voice for African American scholarship as well as a widely read chronicler of the African American gay experience. His novels Trouble the Water and Vanishing Rooms still receive considerable attention, as do his collections of poetry and his major work of criticism, Ride Out the Wilderness: Geography and Identity in Afro-American Literature.

What emerges from the essays collected here is the voice of a confident, engaging scholar, who tackles a wide range of literary and cultural topics. Dixon examines the trickster characters of Charles W. Chesnutt, the friendship between the Haitian novelist Jacques Roumain and Langston Hughes, and the aesthetic importance of black speech in the novels of Gayl Jones. His address to OutWrite serves as a poignant record of Dixon's knack to wax elegiac and poetic and to synthesize criticism, activism, and art. The introduction places Dixon in the contexts of African American cultural history and gay/lesbian critical discourse.

Laclau: A Critical Reader is the first full-length critical appraisal of Laclau's work and includes contributions from several leading philosophers and theorists. The first section examines Laclau's theory that the contest between universalism and particularism provides much of the philosophical background to political and social struggle, taking up the important place accorded to, amongst others, Hegel and Lacan in Laclau's work. The second section of the book considers what Laclau's 'radical democracy' might look like and reflects on its ethical implications, particularly in relation to Laclau's post-Marxism and thinkers such as Jrgen Habermas. The final section investigates the place of hegemony in Laclau's work, the idea for which he is perhaps best-known.

This stimulating collection also includes replies to his critics by Laclau and the important exchange between Laclau and Judith Butler on equality, making it an excellent companion to Laclau's work and essential reading for students of political and social theory.

Introduction Section 1: Philosophy: Universality, Singularity, Difference Rodolphe Gasch How Empty Can Empty Be? On the Place of the Universal Fred Dallmayr Laclau and Hegemony: Some (Post) Hegelian Caveats Oliver Marchart Politics and the Ontological Difference: On the "Strictly Philosophical" in Laclau's Work Rado Riha Politics as the Real of Philosophy Linda Zerilli This Universalism Which Is Not One Section 2: Democracy: Politics, Ethics, Normativity Simon Critchley Is there a Normative Deficit in the Theory of Hegemony? Mark Devenney Ethics and Politics in Discourse Theory Aletta Norval Democratic Decisions and the Question of Universality: Rethinking Recent Approaches William E. Connolly The Ethos of Democratization Jelica Sumic Anarchism of Emancipation or Fidelity to Politics Section 3: Hegemony: Discourse, Rhetorics, Antagonism Jason Glynos and Yannis Stavrakakis Encounters of the Real Kind: Sussing Out the Limits of Laclau's Embrace of Lacan J. Hillis Miller "Taking Up a Task": Moments of Decision in Ernesto Laclau's Thought Urs Stheli Competing Figures of the Limit: Dispersion, Transgression, Antagonism and Indifference Torben Dyrberg The Political and Politics in Discourse Analysis David Howarth Hegemony, Political Subjectivity and Radical Democracy Ernesto Laclau Glimpsing the Future A Reply Appendix 1: Ernesto Laclau and Judith Butler The Uses of Equality Appendix 2: Bibliography of Ernesto Laclau's Work

Simon Critchley is Professor of Philosophy in the Graduate Faculty, New School University and at the University of Essex. He is the author and editor of many books.

Oliver Marchart is a lecturer in Cultural and Media Theory at the University of Basel and in Political Theory at the University of Vienna.

'After the editor's superb introduction that sets the general implication of Laclau's work, a collection of snappy and well-written articles deal with Laclau's novel conceptualisation of hegemony and its implications ... the text is so well edited that it is quite difficult to find any problem with it.' - Political Studies Review

Does the knowledge (facts, truths, information, data, etc.) in the text represent our current best understanding of things as they are today? If not, what has changed and why? And how does that change impact the strength and meaning of the text itself?

As human beings, we misunderstand too much and lack too much information and perspective. This leads to humility being one of the most important reading strategies of critical reading. By bringing that mindset to a text, we stand a better chance of evaluating the claim-reasoning strength of a text and, in doing so, stand a better chance of improving our own knowledge and critical reasoning skills.

This collection is designed to answer the demands of students and socialists, teachers and interested readers, for a comprehensive critique of the major schools of European Marxism since the October Revolution. It is composed of a series of carefully documented essays setting out the theories of the major thinkers of the tradition, and submitting them to searching criticism.

Essays include critiques of Lukcs by Gareth Stedman Jones and Michael Lwy; a survey of the Frankfurt School by Gran Therborn; an assessment of the legacy of Gramsci by John Merrington; exposition and criticism of the work of Sartre by Andr Gorz and Ronald Aronson; major assessments of Althusser by Norman Geras and Andr Glucksmann and a wide-ranging interview with the Italian philosopher Lucio Colletti that provides an overview of Western Marxism.

The perspectives discussed within Mad Matters may encourage readers to position themselves and understand their lived experiences within the field of Mad Studies. I recommend this book for undergraduate students, graduate students and professors in the fields of Mad Studies, Critical Disability Studies and Education as it offers alternative non-psychiatric perspectives by drawing on the voices of Mad people to develop nuanced critical understandings of mental health issues often notably absent in these fields and particularly underrepresented in Education. This book may transform ways of thinking about clinical and pathologizing practices and the violence of psychiatry embedded within educational institutions, systems and regimes of practices.

You might think that reading a text means curling up with a good book, or forcing yourself to study a textbook. Actually, reading a text can mean much more. First of all, let's define the two terms of interest here--"reading" and "text."

Reading is something we do with books and other print materials, certainly, but we also read things like the sky when we want to know what the weather is doing, someone's expression or body language when we want to know what someone is thinking or feeling, or an unpredictable situation so we'll know what the best course of action is. As well as reading to gather information, "reading" can mean such diverse things as interpreting, analyzing, or attempting to make predictions.

When we think of a text, we may think of words in print, but a text can be anything from a road map to a movie. Some have expanded the meaning of "text" to include anything that can be read, interpreted or analyzed. So a painting can be a text to interpret for some meaning it holds, and a mall can be a text to be analyzed to find out how modern Americans behave in their free time.

When we read, we don't decipher every word on the page for its individual meaning. We process text in chunks, and we also employ other "tricks" to help us make meaning out of so many individual words in a text we are reading. First, we bring prior knowledge to everything we read, whether we are aware of it or not. Titles of texts, authors' names, and the topic of the piece all trigger prior knowledge in us. The more prior knowledge we have, the better prepared we are to make meaning of the text. With prior knowledge we make predictions, or guesses about how what we are reading relates to our prior experience. We also make predictions about what meaning the text will convey.

When you have successfully comprehended the text you are reading, you should take this comprehension one step further and try to apply it to your writing process. Good writers know that readers have to work to make meaning of texts, so they will try to make the reader's journey through the text as effortless as possible. As a writer you can help readers tap into prior knowledge by clearly outlining your intent in the introduction of your paper and making use of your own personal experience. You can help readers make accurate guesses by employing clear organization and using clear transitions in your paper.

Whether you realize it or not, you are always making guesses about what you will encounter next in a text. Making predictions about where a text is headed is an important part of the comprehension equation. It's alright to make wrong guesses about what a text will do--wrong guesses are just as much a part of the meaning-making process of reading as right guesses are.

It's important to tap into your prior knowledge of subject before you read about it. Writing an entry in your writer's notebook may be a good way to access this prior knowledge. Discussing the subject with classmates before you read is also a good idea. Tapping into prior knowledge will allow you to approach a piece of writing with more ways to create comprehension than if you start reading "cold."

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