Summary
Contents
Subject index
No national tradition of social theory has been more seductive to Anglo-American readers than the French.There has been a long-standing fascination with French ideas and debates. This extraordinarily accomplished book, written by one of Britain's leading commentators on social theory, provides a peerless account of the French tradition.The book: provides a systematic account of French social theory from the aftermath of the French Revolution (St Simon, Bazard and Comte) to the contemporary scene dominated by Kristeva, Deleuze, Bourdieu and Baudrillard; divides French social theory into three logically coherent cycles: 1800-80 (positivist); 1880-1940 (anthropological); 1940-2000 (Marxist); provides a detailed guide to the three phases of postwar French social theory - existential, structural and post-structural; and situates the discussions of individuals and schools in the relevant social and political contexts. The book is a masterpiece of erudition and scholarship but is written throughout in an engaging and informative style. It will be required reading for anyone interested in social theory and sociology.
The Third Cycle, 1940–2000: The Second Rebirth of Social Theory: Hypertelia
The Third Cycle, 1940–2000: The Second Rebirth of Social Theory: Hypertelia
We are living in a state of having anticipated in some way our own ends, of having anticipated the ends of man, of having already realized them, or even of having passed beyond them, through a sort of hypertelic [hypertélique] process in which we will have gone faster than our shadow … in which we will have passed as living beings into a sort of transpolitical, transsexual, transaesthetic state (which is not at all the eclectic and derisory state of postmodern indetermination, but a tragic state of passing beyond our own finalities) and where in consequence it would no longer be possible to live ...
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