de Certeau is often considered to be the theorist of everyday life par excellence. This book provides an unrivalled critical introduction to de Certeau's work and influence and looks at his key ideas and asks how should we try to understand him in relation to theories of modern culture and society. Ian Buchanan demonstrates how de Certeau was influenced by Lacan, Merleau-Ponty and Greimas and the meaning of de Certeau's notions of `strategy', `tactics', `place' and `space' are clearly described. The book argues that de Certeau died before developing the full import of his work for the study of culture and convincingly, it tries to complete or imagine the directions that de Certeau's work would have taken, had he lived.

The Plane of Immanence

The plane of immanence

A beginning must be found which is not yet the presentation of an intelligible phenomenon, but which is rather simply a special kind of awakened attention on our part.

Fredric Jameson, Sartre: The Origins of a Style

The humbling breadth of de Certeau's erudition taunts readers of his work into making unwarranted reductions – in the hope of making it manageable, no doubt. Specified either by period, giving us a specious early and late de Certeau, which holds that his early work as religious historian did not prepare him for his later career as cultural theorist, or biography, giving us an even more specious distinction between a religious and a secular de Certeau, as though to say in ceasing to ...

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