C. Pawling 
Critical Theory and Political Engagement 
From May 1968 to the Arab Spring

In this timely study, Pawling argues for a renewal of the ‘politics of intellectual life’, calling for an engaged critical theory written in the spirit of May 1968, as exemplified in the works of figures such as Sartre, Derrida, Badiou, Jameson and Said.

Table of Content

Introduction 1. Critical Theory and Radical Politics in the late ’60s 2. Marxism and Artistic Commitment 3. Humanism and Post-Humanism: the Antinomies of Critical Theory, Post-’68 4. Rediscovering Commitment: Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx 5. Reviving the Critical Spirit of May ’68: Alain Badiou and the Cultural Politics of the ‘Event’ 6. Badiou and the Search for an Anti-Humanist Aesthetic 7. Totality and the Dialectic in the Critical Theory of Fredric Jameson 8. Back to the Future? From Post-Modernism to the ‘Communist Idea’

About the author

Christopher Pawling was formerly Subject Leader in Communications and is now an Honorary Research Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. His publications include Popular Fiction and Social Change (ed., Macmillan, 1984), Christopher Caudwell: Towards A Dialectical Theory of Literature (Macmillan, 1989) and Narrating the Thirties (co-authored, Macmillan, 1995). Recently he has published his work in the form of contributed book chapters and has also published articles in Media, Culture and Society, Textual Practice, The Magazine of Cultural Studies and Literature and History.