Cultural Semantics

Keywords of Our Time

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by Martin Jay

University of Massachusetts Press

Due/Published February 1998, 272 pages, paper

ISBN 1558491163

This is a selection of Jay's recent writings on contemporary thought and culture. Borrowing from Flaubert's notion of a dictionary of "received ideas" and Raymond Williams's explorations of "keywords," Jay investigates some of the central concepts by which we currently organize our thoughts and lives. His topics range from theory and experience to the meaning of multiculturalism and the dynamics of cultural subversion. Adorno, Bataille, Foucault, Lacoue-Labarthe, Benjamin, Christa Wolf, and Lyotard are among the figures discussed.