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Author Boucher, Geoff, author

Title Habermas and literature : the public sphere and the social imaginary / Geoff Boucher
Edition First edition
Published London [England] : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021
[London, England] : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021
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Description 1 online resource (272 pages)
Contents Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. Adorno's Social Philosophy -- 2. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory -- 3. Habermas's Social Theory -- 4. The Literary Discourse of Modernity -- 5. The Nature of Critique -- 6. Silenced Needs, Hidden Desires -- 7. Habermas and the Devil: Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus -- 8. Imaginative Disclosure and Literary Identification -- 9. Literary Visions and the Social Imaginary -- 10. The Phoenix and the Serpent: JK Rowling's Harry Potter Series -- References -- Index
Summary "Although Habermas has written about the cultural role of literature and about literary works, he has not systematically articulated a literary-critical method as a component of either communicative reason or post-metaphysical thinking. Habermas and Literature brings Habermasian concepts and categories into contact with aesthetic and cultural theories in and around the Frankfurt School, and beyond. Its central claim is that Habermas' contribution to literary and cultural criticism is the concept of literary rationality and the notion that literature performs a key role in the formation of the modern social imaginary. Habermas and Literature maintains that literary works have 'two faces' - discursive intervention in the public sphere and personal integration of imaginative disclosures - that depend upon two modalities of literary reception: critique and identification. It develops the resulting literary theory through detailed discussion of the theories advanced by Habermas, followed in each case by synthetic and reconstructive argumentation that brings the framework of communicative reason into dialogue with literary methods, aesthetic theories and psychoanalytic categories. It does so through close engagement with debates around aesthetic rationality, world disclosure, social imaginaries, post-secular society and the utopian demand for happiness articulated by artworks. In the process, the Habermasian position is critically reconstructed when necessary, with reference to psychoanalytic and literary theories, and tested, in relation to demanding fictions and popular works."--
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Restricted Abstract freely available; full-text restricted to individual document purchasers
Notes Mode of access: World Wide Web
Subject Habermas, Jürgen -- Criticism, interpretation, etc
Literature and society
Reading List ALL728 recommended text 2024
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781501344084
9781501344060