Subjectivity and Identity: Between Modernity and Postmodernity

Description

Subjectivity and Identity is a philosophical and interdisciplinary study that critically evaluates critically the most important philosophical, sociological, psychological and literary debates on subjectivity and the subject. Starting from a history of the concept of the subject from modernity to postmodernity - from Descartes and Kant to Adorno and Lyotard - Peter V. Zima distinguishes between individual, collective, mythical and other subjects. Most texts on subjectivity and the subject present the topic from the point of view of a single discipline: philosophy, sociology, psychology or theory of literature. In Subjectivity and Identity Zima links philosophical approaches to those of sociology, psychology and literary criticism. The link between philosophy and sociology is social philosophy (e.g. Althusser, Marcuse, Habermas), the link between philosophy and literary criticism is aesthetics (e.g. Adorno, Lyotard, Vattimo). Philosophy and psychology can be related thanks to the psychological implications of several philosophical concepts of subjectivity (Hobbes, Stirner, Sartre).

Peter V. Zima was Professor of General and Comparative Literature at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria until 2012. He was elected corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Vienna) in 1998 and member of the European Academy (London) in 2010. In 2014 he was appointed honorary professor of the East China Normal University in Shanghai, China.

An impressive interdisciplinary engagement with one of the most challenging problem of our time - the crisis of the individual subject. * Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology, University of Kent, UK * Peter Zima has added another hugely impressive work to the corpus in which, over the past three decades, he has done so much to illuminate the sources and development of modern critical theory. Indeed this stands as something of a high-point and grand summation of his thinking to date. Although the topic is one much debated amongst the lingering heirs of multiple successive movements in European philosophy and intellectual history it has never previously been surveyed in such depth or with such a sustained power of critical and speculative thought. Altogether a notable achievement and a book that belongs among the classics in its genre. * Christopher Norris, Distinguished Research Professor, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University, UK *