An anthology of readings and extracts providing an introduction to the main schools and positions of critical theory. The book is divided into five sections: structuralism and poststructuralism, psychoanalytical theory, Marxism, feminism, and post-foundational ethics and politics.

Critical Theory: An Introduction. Part 1: Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. Introduction. Roland Barthes - Myth Today. Jacques Derrida - Positions. Julia Kristeva - Revolution in Poetic Language. Michel Foucault - Truth and Power. Paul de Man - The Resistance to Theory. J Hillis Miller - Reading Unreadability: de Man. Part 2: Psychoanalytic Theory. Introduction. Philip Rieff - The Emergence of Psychological Man. Herbert Macuse - Eros and Civilisation: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. Kate Millett - Sexual Politics. Jacques Lacan - The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I. Naomi Schor - Female Paranoia: The Case for Psychoanalytic Feminist Criticism. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari - Anti Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Part 3: Feminism. Introduction. Heidi Hartmann - The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union. Hlne Cixous - Sorties. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak - Feminism and Deconstruction, Again: Negotiating with Unacknowledged Masculinism. Trinh T Minh-ha - Difference: "A Special Third World Issue". Monique Wittig - One is Not Born a Woman. Carol Gilligan - In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Part 4: Marxism. Walter Benjamin - Theses on the Philosophy of History. Theodor W Adorno - Cultural Criticism and Society. Louis Althussar - Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Rayond Williams - Dominant, Residual, and Emergent. Sebastiano Timpanaro - Considerations on Materialism. Fredric Jameson - Conclusion to the Political Unconscious. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe - Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Part 5: Post-Foundational Ethics and Politics. Introduction. Richard Rorty - The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy. Jean-Franois Lyotard - The Differend. Jurgen Habermas - Questions and Counterquestions. Seyla Benhabib - Communicative Ethics and the Claims of Gender, Community and Post-modernism. Emmanuel Levinas - Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas. Luce Irigaray - Why Define Sexed Rights? Martha C Nussbaum - Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defence of Aristotelian Essentialism.