Culture Machine is pleased to announce the following new reviews:
* Simon Morgan Wortham & Christopher Fynsk in dialogue about Christopher
Fynsk's latest book (2004) The Claim of Language. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Christopher Fynsk’s book, The Claim of Language, contributes to current
debates about the state of the contemporary university by acknowledging
the decline in fortunes of those disciplines traditionally associated
with the liberal arts, particularly (although by no means exclusively)
in North America. Fynsk’s analysis of this deterioration draws upon and
further extends the terms of discussion set out by Bill Readings and
others over the past decade.
* Sean Cubitt (2004) The Cinema Effect. Cambridge and London: The MIT
Press. Reviewed by Rob Leventhal.
Using Marx’s fundamental insight into the production and construction of
commodity fetishism, and taking as his point of departure that film is
uniquely capable of revealing the inner workings of the commodity ‘since
it was, for the last century, the most popular, as it is still the most
strategic medium’, Sean Cubitt continues his inquiries into the
mediations of media with a book that is at once lucid (if at times
difficult), encyclopedic in scope, and rich in historical and
theoretical insights.
* Robert Pepperell and Michael Punt (2000 HB, 2003 PB) The Postdigital
Membrane: Imagination, Technology and Desire. Portland, OR: Intellect
Books. Reviewed by Steven D. Scott.
Eschewing traditional argumentation, The Postdigital Membrane takes as
its central metaphor the ‘biological membrane, a lubricating sheath that
gives form to complex phenomena (such as imagination, technology and
desire) at the same time as enabling a continuity between them’.
* Luce Irigaray (2002). The Way of Love. Trans. Heidi Bostic and Stephen
Pluhàcek. Continuum: New York and London. Reviewed by Gwendolyn Blue.
This book is part of Irigaray's more recent attempts (I Love To You,
Democracy Begins Between Two) to construct the possibility of an
intersubjective relation between masculine and feminine subjects that is
founded on love, and, more specifically, on a particular formulation of
love that could provide the basis for a new socio-political order.
The reviews are available at:
http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/bk_rev.htm
CULTURE MACHINE <http://www.culturemachine.net> publishes new work from
both established figures and up-and-coming writers. It is fully refereed
and has an International Editorial Advisory Board which includes
Geoffrey Bennington, Robert Bernasconi, Sue Golding, Lawrence Grossberg,
Peggy Kamuf, Alphonso Lingis, Meaghan Morris, Paul Patton, Mark Poster,
Avital Ronell, Nicholas Royle, Tadeusz Slawek and Kenneth Surin.
--
Dr Joanna Zylinska
Department of Media and Communications
Goldsmiths College, University of London
New Cross
London SE14 6NW
UK
Reviews Editor for Culture Machine, http://www.culturemachine.net
My website: http://www.joannazylinska.net
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