{"product_id":"on-paradox-9781478018971","title":"On Paradox","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eOn Paradox\u003c\/i\u003e literary and legal scholar Elizabeth S. Anker contends that faith in the logic of paradox has been the cornerstone of left intellectualism since the second half of the twentieth century. She attributes the ubiquity of paradox in the humanities to its appeal as an incisive tool for exposing and dismantling hierarchies. Tracing the ascent of paradox in theories of modernity, in rights discourse, in the history of literary criticism and the linguistic turn, and in the transformation of the liberal arts in higher education, Anker suggests that paradox not only generates the very exclusions it critiques but also creates a disempowering haze of indecision. She shows that reasoning through paradox has become deeply problematic: it engrains a startling homogeneity of thought while undercutting the commitment to social justice that remains a guiding imperative of theory. Rather than calling for a wholesale abandonment of such reasoning, Anker argues for an expanded, diversi\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The novelty of [Anker’s] approach is to identify theory’s style of thought with a fatal attraction to paradox, to something that appears absurd or contradictory but is actually true. . . . Anker illuminates both why theory has migrated so effectively beyond the academy and also how its self-replicating endlessness gives a startling large-scale intellectual uniformity to the pronouncements of elite institutions and right-wing conspiracists alike.” -- Michael W. Clune * Los Angeles Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments  ix\u003cbr\u003e Introduction: On Paradox  1\u003cbr\u003e 1. All That Is Solid Melts into Paradox: The Idea of Modernity  29\u003cbr\u003e 2. Ontologizing the Paradoxes of Rights, or the Anti-legalism of Theory  73\u003cbr\u003e Interlude. Anatomy of Paradox, or a Brief History of Aesthetic Theory  112\u003cbr\u003e 3. Redeeming Rights, or the Ethics and Politics of Paradox  138\u003cbr\u003e 4. The Politics of Exclusion  181\u003cbr\u003e 5. The Pedagogy of Paradox  221\u003cbr\u003e Interlude. A Different Kind of Theory  261\u003cbr\u003e 6. What Holds Things Together: Toward an Integrative Criticism  266\u003cbr\u003e Notes  313\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography  335\u003cbr\u003e Index","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409009844567,"sku":"9781478018971","price":20.69,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781478018971.jpg?v=1730505075","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/on-paradox-9781478018971","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}