An index of this lexicon of key concepts in cultural theory should have
been split into three parts: Habermas, Lyotard and all the rest. It is almost
uncanny how these two creep up into almost every single term. Besides this
somewhat unexplained over representation the choice of terms could be described
as delightfully idiosyncratic, but so it is in every lexicon. I appreciated the
introduction of terms taken from the world of art, usually missing from such
lexicons as if to blur the debt cultural research owes the Humanities. Other
oddities, such as the full 10 pages dedicated to Quine's Holism seem at odds,
to put it mildly, with the two short sentences dedicated to "Code",
or the single paragraph dedicated to "Gender" and
"Intertextuality".
One very annoying tendency on numerous terms, including all those
regarding Psychoanalysis, is the attempt to give them a complete definition as
seen in their domestic territory. Beyond being completely unusable to the non-Illuminati,
this type of definition could be ascribed to an attempt at writing philosophy
but it neglects completely the historicity of the term: I don't want to know
what it means, if it can mean anything at all, I want to know how the term is
used.
There are a few exceptional terms that are really excellent – most of
these being the terms that their mere inclusion is a surprise. As such, it
seems, their contributors seemed to be writing with less of the weight of the
world on their shoulders. One such term is Theology, which neglects to mention
anything except Christian Hermeneutics, but then again the subject is always
fun. "Metaphor" could hardly have been improved.
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