some books

Mapping Ideology
edited by Slavoj Žižek

Not so long ago, the term ""ideology"" was in considerable disrepute. Its use had become associated with a claim to know a truth beyond ideology, a radically unfashionable position. What then explains the sudden revival of interest in grappling with the questions that 'ideology' poses to social and cultural theory, as well as to political practice? Mapping Ideology presents a comprehensive sampling of the most important contemporary writing on the subject. Slavoj Zizek's introductory essay surveys the development of the concept from Marx to the present. Terry Eagleton, Peter Dews and Seyla Benhabib assess the decisive contributions of Lukacs and the Frankfurt School. A different tradition is revealed in an essay by the French post-structuralist Michel Pecheux, while the study of ideology is exemplified in classic texts by Theodor Adorno, Jacques Lacan and Louis Althusser. An intersection of Gramscian and Althusserian motifs appears in a now famous debate over 'the dominant ideology thesis', reprinted here. Pierre Bourdieu succinctly formulates his departure from this tradition in an interview with Eagleton. Further readings of the ideological are explored by Richard Rorty and Michele Barrett. Finally Fredric Jameson supplies an authoritative statement of the nature and position of the ideological in late capitalist society. Mapping Ideology is an invaluable guide to what is now the most dynamic field of cultural theory.

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Artistic Citizenship. A Public Voice for the Arts
by Mary Schmidt (Editor), Randy Martin (Editor)

How do people in the creative arts prepare for, and participate in, civic life? This question is central to anyone involved in arts education and in the creation of public policy for the arts. Celebrity endorsements of political candidates and controversies over NEA funding aside, the role of the artists - student and professional - must increasingly be couched in terms of the social: artists make art, but they also exercise their cultural citizenship as explainers, teachers, and advocates.

This volume will be developed at NYU, where the Tisch School of the Arts (not coincidentally founded in 1965, the year the NEA came into being) is one of the country's premier institutions for arts education. Mary Schmidt Campbell and Randy Martin are putting together a volume that will explore the central questions of "artistic citizenship," a term they create here to explore a unique and powerful form of civic identity.

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Noir Anxiety
by Kelly Oliver & Benigno Trigo

Among the elements that define the classic film noir-chiaroscuro lighting, voice-over narration, and such archetypal characters as the world-weary private eye and the femme fatale-perhaps no element is more responsible for the genre's continued popularity among movie buffs, filmmakers, and critics than the palpable sense of anxiety that emanates from the screen. Because the genre emerged in the shadow of the Second World War, this profound psychological and philosophical unease is usually ascribed either to postwar fears about the atomic bomb or to the reactions of returning soldiers to a new social landscape. In Noir Anxiety, however, Kelly Oliver and Benigno Trigo interpret what has been called the "free-floating anxiety" of film noir as concrete apprehensions about race and sexuality.

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