Whether its ultimate resting-place is deemed to be Fukuyama’s liberal democracy or Baudrillard’s hyperreality, history, according to a number of pundits, has reached the end of the line. In the inflated debates that have ensued, it is precisely history which has been ignored, for the conception of posthistoire is far from new. Here, Lutz Niethammer, Germany’s leading practitioner of ‘history from below’, explores in fascinating detail the forms the conception has taken in the twentieth century and assembles what amounts to an intellectual history of disillusion and resignation. In his survey of thinkers as diverse as Kojeve, Heidegger and Junger, he finds adherents to the idea of the end of history on the Right and Left. But whether they pinned all their hopes on the nation or the proletariat, in different ways they have all conflated the apparent collapse of a particular historical project with the collapse of history itself.

‘Theory’ – a magical glow has emanated from this word since the sixties. Theory was more than just a succession of ideas: it was an article of faith, a claim to truth, a lifestyle. It spread among its adherents in cheap paperbacks and triggered heated debates in seminar rooms and cafés. The Frankfurt School, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Adorno, Derrida, Foucault: these and others were the exotic schools and thinkers whose ideas were being devoured by young minds. But where did the fascination for dangerous thoughts come from? In his magnificently written book, Philipp Felsch follows the hopes and dreams of a generation that entered the jungle of difficult texts. His setting is West Germany in the decades from the 1960s to the 1990s: in a world frozen in the Cold War, movement only came from big ideas. It was the time of apocalyptic master thinkers, upsetting reading experiences and glamorous incomprehensibility. As the German publisher Suhrkamp published Adorno’s Minima Moralia and other High Theory works of the Frankfurt School, a small publisher in West Berlin, Merve Verlag, provided readers with a steady stream of the subversive new theory coming out of France. By following the adventures of the publishers who provided the books and the reading communities that consumed and debated them, Philipp Felsch tells the remarkable story of an intellectual revolt when the German Left fell in love with Theory.

Politics at the Edge was the theme of the 1999 PSA Annual Conference. This volume brings together nearly twenty of the liveliest, most thoughtful and original papers from some two hundred presented at the conference. The major traditional strengths of British political science are well represented - with papers on parties, political theory and the history of political thought - but so too are less familiar areas such as the politics of Latin America and the politics of poststructuralism. Distinguished contributors include Agnes Heller, David Held, Mahdi Elmandjra, Andrew Dobson, Andrew Vincent and Richard Sakwa.

This book of ten original essays provides a showcase of currently diverse theoretical agendas in the field of international relations. Contributors address the theoretical analysis that their perspective brings to the issue of change in global politics. Written for readers with a general interest in and knowledge of world affairs, New Thinking in International Relations Theory can also be assigned in international relations theory courses.The volume begins with an essay on the classical tradition at the end of the Cold War. Essays explore work outside the mainstream, such as Jean Bethke Elshtain on feminist theory and James Der Derian on postmodern theory as well as those developing theoretical advances within traditional realms from James DeNardo's formal modeling to the more descriptive analyses of Miles Kahler and Steve Weber. Other essays include Matthew Evangelista on domestics structure, Daniel Deudney on naturalist and geopolitical theory, and Joseph Grieco on international structuralist theory.

Critical Practices in International Theory brings together for the first time the essays of the leading IR theorist, James Der Derian. The essays cover a variety of issues central to Der Derian's work including diplomacy, alienation, terrorism, intelligence, national security, new forms of warfare, the role of information technology in international relations, poststructuralist theory, and the military-entertainment-media matrix. The book includes a framing introduction written for this volume in which Der Derian provides historical and theoretical context for a diverse body of work. Discussing his own influences and reflecting upon the development of international theory, he advocates a critical pluralist approach to the most pressing problems of world politics. Written in the eloquent style that marks out Der Derian as one of the most provocative and innovative thinkers in international relations, this collection is essential reading for scholars and students interested in the past, present and future of international relations. James Der Derian is a Watson Institute research professor of international studies at Brown University, where he directs the Global Security Program and the Global Media Project. He is the author of many articles and books, including the highly acclaimed Virtuous War (2001, 2009).

Unites literary criticism, social and legal history, and Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of culture. This book offers an exploration of the professionalization of early modern disciplines in an effort to characterize those disciplines in their social, economic, and historical contexts.

Shakespeare has been a central figure in German literature and theatre. This book tells the story of Shakespeare in the German-speaking theatre against the background of German culture and politics in the twentieth century. It follows the earlier volume by Simon Williams on the reception of Shakespeare during the previous 300 years (Shakespeare on the German Stage, 1586-1914). Hortmann concentrates on the two most important and fruitful periods: the years of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and the turbulent decades of the sixties and seventies, when the German theatre was revitalised by a stormy marriage of avant-garde art and revolutionary politics. A section by Maik Hamburger covers developments in the theatres of the German Democratic Republic. Hortmann focuses on the most representative and colourful directors and actors, describing and illustrating individual productions as examples of particular trends or movements.

The current resurgence of ethics in the beleaguered humanities reflects an increasing anxiety about the value and utility of critical/philosophical debate in the wake of poststructuralism. This book addresses this 'return to ethics' in relation to a wide variety of theories and texts. It covers substantial areas of ethical debate, particularly in relation to queer politics, biography, history, postmodernism, atrocity literature, utilitarianism, pedagogy and the philosophy of science. Theorists discussed in the volume include Rorty, Heidegger, Levinas, Mill, Lyotard, Leavis, Kuhn, Davidson, Nussbaum and Freud.

Modern/Postmodern: Society, Philosophy, Literature offers new definitions of modernism and postmodernism by presenting an original theoretical system of thought that explains the differences between these two key movements. Taking a contrastive approach, Peter V. Zima identifies three key concepts in the relationship between modernism and postmodernism - ambiguity, ambivalence and indifference. Zima defines modernism and postmodernism as problematics, as opposed to aesthetics, stylistics or ideologies. Unlike modernism, which is grounded in an increasing ambivalence towards social norms and values, postmodernity is presented as an era of indifference, i.e. of interchangeable norms, values and perspectives. Taking an historical, interdisciplinary and intercultural approach that engages with Anglo-American and European debates, the book describes the transition from late modernist ambivalence to postmodern indifference in the contexts of philosophy, literature and sociology. This is the ideal guide to the relationship between modernism and postmodernism for students and scholars throughout the humanities.