Fin-De-Siecle Socialism: And Other Essays

by Martin Jay

Demonstrates the lively potential for cultural criticism in intellectual history. Discusses such controversies as the Habermas-Gadamer debate and the deconstructionist challenge to synoptic analysis.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Nils · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe my favorite book of Jay's essays -- in a way better now even than when it was published, because the passage of time shows hi wright Jay was concerning the interventions he was making into debates over post/modernity, concerning the logical inconsistencies and performative contradictions associated with radical anti-hierarchical anti-Foundationalism, on the one hand, and wholesale rejection of the normative ideals of socialism, on the other. It's also a transitional text, where you see him on the move from the deep immersion in Western Marxism (after Marxism and Totality) toward a broader set of concerns concerning the subtending categories that structure political and social thought, e.g. visuality, temporality, mendacity, and so on. He embraces philosophical intervention here, rather than simply maintaining a detached and somewhat Olympian view on the debates he covers.