Böcker av John Lechte

Bataille, Agamben and Girard are thinkers of the moment in as much as they each aim to explain the basis of society and culture in the context of power and the sacred. John Lechte shows that to study power and the sacred is to reveal the connection between violence and the image, a connection that also shows what it means to be a victim. Lechte concludes that no study of violence and the image can avoid engaging with the issue of what justice and injustice mean in relation to persecution and the victim as scapegoat. John Lechte is Emeritus Professor in Sociology at Macquarie University in Sydney.

Includes entries on some of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first century: Zizek, Bergson, Hussen, Heidegger, Butler, and Haraway. This book also includes sections on phenomenology and the post-human, cross-referencing and guides to major primary and secondary texts.

Offers an essential roadmap to the key concepts which frame our understanding of society and culture. From cybernetics to quantum theory, from ideology to power, from aesthetics to mimesis, this book spans a range of disciplines to provide an insight into the scientific and intellectual state of society.

Human rights are in crisis today. Everywhere one looks, there is violence, deprivation, and oppression, which human rights norms seem powerless to prevent. This book investigates the roots of the current crisis through the thought of Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. Human rights theory and practice must come to grips with key problems identified by Agamben "e; the violence of the sovereign state of exception and the reduction of humanity to 'bare' life. Any renewal of human rights today must involve breaking decisively with the traditional coordinates of Western political thought and instead affirm a new understanding of life and political action.