Bøger af Malcolm Read

The gravamen of The Matrix Effect is that the discipline of Hispanism is currently suffering from a theoretical deficit of considerable proportions, at the root of which is a pragmatic dependence upon theories developed outside the discipline, which are quite simply â put to useâ indiscriminately, with little attention to, or concern for, their coherence. The phenomenon its author describes â descriptive theoretical pluralism â is systemic and each of his borings into the disciplinary bedrock of Hispanism reveals a particular layer of it. While in no sense a history of Hispanism The Matrix Effect pursues the consequences of what is commonly known as the â linguistic turnâ across the major disciplinary sub-divisions: (post-)colonialism, the new Latinamericanism, feminism, and cultural studies. The significance of Hispanism, as an academic discipline, rests upon major demographic shifts that have increasingly thrown Hispanic cultures and society into relief within the context of a globalizing capitalism and, correspondingly, of an academy that this capitalism has disciplined and subjected to its requirements. The key contribution of The Matrix Effect is theoretical and lies in its articulation of the notion of the ideological unconscious, otherwise the matrix effect of the mode of production, as it is manifested at the level of the ideological instance. Contradictions within each mode of production, and between distinct modes, are what account for the ideological conflict within the social formation as a whole. The present work traces the impact of such contradictions within Hispanism and, more specifically, critiques the forms these contradictions have taken within the various â postâ movements that currently dominate this discipline.

A collection of fresh essays examining the wide scope and significance of early Germanic culture and literature.The first volume of this set views the development of writing in German with respect to broad aspects of the early Germanic past, drawing on a range of disciplines including archaeology, anthropology, and philology in addition toliterary history. The first part considers the whole concept of Germanic antiquity and the way in which it has been approached, examines classical writings about Germanic origins and the earliest Germanic tribes, and looks at thetwo great influences on the early Germanic world: the confrontation with the Roman Empire and the displacement of Germanic religion by Christianity. A chapter on orality -- the earliest stage of all literature -- provides a bridgeto the earliest Germanic writings. The second part of the book is devoted to written Germanic -- rather than German -- materials, with a series of chapters looking first at the Runic inscriptions, then at Gothic, the first Germanic language to find its way onto parchment (in Ulfilas's Bible translation). The topic turns finally to what we now understand as literature, with general surveys of the three great areas of early Germanic literature: Old Norse, Old English, and Old High and Low German. A final chapter is devoted to the Old Saxon Heliand.Contributors: T. M. Andersson, Heinrich Beck, Graeme Dunphy, Klaus Duwel, G. Ronald Murphy, Adrian Murdoch, Brian Murdoch, Rudolf Simek, Herwig Wolfram.Brian Murdoch and Malcolm Read both teach in the German Department of the University of Stirling in Scotland.