Reconfigurations: Critical Theory and General Economy

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Reconfigurations is a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary critical theory and of the forces that have transformed the classical modes of thought dominating Western theory from its beginnings. The book associates these transformations with Georges Bataille's idea of general economy, which relates its objects to the loss of meaning - a loss regarded as ineluctable within any given system. General economy, primarily in Nietzsche, Bataille, and Derrida, is compared with classical theories or restricted economies, which configure their objects as always meaningful and which claim to avoid the unproductive expenditure of energy and to contain multiplicity and indeterminacy within them. General economy exposes such claims as finally untenable, as we see here in great detail. Reconfigurations proposes complementarity as a critical model which can work out of general economy. This model is drawn from Niels Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics, where it accounts for the indeterminacy of quantum systems and describes their conflicting aspects without subjecting them to classical synthesis. The book mutually enriches and develops both ideas - general economy and complementarity - within a comprehensive historical and theoretical framework, thus enabling the reader to see how general economy operates in and transforms the landscape of modernity and postmodernity. Proceeding from extensive consideration of the works of Nietzsche, Bataille, Derrida, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Heidegger, Althusser, Lyotard, Jameson, and commentaries on these authors, Reconfigurations offers both a cohesive overview of contemporary theory and a demonstration of this theory at work. The analysis of narrativethrough the idea of play and a juxtaposition of Nietzsche's and Derrida's discourse by way of Freud's notion of interminable analysis are only two of many fresh readings and examinations presented here. In contesting the boundaries of old approaches, in challenging the ground