The theory toolbox why theory

Nealon and Searls Giroux describe key concepts and illuminate each with an engaging inquiry that asks students to consider deeper and deeper questions. Written in students' own idiom, and drawing its examples from the social world, literature, popular culture, and advertising, The Theory Toolbox offers students the language and opportunity to theorize rather than positioning them to respond to theory as a reified history of various schools of thought.

Clear and engaging, it avoids facile description, inviting students to struggle with ideas and the world by virtue of the book's relentless challenge to common assumptions and its appeal to common sense. Updated throughout, the second edition of The Theory Toolbox includes a discussion of new media, as well as two new chapters on life and nature.

Series: Culture and Politics Series. Courses: English; Critical Theory. Jeffrey T. Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Why Theory? They're back! Nealon and Sarls Giroux still pack more thoughtful questions and more useful information into the second edition of their 'toolbox' than multi-volume encyclopedias. If you can find a better guide for both beginners and more advanced students to the major intellectual challenges of our time, go ahead and buy it.

Meanwhile, the readers of this handy and witty little text will already be writing the works that will be discussed in the third edition. Tyson Jr. Distinguished Professor of Humanities, University of North Carolina; coeditor of The Norton Anthology The Theory Toolbox is essential and required reading in my undergraduate and graduate architectural history and theory courses. The book is particularly useful as an excellent introduction to basic concepts that students in humanities, science, and design need to engage in meaningful discussion of culture and society.

Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Updated throughout, the second edition of The Theory Toolbox includes a discussion of new media, as well as two new chapters on life and nature"-- "This text involves students in understanding and using the "tools" of critical social and literary theory from the first day of class.

Table of Contents. Why theory? Multiculturalism ; Popular culture ; Media culture ; Media culture 2. Postmodernism ; Poststructuralism ; Postcolonialism. Gender ; Queer ; Race ; Class ; Concluding differences. Biopower ; Resistance ; The economics of culture; or, The biopower business. Also in This Series. More Like This. More Details. Updated throughout, the second edition of The Theory Toolbox includes a discussion of new media, as well as two new chapters on life and nature"--,Provided by publisher.

More Copies In Prospector. Loading Prospector Copies Loading Excerpt Staff View. Grouped Work ID:. Another point made in the book is the difference between metaphor and metonymy.

Moving forward in chapter one, we are faced with the first theoretical point. In the Theory Toolbox, it is revealed that the first theoretical point is that you should be suspicious of everything. Everything must come from somewhere, everything has a meaning. Putting theory into use, in an example such as the requirements given for an assignment in class, you might have something bigger than you first thought. For example, if you are given project requirements such as having to have work that is neat, clean, and smoothly sanded all on top of a pedestal, theory brings in some fantastic questions about the assignment.

You can ask questions such as what does being neat, clean and smoothly sanded mean, or what counts as a pedestal? When you put being suspicious of everything into use, it shows you how the Theory Toolbox are only beginning to help you understand these concepts of theory. In chapter two of the Theory Toolbox, it gets more into the author side of theory.

The Canon mainly exists of white western European men, who also decided what would qualify as a part of the Canon. Because the author is behind the text, that means that there will never not be a meaning for it, even if it is subtle. Instead, more of the questions are directed to the author, and are about what they originally meant.

The author dying, is almost like the opposite, because you are getting closer to the meaning of the life that they put into the text. Basically, everyone has an opinion, which could be a fact or not, but no one opinion is better or has more meaning that the other.

Moving far along through chapter three of the Theory Toolbox, it brings up the concepts of words, and how they relate to each other. To start off, a signifier is a word, but it is the symbol or sign of a word, what we have learned what that word is.