Changing The Subject

Changing the Subject is a classic critique of traditional psychology in which the foundations of critical and feminist psychology are laid down. Pioneering and foundational, it is still the groundbreaking text crucial to furthering the new psychology in both teaching and research. Now reissued with a new foreword describing the changes which have taken place over the last few years, Changing the Subject will continue to have a significant impact on thinking about psychology and social theory.

Birkerts "examines the changes that he has observed in himself and others [since allowing a degree of everyday digital technology into his life]: the distraction induced by reading on the screen; the loss of personal agency through reliance on GPS and one-stop information resources; an increasing acceptance of 'hive' behaviors. 'An unprecedented shift is underway,' he argues, and 'this transformation is dramatically accelerated and more psychologically formative than any previous technological innovation.' He finds solace in engagement with art, particularly literature, and contemplates the countering energies available to us through acts of sustained attention, even as he worries that our increasingly mediated existences are a threat to creativity"--Page 4 of cove

Changing the Subject explores ways of engaging across difference. In this first book-length study of the concept of empathy from a rhetorical perspective, Lisa Blankenship frames the classical concept of pathos in new ways and makes a case for rhetorical empathy as a means of ethical rhetorical engagement. The book considers how empathy can be a deliberate, conscious choice to try to understand others through deep listening and how language and other symbol systems play a role in this process that is both cognitive and affective. Departing from agonistic win-or-lose rhetoric in the classical Greek tradition that has so strongly influenced Western thinking, Blankenship proposes that we ourselves are changed (“changing the subject” or the self) when we focus on trying to understand rather than simply changing an Other. This work is informed by her experiences growing up in the conservative South and now working as a professor in New York City, as well as the stories and examples of three people working across profound social, political, class, and gender differences: Jane Addams’s activist work on behalf of immigrants and domestic workers in Gilded Age Chicago; the social media advocacy of Brazilian rap star and former maid Joyce Fernandes for domestic worker labor reform; and the online activist work of Justin Lee, a queer Christian who advocates for greater understanding and inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in conservative Christian churches. A much-needed book in the current political climate, Changing the Subject charts new theoretical ground and proposes ways of integrating principles of rhetorical empathy in our everyday lives to help fight the temptations of despair and disengagement. The book will appeal to students, scholars, and teachers of rhetoric and composition as well as people outside the academy in search of new ways of engaging across differences.

“A history of philosophy in twelve thinkers...The whole performance combines polyglot philological rigor with supple intellectual sympathy, and it is all presented...in a spirit of fun...This bracing and approachable book [shows] that there is life in philosophy yet.” —Times Literary Supplement “Exceptionally engaging...Geuss has a remarkable knack for putting even familiar thinkers in a new light.” —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews “Geuss is something like the consummate teacher, his analyses navigable and crystal, his guidance on point.” —Doug Phillips, Key Reporter Raymond Geuss explores the ideas of twelve philosophers who broke dramatically with prevailing wisdom, from Socrates and Plato in the ancient world to Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Adorno. The result is a striking account of some of the most innovative thinkers in Western history and an indirect manifesto for how to pursue philosophy today. Geuss cautions that philosophers’ attempts to break from convention do not necessarily make the world a better place. Montaigne’s ideas may have been benign, but the fate of those of Hobbes, Hegel, and Nietzsche has been more varied. Yet in the act of provoking people to think differently, philosophers remind us that we are not fated to live within the systems of thought we inherit.

Fiction. Stephen-Paul Martin has been called "one of our great deadpan humorists," by Eric Basso and "North America's foremost master of the short story" by Vernon Frazer. Marjorie Perloff has described his writing as "wildly comic," and Fanny Howe has called his stories "magnificent and entertaining." In CHANGING THE SUBJECT Martin once again deforms traditional notions of the story, giving us beautifully digressive revenge-fantasies, hysterical moral tales, and his singular, uncanny brand of the shaggy dog yarn. Kirpal Gordon writes, "What's so transformative in CHANGING THE SUBJECT is [the] range of knowledge--quantum mechanics, semiotics, literary theory, psychology & meditation practice--delivered in a voice unpretentious yet outrageous, scary yet funny, reader-friendly yet beyond category."

This book is based on a set of stories from teachers and education professionals in thirteen OECD countries. Twenty-three case studies tell of innovations in practice involving school teachers, inspectors, academics and policy makers.

In Changing the Subject Srila Roy maps the rapidly transforming terrain of gender and sexual politics in India under the conditions of global neoliberalism. The consequences of India’s liberalization were paradoxical: the influx of global funds for social development and NGOs signaled the co-optation and depoliticization of struggles for women’s rights, even as they amplified the visibility and vitalization of queer activism. Roy reveals the specificity of activist and NGO work around issues of gender and sexuality through a decade-long ethnography of two West Bengal organizations, one working on lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues and the other on rural women’s empowerment. Tracing changes in feminist governmentality that were entangled in transnational neoliberalism, Roy shows how historical and highly local feminist currents shaped contemporary queer and nonqueer neoliberal feminisms. The interplay between historic techniques of activist governance and queer feminist governmentality’s focus on changing the self offers a new way of knowing feminism—both as always already co-opted and as a transformative force in the world.

Lady Mary Wroth (c. 1587-1653) wrote the first sonnet sequence in English by a woman, one of the first plays by a woman, and the first published work of fiction by an Englishwoman. Yet, despite her status as a member of the distinguished Sidney family, Wroth met with disgrace at court for her authorship of a prose romance, which was adjudged an inappropriate endeavor for a woman and was forcibly withdrawn from publication. Only recently has recognition of Wroth's historical and literary importance been signaled by the publication of the first modern edition of her romance, The Countess of Mountgomeries Urania. Naomi Miller offers an illuminating study of this significant early modern woman writer. Using multiple critical/theoretical perspectives, including French feminism, new historicism, and cultural materialism, she examines gender in Wroth's time. Moving beyond the emphasis on victimization that shaped many previous studies, she considers the range of strategies devised by women writers of the period to establish voices for themselves. Where previous critics have viewed Wroth primarily in relation to her male literary predecessors in the Sidney family, Miller explores Wroth's engagement with a variety of discourses, reading her in relation to a broad range of English and continental authors, both male and female, from Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare to Aemilia Lanier, Elizabeth Cary, and Marguerite de Navarre. She also contextualizes Wroth's writing in relation to a variety of nonliterary texts of the period, both political and domestic. Thanks to Miller's sensitive readings, Wroth's writings provide a lens through which to view gender relations in the early modern period.

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The author shows the many ways in which women's scriptural "performances" are liberating. Shifting decisively from "women's experience" to discursive practices, she offers three sample readings of "emancipatory discourses" from diverse social locations that better display the variety of ways in which women are oppressed and resistant.