Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide

Front Cover
University of Toronto Press, Jan 1, 2002 - Social Science - 369 pages

Attempting to bridge the gap between specialised scholarship in the humanistic disciplines and an interdisciplinary project of cultural analysis, Mieke Bal has written an intellectual travel guide that charts the course 'beyond' cultural studies. As with any guide, it can be used in a number of ways and the reader can follow or willfully ignore any of the paths it maps or signposts.

Bal's focus for this book is the idea that interdisciplinarity in the humanities - necessary, exciting, serious - must seek its heuristic and methodological basis in concepts rather than its methods. Concepts are not grids to put over an object. The counterpart of any given concept is the cultural text or work or 'thing' that constitutes the object of analysis. No concept is meaningful for cultural analysis unless it helps us to understand the object better on its own terms.

Bal offers the reader a sustained theoretical reflection on how to 'do' cultural analysis through a tentative practice of doing just that. This offers a concrete practice to theoretical constructs, and allows the proposed method more accessibility.

 

Contents

I
3
II
22
III
25
IV
29
V
35
VI
40
VII
46
VIII
50
XXXI
174
XXXIII
178
XXXIV
182
XXXV
187
XXXVI
195
XXXVII
200
XXXVIII
205
XXXIX
208

IX
56
X
62
XI
64
XII
71
XIII
76
XIV
85
XV
89
XVI
96
XVIII
99
XIX
106
XX
113
XXI
118
XXII
122
XXIII
129
XXIV
133
XXV
138
XXVI
141
XXVII
147
XXVIII
155
XXIX
166
XXX
172
XL
213
XLII
216
XLIII
226
XLIV
235
XLV
242
XLVI
246
XLVII
251
XLVIII
253
L
256
LI
266
LII
270
LIII
273
LIV
280
LV
283
LVI
286
LVII
291
LVIII
296
LIX
307
LX
312
LXI
322
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About the author (2002)

Mieke Bal is Jackman Professor of the Humanities at the University of Toronto.

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