I have been thrilled to find theo-bloggers discussing contemporary European Philosophy, if for no other reason than because I comfort myself saying, “you’re not crazy afterall.” Agamben, Zizek, Badiou, Schmitt: just jumping right in to these can present a challenge to someone whose education has been primarily theological; heck, they are challenging for anyone! At the request of Adam, and because I have been too long absent from this blog, Here is a reading list for those theology students I know who are getting interested in Cultural Studies / Frankfurt School / Leftist Literature / Theory / Whatever We Call This Body of Literature:
Start With Marx! Really this whole thing builds upon Marx (and Freud). Even those who think Marx is wrong are disagreeing with Marx. He provides the framework that the discipline of Cultural Studies is based. So where it start? Start with the earlier works, especially the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Grundrisse. Norton’s Marx-Engels Reader (edited by Robert Tucker) is the preferred text.
Next Up, Some essays:
Antonio Gramsci, “The Formation of the Intellectuals”
This is the first chapter of his Prison Notebooks
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of art in the Age of Mechanical Representation” Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, “The Culture Industry as Mass Deception”
Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” Some More Books: Michel Foucault: If you haven’t read anything by Foucault, start by reading The Foucault Reader (Pantheon), and then move to these: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Power/Knowedge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, and The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences.
Jean Baudrillard, Simulations. This slim volume provides for us a definition of his term, Simulacrum
Roland Barthes, Mythologies
Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism What have I missed? What books and essays are essential for theology students trying to grapple with the current body of literature on Paul and Christianity by philosophers? I know Lacan is missing, but alas, I haven’t read any of his work.
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