Hegel's Dialectic of Desire and Recognition

<p><b>Presents three generations of German French and Anglo-American thinking on the Hegelian narrative of desire recognition and alienation in life labor and language.</b></p><p>This book presents three generations of German French and Anglo-American thinking on the Hegelian narrative of desire recognition and alienation in life labor and language-a narrative that has been subject to extensive commentary in philosophy literature psychoanalysis and feminist thought. The texts focus on a central topos in Western thought the story of self-consciousness awakened in nature and in history. John O'Neill argues that current postmodern rejections of the Hegelian-Marxist narrative demand an understanding of the texts included here. Without Hegel and Marx in our toolbox he argues we will flounder in a world marked by the split between postmodern indifference and premodern passion.</p><p>The book makes a strong selection from the history of Hegelian-Marxist debate hermeneutical and critical theory and Freudian/Lacanian and feminist commentary on the dialectic of desire and recognition on the levels of social psychology and political economy. Included are articles by Karl Marx G. W. F. Hegel Alexandre Kojève Jean Hyppolite Jean-Paul Sarte Georg Lukács Jürgen Habermas Hans-Georg Gadamer Howard Adelman Shlomo Avineri Jessica Benjamin Edward S. Casey and J. Melvin Woody Henry S. Harris George Armstrong Kelly Ludwig Siep Judith N. Shklar and Henry Sussman. The texts and commentaries show how the Hegelian-Maxist narrative of desire recognition and alienation is a contested story one in which class race and gender issues are drawn into a historical romance that is being rewritten in contemporary cultural politics.</p>