The Language of Contemporary Criticism Clarified

The worlds of art, culture, history, and criticism have been invaded, in recent times, by confusing conceptual language and terminology. Too many texts are difficult to read and comprehend. Indeed they often can be understood only by the knowledgeable minority that knows the code. Yet it is essential for creative thinkers, especially students, to find the key to this unfamiliar world.

Reflexivity, ludic, bricolage, heuristic, reify, homology, indexicality --- what do they really mean? Finally, one of the country's most renowned art historians --- William Innes Homer --- has come to the rescue. For the first time, these and many other terms have been defined and their unwritten meanings revealed.

This book is your key to the complexities of modern and postmodern theoretical and critical writing. Professor Homer's background essays, along with an extensive glossary of currently relevant terminology, promise to answer the questions you were always afraid to ask. Beginning with Marxist criticism and extending through feminism, he guides us on a clarifying voyage through the language that is at forefront of art criticism, linguistics, literary theory, anthropology, social theory philosophy, and psychoanalysis.

Homer's language is nontechnical and liberated from jargon. He has broken through the barriers of obscurity. Complex ideas are finally easy to understand