The Task of Cultural Critique, by Teresa L. Ebert. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Paper, $25.00. Pp. 213

摘要

Teresa Ebert is known for her relentless critique of contemporary poststruc-turalist and postmodernist academia's "ludic" theories as concealing and naturalizing the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, thus constituting an intellectual-ideological arm of the capitalist class. The Task of Cultural Critique continues this line of argument, while anatomizing the morphology of post-contemporary cultural theory and offering some insightful re-readings of popular cultural texts. Regardless of certain deficiencies, Ebert's latest work is an astute assessment of what contemporary cultural theory cannot explain: the complex relation between "the cultural" and transnational global capitalism's exploitative relations of labor.