Geoff Boucher

Dismissed as a miserable elitist who condemned popular culture in the name of 'high art', Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) is one of the most provocative and important yet least understood of contemporary thinkers. This book challenges this popular image and re-examines Adorno as a utopian philosopher who believed authentic art could save the world. Adorno Reframed is not only a comprehensive introduction to the reader coming to Adorno for the first time, but also an important re-evaluation of this founder of the Frankfurt School. Using a wealth of concrete illustrations from popular culture, Geoffrey Boucher recasts Adorno as a revolutionary whose subversive irony and profoundly historical aesthetics defended the integrity of the individual against social totality.

Interpreting Key Thinkers for the Arts

Adorno Reframed

Mona Ruiz

With this autobiography, Mona Ruiz and co-author Geoff Boucher spin a tale of one woman's private war to escape the tentacles of the street gangs that have carved her barrio into turfs where one misstep leads to violence. This page-turner charts the map of Ruiz's journey toward self-identity, tracing the tortuous path of her life - a life in which Ruiz assumed contradicting roles: gang chola, high school drop-out, disowned daughter, battered wife, welfare mother, student, policewoman and finally success story. At each step in the journey, Ruiz faced violence, ridicule and skepticism. She nevertheless prevailed in exchanging her badge of social defiance for one of protection of her community.

The Lives of Mona Ruiz

Two Badges

Matthew Sharpe

John Howard said, The times will suit me,' and they did. For over a decade John Howard took advantage of international crises and local anxieties to not only stay in government, but to radically reshape Australian public life. The Times Will Suit Them digs behind the headlines to explain the success of Howard's radical new conservatism. It shows how the Howard government and its small legion of culture warriors responded to deep changes engendered by two decades of economic reform by importing moral agendas from the US. The result was a brand of deeply postmodern' conservatism which undermined much that traditional conservatives hold dear. From Hansonism to children overboard to the Intervention in the Northern Territory and beyond, The Times Will Suit Them offers a fresh and provocative analysis from two Young Turks. It is compelling reading for anyone seeking to understand the drivers in contemporary Australian politics.

Postmodern conservatism in Australia

The Times Will Suit Them

Although Habermas has written about the cultural role of literature and about literary works, he has not systematically articulated a literary-critical method as a component of either communicative reason or post-metaphysical thinking. Habermas and Literature brings Habermasian concepts and categories into contact with aesthetic and cultural theories in and around the Frankfurt School, and beyond. Its central claim is that Habermas' contribution to literary and cultural criticism is the concept of literary rationality and the notion that literature performs a key role in the formation of the modern social imaginary. Habermas and Literature maintains that literary works have two faces  discursive intervention in the public sphere and personal integration of imaginative disclosures  that depend upon two modalities of literary reception: critique and identification. It develops the resulting literary theory through detailed discussion of the theories advanced by Habermas, followed in each case by synthetic and reconstructive argumentation that brings the framework of communicative reason into dialogue with literary methods, aesthetic theories and psychoanalytic categories. It does so through close engagement with debates around aesthetic rationality, world disclosure, social imaginaries, post-secular society and the utopian demand for happiness articulated by artworks. In the process, the Habermasian position is critically reconstructed when necessary, with reference to psychoanalytic and literary theories, and tested, in relation to demanding fiction and popular works.

The Public Sphere and the Social Imaginary

Habermas and Literature

Chris Lee

Avengers Assemble chronicles the rise and continuing rise of what is arguably the greatest filmic success story of the past half century: the Marvel Cinematic universe. Since 2008, the interlocking series of 23 superhero movies have combined to gross over 22.5 billion dollars worldwide. This is the first and only comprehensive narrative of how the MCU came to be, assembled by two veteran pop culture experts, journalists Chris Lee and Geoff Boucher. Avengers Assemble features inside access to the major players within the MCU from Jon Favreau, Robert Downey, Jr., Kevin Feige, Isaac Permutter, and David Maisel, one of the founding architects who frequently does not get much credit, and many, many others. The book kicks off with the very founding of the Marvel Studios and takes readers behind the scenes of how the real Marvel Universe came to be formed and how they have continued to have remarkable success. Marvel fans and cinema fans alike will find much to obsess over in this explosive inside look at the making of a mega franchise.

The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Avengers Assemble

Mona Ruiz grew up in a gang lifestyle, but she always wanted to become a police officer. Would Mona get the chance to change her future, or would the gangs decide for her?

The author describes how she went from a gang member, married to an abusive husband, and on welfare to becoming a member of the Santa Ana police force.

Although Habermas has written about the cultural role of literature and about literary works, he has not systematically articulated a literary-critical method as a component of either communicative reason or post-metaphysical thinking. Habermas and Literature brings Habermasian concepts and categories into contact with aesthetic and cultural theories in and around the Frankfurt School, and beyond. Its central claim is that Habermas' contribution to literary and cultural criticism is the concept of literary rationality and the notion that literature performs a key role in the formation of the modern social imaginary. Habermas and Literature maintains that literary works have “two faces” – discursive intervention in the public sphere and personal integration of imaginative disclosures – that depend upon two modalities of literary reception: critique and identification. It develops the resulting literary theory through detailed discussion of the theories advanced by Habermas, followed in each case by synthetic and reconstructive argumentation that brings the framework of communicative reason into dialogue with literary methods, aesthetic theories and psychoanalytic categories. It does so through close engagement with debates around aesthetic rationality, world disclosure, social imaginaries, post-secular society and the utopian demand for happiness articulated by artworks. In the process, the Habermasian position is critically reconstructed when necessary, with reference to psychoanalytic and literary theories, and tested, in relation to demanding fiction and popular works.

Set against the collapse of social theory into a theory of ideological discourse, Geoff Boucher sets to work a rigorous mapping of the contemporary field, targeting the relativist implications of this new form of philosophical idealism. Offering a detailed and immanent critique, Boucher concentrates his critical attention on the 'postmarxism' of Laclau and Mouffe, Butler and Žižek. In response Boucher points to 'intersubjectivity' as an exit from postmarxist theory's charmed circle of ideology.

Geoff Boucher

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