Confronting Theory

Philip Bell has published several books on television and media culture and more than sixty research monographs, journal articles and book chapters on the representation of social issues in the media, globalization and genres of film and television.

• Chapter One:Cultural Studies and Capital-T TheoryThe Problem of ‘Theory’Cultural Studies and/as PsychologyTexts and Science Theory's Challenge  Chapter Two:What is Theory About?Immaterial FoundationsAfter the ‘Sokal Hoax’Theory is Not Metaphor Chapter Three:Different ThingsLanguage ProblemsReductionism and ‘Essentialism’Relations and ThingsBecoming TheoreticalReal Differences: ‘Race’ and IdentityMaking Sense of Difference Chapter Four:Theory, People and ‘Subjects’Psychology and the Emergence of Cultural StudiesThe ‘Return to the Signifier’Semiotic Subjects, or Persons?Decentring PsychologyEquivocating: Anti-‘Essentialism’Subjects Need Biology Chapter Five:‘Post-Human’ Theory and Cultural StudiesThe Printing Press, Digital Media and HumanismEnlightenment HumanismEscaping the Human?Problems of Coherence Chapter Six:Affecting OntologiesAffect as an EntityThe Trinity: Feeling, Emotion, AffectBecoming Ontological – The Student’s ProblemAffect extraordinaire: Horse Sense? Chapter Seven:Real experience, Un-real ScienceMoving Science: The Body in TheoryVital PhenomenologyNeo- or Non-Psychology?Realism as an Ethical Attitude Chapter Eight:Theory and EducationRealism as a Default PositionWhen Students ‘do Theory’Teaching TheoryBluffing ‘Post-Humanities’ and EducationNo Laughing Matter