Explanation and Power: The Control of Human Behavior - Softcover

Peckham, Morse

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816616574 ISBN 13: 9780816616572

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 1988

Synopsis

Explanation and Power was first published in 1988. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

The meaning of any utterance or any sign is the response to that utterance or sign: this is the fundamental proposition behind Morse Peckham's Explanation and Power. Published in 1979 and now available in paperback for the first time, Explanation and Power grew out of Peckham's efforts, as a scholar of Victorian literature, to understand the nature of Romanticism. His search ultimately led back to―and built upon―the tradition of signs developed by the American Pragmatists. Since, in Peckham's view, meaning is not inherent in word or sign, only in response, human behavior itself must depend upon interaction, which in turn relies upon the stability of verbal and nonverbal signs. In the end, meaning can be stabilized only by explanation, and when explanation fails, by force. Peckham's semiotic account of human behavior, radical in its time, contends with the same issues that animate today's debates in critical theory ― how culture is produced, how meaning is arrived at, the relation of knowledge to power and of society to its institutions. Readers across a wide range of disciplines, in the humanities and social sciences, will welcome its reappearance.

About this title

About the Author

Morse Peckham was professor of comparative literature, emeritus, at the University of South Carolina. His books include Beyond the Tragic Vision, Art and Pornography, Victorian Revolutionaries, and Romanticism and Ideology.

From the Back Cover

Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible to scholars, students, researchers, and general readers. Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The books offered through Minnesota Archive Editions are produced in limited quantities according to customer demand and are available through select distribution partners.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816616574
• ISBN 13: 9780816616572
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312