One of our premier intellectual historians, Poster shows his sovereign command A difficult ideas and his great skill in presenting them clearly. Although he is deeply committed to certain of those ideas, he displays an admirable willingness to criticize their weaknesses. His argument is compelling, provocative and important. For those who already know his earlier work and who anticipate with eagerness his projected work on the mode of information, this book will be a vital resource. Martin Jay, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley

In Critical Theory and Poststructuralism Mark Poster enacts a dialogue between the French poststructuralists, especially Michel Foucault, and the tradition of critical social theory as developed by the Frankfurt School and by other Continental theorists such as Jean-Paul Sartre. This confrontation between poststructuralists who repre- sent "postmodem" thought and theorists committed to the "modern" project of the Enlightenment is, according to Poster, of urgent importance because of the fallure of critical theory to sustain a convincing critique of today's radically changed social formation.

In the eight essays collected here Poster continues the assessment of critical social theory he began in Foucault, Marxism, and History (1985), and develops his perception that the most important changes in contemporary society are taking place not at the level of social action, but at the level of language, and as a result of the revolution in our experience of language brought about by rapid advances In computer and media technology. Poster considers the major challenges to critical theory raised by the decolonization movement, which questions the ability of Westem thought productively to critique Western forms of domination; and by the feminist movement, which delects patriarchal elements within Westem theory, not excepting critical theory. He demonstrates how these theoretical developments, together with the effects of the proliferation of electronic communication systems, cast into doubt not only the familiar configuration of the social landscape that has been the target of critical theory but the very subject of that theory-including the position of the knower and the assumptions of the theorist. Poster urges that poststructuralist criticism be integrated into a new critical theory which he calis the mode of in- formation. Poststructuralist theory, he concludes, with its focus on language and its critique of Western reason, has much to offer for the reconstruction of critical theory, and he suggests, as did Foucault himself near the end of his life, that post- structuralist theorists for their part work toward contextualizing their position in order to undertake a critique of the present.

This lucid and challenging book will be welcomed by intellectual historians, political

theorists, social and political philosophers, literary theorists, and others involved in

current controversies over critical social theory or over the impact of technology on