Reconfigurations: Critical Theory and General Economy

This is a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary critical theory and of the forces that have transformed the classical modes of thought dominating Western critical theory from its beginnings. Plotnitsky explores the confrontation and necessary reordering of ideas, introducing notions of a plural style and specific investigative techniques such as play, reading, metaphors of scientific inquiry and the interplay of metaphors. The book proposes complementarity as a model of general economy, a theory that relates the objects it considers to the loss of meaning. Drawn from Niels Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics, complementarity accounts for the indeterminacy of quantum systems and describes their conflicting aspects.