Difference in Time

the long version

"Arguing against the postmodern claim that systematic theory is unable to account for difference, Difference in Time: A Critical Theory of Culture adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of cultural judgement and social change. With music as her model for theory, Hanrahan explores the role of time, the creation of meaning, the identification of difference, and the basis for judgements in cultural life, and in doing so provides a foundation for the critique of cultural objects and practices that avoids both the elitism of traditional aesthetics and the unwavering relativism of so much contemporary cultural analysis. A broad-ranging and deeply philosophical work building on the scholarship of the Frankfurt School, Difference in Time: A Critical Theory of Culture drives home the need for critique in the evaluation and revision of the social knowledge and institutions of democratic civic life."--BOOK JACKET.