Can reading social protest novels actually produce a more just world? Literature and Social Justice offers a scientifically informed, evidence-based affirmative answer to that crucial question, arguing that literature has the potential—albeit largely unrealized—to produce lasting, socially transformative psychological changes in readers. Moving beyond traditional social criticism in its various forms, including feminist, gender, queer, and postcolonialist approaches, Mark Bracher uses new knowledge concerning the cognitive structures and processes that constitute the psychological roots of social injustice to develop a detailed, systematic critical strategy that he calls “schema criticism,” which can be applied to literature and other discourses to maximize and extend their potential for promoting social justice.
Bracher draws on studies in social cognition, social neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, political psychology, and psychoanalysis to uncover the root cognitive structures that cause misunderstandings among people and give rise to social injustice. Using the novels The Jungle, The Grapes of Wrath, and Native Son, he then demonstrates how schema criticism can correct these faulty cognitive structures and enable readers to develop more accurate and empathetic views of those they deem “Other,” as well as become more aware of their own cognitive processes. Calling the book “insightful, erudite, and humane,” Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture Series coeditor Patrick Colm Hogan says, “This inspiring book should be welcomed by literary critics, political activists, and anyone who cares about social justice.”

Literature and Social Justice: Protest Novels, Cognitive Politics, and Schema Criticism (Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture Series)

Literature & Fiction

Bracher, Mark

History & Criticism

University of Texas Press

Social Symptoms of Identity Needs: Why We Have Failed to Solve Our Social Problems and What to do About It (The Exploring Psycho-Social Studies Series)

Explains how our major social problems, including crime, violence, terrorism, war, substance abuse, and prejudice, are the result of efforts by their perpetrators to maintain a secure identity, or sense of self. It locates the root causes of these social problems and counterproductive responses in certain identity-damaging social and cultural pheno

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

Routledge

Convinced that cultural criticism need not merely be an academic exercise but can help improve people's lives, Mark Bracher proposes a method of cultural criticism which is based on the principles of psychoanalytic treatment and which aims to alter subjectivity and behavior.
In this forceful and engagingly written book, Bracher first accounts for the failure of contemporary cultural criticism to achieve significant social impact. He then offers a model of analysis that draws on Lacan's theoretical insights into the structure of subjectivity and the psychological functions of discourse, asserting that the use of this model can promote collective psychological change. While cultural criticism has generally focused on texts, Bracher instead analyzes audiences' actual responses―to a variety of discourses from "high" as well as popular culture: the political speeches of Ronald Reagan and Jesse Jackson, anti-abortion propaganda, pornography, Keats's "To Autumn," and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Through analyzing these responses, Bracher is able to uncover the unconscious identifications and fantasies of the respondents―an intervention that, he argues, has the potential for altering subjectivity. In his view, such a method of cultural criticism is both unusually powerful and ethnically defensible, since instead of attacking or upholding a group's values, it reveals the psychological conflicts manifest in responses to particular texts.
Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change will be essential reading for students as well as specialists in such fields as cultural criticism, feminist theory, literary theory, psychoanalytic criticism, reader-response criticism, reader-response criticism, and Lacanian theory.

Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change: A Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism

Cornell University Press

Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change: A Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism (Chicago Series on Sexuality, History)

Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure, and Society

This collection introduces and develops Lacanian thought concerning the relations among language, subjectivity, and society. Lacanian Theory of Discourse provides an account of how language both interacts with and constitutes structures of subjectivity, producing specific attitudes and behaviors as well as significant social effects.

NYU Press

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Being Form'D: Thinking Through Blake's Milton

This exemplary philosophical reading of Milton is going to make a tremendous change in Blake's criticism. It will take a while to digest, and critics without a firm grounding in philosophy will find it difficult to follow some of the time. Yet the careful reader of Bracher, who accepts his careful definitions and consistent employment of concepts and terms, will find aspect after aspect of the poem clarified and its whole argument and message made plain.. A landmark of modern scholarship! -David V. ErdmanBeing Form'd opens truly new perspectives upon the primal ground not only of Blake's revolutionary imaginative vision but also upon that new apocalypse which is simultaneously a reversal of the western consciousness and a new birth of a universal vision and consciousness. -Thomas J.J. Altizer

BEING FORM'D: Thinking Through Blake's Milton

Station Hill Press

This exemplary philosophical reading of Milton is going to make a tremendous change in Blake's criticism. It will take a while to digest, and critics without a firm grounding in philosophy will find it difficult to follow some of the time. Yet the careful reader of Bracher, who accepts his careful definitions and consistent employment of concepts and terms, will find aspect after aspect of the poem clarified and its whole argument and message made plain.. A landmark of modern scholarship! -David V. ErdmanBeing Form'd opens truly new perspectives upon the primal ground not only of Blake's revolutionary imaginative vision but also upon that new apocalypse which is simultaneously a reversal of the western consciousness and a new birth of a universal vision and consciousness. -Thomas J.J. Altizer

Station Hill Pr

This book responds to the pressing and increasingly recognized need to cultivate social wisdom for addressing major problems confronting humanity. Connecting literary studies with some of the biggest questions confronted by researchers and students today, the book provides a practical approach to thinking through, and potentially solving, global problems such as poverty, inequality, crime, war, racism, classism, environmental decline, and climate change. 
Bracher argues that solving such problems requires “systems thinking” and that literary study is an excellent way to develop the four key cognitive functions of which systems thinking is composed, which are causal analysis, prospection/strategic planning, social cognition, and metacognition. 
Drawing on evidence-based learning theory, as well as the latest research on systems thinking and its four cognitive functions, the book provides a comprehensive and detailed explanation of how these advanced thinking skills can be developed through literary study, illustrating the process with numerous examples from major works of literature. 
In explaining the nature and importance of these thinking skills and the ability of literary study to develop them, this book will be of value to literature teachers and students from introductory to advanced levels, and to anyone looking to develop better problem-solving and decision-making skills.

Literature, Social Wisdom, and Global Justice

Literature, Social Wisdom, and Global Justice: Developing Systems Thinking through Literary Study

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bracher, Mark. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Bracher, Mark

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bracher, Mark. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Literature and Social Justice: Protest Novels, Cognitive Politics, and Schema Criticism (Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture Series)

Social Symptoms of Identity Needs: Why We Have Failed to Solve Our Social Problems and What to do About It (The Exploring Psycho-Social Studies Series)

Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change: A Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism

Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change: A Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism (Chicago Series on Sexuality, History)

Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure, and Society

Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure, and Society

BEING FORM'D: Thinking Through Blake's Milton

Being Form'D: Thinking Through Blake's Milton

Literature, Social Wisdom, and Global Justice

Literature, Social Wisdom, and Global Justice: Developing Systems Thinking through Literary Study