October: the second decade, 1986-1996

October: The Second Decade collects examples of the innovative critical and theoretical work for which the journal October is known. A journal anthology draws a collective portrait; together, the gathered texts demonstrate the journal's ambitions and strengths. From the outset, October's aim has been to consider a range of cultural practices and to assess their place at a particular historical juncture. That task has now taken on an intensified urgency. The catastrophic state of our urban economies and the attendant social crises, as well as the more general predicaments of a postcolonial era, have had an inescapable impact on the cultural and discursive practices that are October's concern. Hence, October in its second decade has had an intensified concern with the role of cultural production within the public sphere and a sharper focus on the intersections of cultural practices with institutional structures. The topics of inquiry include body politics and psychoanalysis, spectacle and institutional critique, art practice and art history, and postcolonial discourse. Contributors: Carol Armstrong, Leo Bersani, Homi Bhabha, Yve-Alain Bois, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Susan Buck-Morss, Lygia Clark, T. J. Clark, Jonathan Crary, Gilles Deleuze, Manthia Diawara, Peter Eisenman, Hal Foster, Group Material, Denis Hollier, Alexander Kluge, Gertrud Koch, Silvia Kolbowski, Rosalind Krauss, Annette Michelson, Helen Molesworth, V. Y. Mudimbe, Oskar Negt, Mignon Nixon.