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Shows that the defining but largely neglected feature of what has become 'French theory' was a collective mind and style of thought, an explosive but fragile mixture of scientific and political radicalism that rather quickly watered down to academic orthodoxy.

Academic autonomy has been a dominant issue among Latin American social studies, given that the production of knowledge in the region has been mostly suspected for its lack of originality and the replication of Euro-American models.

In this ground-breaking book, Shaun Best analyses the intellectual knowledge production of Zygmunt Bauman and his rise to academic stardom in the English speaking world by evaluating the relation between his biography, the contexts in which he found himself and why his intellectual creativity is admired by so many people.

New Public Spheres gives a multidisciplinary account of the way in which public intellectuals have constructed their role and position in the public sphere in the past and how they try to voice public concerns and achieve authority again within those fragmented public spheres today.