What is the nature of meaningful action and its relationship to power, truth, desire, and the self? How are meaning and truth related to the phenomenological body? Where do postmodern insights coherently intersect with the perspective of critical theory, and where are postmodernists and criticalists in fundamental disagreement? Carspecken explores these and other questions within the four essays of this book. His investigations are timely and relevant to all who have an interest in the philosophy of critical theory, social theory, cultural studies, and methodologies for social research.