The book is available only in Czech.

We live in an era of superhero blockbusters, but we also live in an era of a huge surplus of critical literature that reflects all aspects of our reality, including, of course, popular culture itself. In order to navigate these conditions, we need to understand how contemporary pop culture has evolved, but also how its criticism has evolved. In Václav Janoščík’s book, readers will not only find a strange and exciting genealogy of critical theory and superheroes – in which Superman and Adorno, Watchmen with the Dark Knight and Deleuze, or the Joker, the Avengers, and Bernard Stiegler stand side by side – but the author’s speculative-historical and pop-philosophical project offers some original answers to the ambitious questions of our time: what exactly do superheroes represent, or what problems are they a symptom of? What is critical theory today and how has it evolved over the last century? How has it been shaped by psychoanalysis, Marxism, or poststructuralism? What is dialectics or the task of thinking? What dreams of the past (20th century) are we realizing with our present lives (in the 21st century)?

Minulost sní o dnešku. Dějiny superhrdinů a kritické teorie (The Past Is Dreaming of Today. Superhero History and Critical Theory)