Download or read book 9 11 Culture Catastrophe and the Critique of Singularity written by Diana Gonçalves and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-10-24 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even though much has been said and written about 9/11, the work developed on this subject has mostly explored it as an unparalleled event, a turning point in history. This book wishes to look instead at how disruptive events promote a network of associations and how people resort to comparison as a means to make sense of the unknown, i.e. to comprehend what seems incomprehensible. In order to effectively discuss the complexity of 9/11, this book articulates different fields of knowledge and perspectives such as visual culture, media studies, performance studies, critical theory, memory studies and literary studies to shed some light on 9/11 and analyze how the event has impacted on American social and cultural fabric and how the American society has come to terms with such a devastating event. A more in-depth study of Don DeLillo’s Falling Man and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close draws attention to the cultural construction of catastrophe and the plethora of cultural products 9/11 has inspired. It demonstrates how the event has been integrated into American culture and exemplifies what makes up the 9/11 imaginary.

Download or read book 9 11 Culture Catastrophe and the Critique of Singularity written by Diana Gonçalves and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-10-24 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even though much has been said and written about 9/11, the work developed on this subject has mostly explored it as an unparalleled event, a turning point in history. This book wishes to look instead at how disruptive events promote a network of associations and how people resort to comparison as a means to make sense of the unknown, i.e. to comprehend what seems incomprehensible. In order to effectively discuss the complexity of 9/11, this book articulates different fields of knowledge and perspectives such as visual culture, media studies, performance studies, critical theory, memory studies and literary studies to shed some light on 9/11 and analyze how the event has impacted on American social and cultural fabric and how the American society has come to terms with such a devastating event. A more in-depth study of Don DeLillo’s Falling Man and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close draws attention to the cultural construction of catastrophe and the plethora of cultural products 9/11 has inspired. It demonstrates how the event has been integrated into American culture and exemplifies what makes up the 9/11 imaginary.

Download or read book The Way to Hell written by Nathan Crick and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2024-10 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We are living in Machiavellian times, argues Nathan Crick in The Way to Hell: Machiavelli for Catastrophic Times. Just as Machiavelli warned in the closing chapter of the Prince, a foreboding sense of catastrophe encroaches upon our daily lives from every corner - political, cultural, environmental, and viral, forces not unlike the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that were familiar characters in the daily lives of Machiavelli's Renaissance contemporaries, and which feature in the headlines that greet us every morning. Where catastrophe looms, Machiavelli inevitably follows. Drawing from the insights contained in Machiavelli's collected works, Crick interprets Machiavelli's political thought by first applying it to his own time and then our own, exploring the different paths we might choose when trying to avoid the hellish outcomes - environmental, economic, and political-that feel as if they are increasingly inevitable. Here Crick explores key questions in Machiavelli's writing with pragmatic sensibility and an open mind. When is force and fraud necessary to defend democracy? Is cruelty ever justified? When does social protest slip into violent revolution? What is the relationship between politics and propaganda? Can we have both good and effective leaders in times of crisis? And how does catastrophe bring out the comedy and tragedy of life? In our effort to avoid the way to Hell, we must confront difficult questions and make hard choices. The Way to Hell contributes not only to our understanding of Machiavelli but to our ability to meet the challenges ahead with forethought and courage"--

Download or read book Earthquake and the Invention of America written by Anna Brickhouse and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-10-10 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Earthquake and the Invention of America: The Making of Elsewhere Catastrophe explores the role of earthquakes in shaping the deep timeframes and multi-hemispheric geographies of American literary history. Spanning the ancient world to the futuristic continents of speculative fiction, the earthquake stories assembled here together reveal the emergence of a broadly Western cultural syndrome that became an acute national fantasy: elsewhere catastrophe, an unspoken but widely prevalent sense that catastrophe is somehow "un-American." Catastrophe must be elsewhere because it affirms the rightness of "here" where conquest, according to the syndrome's logic, did not happen and is not occurring. The psychic investment in elsewhere catastrophe coalesced slowly, across centuries; varieties of it can be found in various European traditions of the modern. Yet in its most striking modes and resonances, elsewhere catastrophe proves fundamental to the invention of US-America--which is why earthquake, as the exemplary elsewhere catastrophe, is the disaster that must always happen far away or be forgotten. The book's eight chapters and epilogue range from Plato to the Puritans, from El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Voltaire to Herman Melville and N.K. Jemisin, examining along the way the seismic imaginings of Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, and Jose Martí, among other writers. At the core of the book's inquiries are the earthquakes, historical and imagined, that act as both a recurrent eruptive force and a provocation for disparate modes of critical engagement with the long and catastrophic history of the Americas.

Download or read book Cultures of Silence written by Luísa Santos and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the notion of silence as both an oppressing instrument and a powerful tool of resistance under the lenses and practices of cultural production. Taking a transdisciplinary and transcultural approach to the study of creative and cultural practices, the chapters ask how cultural production is dealing with surges of oppressive regimes, censorship, and fake news, and which cultural processes are implied in silencing as well in giving voice to, in erasing, and in producing small and grand narratives. The book reaches beyond dominant instrumental views of contemporary cultural practice to understand culture not only as an expedient to conduct social policy but also as a diagnostic tool and a vernacular space of giving voice to the many small narratives that make the world we live in. Offering an introduction to an underrepresented area of cultural studies, this truly interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to scholars of cultural studies, cultural history, media studies, politics, visual studies, communication studies, history, and literature.

Download or read book Tower to Tower written by Henriette Steiner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-05-21 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cultural history of gigantism in architecture and digital culture, from the Eiffel Tower to the World Trade Center. The gigantic is everywhere, and gigantism is manifest in everything from excessively tall skyscrapers to globe-spanning digital networks. In this book, Henriette Steiner and Kristin Veel map and critique the trajectory of gigantism in architecture and digital culture—the convergence of tall buildings and networked infrastructures—from the Eiffel Tower to One World Trade Center. They show how these two forms of gigantism intersect in the figure of the skyscraper with a transmitting antenna on its roof, a gigantic building that is also a nodal point in a gigantic digital infrastructure. Steiner and Veel focus on two paradigmatic tower sites: the Eiffel Tower and the Twin Towers of the destroyed World Trade Center (as well as their replacement, the One World Trade Center tower). They consider, among other things, philosophical interpretations of the Eiffel Tower; the design and destruction of the Twin Towers; the architectural debates surrounding the erection of One World Trade Center on the Ground Zero site; and such recent examples of gigantism across architecture and digital culture as Rem Koolhaas's headquarters for China Central TV and the phenomenon of the “tech giant.” Examining the cultural, architectural, and media history of these towers, they analyze the changing conceptions of the gigantism that they represent, not just as physical structures but as sites for the projection of cultural ideas and ideals.

Download or read book Collective Securitisation and Security Governance in the European Union written by Sonia Lucarelli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-04 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collective Securitisation and Security Governance in the European Union presents an integrated theory of collective securitisation – a theoretical foundation for explaining how the process of collective securitisation sustains and makes effective an identifiable system of regional security governance. The volume demonstrates the empirical utility of collective securitisation in the EU security space through a set of structured case studies focusing on the collective securitisation of terrorism, cyberspace, migration, energy, health and climate change. The contributions to this collection address three questions: Under what conditions does collective securitisation occur? How does collective securitisation affect the scope and domains of EU security governance? And how does collective securitisation explain the emergence of the EU system of security governance? This volume breaks new ground in the field of EU security studies and provides a theoretical orientation that contributes to our understanding of how and why the EU has developed as a security actor in the 21st century. Developing and testing the theory of collective securitisation with reference to some of the most pressing contemporary security issues, Collective Securitisation and Security Governance in the European Union will be of great interest to scholars of the European Union and Security Studies. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.

Download or read book Refugees Security and the European Union written by Sarah Léonard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-07 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the extent and the modalities of the securitization of asylum-seekers and refugees in the EU. It argues that the development of the EU asylum policy, far from 'securitizing' asylum-seekers and refugees, has led to the strengthening and codification of several rights for these two categories of persons. However, the securitization of terrorism and the links that have been constructed between asylum, irregular migration and terrorism in the wake of the various terrorist attacks that have taken place in Europe in the last few years have had a significant impact on the ability of asylum-seekers to gain access to asylum systems in the EU. From a theoretical point of view, the book develops an original analytical framework that draws upon and further develops security studies – more precisely securitization theory – by connecting it to the literature on policy venues and venue-shopping. It therefore makes a significant contribution to the debates on both securitization and migration. Empirically examining the entire development of the EU’s policy towards asylum-seekers and refugees, from its origins in 1993, this book will be of great interest to students of European and EU politics, refugees, migration, security, terrorism and counter-terrorism, security studies and International Relations.

Download or read book The European Union as a Global Counter Terrorism Actor written by Kaunert, Christian and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. After the death of Osama Bin Laden and the demise of Al Qaeda, the EU is increasingly threatened by new jihadi terrorist groups such as ISIS, as exemplified by recent terror attacks on Paris, Brussels, Nice, Berlin and Manchester. This book investigates the role of the EU in dealing with such groups as part of its counter-terrorism efforts, by outlining the increasing role of the EU as an external counter-terrorism actor.

Download or read book Evacuation written by Peter Adey and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2024-08-16 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Evacuation, Peter Adey examines the politics, aesthetics, and practice of moving people and animals from harm during emergencies. He outlines how the governance and design of evacuation are recursive, operating on myriad political, symbolic, and affective levels in ways that reflect and reinforce social hierarchies. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, from the retrieval of wounded soldiers from the battlefield during World War I and escaping the World Trade Center on 9/11 to the human and animal evacuations in response to the 2009 Australian bushfires and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Adey demonstrates that evacuation is not an equal process. Some people may choose not to move while others are forced; some may even be brought into harm through evacuation. Often the poorest, racialized, and most marginalized communities hold the least power in such moments. At the same time, these communities can generate compassionate, creative, and democratic forms of care that offer alternative responses to crises. Ultimately, Adey contends, understanding the practice of evacuation illuminates its importance to power relations and everyday governance.

Download or read book Literature after 9 11 written by Ann Keniston and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on trauma theory, genre theory, political theory, and theories of postmodernity, space, and temporality, Literature After 9/11 suggests ways that these often distinct discourses can be recombined and set into dialogue with one another as it explores 9/11’s effects on literature and literature’s attempts to convey 9/11.

Download or read book The Cultural Life of Catastrophes and Crises written by Carsten Meiner and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catastrophes and crises are exceptions. They are disruptions of order. In various ways and to different degrees, they change and subvert what we regard as normal. They may occur on a personal level in the form of traumatic or stressful situations, on a social level in the form of unstable political, financial or religious situations, or on a global level in the form of environmental states of emergency. The main assumption in this book is that, in contrast to the directness of any given catastrophe and its obvious physical, economical and psychological consequences our understanding of catastrophes and crises is shaped by our cultural imagination. No matter in which eruptive and traumatizing form we encounter them, our collective repertoire of symbolic forms, historical sensibilities, modes of representation, and patterns of imagination determine how we identify, analyze and deal with catastrophes and crises.This book presents a series of articles investigating how we address and interpret catastrophes and crises in film, literature, art and theory, ranging from Voltaire’s eighteenth-century Europe, haunted by revolutions and earthquakes, to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to the bleak, prophetic landscapes of Cormac McCarthy.

Download or read book Falling Man written by Don DeLillo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-05-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is September 11 and then there are the days after, and finally the years. Falling Man is a magnificent, essential novel about the event that defines turn-of-the-century America. It begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and tracks the aftermath of this global tremor in the intimate lives of a few people. First there is Keith, walking out of the rubble into a life that he'd always imagined belonged to everyone but him. Then Lianne, his es-tranged wife, memory-haunted, trying to reconcile two versions of the same shadowy man. And their small son Justin, standing at the window, scanning the sky for more planes. These are lives choreographed by loss, grief and the enormous force of history. Brave and brilliant, Falling Man traces the way the events of September 11 have reconfigured our emotional landscape, our memory and our perception of the world. It is cathartic, beautiful, heartbreaking.

Download or read book The Singularity Is Near written by Ray Kurzweil and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-09-22 with total page 992 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil, hailed by Bill Gates as “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence,” presents an “elaborate, smart, and persuasive” (The Boston Globe) view of the future course of human development. “Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.”—Los Angeles Times “Startling in scope and bravado.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “An important book.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near presents a radical and optimistic view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

Download or read book A Problem from Hell written by Samantha Power and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From former UN Ambassador and author of the New York Times bestseller The Education of an Idealist Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on America's repeated failure to stop genocides around the world In her prizewinning examination of the last century of American history, Samantha Power asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow "never again" repeatedly fail to stop genocide? Power, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, draws upon exclusive interviews with Washington's top policymakers, thousands of declassified documents, and her own reporting from modern killing fields to provide the answer. "A Problem from Hell" shows how decent Americans inside and outside government refused to get involved despite chilling warnings, and tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act. A modern classic and "an angry, brilliant, fiercely useful, absolutely essential book" (New Republic), "A Problem from Hell" has forever reshaped debates about American foreign policy. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner of the Raphael Lemkin Award

Download or read book Alternative Press Index written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Media Spectacle written by Douglas Kellner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-08-29 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the mid-1990s, the O.J. Simpson murder trial dominated the media in the United States and were circulated throughout the world via global communications networks. The case became a spectacle of race, gender, class and violence, bringing in elements of domestic melodrama, crime drama and legal drama. According to this fascinating new book, the Simpson case was just one example of what the author calls 'media spectacle' - a form of media culture that puts contemporary dreams, nightmares, fantasies and values on display. Through the analysis of several such media spectacles - including Elvis, The X Files, Michael Jordan, and the Bill Clinton sex scandals - Doug Kellner draws out important insights into media, journalism, the public sphere and politics in an era of new technologies. In this excellent follow up to his best selling Media Culture, Kellner's fascinating new volume delivers an informative read for students of sociology, culture and media.