Download or read book Agon Culture written by Claudio Colaguori and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agon Culture offers an analysis of the human condition through an examination of the way in which the cultural ideology of competition operates as a mode of rationality that underpins the order of domination. By combining insights from Theodor Adorno's critical theory with a reconstruction of the philosophy of the agon, the book formulates a novel critical theory of cultural domination that offers insights into our "winner-loser" culture and a renewed intensity of its social Darwinist tendencies. Contrary to current evolutionary thinkers who understand competition as a biological drive, Agon Culture posits that competition is a powerful force that has a largely unrecognized and dangerous underside in its promotion of interpersonal conflict, war, and cyclical domination.
Download or read book Sexagon written by Mehammed Amadeus Mack and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2017-01-02 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contemporary France, particularly in the banlieues of Paris, the figure of the young, virile, hypermasculine Muslim looms large. So large, in fact, it often supersedes liberal secular society’s understanding of gender and sexuality altogether. Engaging the nexus of race, gender, nation, and sexuality, Sexagon studies the broad politicization of Franco-Arab identity in the context of French culture and its assumptions about appropriate modes of sexual and gender expression, both gay and straight. Surveying representations of young Muslim men and women in literature, film, popular journalism, television, and erotica as well as in psychoanalysis, ethnography, and gay and lesbian activist rhetoric, Mehammed Amadeus Mack reveals the myriad ways in which communities of immigrant origin are continually and consistently scapegoated as already and always outside the boundary of French citizenship regardless of where the individuals within these communities were born. At the same time, through deft readings of—among other things—fashion photography and online hook-up sites, Mack shows how Franco-Arab youth culture is commodified and fetishized to the point of sexual fantasy. Official French culture, as Mack suggests, has judged the integration of Muslim immigrants from North and West Africa—as well as their French descendants—according to their presumed attitudes about gender and sexuality. More precisely, Mack argues, the frustrations consistently expressed by the French establishment in the face of the alleged Muslim refusal to assimilate is not only symptomatic of anxieties regarding changes to a “familiar” France but also indicative of an unacknowledged preoccupation with what Mack identifies as the “virility cultures” of Franco-Arabs, rendering Muslim youth as both sexualized objects and unruly subjects. The perceived volatility of this banlieue virility serves to animate French characterizations of the “difficult” black, Arab, and Muslim boy—and girl—across a variety of sensational newscasts and entertainment media, which are crucially inflamed by the clandestine nature of the banlieues themselves and non-European expressions of virility. Mirroring the secret and underground qualities of “illegal” immigration, Mack shows, Franco-Arab youth increasingly choose to withdraw from official scrutiny of the French Republic and to thwart its desires for universalism and transparency. For their impenetrability, these sealed-off domains of banlieue virility are deemed all the more threatening to the surveillance of mainstream French society and the state apparatus.
Download or read book Agonistics written by Janet Lungstrum and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focuses on a very significant psycho-cultural concept (that of "agonistics" or "contestatory creativity") with ramifications in several areas of the postmodern debate: cultural philosophy, psychologies of race, gender and the body, and narratology.
Download or read book Agon in Nietzsche written by Yunus Tuncel and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a comprehensive study of Nietzsche's relationship to the agonistic culture of ancient Greece. The book examines not only the overt elements of Greek agonism in Nietzsche's early works, but also shows how his later works embody its spirit as it is manifest in such notions as the will to power, the overhuman and "active justice."
Download or read book The Argument Culture written by Deborah Tannen and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2012-10-24 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her number one bestseller, You Just Don't Understand, Deborah Tannen showed why talking to someone of the other sex can be like talking to someone from another world. Her bestseller Talking from 9 to 5 did for workplace communication what You Just Don't Understand did for personal relationships. Now Tannen is back with another groundbreaking book, this time widening her lens to examine the way we communicate in public--in the media, in politics, in our courtrooms and classrooms--once again letting us see in a new way forces that have been powerfully shaping our lives. The Argument Culture is about a pervasive warlike atmosphere that makes us approach anything we need to accomplish as a fight between two opposing sides. The argument culture urges us to regard the world--and the people in it--in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done: The best way to explore an idea is to set up a debate; the best way to cover the news is to find spokespeople who express the most extreme, polarized views and present them as "both sides"; the best way to settle disputes is litigation that pits one party against the other; the best way to begin an essay is to oppose someone; and the best way to show you're really thinking is to criticize and attack. Sometimes these approaches work well, but often they create more problems than they solve. Our public encounters have become more and more like having an argument with a spouse: You're not trying to understand what the other person is saying; you're just trying to win the argument. But just as spouses have to learn ways of settling differences without inflicting real damage on each other, so we, as a society, have to find constructive and creative ways of resolving disputes and differences. Public discussions require making an argument for a point of view, not having an argument--as in having a fight. The war on drugs, the war on cancer, the battle of the sexes, politicians' turf battles--in the argument culture, war metaphors pervade our talk and shape our thinking. Tannen shows how deeply entrenched this cultural tendency is, the forms it takes, and how it affects us every day--sometimes in useful ways, but often causing, rather than avoiding, damage. In the argument culture, the quality of information we receive is compromised, and our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention. Tannen explores the roots of the argument culture, the role played by gender, and how other cultures suggest alternative ways to negotiate disagreement and mediate conflicts--and make things better, in public and in private, wherever people are trying to resolve differences and get things done. The Argument Culture is a remarkable book that will change forever the way you perceive the world. You will listen to our public voices in a whole new way.
Download or read book Agonal Perspectives on Nietzsche s Philosophy of Critical Transvaluation written by Herman W. Siemens and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Die Reihe Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) setzt seit mehreren Jahrzehnten die Agenda in der sich stetig verändernden Nietzsche-Forschung. Die Bände sind interdisziplinär und international ausgerichtet und spiegeln das gesamte Spektrum der Nietzsche-Forschung wider, von der Philosophie über die Literaturwissenschaft bis zur politischen Theorie. Die Reihe veröffentlicht Monographien und Sammelbände, die einem strengen Peer-Review-Verfahren unterliegen. Die Buchreihe wird von einem internationalen Redaktionsteam geleitet.
Download or read book Agon written by Harold Bloom and published by New York ; Oxford : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expands on the controversial theory of revisionism presented in The Anxiety of Influence and A Map of Misreading. Bloom's 'theory' is based on a dialectic or contest involving opposing artistic and moral views which he particularly examines in relation to Romanticism, the American poetic tradition, Freud's theories, and what the author calls the 'American religion of competitiveness' that he sees best exemplified by contemporary Jewry.
Download or read book Conflict and Competition Agon in Western Greece written by John Serrati and published by . This book was released on 2020-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2004, the city of Athens hosted the the Olympic Games. But the word 'games' almost trivializes the ancient concept of ag?n, which transcends sport, drama, war, and even philosophical debate. The ag?n deemed characteristic of ancient Greek culture has roots in in the eris (strife) illustrated in Homer and Hesiod and debated in the metaphysics of Heraclitus and Empedocles. It reverberates throughout philosophy, drama, history, poetry, art, and even the 19th century reception of Greek culture. This volume considers ag?n from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, with a special emphasis on Western Greece - the ancient Hellenic cities of Sicily and Southern Italy. Authors discussed include Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Theocritus, Callimachus, Diodorus, Porphyry, Nietzsche, and Burkhardt.
Download or read book Constructing America s War Culture written by Thomas J. Conroy and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1927, political scientist Harold Lasswell wrote about the strategies employed by the American government to sell the benefits of participating in World War I to a reluctant public. In Propaganda Techniques in World War I, Lasswell discussed the "manipulative symbols to manipulate opinions and attitudes" (p 9). Ever since then, all wars have involved specialists who attempt to control the way the media report about war and the way media contribute to shaping public opinion. This collection of essays discusses how media have "packaged" the war in Iraq. The chapters in this collection explore the way the media have presented the war to us by telling us human interest stories, supporting public policies, and crafting a narrative that supports the war. Some chapters focus on the way the Bush administration has actively promoted and attempted to control information; others tell of how the media have either been complicit in supporting the dominant narrative, or how the public has used the images in the media to negotiate attitudes toward the war, terrorism, and international relations. All of the chapters discuss the relationships among conflict, political agendas, the power of media, and the way audiences use media to construct attitudes, beliefs, and--ultimately--a sense of history about the war. Coming from the perspective of communication studies, situates the multi-dimensional aspects of war, terrorism, public policy, media, and story-telling within the context of creating a consensually assembled image of what the war in Iraq is all about. This book will be of interest to undergraduate students as well as scholars of communication, history, sociology, political science, and American studies, and it will be an excellent resource both for classroom use as well as the general public.
Download or read book East West Symbioses written by Eugene Eoyang and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the encounters between “East” and “West”, studying how “they get along”. These exchanges involve deliberate exoticizations and incommensurabilities, as well as creative fusions, such as Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit monk in the late 16th-early 17th centuries who learned Chinese in Beijing well enough to compose works in Chinese, and Octavio Paz, the Mexican Nobel Laureate, who admired Chinese civilization. The book also considers the effect of the West on Asian countries, the cases of Japan and Turkey, who tried to “modernize” by becoming more “Western”, and the examples of China and Korea, who adopted Western forms of theatre to advance a distinctly Asian aesthetic. It will appeal to anyone seeking more than a superficial understanding of the encounters between “East” and “West”.
Download or read book Socratic Charis written by Lisa Atwood Wilkinson and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the possibility that Plato’s philosophia is influenced by non-agonal practices and values that historically and philosophically antedate the agonal practices of the Athenian ekklesia. The author surveys literature concerning the predominance of agonal in ancient Greek culture, the values associated with oral poetic performance as a religious practice, and the ubiquitous character of the gift practice known as xenia in the ancient world. The author compares the structure of the agon to the structure of other ancient practices, and reasons that while agonistic practices are oppositional and binary, poetic and social practices are narrative and plural and exemplify, alternative to the agonal, the value of charis—grace. Reading Socratic speech and Socratic inquiry in terms of charis illuminates the narrative structure of Plato’s portrayal of Socrates and precludes one-dimensional analyses of Plato’s writings as philosophically agonistic and demonstrative. Rather the value of Socratic charis illustrates the value of genuine dialogue, and the author suggests how revaluing Socratic dialogue in light of charis can be relevant to current thinking about philosophy, politics, and the agon.
Download or read book Wave written by Sonali Deraniyagala and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brave, intimate, beautifully crafted memoir by a survivor of the tsunami that struck the Sri Lankan coast in 2004 and took her entire family. On December 26, Boxing Day, Sonali Deraniyagala, her English husband, her parents, her two young sons, and a close friend were ending Christmas vacation at the seaside resort of Yala on the south coast of Sri Lanka when a wave suddenly overtook them. She was only to learn later that this was a tsunami that devastated coastlines through Southeast Asia. When the water began to encroach closer to their hotel, they began to run, but in an instant, water engulfed them, Sonali was separated from her family, and all was lost. Sonali Deraniyagala has written an extraordinarily honest, utterly engrossing account of the surreal tragedy of a devastating event that all at once ended her life as she knew it and her journey since in search of understanding and redemption. It is also a remarkable portrait of a young family's life and what came before, with all the small moments and larger dreams that suddenly and irrevocably ended.
Download or read book Thresholds of Western Culture written by John Burt Foster, Jr. and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thresholds of Western Culture explores identity, postcoloniality and transnationalism--three closely related issues which redefine contemporary cultural identity. The book opens with an analysis of subjectivity and the cultural meltdown that accompanied fascism in the West. The situation in Africa is then explored which, while recalling modernity's dark side, highlights the intricacy of postcolonial identity. Post-Soviet Eastern Europe presents a separate case of neglected postcoloniality which emphasizes how ethnocentrism and cultural tensions have exposed the fragility of transnationalism. The book concludes with an examination of East Asia, a region which offers transnational options potentially much more fruitful than Balkanization.
Download or read book God of Many Names written by Mihai Spariosu and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the interrelationship among play, poetic imitation, and power to the Hellenic world, Mihai I. Spariosu provides a revisionist model of cultural change in Greek antiquity. Challenging the traditional and static distinction made between archaic and later Greek culture, Spariosu's perspective is grounded in a dialectical understanding of values whose dominance depends on cultural emphasis and which shifts through time. Building upon the scholarship of an earlier volume, Dionysus Reborn, Spariosu her continues to draw on Dionysus--the "God of many names," of both poetic play and sacred power--as a mythical embodiment of the two sides of the classical Greek mentality. Combining philosophical reflection with close textual analysis, the author examines the divided nature of the Hellenic mentality in such primary canonic texts as the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Theogony, Works and Days, the most well-known of the Presocratic fragments, Euripides' Bacchae, Aristophanes' The Frogs, Plato's Republic and Laws, and Aristotle's Poetics and Politics. Spariosu's model illuminates the many of the most enduring questions in contemporary humanistic study and addresses modern questions about the nature of the interrelation of poetry, ethics, and politics.
Download or read book The Greeks and Greek Civilization written by Jacob Burckhardt and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1999-10-21 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1872 Burckhardt, one of the preeminent historians of classical and Renaissance culture, presented this revolutionary work, which portrays ancient Greek culture as an aristocratic world and tyrannical state with minimal personal freedoms. This landmark culmination of 30 years of scholarship offers a rich cultural history of a fascinating society.
Download or read book Agon Logos Polis written by Jóhann Páll Árnason and published by Franz Steiner Verlag. This book was released on 2001 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten papers, from a conference held at Ohio State University in 1997, reconsider Greek experience and its lessons for later cultures from a variety of perspectives. The contributions reflect in particular the central role of politics and the `Polis', so distinctively and uniquely Greek, in the development of Greek culture. The papers also consider Greek philosophy, drama and the Greek view of the natural and divine world around them and demonstrate the continuing influence of Hellenism by discussing modern adaptations of Greek models. Contributors include Johann Arnason, Cornelius Castoriadis, Vassilis Lambropoulos, Christian Meier, Oswyn Murray, Peter Murphy, Kurt Raaflaub, Louis Ruprecht, Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet.
Download or read book Man Play and Games written by Roger Caillois and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to Roger Caillois, play is an occasion of pure waste. In spite of this - or because of it - play constitutes an essential element of human social and spiritual development. In this study, the author defines play as a free and voluntary activity that occurs in a pure space, isolated and protected from the rest of life.
