Download or read book On Beauty and Being Just written by Elaine Scarry and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have we become beauty-blind? For two decades or more in the humanities, various political arguments have been put forward against beauty: that it distracts us from more important issues; that it is the handmaiden of privilege; and that it masks political interests. In On Beauty and Being Just Elaine Scarry not only defends beauty from the political arguments against it but also argues that beauty does indeed press us toward a greater concern for justice. Taking inspiration from writers and thinkers as diverse as Homer, Plato, Marcel Proust, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch as well as her own experiences, Scarry offers up an elegant, passionate manifesto for the revival of beauty in our intellectual work as well as our homes, museums, and classrooms. Scarry argues that our responses to beauty are perceptual events of profound significance for the individual and for society. Presenting us with a rare and exceptional opportunity to witness fairness, beauty assists us in our attention to justice. The beautiful object renders fairness, an abstract concept, concrete by making it directly available to our sensory perceptions. With its direct appeal to the senses, beauty stops us, transfixes us, fills us with a "surfeit of aliveness." In so doing, it takes the individual away from the center of his or her self-preoccupation and thus prompts a distribution of attention outward toward others and, ultimately, she contends, toward ethical fairness. Scarry, author of the landmark The Body in Pain and one of our bravest and most creative thinkers, offers us here philosophical critique written with clarity and conviction as well as a passionate plea that we change the way we think about beauty.
Download or read book On Beauty written by Zadie Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this loose retelling of Howard's End, Zadie Smith considers the big questions: Why do we fall in love with the people we do? Why do we visit our mistakes on our children? What makes life truly beautiful? Set in New England mainly and London partly, On Beauty concerns a pair of feuding families—the Belseys and the Kippses—and a clutch of doomed affairs. It puts low morals among high ideals and asks some searching questions about what life does to love. For the Belseys and the Kippses, the confusions—both personal and political—of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family.
Download or read book Speaking of Beauty written by Denis Donoghue and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A foremost critic of the English language here reflects on beauty and the language that it inspires in authors from Kant to Keats, Hawthorne to Housman. "An excellent and eloquent book.”--James Wood, New York Times Book Review "A beautiful book about beauty. Enormously learned, allusive, recuperative, and citational, it is a passionate meditation on what has been said about beauty in the West from the Greeks to the present day.”--J. Hillis Miller "Donoghue talks . . . with a delightful informality and absence of dogma. . . . One of the most charming features of Denis Donoghue’s book is his appendix of 'afterwords,’ brief quotations on beauty from sundry writers.”--John Bayley, New York Review of Books "Continuously fascinating, continuously readable, the book speaks of beauty, and of speakers of beauty, in its own calm, steady voice. You won’t want to lay it down.”--Hugh Kenner
Download or read book Thinking in an Emergency Norton Global Ethics Series written by Elaine Scarry and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-04-09 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning critic Elaine Scarry provides a vital new assessment of leadership during crisis that ensures the protection of democratic values. In Thinking in an Emergency, Elaine Scarry lays bare the realities of “emergency” politics and emphasizes what she sees as the ultimate ethical concern: “equality of survival.” She reveals how regular citizens can reclaim the power to protect one another and our democratic principles. Government leaders sometimes argue that the need for swift national action means there is no time for the population to think, deliberate, or debate. But Scarry shows that clear thinking and rapid action are not in opposition. Examining regions as diverse as Japan, Switzerland, Ethiopia, and Canada, Scarry identifies forms of emergency assistance that represent “thinking” at its most rigorous and remarkable. She draws on the work of philosophers, scientists, and artists to remind us of our ability to assist one another, whether we are called upon to perform acts of rescue as individuals, as members of a neighborhood, or as citizens of a country.
Download or read book Dreaming by the Book written by Elaine Scarry and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2001-04-09 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writers from Homer to Heaney instruct readers in the art of mental composition in this exploration of how poets and writers employ the work of imaginative creation.
Download or read book Not Just a Pretty Face written by Stacy Malkan and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2007-10-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lead in lipstick? 1,4 dioxane in baby soap? Coal tar in shampoo? How is this possible? Simple. The $35 billion cosmetics industry is so powerful that they've kept themselves unregulated for decades. Not one cosmetic product has to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration before hitting the market. Incredible? Consider this: The European Union has banned more than 1,100 chemicals from cosmetics. The United States has banned just 10. Only 11% of chemicals used in cosmetics in the US have been assessed for health and safety - leaving a staggering 89% with unknown or undisclosed effects. More than 70% of all personal care products may contain phthalates, which are linked to birth defects and infertility. Many baby soaps are contaminated with the cancer-causing chemical 1,4 dioxane. It's not just women who are affected by this chemists' brew. Shampoo, deodorant, face lotion and other products used daily by men, women and children contain hazardous chemicals that the industry claims are "within acceptable limits." But there's nothing acceptable about daily multiple exposures to carcinogenic chemicals -- from products that are supposed to make us feel healthy and beautiful. Not Just a Pretty Face delves deeply into the dark side of the beauty industry, and looks to hopeful solutions for a healthier future. This scathing investigation peels away less-than-lovely layers to expose an industry in dire need of an extreme makeover. 15 percent of the purchase price of each book sold benefits the national Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, administered by the Breast Cancer Fund, through December 31, 2012.
Download or read book Six Names of Beauty written by Crispin Sartwell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-24 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but it's also in the language we use and everywhere in the world around us. In this elegant, witty, and ultimately profound meditation on what is beautiful, Crispin Sartwell begins with six words from six different cultures - ancient Greek's 'to kalon', the Japanese idea of 'wabi-sabi', Hebrew's 'yapha', the Navajo concept 'hozho', Sanskrit 'sundara', and our own English-language 'beauty'. Each word becomes a door onto another way of thinking about, and looking at, what is beautiful in the world, and in our lives. In Sartwell's hands these six names of beauty - and there could be thousands more - are revealed as simple and profound ideas about our world and our selves.
Download or read book Rule of Law Misrule of Men written by Elaine Scarry and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-04-02 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A passionate call for citizen action to uphold the rule of law when government does not. This book is a passionate call for citizen action to uphold the rule of law when government does not. Arguing that post-9/11 legislation and foreign policy severed the executive branch from the will of the people, Elaine Scarry in Rule of Law, Misrule of Men offers a fierce defense of the people's role as guarantor of our democracy. She begins with the groundswell of local resistance to the 2001 Patriot Act, when hundreds of towns, cities, and counties passed resolutions refusing compliance with the information-gathering the act demanded, showing that citizens can take action against laws that undermine the rights of citizens and noncitizens alike. Scarry, once described in the New York Times Sunday Magazine as “known for her unflinching investigations of war, torture, and pain,” then turns to the conduct of the Iraqi occupation, arguing that the Bush administration led the country onto treacherous moral terrain, violating the Geneva Conventions and the armed forces' own most fundamental standards. She warns of the damage done to democracy when military personnel must choose between their own codes of warfare and the illegal orders of their civilian superiors. If our military leaders uphold the rule of law when civilian leaders do not, might we come to prefer them? Finally, reviewing what we know now about the Bush administration's crimes, Scarry insists that prosecution—whether local, national, or international—is essential to restoring the rule of law, and she shows how a brave town in Vermont has taken up the challenge. Throughout the book, Scarry finds hope in moments where citizens withheld their consent to grievous crimes, finding creative ways to stand by their patriotism.
Download or read book On Earth We re Briefly Gorgeous written by Ocean Vuong and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant New York Times Bestseller • Nominated for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction “A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years. Named a Best Book of the Year by: GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, TIME, Esquire, The Washington Post, Apple, Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine and more!
Download or read book Saving Beauty written by Byung-Chul Han and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-10-27 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beauty today is a paradox. The cult of beauty is ubiquitous but it has lost its transcendence and become little more than an aspect of consumerism, the aesthetic dimension of capitalism. The sublime and unsettling aspects of beauty have given way to corporeal pleasures and 'likes', resulting in a kind of 'pornography' of beauty. In this book, cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han reinvigorates aesthetic theory for our digital age. He interrogates our preoccupation with all things slick and smooth, from Jeff Koon's sculptures and the iPhone to Brazilian waxing. Reaching far deeper than our superficial reactions to viral videos and memes, Han reclaims beauty, showing how it manifests itself as truth, temptation and even disaster. This wide-ranging and profound exploration of beauty, encompassing ethical and political considerations as well as aesthetic, will appeal to all those interested in cultural and aesthetic theory, philosophy and digital media.
Download or read book Dreaming by the Book written by Elaine Scarry and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Beauty and the Bully written by Andy Behrens and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-08-14 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What wouldn’t a guy do to get the girl? How will garage band front man Duncan ever get the attention of his goddess like classmate Carly, who’s so busy trying to save the world that she won’t even look in his direction? An idea hits him, literally: when Duncan accidentally bruises himself, Carly wants to know who punched him, and vows to take care of “poor widdle Dunky.” But as his black eye fades, so does Carly’s devotion. Duncan needs a plan. He needs impending danger. He needs a BULLY. The search is on. This hilarious novel plays with the certainty that teenage boys will do just about anything to get a girl’s attention.
Download or read book The Body in Pain The Making and Unmaking of the World written by Elaine Scarry and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1985-09-26 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate.
Download or read book Resisting Representation written by Elaine Scarry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1994-09-29 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned scholar Elaine Scarry's book, The Body in Pain, has been called by Susan Sontag "extraordinary...large-spirited, heroically truthful." The Los Angeles Times called it "brilliant, ambitious, and controversial." Now Oxford has collected some of Scarry's most provocative writing. This collection of essays deals with the complicated problems of representation in diverse literary and cultural genres--from her beloved sixth-century philosopher Boethius, through the nineteenth-century novel, to twentieth-century advertising. qWe often assume that all areas of experience are equally available for representation. On the contrary, these essays present discussions of experiences and concepts that challenge, defeat, or block representation. Physical pain, physical labor, the hidden reflexes of cognition and its judgments about the coherence or incoherence of the world are all phenomena that test the resources of language. Using primarily literary sources (works by Hardy, Beckett, Boethius, Thackeray, and others), Scarry also draws on painting, medical advertising, and philosophic dialogue to probe the limitations of expression and representation. Resisting Representation celebrates language. It looks at the problematic areas of expression not at the moment when representation is resisted, but at the moment when that resistance is at last overcome, thus suggesting a domain of plenitude and inclusion.
Download or read book Beauty Matters written by Peg Zeglin Brand and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2000-05-22 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beauty has captured human interest since before Plato, but how, why, and to whom does beauty matter in today's world? Whose standard of beauty motivates African Americans to straighten their hair? What inspires beauty queens to measure up as flawless objects for the male gaze? Why does a French performance artist use cosmetic surgery to remake her face into a composite of the master painters' version of beauty? How does beauty culture perceive the disabled body? Is the constant effort to remain young and thin, often at considerable economic and emotional expense, ethically justifiable? Provocative essays by an international group of scholars discuss aesthetics in aesthetics, the arts, the tools of fashion, the materials of decoration, and the big business of beautification—beauty matters—to reveal the ways gender, race, and sexual orientation have informed the concept of beauty and driven us to become more beautiful. Here, Kant rubs shoulders with Calvin Klein. Beauty Matters draws from visual art, dance, cultural history, and literary and feminist theory to explore the values and politics of beauty. Various philosophical perspectives on ethics and aesthetics emerge from this penetrating book to determine and reveal that beauty is never disinterested.
Download or read book Only a Promise of Happiness written by Alexander Nehamas and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-17 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book imparts the fundamental legal understanding required for the purchase and sale of marketing rights for publishing house products. The aim is to enable the reader to competently deal with publishing contracts of every kind. Specific areas of focus include classic copyright and publishing law, the role of collecting societies, issues related to subsidiary rights and their exploitation, as well as questions regarding royalties.
Download or read book How Far You Have Come written by Morgan Harper Nichols and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the midst of the hurt and the mundane, the questions and the not yets, you can forget just how far you have come. This illustrated collection of poetry and essays invites you to reclaim moments of brokenness, division, and pain and re-envision them as experiences of reconciliation, unity, and hope. Popular Instagram poet and bestselling author Morgan Harper Nichols weaves together personal reflections through her signature poems, reflecting on the moments that shaped her. She invites you to: Awaken your heart and recognize how your own story has made you who you are today Enter into a deeper understanding of pressing on and pressing in, of transformation and surrender Discover meaning in the losses and embrace anticipation for the splendor ahead Become who you are in the moment you hold right now How Far You Have Come is an excellent gift for college and high school graduations, celebrations and anniversaries, life transitions, and birthdays or simply a gift for yourself. Follow Morgan on Instagram @morganharpernicols (along with her millions of followers), and look for more beautiful, thought-provoking poetry in her other collections: All Along You Were Blooming You Are Only Just Beginning
