Download or read book Kingship written by Francis Oakley and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From despots to powerless figureheads, and from the Neolithic era to the present, this book traces the history of kingship around the world and the tenacity of its connection with the sacred. Considers the many forms that kingship took during this period, including: the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt; the emperors of Japan; the Maya rulers of Mesoamerica; the medieval popes and emperors; and the English and French monarchs of early modern Europe Explores the panoply of governing roles that kingship involved – administrative, military, judicial, economic, religious and symbolic – but focussing on its connection with the sacred. Draws on the insights of cultural anthropology and comparative religion, as well as the on the resources provided by historians.
Download or read book The Politics of Enchantment written by J. David Black and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do "raves" have to do with eighteenth-century Romanticism, or the latest communication technologies with historical ideas about language, media, and culture? Today’s culture dazzles us with technological marvels and media spectacles. While we find them entertaining, just as often they are troubling — they seem to contradict common sense, eliciting such questions as What is real? or What is reality? and What is language? or What does language do? These questions, once confined to scholars, have become everyone’s concern. Some of the best answers might be found in an unexpected source: Romanticism. Too often we bring the values of the Enlightenment, particularly that of reason, to critique phenomena not inherently rational, such as pop culture or the Internet. This means that much criticism of current culture already has an intellectual foundation antagonistic to it — inviting postmodern arguments that suggest history has ended and reality is an illusion. In contrast, Romanticism, a cultural movement founded in Germany and England during the late eighteenth century, offers us an archive of concepts surprisingly sensitive to these problems. The Romantics were poets, dreamers, and politicians who advanced ideas that anticipated much contemporary thinking. David Black has organized these ideas systematically, and has then applied them to key issues in communications, such as representation, audience, and the information society, as well as to significant debates in cultural studies. As a result, The Politics of Enchantment offers a new theory of media and culture that is grounded in intellectual history, yet as feverishly current as the latest digital device.
Download or read book Enchanted America written by J. Eric Oliver and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America is in civic chaos, its politics rife with conspiracy theories and false information. Nationalism and authoritarianism are on the rise, while scientists, universities, and news organizations are viewed with increasing mistrust. Its citizens reject scientific evidence on climate change and vaccinations while embracing myths of impending apocalypse. And then there is Donald Trump, a presidential candidate who won the support of millions of conservative Christians despite having no moral or political convictions. What is going on? The answer, according to J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood, can be found in the most important force shaping American politics today: human intuition. Much of what seems to be irrational in American politics arises from the growing divide in how its citizens make sense of the world. On one side are rationalists. They use science and reason to understand reality. On the other side are intuitionists. They rely on gut feelings and instincts as their guide to the world. Intuitionists believe in ghosts and End Times prophecies. They embrace conspiracy theories, disbelieve experts, and distrust the media. They are stridently nationalistic and deeply authoritarian in their outlook. And they are the most enthusiastic supporters of Donald Trump. The primary reason why Trump captured the presidency was that he spoke about politics in a way that resonated with how Intuitionists perceive the world. The Intuitionist divide has also become a threat to the American way of life. A generation ago, intuitionists were dispersed across the political spectrum, when most Americans believed in both God and science. Today, intuitionism is ideologically tilted toward the political right. Modern conservatism has become an Intuitionist movement, defined by conspiracy theories, strident nationalism, and hostility to basic civic norms. Enchanted America is a clarion call to rationalists of all political persuasions to reach beyond the minority and speak to intuitionists in a way they understand. The values and principles that define American democracy are at stake.
Download or read book The Enchantment of Modern Life written by Jane Bennett and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-22 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a commonplace that the modern world cannot be experienced as enchanted--that the very concept of enchantment belongs to past ages of superstition. Jane Bennett challenges that view. She seeks to rehabilitate enchantment, showing not only how it is still possible to experience genuine wonder, but how such experience is crucial to motivating ethical behavior. A creative blend of political theory, philosophy, and literary studies, this book is a powerful and innovative contribution to an emerging interdisciplinary conversation about the deep connections between ethics, aesthetics, and politics. As Bennett describes it, enchantment is a sense of openness to the unusual, the captivating, and the disturbing in everyday life. She guides us through a wide and often surprising range of sources of enchantment, showing that we can still find enchantment in nature, for example, but also in such unexpected places as modern technology, advertising, and even bureaucracy. She then explains how everyday moments of enchantment can be cultivated to build an ethics of generosity, stimulating the emotional energy and honing the perceptual refinement necessary to follow moral codes. Throughout, Bennett draws on thinkers and writers as diverse as Kant, Schiller, Thoreau, Kafka, Marx, Weber, Adorno, and Deleuze. With its range and daring, The Enchantment of Modern Life is a provocative challenge to the centuries-old ''narrative of disenchantment,'' one that presents a new ''alter-tale'' that discloses our profound attachment to the human and nonhuman world.
Download or read book Re enchanting the World written by Silvia Federici and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silvia Federici is one of the most important contemporary theorists of capitalism and feminist movements. In this collection of her work spanning over twenty years, she provides a detailed history and critique of the politics of the commons from a feminist perspective. In her clear and combative voice, Federici provides readers with an analysis of some of the key issues and debates in contemporary thinking on this subject. Drawing on rich historical research, she maps the connections between the previous forms of enclosure that occurred with the birth of capitalism and the destruction of the commons and the “new enclosures” at the heart of the present phase of global capitalist accumulation. Considering the commons from a feminist perspective, this collection centers on women and reproductive work as crucial to both our economic survival and the construction of a world free from the hierarchies and divisions capital has planted in the body of the world proletariat. Federici is clear that the commons should not be understood as happy islands in a sea of exploitative relations but rather autonomous spaces from which to challenge the existing capitalist organization of life and labor.
Download or read book Secularism Identity and Enchantment written by Akeel Bilgrami and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-21 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a rigorous exploration of how secularism and identity emerged as conflicting concepts in the modern world, Akeel Bilgrami elaborates a notion of secular enchantment with a view to finding in secular modernity a locus of meaning and value, while addressing squarely the anxiety that all such notions are exercises in nostalgia.
Download or read book The Enchantment of Democracy and India written by Sudipta Kaviraj and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Enchantments of Mammon written by Eugene McCarraher and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An extraordinary work of intellectual history as well as a scholarly tour de force, a bracing polemic, and a work of Christian prophecy...McCarraher challenges more than 200 years of post-Enlightenment assumptions about the way we live and work.” —The Observer At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the “disenchantment” of the world, stripping material objects and social relations of their mystery and magic. In this magisterial work, Eugene McCarraher challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether one is prepared to acknowledge it or not. First flowering in the fields and factories of England and brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals, whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit, capitalism has become so thoroughly enmeshed in the fabric of our society that our faith in “the market” has become sacrosanct. Informed by cultural history and theology as well as management theory, The Enchantments of Mammon looks to nineteenth-century Romantics, whose vision of labor combined reason, creativity, and mutual aid, for salvation. In this impassioned challenge to some of our most firmly held assumptions, McCarraher argues that capitalism has hijacked our intrinsic longing for divinity—and urges us to break its hold on our souls. “A majestic achievement...It is a work of great moral and spiritual intelligence, and one that invites contemplation about things we can’t afford not to care about deeply.” —Commonweal “More brilliant, more capacious, and more entertaining, page by page, than his most ardent fans dared hope. The magnitude of his accomplishment—an account of American capitalism as a religion...will stun even skeptical readers.” —Christian Century
Download or read book Nazi Cinema as Enchantment written by Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2006 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nazi regime did not merely terrorize its citizens into submission; it also seduced them by offering stability, a traditional value system, a sense of belonging, and hope of a better standard of living. Nazi cinema's popularity rested on its ability to express positive social fantasies and promote the enchantment of reality, so that one would want to share in the dream at any price. This is an interdisciplinary study, written for scholars and students in the fields of film studies, German studies, history, critical studies, and political science, that explores how cinema participated in the larger framework of everyday fascism. The book examines how five film genres - the historical musical, the foreign adventure film, the home-front film, the melodrama, and the problem film - enchanted audiences and enacted shared stories that can tell us much about how family, community, history, the nation, and the war were imagined in Nazi Germany. The book analyzes thirteen motion pictures, many of which are not well known to English-speaking audiences: Wunschkonzert, Die große Liebe, Tanz auf dem Vulkan, Damals, Die Degenhardts, Opfergang, Kautschuk, Robert und Bertram, Verklungene Melodie, Frauen für Golden Hill, Das Leben kann so schön sein, Der verzauberte Tag, and Via Mala. Based on exhaustive research in German archives, the book examines, in addition to the films themselves, articles from the propaganda ministry's official organ, Der deutsche Film, daily trade sheets, fan magazines, and even studio press packages for individual stars and films. Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien is Professor of German at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York.
Download or read book A Reenchanted World written by James William Gibson and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2009-04-14 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A surprising and enlightening investigation of how modern society is making nature sacred once again For more than two centuries, Western cultures, as they became ever more industrialized, increasingly regarded the natural world as little more than a collection of useful raw resources. The folklore of powerful forest spirits and mountain demons was displaced by the practicalities of logging and strip-mining; the traditional rituals of hunting ceremonies gave way to the indiscriminate butchering of animals for meat markets. In the famous lament of Max Weber, our surroundings became "disenchanted," with nature's magic swept away by secularization and rationalization. But now, as acclaimed sociologist James William Gibson reveals in this insightful study, the culture of enchantment is making an astonishing comeback. From Greenpeace eco-warriors to evangelical Christians preaching "creation care" and geneticists who speak of human-animal kinship, Gibson finds a remarkably broad yearning for a spiritual reconnection to nature. As we grapple with increasingly dire environmental disasters, he points to this cultural shift as the last utopian dream—the final hope for protecting the world that all of us must live in.
Download or read book Empire of Enchantment written by John Zubrzycki and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2018 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "How Indian magic descended from the realm of the gods to become a popular amusement for the masses around the globe"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book American Literature and Irish Culture 1910 55 written by Tara Stubbs and published by . This book was released on 2017-03-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses how and why American modernist writers turned to Ireland at various stages during their careers. By placing events such as the Celtic Revival and the Easter Rising at the centre of the discussion, it shows how Irishness became a cultural determinant in the work of American modernists. It is the first study to extend the analysis of Irish influence on American literature beyond racial, ethnic or national frameworks. Through close readings and archival research, American literature and Irish culture, 1910-55 provides a balanced and structured approach to the study of the complexities of American modernist writers' responses to Ireland. Offering new readings of familiar literary figures - including Fitzgerald, Moore, O'Neill, Steinbeck and Stevens - it makes for essential reading for students and academics working on twentieth-century American and Irish literature and culture, and transatlantic studies.
Download or read book Arts of Wonder written by Jeffrey L. Kosky and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kosky focuses on a handful of artists - Walter De Maria, Diller + Scofidio, James Turrell, and Andy Goldsworthy - to show how they introduce spaces hospitable to mystery and wonder, redemption and revelation, and transcendence and creation.
Download or read book Magical Capitalism written by Brian Moeran and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-16 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of essays examines the ways in which magical practices are found in different aspects of contemporary capitalist societies. From contract law to science, by way of finance, business, marketing, advertising, cultural production, and the political economy in general, each chapter argues that the kind of magic studied by anthropologists in less developed societies – shamanism, sorcery, enchantment, the occult – is not only alive and well, but flourishing in the midst of so-called ‘modernity’. Modern day magicians range from fashion designers and architects to Donald Trump and George Soros. Magical rites take place in the form of political summits, the transformation of products into brands through advertising campaigns, and the biannual fashion collections shown in New York, London, Milan and Paris. Magical language, in the form of magical spells, is used by everyone, from media to marketers and all others devoted to the art of ‘spin’. While magic may appear to be opposed to systems of rational economic thought, Moeran and Malefyt highlight the ways it may in fact be an accomplice to it.
Download or read book The Enchantment Of Reason written by Pierre Schlag and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1998-07-22 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enchantment of Reason is a lively critique of American legal thought and the American legal system’s deification of reason. In an attempt to understand the current malaise of American law and the depressed condition of American intellectual life in general, Pierre Schlag diagnoses what he believes is an epidemic of pathological reliance on the principle of reason. Contending that legal thinkers continually fail to recognize the aesthetic and ethical prejudices of rationalism, Schlag creates a genealogy that shows how the call to reason has become a manipulative vehicle of power, faith, and prejudice. In examining the fierce resistance to questioning reason’s primacy, this renowned critic and professor of American law demonstrates how those who use and study the law perpetuate their own methodological blind spots. Claiming that reason has been endowed with a virtually mystical power to organize social life, Schlag unravels the seemingly rational world of judicial opinions, statutes, doctrines, and legal principles. In the process, he paints a shocking—and sure to be controversial—picture of the chaos and, indeed, violence of the American legal tradition. This bold commentary on the irrationality of reason in American law and legal studies will interest not only legal scholars and philosophers but also serious thinkers across a broad disciplinary spectrum.
Download or read book Charisma and Disenchantment The Vocation Lectures written by Max Weber and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new translation of two celebrated lectures on politics, academia, and the disenchantment of the world. The German sociologist Max Weber is one of the most venturesome, stimulating, and influential theorists of the modern condition. Among his most significant works are the so-called vocation lectures, published shortly after the end of World War I and delivered at the invitation of a group of student activists. The question the students asked Weber to address was simple and haunting: In a modern world characterized by the division of labor, economic expansion, and unrelenting change, was it still possible to consider an academic or political career as a genuine calling? In response Weber offered his famous diagnosis of “the disenchantment of the world,” along with a challenging account of the place of morality in the classroom and in research. In his second lecture he introduced the notion of political charisma, assigning it a central role in the modern state, even as he recognized that politics is more than anything “a slow and difficult drilling of holes into hard boards.” Damion Searls’s new translation brings out the power and nuance of these celebrated lectures. Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon’s introduction describes their historical and biographical background, reception, and influence. Weber’s effort to rethink the idea of a public calling at the start of the tumultuous twentieth century is revealed to be as timely and stirring as ever.
Download or read book Vibrant Matter written by Jane Bennett and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-04 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Vibrant Matter the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end, she theorizes a “vital materiality” that runs through and across bodies, both human and nonhuman. Bennett explores how political analyses of public events might change were we to acknowledge that agency always emerges as the effect of ad hoc configurations of human and nonhuman forces. She suggests that recognizing that agency is distributed this way, and is not solely the province of humans, might spur the cultivation of a more responsible, ecologically sound politics: a politics less devoted to blaming and condemning individuals than to discerning the web of forces affecting situations and events. Bennett examines the political and theoretical implications of vital materialism through extended discussions of commonplace things and physical phenomena including stem cells, fish oils, electricity, metal, and trash. She reflects on the vital power of material formations such as landfills, which generate lively streams of chemicals, and omega-3 fatty acids, which can transform brain chemistry and mood. Along the way, she engages with the concepts and claims of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Darwin, Adorno, and Deleuze, disclosing a long history of thinking about vibrant matter in Western philosophy, including attempts by Kant, Bergson, and the embryologist Hans Driesch to name the “vital force” inherent in material forms. Bennett concludes by sketching the contours of a “green materialist” ecophilosophy.
