Download or read book The Demons of Modernity written by John Orr and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ingmar Bergman’s films had a very broad and rich relationship with the rest of European cinema, contrary to the myth that Bergman was a peripheral figure, culturally and aesthetically isolated from the rest of Europe. This book contends that he should be put at the very center of European film history by chronologically comparing Bergman’s relationship to key European directors such as Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Andrei Tarkovsky, and also looks at Bergman’s critical relationship to key movements in film history such as the French New Wave. In so doing, it demonstrates how Ingmar Bergman’s films illustrate the demonic struggle in modernity between faith and secularity through “his intense preoccupation with the malaise of intimacy.”
Download or read book Demon Capital Shanghai written by Kenki Ryū and published by Merwinasia. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the role of Shanghai during its treaty-port era in Japanese ventures abroad, as a place for the Japanese to interact with the Chinese, and as ispiration for Japanese intellectuals, authors, songwriters, and poets.
Download or read book The Demon in Democracy written by Ryszard Legutko and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades—and he fought with the Polish anti-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature. In The Demon in Democracy, Legutko explores the shared objectives between these two political systems, and explains how liberal democracy has over time lurched towards the same goals as communism, albeit without Soviet style brutality. Both systems, says Legutko, reduce human nature to that of the common man, who is led to believe himself liberated from the obligations of the past. Both the communist man and the liberal democratic man refuse to admit that there exists anything of value outside the political systems to which they pledged their loyalty. And both systems refuse to undertake any critical examination of their ideological prejudices.
Download or read book The Solution of the Fist written by John P. Moran and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first novel ever written about terrorism, Dostoevsky'sThe Demons is also the most instructive, for in it he addresses--better than any writer before or since--the two persistent riddles of terrorism: why are terrorists so new to our civilization, and how is it that they can kill others so easily in the name of a political idea? As a first-generation observer of terrorism, Dostoevsky came to the conclusion that this new political movement was the product ofmodern culture, politics, and psychology. He felt that modernity created a unique shame and humiliation that fueled terrorism. The "demons" that he brings to life in this novel are not fire-breathing monsters, but gracious, subtle, cosmopolitan, rational, and scientific. They are also murderers, rapists, arsonists, and terrorists. For Dostoevsky, these "demons were ultimately the product of cosmopolitan Paris, for it was there that individuals first deified reason and thus abandoned the ancient sources of morality--the ancient Gods. By replacing the ancient with the modern gods of atheism, science, and liberalism, modern societies have abandoned any sort of moral constraint that helped to keep violence and tyranny in check. This created the new, modern, nihilistic world of terrorism. If modern shame and humiliation are truly at the heart of modern terrorism, twenty-first century readers can gain a clearer insight into terrorist motivations through understanding Dostoevsky's work.The Solution of the Fist: Dostoevsky and the Roots of Modern Terrorism aims to aid in this process through an in-depth analysis of his work and a careful explanation of the context in which nineteenth-century readers would understand it.
Download or read book Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period written by Siam Bhayro and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-02-06 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many near eastern traditions, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam, demons have appeared as a cause of illness from ancient times until at least the early modern period. This volume explores the relationship between demons, illness and treatment comparatively. Its twenty chapters range from Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt to early modern Europe, and include studies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They discuss the relationship between ‘demonic’ illnesses and wider ideas about illness, medicine, magic, and the supernatural. A further theme of the volume is the value of treating a wide variety of periods and places, using a comparative approach, and this is highlighted particularly in the volume’s Introduction and Afterword. The chapters originated in an international conference held in 2013. "Ultimately, Demons and Illness admirably performs the important task of reminding modern scholars of premodern health of the integral role played by these complex and shifting entities in the lives of people across the globe and through the centuries." -Rachel Podd, Fordham University, in: Social History of Medicine 32.3 (2019) "Given the sheer breadth of its scope, the volume is, of course, illustrative rather than comprehensive in its coverage, yet there is a definite coherence to its content, aided by the introduction and afterword which bookend the work and help begin to draw out the threads of commonality and difference. As such it constitutes a significant and welcome resource for comparative explorations of historical-cultural links between demons, illness, medicine, and magic, while offering a clear invitation to future work." -Matthew A. Collins, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 43.5 (2019)
Download or read book Sociology of Exorcism in Late Modernity written by Giuseppe Giordan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-12-12 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a sociological understanding of the phenomenon of exorcism and an analysis of the reasons for its contemporary re-emergence and impact on various communities. It argues that exorcism has become a religious commodity with the potential to strengthen a religion’s attraction to adherents, whilst also ensuring its hold. It shows that due to intense competition between religious groups in our multi-faith societies, religious groups are now competing for authority over the supernatural by ‘branding’ their particular type of exorcism ritual in order to validate the strength of their own belief system. Sociology of Exorcism in Late Modernity features a detailed case-study of a Catholic exorcist in the south of Europe who dealt with more than 1,000 cases during a decade of work.
Download or read book Portraits of Human Monsters in the Renaissance written by Touba Ghadessi and published by Medieval Institute Publications. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the center of this interdisciplinary study are court monsters--dwarves, hirsutes, and misshapen individuals--who, by their very presence, altered Renaissance ethics vis-a-vis anatomical difference, social virtues, and scientific knowledge. The study traces how these monsters evolved from objects of curiosity, to scientific cases, to legally independent beings. The works examined here point to the intricate cultural, religious, ethical, and scientific perceptions of monstrous individuals who were fixtures in contemporary courts.
Download or read book Demons of the Modern World written by Malcolm Mcgrath and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ...probably the first thorough review of modern demonology...superb. Recommended... - Library Journal...a terrifically contextualized debunking that is sure to generate debate among the faithful. - Publishers Weekly...a fascinating book on the psychology of modern Western culture. - Science & Spirit MagazineThis fascinating discussion of modern demonology focuses on our ability to differentiate the physical world, with its mechanical laws, from the inherently less predictable psychological realm of thoughts and beliefs. McGrath points out that this ability was a hard-won historical development, and today must be learned in childhood through education. Because of this historical background and our rich fantasy life in childhood, each of us unconsciously suspects, or fears, that supernatural forces may break through the borders of our everyday commonsense order at any time. Indeed, at times of personal stress or societal crisis, the modern boundaries between fantasy and reality begin to slip, and then a magical world of demons and other phantasms can come flooding back into our disenchanted reality.Through this innovative thesis McGrath goes a long way toward explaining both our fascination with fantasy entertainment, such as horror stories and films, and bizarre crazes such as witch-hunts, Satanism scares, and even claims of alien abduction. Despite our demystified culture the lure of childhood's magic kingdom with its monstrous shadow realm remains strong.Malcolm McGrath (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a doctoral candidate in political philosophy at Oxford University.
Download or read book Civilization and Monsters written by Gerald A. Figal and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the representation/role of the supernatural or the "fantastic" in the construction of Japanese modernism in late 19th and early 20th century Japan.
Download or read book Post war Cinema and Modernity written by John Orr and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2001-03 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both professors at the U. of Edinburgh (Scotland), Orr (sociology) and Taxidou (English) have collected a diverse selection of previously published material on film, much of it controversial and challenging, to produce a reader for the undergraduate classroom. The readings are divided into theory and form, form and process, and international cinema. The selected authors (who include such thinkers and directors as Andre Bazin, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gilles Deleuze, Fredric Jameson, Paul Virilio, Duncan Petrie, Susan Sontag, and Laura Mulvey) mull questions of film and modernity, film and poetry, film and postmodernity, cinematic perception, changing film technology, and the social and national context of international films. c. Book News Inc.
Download or read book The Mass and Modernity written by Jonathan Robinson and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many in the Church have accepted modernity in their effort to speak to the modern world, and not nearly enough attention has been given to trying to disentangle the complex of ideas and half-formulated convictions that constitute this mind-set which is in fact contrary to Christianity. The first aim of this book is to examine the origins and present day influence of modernity, and then to argue that there is nothing in the Christian's concern for the modern world that requires accepting this damaging mind-set in connection with the highest form of worship, the Mass. The second aim of the book is to show that that the sources of a genuine liturgical renewal are to be found in a heightened sense of the centrality of the Mass and a return to a theology compatible with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Fr. Robinson's book is a philosopher's gift to the Catholic liturgy. He provides a thoroughly lucid account of the climate of ideas which handicaps the celebration of Catholic worship in the modern world. This is a diagnosis which shows just how far reaching must be the cure. --Fr. Aidan Nichols, Author, Looking at the Liturgy
Download or read book Believe Not Every Spirit written by Moshe Sluhovsky and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1400 through 1700, the number of reports of demonic possessions among European women was extraordinarily high. During the same period, a new type of mysticism—popular with women—emerged that greatly affected the risk of possession and, as a result, the practice of exorcism. Many feared that in moments of rapture, women, who had surrendered their souls to divine love, were not experiencing the work of angels, but rather the ravages of demons in disguise. So how then, asks Moshe Sluhovsky, were practitioners of exorcism to distinguish demonic from divine possessions? Drawing on unexplored accounts of mystical schools and spiritual techniques, testimonies of the possessed, and exorcism manuals, Believe Not Every Spirit examines how early modern Europeans dealt with this dilemma. The personal experiences of practitioners, Sluhovsky shows, trumped theological knowledge. Worried that this could lead to a rejection of Catholic rituals, the church reshaped the meaning and practices of exorcism, transforming this healing rite into a means of spiritual interrogation. In its efforts to distinguish between good and evil, the church developed important new explanatory frameworks for the relations between body and soul, interiority and exteriority, and the natural and supernatural.
Download or read book From Demons to Dracula written by Matthew Beresford and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2008-12-15 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In blood-soaked lore handed down the centuries, the vampire is a monster of endless fascination: from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this seductive lover of blood haunts popular culture and inhabits our darkest imaginings. The cultural history of the vampire is a rich and varied tale that is now ably documented in From Demons to Dracula, a compelling study of the vampire myth that reveals why this creature of the undead fascinates us so. Beresford’s chronicle roams from the mountains of Eastern Europe to the foggy streets of Victorian England to Hollywood, as he investigates the portrayal of the vampire in history, literature, and art. Opening with the original Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, and his status as a national hero in Romania, he endeavors to winnow out truths from the complex legend and folklore. From Demons to Dracula tracks the evolution of the vampire as an icon and supernatural creature, drawing on classical Greek and Roman myths, witch trials and medieval plagues, Gothic literature, and even contemporary works such as Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire and Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian. Beresford also looks at the widespread impact of screen vampires from television shows, classic movies starring Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, and more recent films such as Underworld and Blade. Whether as a demon of the underworld or a light-fearing hunter of humans, the vampire has endured through the centuries, the book reveals, as powerfully symbolic figure for human concerns with life, death, and the afterlife. A wide-ranging and engrossing chronicle, From Demons to Dracula casts this blood-thirsty nightstalker as a remarkably complex and telling totem of our nightmares, real and imagined.
Download or read book Exorcising the Demons written by Jack Frederick Davies and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his polemic novel 'Demons' Fyodor Dostoevsky noted the destructive power of political actors 'possessed' by the righteousness of ideas over concern for actually existing people. The ideologies of the 20th century, Liberalism, Fascism and Socialism contain within them absolute statements of ontology, teleology and broad human purpose that allow them to incorporate any and all aspects of human social existence into their state projects. The absolute and universal nature of the claims made by these ideologies causes a state of incommensurability in dialougue with other systems that can lead to violent action as political disagreement is translated into ontological incompatibility leading to demonization and dehumanization. This project aims to propose a system based on a modified form of Burkean conservatism that allows for a recognizes the importance of universal beliefs in the context of humility. A humility rooted in the knowledge of the historical contingency of political situations and the inevitability of philosophical change leading to an epistemological skepticism as to the absolute validity of ideological claims. Instead of locating the need for community on shared convictions, political action is rooted in a shared sense of suffering and responsibility interpreted through the Russian Orthodox concept of Sobornost- where each person is responsible for the suffering of others and has an obligation to relieve the suffering of the world in shared humility.
Download or read book The Man from the Third Row written by Fredrik Gustafsson and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-10-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until his early retirement at age 50, Hasse Ekman was one of the leading lights of Swedish cinema, an actor, writer, and director of prodigious talents. Yet today his work is virtually unknown outside of Sweden, eclipsed by the filmography of his occasional collaborator (and frequent rival) Ingmar Bergman. This comprehensive introduction—the first ever in English—follows Ekman’s career from his early days as a film journalist, through landmark films such as Girl with Hyacinths (1950), to his retirement amid exhaustion and disillusionment. Combining historical context with insightful analyses of Ekman’s styles and themes, this long overdue study considerably enriches our understanding of Swedish film history.
Download or read book Old Demons New Deities written by Tenzin Dickie and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first English-language anthology of contemporary Tibetan fiction available in the West, Old Demons, New Deities brings together the best Tibetan writers from both Tibet and the diaspora, who write in Tibetan, English and Chinese. Modern Tibetan literature is just under forty years old: its birth dates to 1980, when the first Tibetan language journal was published in Lhasa. Since then, short stories have become one of the primary modern Tibetan art forms. Through these sometimes absurd, sometimes strange, and always moving stories, the English-reading audience gets an authentic look at the lives of ordinary, secular, modern Tibetans navigating the space between tradition and modernity, occupation and exile, the personal and the national. The setting may be the Himalayas, an Indian railway, or a New York City brothel, but the insights into an ancient culture and the lives and concerns of a modern people are real, and powerful. For this anthology, editor and translator Tenzin Dickie has collected 21 short stories by 16 of the most respected and well known Tibetan writers working today, including Pema Bhum, Pema Tseden, Tsering Dondrup, Woeser, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Kyabchen Dedrol, and Jamyang Norbu.
Download or read book Unveiling Modernity in Twentieth Century West African Islamic Reforms written by Ousman Murzik Kobo and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-08-27 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Ousman Kobo provides a fresh understanding of the indigenous origins of Islamic reforms sympathetic to "Wahhabi" ideas in two West African countries, Burkina Faso and Ghana, and connects these movements to Muslim's search for religious purity in modern contexts.
