Download or read book The Eros of Everyday Life written by Susan Griffin and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1996-08-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her award-winning examination of the nature of war, A Chorus of Stones, critically acclaimed author and feminist Susan Griffin showed new ways of thinking about society and war, about private and public lives. In The Eros of Everyday Life, she once again takes readers on a startling journey, showing the profound connections between religion and philosophy, science and nature, Western thought and the role of women, and the supremacy of abstract thought over the forces of life. Featuring the brilliant original title essay that is nothing less than an intellectual and emotional exploration of the nature of Western society itself, as well as Susan Griffin's best previously published essays of the past decade, The Eros of Everyday Life combines the beautiful lyricism and sensibility of a poet with the intellectual rigor of one of the finest and most original minds writing today.
Download or read book The Eros of Everyday Life written by Susan Griffin and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant collection of thought-provoking essays on gender, nature, passion, and society from an acclaimed feminist, philosopher, and poet In The Eros of Everyday Life, one of America’s most provocative writers and thinkers offers insightful and compelling views on a wide range of social, ecological, and gender issues. From a distinctly feminist point of view, Susan Griffin explores the intricate connections between science and religion, nature and society, women and men, and love and consciousness. She brilliantly commingles lyrical memoir with cogent social commentary, producing a colorful literary tapestry that examines contemporary life and culture, its contradictions and complexities, and the rise of new ideologies. The Eros of Everyday Life showcases a decade’s worth of the very best writing by this acclaimed Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. It is an enthralling anthology that reveals the ways in which Western society undermines itself by diminishing both woman and the natural environment, and yet it is also a celebration of the power of passion, and the remarkable evolution of the human capacity for love.
Download or read book The Power of Divine Eros written by A. H. Almaas and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two innovative spiritual teachers show how to use desire and passion—eros—as a gateway to realizing our fullest potential What do desire and passion have to do with our spiritual journey? According to A. H. Almaas and Karen Johnson, they are an essential part of it. Conventional wisdom cautions that desire and passion are opposed to the spiritual path—that engaging in desire will take you more into the world, into egoic life. And for most people, that is exactly what happens. We naturally tend to experience wanting in a self-centered way. The Power of Divine Eros challenges the view that the divine and the erotic are separate. When we open to the energy, aliveness, spontaneity, and zest of erotic love, we will find it inseparable from the realm of the holy and sacred. When this is understood, desire and passion become a gateway to wholeness and to realizing our full potential. Through guided exercises, the authors reveal how our relationships become opportunities on the spiritual journey to express ourselves authentically, to relate with openness, and to discover dynamic inner realms with another person. Through embodying the energy of eros, each of us can learn to be fully real and alive in all of our interactions.
Download or read book A Chorus of Stones written by Susan Griffin and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant and provocative exploration of the interconnection of private life and the large-scale horrors of war and devastation. A Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and a winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award, Susan Griffin’s A Chorus of Stones is an extraordinary reevaluation of history that explores the links between individual lives and catastrophic, world-altering violence. One of the most acclaimed and poetic voices of contemporary American feminism, Griffin delves into the perspective of those whose personal relationships and family histories were profoundly influenced by war and its often secret mechanisms: the bomb-maker and the bombing victim, the soldier and the pacifist, the grand architects who were shaped by personal experience and in turn reshaped the world. Declaring that “each solitary story belongs to a larger story”—and beginning with the brutal and heartbreaking circumstances of her own childhood—Griffin examines how the subtle dynamics of parenthood, childhood, and marriage interweave with the monumental violence of global conflict. She proffers a bold and powerful new understanding of the psychology of war through illuminating glimpses into the personal lives of Ernest Hemingway, Mahatma Gandhi, Heinrich Himmler, British officer Sir Hugh Trenchard, and other historic figures—as well as the munitions workers at Oak Ridge, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, and other humbler yet indispensible witnesses to history.
Download or read book A Plea for Eros written by Siri Hustvedt and published by Picador. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the international bestseller What I Loved, a provocative collection of autobiographical and critical essays about writing and writers. Whether her subject is growing up in Minnesota, cross-dressing, or the novel, Hustvedt's nonfiction, like her fiction, defies easy categorization, elegantly combining intellect, emotion, wit, and passion. With a light touch and consummate clarity, she undresses the cultural prejudices that veil both literature and life and explores the multiple personalities that inevitably inhabit a writer's mind. Is it possible for a woman in the twentieth century to endorse the corset, and at the same time approach with authority what it is like to be a man? Hustvedt does. Writing with rigorous honesty about her own divided self, and how this has shaped her as a writer, she also approaches the works of others--Fitzgerald, Dickens, and Henry James--with revelatory insight, and a practitioner's understanding of their art.
Download or read book The Book of the Courtesans written by Susan Griffin and published by Crown. This book was released on 2002-02-06 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pulitzer-Prize-nominated author Susan Griffin comes an unprecedented, provocative look at the dazzling world of the West’s first independent women, whose lively liaisons brought them unspoken influence, wealth, and freedom. While they charmed some of Europe’s most illustrious men honing their social skills as well as their sexual ones, the great courtesans gained riches, power, education, and sexual freedom in a time when other women were denied all of these. From Imperia of sixteenth-century Rome, who personified the Renaissance ideal of beauty; Mme. de Pompadour, the arbiter of all things fashionable in eighteenth-century Paris and Versailles; Liane de Pougy, known in France during the Belle Epoque as “Our National Courtesan”; to Sarah Bernhardt, who, following in her mother’s footsteps, supported herself in her early career with a second profession, The Book of the Courtesans tells the life stories and intricacies of the lavish lifestyles of these women. Unlike their geisha counterparts, courtesans neither lived in brothels nor bent their wills to suit their suitors. They were strong- willed, autonomous, and plucky. An open secret, their presence can be felt throughout our culture. The muses who enflamed the hearts and imaginations of our most celebrated artists, they were also artists in their own right. They wrote poetry and novels, invented the cancan at the Moulin Rouge, and presented celebrated acts at the Folies Bergères. They helped to influence and shape the sensibility of modern literature, painting, and fashion. When Greek sculptor Praxiteles wanted to depict Venus he used a famous courtesan as a model, as in later centuries Titian, Veronese, Raphael, Giorgione, and Boucher did when they painted goddesses. When Marcel Proust was a young man it was the courtesan Laure Hayman who took him under her wing, introducing him to the right people, and providing inspiration for one of literature’s greatest masterpieces. And they often had considerable political influence too. When King Louis XV needed advice on foreign affairs or appointments of state he turned to Jeanne du Barry as well as Pompadour. In her witty and insightful prose, as Griffin celebrates these alluring and fascinating women, she restores a lost legacy of women’s history. She gives us the stories of these amazing women who, starting from impoverished or unimpressive beginnings, garnered chateaux, fine coaches, fabulous collections of jewelry, and even aristocratic titles along the way. And through a brilliant exploration of their extraordinary abilities, skills, and talents which Griffin playfully categorizes as their virtues "Timing, Beauty, Cheek, Brilliance, Gaiety, Grace, and Charm" her book explains how, while helping themselves, through their often outrageous, always entertaining examples, the great courtesans not only enriched our cultural heritage but helped to liberate women from the social, sexual, and economic strictures that confined them. Intensively researched and beautifully crafted, The Book of the Courtesans delves into scintillating but often hidden worlds, telling stories gleaned from many sources, including courtesans’ memoirs, presented along with stunning rare photographs to create memorable portraits of some of the most pivotal figures in women’s history.
Download or read book Pornography and Silence written by Susan Griffin and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterwork of feminist ideology, brilliantly exposing pornography as the antithesis of free expression and the enemy of liberty In this powerful and devastating critique, poet, philosopher, and feminist Susan Griffin exposes the inherent psychological horrors of pornography. Griffin argues that, rather than encouraging expression, pornographic images and the philosophies that support them actually stifle freedoms through the dehumanization, subjugation, and degradation of female subjects. The pornographic mindset, Griffin contends, is akin to racism in that it causes dangerous schisms in society and promotes sexual regression, fear, and hatred. This violent rift in Western culture is explored by examining the lives of six notable individuals across two centuries: Franz Marc, the Marquis de Sade, Kate Chopin, Lawrence Singleton, Anne Frank, and Marilyn Monroe. The result is an extraordinary new approach to evaluating sexual health and the parameters of erotic imagination. Griffin reveals pornography as “not a love of the life of the body, but a fear of bodily knowledge, and a desire to silence Eros.”
Download or read book The Way of the Dog written by Eva A. MacDonnell and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2018-10-27 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eros is a poodle puppy, born in rural New Jersey. He is a prodigy when it comes to questions, although his prodigiousness ends when it comes to answers—for now. As just a puppy, there is much to learn before Eros can enter the wild, a fascinating and dangerous place for dogs and humans alike. He hones his skills for the sole purpose of survival. It takes time for young Eros to realize that life is about much more than survival; life is about finding happiness. However, to find happiness, it is imperative that Eros grows stronger, fights better, and finds time to play. There will be difficulties, of course, but the drive to survive inspires endurance in the young pup as he seeks purpose and love. When Eros believes happiness is out there waiting, it is! He discovers that finding happiness is not hard if he keeps his eyes open. In this playful allegory, there is much to learn from a poodle puppy, but the wisest thing Eros ever learned: “The purpose of life is to find happiness, and you can only discover happiness through the knowledge that you find.”
Download or read book Ecology of Everyday Life written by Chaia Heller and published by Black Rose Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecology of Everyday Life examines the ecological impulse as a 'desire for nature', a desire that emerges as people within industrial capitalist contexts respond to the personal and aesthetic, rather than the physical and political implications of ecological breakdown. While exploring the historical causes of this romantic 'desire for nature', Heller also offers a way to reconstruct ideas of both `nature' and 'desire', drawing from feminist, anarchist, and social ecological theory. She provides an activist response to ecological questions, arguing that the ecology movement too often links ecological problems to personal, psychological, and spiritual concerns, rather than to concerns of social justice. Yet rather than dismiss such personal and qualitative concerns, Heller links the desire for a more meaningful and integral quality of life to the activist impulse itself. Questioning assumptions about 'nature', 'desire', and 'the ecological agenda', the author encourages readers to consider new ways of desiring nature that entail changes not only in personal life-style and outlook, but changes in social institutions as well. Chaia Heller holds a MA in psychology and has worked for many years as a clinical social worker counselling and advocating for women struggling with issues of domestic abuse and poverty. In addition, she has had a long career as a teacher and international lecturer in the fields of social ecology and ecofeminism and is currently on the faculty at the Institute for Social Ecology. She also teaches at the University of Massachusetts where she is pursuing a PhD.
Download or read book Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy written by Susan Griffin and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2008 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative work, Susan Griffin charts the rise and fall of our society’s highest values—equality, truth, and freedom—from the Declaration of Independence to the Iraq War. Combining contemplative memoir with social and political history, she explores both the inward and outward dimensions of our democracy. She argues compellingly that the dawning of American democracy represented nothing less than a revolution of consciousness, one that is still unfolding today.
Download or read book Revolution of Everyday Life written by Raoul Vaneigem and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2012-10-05 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published just months before the May 1968 upheavals in France, Raoul Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life offered a lyrical and aphoristic critique of the “society of the spectacle” from the point of view of individual experience. Whereas Debord’s masterful analysis of the new historical conditions that triggered the uprisings of the 1960s armed the revolutionaries of the time with theory, Vaneigem’s book described their feelings of desperation directly, and armed them with “formulations capable of firing point-blank on our enemies.” “I realise,” writes Vaneigem in his introduction, “that I have given subjective will an easy time in this book, but let no one reproach me for this without first considering the extent to which the objective conditions of the contemporary world advance the cause of subjectivity day after day.” Vaneigem names and defines the alienating features of everyday life in consumer society: survival rather than life, the call to sacrifice, the cultivation of false needs, the dictatorship of the commodity, subjection to social roles, and above all the replacement of God by the Economy. And in the second part of his book, “Reversal of Perspective,” he explores the countervailing impulses that, in true dialectical fashion, persist within the deepest alienation: creativity, spontaneity, poetry, and the path from isolation to communication and participation. For “To desire a different life is already that life in the making.” And “fulfillment is expressed in the singular but conjugated in the plural.” The present English translation was first published by Rebel Press of London in 1983. This new edition of The Revolution of Everyday Life has been reviewed and corrected by the translator and contains a new preface addressed to English-language readers by Raoul Vaneigem. The book is the first of several translations of works by Raoul Vaneigem that PM Press plans to publish in uniform volumes. Vaneigem’s classic work is to be followed by The Knight, the Lady, the Devil, and Death (2003) and The Inhumanity of Religion (2000).
Download or read book Woman and Nature written by Susan Griffin and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2016-08-22 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this famously provocative cornerstone of feminist literature, Susan Griffin explores the identification of women with the earth—both as sustenance for humanity and as victim of male rage. Starting from Plato's fateful division of the world into spirit and matter, her analysis of how patriarchal Western philosophy and religion have used language and science to bolster their power over both women and nature is brilliant and persuasive, coming alive in poetic prose. Griffin draws on an astonishing range of sources—from timbering manuals to medical texts to Scripture and classical literature—in showing how destructive has been the impulse to disembody the human soul, and how the long separated might once more be rejoined. Poet Adrienne Rich calls Woman and Nature "perhaps the most extraordinary nonfiction work to have merged from the matrix of contemporary female consciousness—a fusion of patriarchal science, ecology, female history and feminism, written by a poet who has created a new form for her vision. ...The book has the impact of a great film or a fresco; yet it is intimately personal, touching to the quick of woman's experience."
Download or read book Eros and Polis written by Paul W. Ludwig and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-10-21 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eros and Polis examines how and why Greek theorists treated political passions as erotic. Because of the tiny size of ancient Greek cities, contemporary theory and ideology could conceive of entire communities based on desire. A recurrent aspiration was to transform the polity into one great household that would bind the citizens together through ties of mutual affection. In this study, Paul Ludwig evaluates sexuality, love and civic friendship as sources of political attachment and as bonds of political association. Studying the ancient view of eros recovers a way of looking at political phenomena that provides a bridge, missing in modern thought, between the private and public spheres, between erotic love and civic commitment. Ludwig's study thus has important implications for the theoretical foundations of community.
Download or read book What Her Body Thought written by Susan Griffin and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this boldly intimate and intelligent blend of personal memoir, social history, and cultural criticism, Susan Griffin profoundly illuminates our understanding of illness. She explores its physical, emotional, spiritual, and social aspects, revealing how it magnifies our yearning for connection and reconciliation. Griffin begins with a gripping account of her own harrowing experiences with Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS), a potentially life-threatening illness that has been misconstrued and marginalized through the label "psychosomatic." Faced with terrifying bouts of fatigue, pain, and diminished thinking, the shame of illness, and the difficulty of being told you are "not really ill," she was driven to understand how early childhood loss made her susceptible to disease. Alongside her own story, Griffin weaves in her fascinating interpretation of the story of Marie du Plessis, popularized as the fictional Camille, an eighteenth-century courtesan whose young life was taken by tuberculosis. In the old story, Griffin finds contemporary themes of "money, bills, creditors, class, social standing, who is acceptable and who not, who is to be protected and who abandoned." In our current economy, she sees "how to be sick can impoverish, how poverty increases the misery of sickness, and how the implicit violence of this process wounds the soul as well as the body." Griffin insists that we must tell our stories to maintain our own integrity and authority, so that the sources of suffering become visible and validated. She writes passionately of a society where we are all cared for through "the rootedness of our connections. How the wound of being allowed to suffer points to a need to meet at the deepest level, to make an exchange at the nadir of life and death, the giving and taking which will weave a more spacious fabric of existence, communitas, community." Her views of the larger problems of illness and society are deeply illuminating.
Download or read book The Practice of Everyday Life written by Michel de Certeau and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws on an immense theoretical literature in analytic philosophy, linguistics, sociology, semiology, and anthropology--to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.
Download or read book Dark Eros written by Thomas Moore and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Eros Power written by Hilary Bradbury and published by . This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can you approach love in a way that opens your eyes rather than blinds you? Can you love passionately, compassionately, and dispassionately all at once? Can you love non-possessively but with commitment? Can you love inquiringly, bringing benefit to your beloveds? What is the relationship between your spiritual life and embodied love? How are we each to engage this great life adventure, in spite of our unique wounds? In this book filled with passion, compassion, and dispassion, Hilary Bradbury and Bill Torbert go way, way out on a limb. Sharing their erotic autobiographies with us - the beautiful and the ugly - starting with the history of their relationship with one another as professor and student, they invite exploration of the secret places where true love gets lived (and gets crushed). They ask us to reflect on our own stories of love and loss as a way to re-imagine the whole world of erotic friendship in more life affirming ways, at home, at play and at work. Coaxing love under the sign of inquiry they suggest that we already know that passionate love can enchant us, exerting a power over us that can feel like the most liberating feeling in the world. Yet it can also lead us into torturous agony. They discuss the exercise of power to love rather than imprison self and other. These pages invite you to invite yourself and your friends further into this living inquiry, inviting love with inquiry, joining Eros with Power.
