Download or read book The Patriotism of Despair written by Serguei Alex. Oushakine and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-23 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sudden dissolution of the Soviet Union altered the routines, norms, celebrations, and shared understandings that had shaped the lives of Russians for generations. It also meant an end to the state-sponsored, nonmonetary support that most residents had lived with all their lives. How did Russians make sense of these historic transformations? Serguei Alex. Oushakine offers a compelling look at postsocialist life in Russia. In Barnaul, a major industrial city in southwestern Siberia that has lost 25 percent of its population since 1991, many Russians are finding that what binds them together is loss and despair. The Patriotism of Despair examines the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, graphically described in spray paint by a graffiti artist in Barnaul: "We have no Motherland." Once socialism disappeared as a way of understanding the world, what replaced it in people's minds? Once socialism stopped orienting politics and economics, how did capitalism insinuate itself into routine practices? Oushakine offers a compelling look at postsocialist life in noncosmopolitan Russia. He introduces readers to the "neocoms": people who mourn the loss of the Soviet economy and the remonetization of transactions that had not involved the exchange of cash during the Soviet era. Moving from economics into military conflict and personal loss, Oushakine also describes the ways in which veterans of the Chechen war and mothers of soldiers who died there have connected their immediate experiences with the country's historical disruptions. The country, the nation, and traumatized individuals, Oushakine finds, are united by their vocabulary of shared pain.
Download or read book Blockbuster History in the New Russia written by Stephen M. Norris and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-19 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seeking to rebuild the Russian film industry after its post-Soviet collapse, directors and producers sparked a revival of nationalist and patriotic sentiment by applying Hollywood techniques to themes drawn from Russian history. Unsettled by the government's move toward market capitalism, Russians embraced these historical blockbusters, packing the American-style multiplexes that sprouted across the country. Stephen M. Norris examines the connections among cinema, politics, economics, history, and patriotism in the creation of "blockbuster history"—the adaptation of an American cinematic style to Russian historical epics.
Download or read book Not So Quiet written by Helen Zenna Smith and published by The Feminist Press at CUNY. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praised by the Chicago Sun-Times for its “furious, indignant power,” this story offers a rare, funny, bitter, and feminist look at war. First published in London in 1930, Not So Quiet... (on the Western Front) describes a group of British women ambulance drivers on the French front lines during World War I, surviving shell fire, cold, and their punishing commandant, "Mrs. Bitch." The novel takes the guise of an autobiography by Smith, pseudonym for Evadne Price. The novel's power comes from Smith's outrage at the senselessness of war, at her country's complacent patriotism, and her own daily contact with the suffering and the wounded.
Download or read book Nexus of Patriotism and Militarism in Russia written by Katri Pynnöniemi and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume explores patriotism and the growing role of militarism in today's Russia. During the last 20-year period, there has been a consistent effort in Russia to consolidate the nation and to foster a sense of unity and common purpose. To this end, Russian authorities have activated various channels, from educational programmes and youth organizations to media and popular culture. With the conflict in Ukraine, the manipulation of public sentiments - feeling of pride and perception of threat - has become more systemic. The traditional view of Russia being Other for Europe has been replaced with a narrative of enmity. The West is portrayed as a threat to Russia's historical-cultural originality while Russia represents itself as a country encircled by enemies. On the other hand, these state-led projects mixing patriotism and militarism are perceived sceptically by the Russian society, especially the younger generations. This volume provides new insights into the evolution of enemy images in Russia and the ways in which societal actors perceive official projections of patriotism and militarism in the Russian society. The contributors of the volume include several experts on Russian studies, contemporary history, political science, sociology, and media studies.
Download or read book Patriotic Dissent written by Daniel A. Sjursen and published by Heyday Books. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is patriotism in our volatile age? This incendiary work by Danny Sjursen is a personal cry from the heart by a once model U.S. Army officer and West Point graduate who became a military dissenter while still on active duty. Set against the backdrop of the terror wars of the last two decades, Sjursen asks whether there is a proper space for patriotism that renounces entitled exceptionalism and narcissistic jingoism. Once a burgeoning believer and budding conservative, who performed an intellectual and spiritual about face, Sjursen calls for a critical exploration of our allegiances, and suggests a path to a new, more complex notion of patriotism. Equal parts somber and idealistic, this is a story about what it means to be an American in the midst of perpetual war, and what the future of patriotism might look like.
Download or read book Besieged Leningrad written by Polina Barskova and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-15 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 872 days of the Siege of Leningrad (September 1941 to January 1944), the city's inhabitants were surrounded by the military forces of Nazi Germany. They suffered famine, cold, and darkness, and a million people lost their lives, making the siege one of the most destructive in history. Confinement in the besieged city was a traumatic experience. Unlike the victims of the Auschwitz concentration camp, for example, who were brought from afar and robbed of their cultural roots, the victims of the Siege of Leningrad were trapped in the city as it underwent a slow, horrific transformation. They lost everything except their physical location, which was layered with historical, cultural, and personal memory. In Besieged Leningrad, Polina Barskova examines how the city's inhabitants adjusted to their new urban reality, focusing on the emergence of new spatial perceptions that fostered the production of diverse textual and visual representations. The myriad texts that emerged during the siege were varied and exciting, engendered by sometimes sharply conflicting ideological urges and aesthetic sensibilities. In this first study of the cultural and literary representations of spatiality in besieged Leningrad, Barskova examines a wide range of authors with competing views of their difficult relationship with the city, filling a gap in Western knowledge of the culture of the siege. It will appeal to Russian studies specialists as well as those interested in war testimonies and the representation of trauma.
Download or read book Clara Schumann Studies written by Joe Davies and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-02 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Develops a holistic and gender-aware understanding of Clara Schumann as pianist, composer and teacher in nineteenth-century Germany.
Download or read book Citizens of the Empire written by Robert Jensen and published by City Lights Books. This book was released on 2004-04 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As we approach the elections of 2004, U.S. progressives are faced with the challenge of how to confront our unresponsive and apparently untouchable power structures. With millions of antiwar demonstrators glibly dismissed as a "focus group," and with the collapse of political and intellectual dialogue into slogans and soundbites used to stifle protest-"Support the Troops," "We Are the Greatest Nation on Earth," etc.-many people feel cynical and hopeless. Citizens of the Empire probes into the sense of disempowerment that has resulted from the Left's inability to halt the violent and repressive course of post-9/11 U.S. policy. In this passionate and personal exploration of what it means to be a citizen of the world's most powerful, affluent and militarized nation in an era of imperial expansion, Jensen offers a potent antidote to despair over the future of democracy. In a plainspoken analysis of the dominant political rhetoric-which is intentionally crafted to depress political discourse and activism-Jensen reveals the contradictions and falsehoods of prevailing myths, using common-sense analogies that provide the reader with a clear-thinking rebuttal and a way to move forward with progressive political work and discussions. With an ethical framework that integrates political, intellectual and emotional responses to the disheartening events of the past two years, Jensen examines the ways in which society has been led to this point and offers renewed hope for constructive engagement. Robert Jensen is a professor of media law, ethics and politics at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream, among other books. He also writes for popular media, and his opinion and analytical pieces on foreign policy, politics and race have appeared in papers and magazines throughout the United States.
Download or read book Regimes of Narcissism Regimes of Despair written by Ashis Nandy and published by OUP India. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this rare collection of essays, Ashis Nandy talks about an India where things have changed drastically in recent years. Looking at the nationalism of Gandhi and Tagore, Savarkar, and Madanlal Pahwa, and cultural psychology, terror and counter-terror, humiliation and human degradation, happiness, and modernity and the sense of loss, the essays open up the future for the next generation of intellectuals and political activists in India and in other societies.
Download or read book Oration by Frederick Douglass Delivered on the Occasion of the Unveiling of the Freedmen s Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Park Washington D C April 14th 1876 with an Appendix written by Frederick Douglass and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2024-06-14 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.
Download or read book Patriotic Treason written by Evan Carton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-09-15 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Brown is a lightning rod of history. Yet he is poorly understood and most commonly described in stereotypes -- as a madman, martyr, or enigma. Not until Patriotic Treason has a biography or history brought him so fully to life, in scintillating prose and moving detail, making his life and legacy -- and the staggering sacrifices he made for his ideals-fascinatingly relevant to today's issues of social justice and to defining the line between activism and terrorism. Vividly re-creating the world in which Brown and his compatriots lived with a combination of scrupulous original research, new perspectives, and a sensitive historical imagination, Patriotic Treason narrates the dramatic life of the first U.S. citizen committed to absolute racial equality. Here are his friendships (Brown lived, worked, ate, and fought alongside African Americans, in defiance of the culture around him), his family (he turned his twenty children by two wives into a dedicated militia), and his ideals (inspired by the Declaration of Independence and the Golden Rule, he collaborated with black leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, and Harriet Tubman to overthrow slavery). Evan Carton captures the complex, tragic, and provocative story of Brown the committed abolitionist, Brown the tender yet demanding and often absent father and husband, and Brown the radical American patriot who attacked the American state in the name of American principles. Through new research into archives, attention to overlooked family letters, and reinterpretation of documents and events, Carton essentially reveals a missing link in American history. A wrenching family saga, Patriotic Treason positions John Brown at the heart of our most profound and enduring national debates. As definitions of patriotism and treason are fiercely contested, as some criticize religious extremism while others mourn religion's decline, and as race relations in America remain unresolved, John Brown's story speaks to us as never before, reminding us that one courageous individual can change the course of history.
Download or read book The Gumilev Mystique written by Mark Bassin and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-04 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the legacy of the historian, ethnographer, and geographer Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912–1992) has attracted extraordinary interest in Russia and beyond. The son of two of modern Russia’s greatest poets, Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova, Gumilev spent thirteen years in Stalinist prison camps, and after his release in 1956 remained officially outcast and professionally shunned. Out of the tumult of perestroika, however, his writings began to attract attention and he himself became a well-known and popular figure. Despite his highly controversial (and often contradictory) views about the meaning of Russian history, the nature of ethnicity, and the dynamics of interethnic relations, Gumilev now enjoys a degree of admiration and adulation matched by few if any other public intellectual figures in the former Soviet Union. He is freely compared to Albert Einstein and Karl Marx, and his works today sell millions of copies and have been adopted as official textbooks in Russian high schools. Universities and mountain peaks alike are named in his honor, and a statue of him adorns a prominent thoroughfare in a major city. Leading politicians, President Vladimir Putin very much included, are unstinting in their deep appreciation for his legacy, and one of the most important foreign-policy projects of the Russian government today is clearly inspired by his particular vision of how the Eurasian peoples formed a historical community. In The Gumilev Mystique, Mark Bassin presents an analysis of this remarkable phenomenon. He investigates the complex structure of Gumilev’s theories, revealing how they reflected and helped shape a variety of academic as well as political and social discourses in the USSR, and he traces how his authority has grown yet greater across the former Soviet Union. The themes he highlights while untangling Gumilev’s complicated web of influence are critical to understanding the political, intellectual, and ethno-national dynamics of Russian society from the age of Stalin to the present day.
Download or read book Banal Nationalism written by Michael Billig and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1995-08-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Billig presents a major challenge to orthodox conceptions of nationalism in this elegantly written book. While traditional theorizing has tended to the focus on extreme expressions of nationalism, the author turns his attention to the everyday, less visible forms which are neither exotic or remote, he describes as `banal nationalism′. The author asks why people do not forget their national identity. He suggests that in daily life nationalism is constantly flagged in the media through routine symbols and habits of language. Banal Nationalism is critical of orthodox theories in sociology, politics and social psychology for ignoring this core feature of national identity. Michael Billig argues forcefully that with nationalism continuing to be a major ideological force in the contemporary world, it is all the more important to recognize those signs of nationalism which are so familiar that they are easily overlooked.
Download or read book I Am a Man written by Joe Starita and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-01-05 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The harrowing story of a Native American man’s tragic loss of land and family, and his heroic journey to reclaim his humanity. In 1877, Chief Standing Bear’s Ponca Indian tribe was forcibly removed from their Nebraska homeland and marched to what was then known as Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), in what became the tribe’s own Trail of Tears. A third of the tribe died on the grueling march, including Standing Bear’s only son. “I Am a Man” chronicles what happened when Standing Bear set off on a six-hundred-mile walk to return the body of his son’s body to the Ponca’s traditional burial ground. It chronicles his efforts to reclaim his land and rights, culminating in his successful use of habeas corpus to gain access to the courts and secure his freedoms. This is a story of survival that explores fundamental issues of citizenship, constitutional protection, and the nature of democracy. Joe Starita’s well-researched and insightful account bring this vital piece of American history brilliantly to life.
Download or read book Faith in the Dream written by Deval Patrick and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The American Dream is founded on the ideals of equality, opportunity, and fair play. These are moral reference points for Americans, matters of conscience. History has shown us time and again that these ideals are motivating. My own life, and the lives of millions of Americans through generations, has demonstrated their power. We need to stop confining our ideals to national holidays and static monuments, and bring them back into our conversations and our politics. We need to let them lead us to the right choices and away from the wrong ones. This is the essence of patriotism. As we decide what kind of country we want to live in, it is time for America's true patriots, by whatever political label, to shape the fate of the nation." Faith in the Dream is a short but powerful eBook and a call to action by one of the nation's most inspirational public figures, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Our country is at a critical crossroads and Americans of all political persuasions sense that something significant is at stake. In this first-of-its-kind eBook, designed to launch a nationwide online conversation, Governor Patrick shows how and why the American Dream itself--the ability of future generations to inherit a country and a life better, more prosperous, and more progressive than that of their forbears--is today very much up for grabs, and what we must all do to restore it. The challenges are daunting, but we cannot sink into anger, defeat, or despair; we must rise to the challenge of protecting the American Dream at all costs. Governor Patrick offers us a path for the future that is built on the best time-honored values of our past and on the powerful role that citizens can play when they come together in support of the common good. Rather than attack government, give up on it, or take it for granted, Patrick heralds our responsibility as Americans to reclaim it, and demand that political leaders stay true to our country's most fundamental values. Capitalizing on the power of our digital age, Faith in the Dream serves as a launching point for a new nationwide dialogue with readers, who are encouraged to share their thoughts and success stories at www.faithinthedream.com regarding what they, and other advocates and leaders they know, are currently doing to improve their communities and country. Offering a modern twist on the time-honored tradition of political pamphlets and perfectly timed for this election season, this is a must-read book--and a stirring invitation to participate--for anyone who cares about the fate of our nation and the sanctity of the American Dream.
Download or read book A Great and Wretched City written by Mark Jurdjevic and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-10 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dispelling the myth that Florentine politics offered only negative lessons, Mark Jurdjevic shows that significant aspects of Machiavelli's political thought were inspired by his native city. Machiavelli's contempt for Florence's shortcomings was a direct function of his considerable estimation of the city's unrealized political potential.
Download or read book After Nationalism written by Samuel Goldman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2021-06-04 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nationalism is on the rise across the Western world, serving as a rallying cry for voters angry at the unacknowledged failures of globalization that has dominated politics and economics since the end of the Cold War. In After Nationalism, Samuel Goldman trains a sympathetic but skeptical eye on the trend, highlighting the deep challenges that face any contemporary effort to revive social cohesion at the national level. Noting the obstacles standing in the way of basing any unifying political project on a singular vision of national identity, Goldman highlights three pillars of mid-twentieth-century nationalism, all of which are absent today: the social dominance of Protestant Christianity, the absorption of European immigrants in a broader white identity, and the defense of democracy abroad. Most of today's nationalists fail to recognize these necessary underpinnings of any renewed nationalism, or the potentially troubling consequences that they would engender. To secure the general welfare in a new century, the future of American unity lies not in monolithic nationalism. Rather, Goldman suggests we move in the opposite direction: go small, embrace difference as the driving characteristic of American society, and support political projects grounded in local communities.
