Download or read book Unstable universalities written by Saul Newman and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unstable universalities, available for the first time in paperback, examines the theme of universality and its place in radical political theory. Saul Newman argues that both Marxist politics of class struggle and the postmodern politics of difference have reached their historical and political limits, and that what is needed is a new approach to universality, a new way of thinking about collective politics. By exploring various themes and ideas within poststructuralist and post-Marxist theory, the book develops a new and original approach to universality – one that has important implications for politics today, particularly on questions of power, subjectivity, ethics and democracy. In so doing, it engages in debates with thinkers such as Laclau, Žižek, Badiou and Rancière over the future of radical politics. It also applies important theoretical insights to contemporary events such as the emergence of the anti-globalisation movement, the ‘war on terrorism’, the rise of anti-immigrant racism, and the nihilistic violence which lurks at the margins of the political.
Download or read book Confronting Universalities written by Mads Anders Baggesgaard and published by Aarhus Universitetsforlag. This book was released on 2011-10-24 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The universe is expanding, the world has gone global, and the US has launched a crusade to export the universal right to democracy to every part of the world. Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the concept of universality is making a remarkable comeback in aesthetic and political theory. The meaning of the world, however, seems more contested than ever. Some denounce it as the ideological guise of particular interests, others as the conceptual equivalent of totalitarianism. But a growing number maintain that universality is an indispensable notion for any genuinely critical aesthetics and politics. Confronting Universalites consists of 12 contributors that examine how contemporary works of art in different media and genres influence, shape, or confront the political realm in both theory and practice by way of the universal. The topics of the essays include depictions of German unification, identity politics of aesthetic taste, contemporary uses of van Gogh, globalized photography, the infamous Danish cartoons, iconic architecture, cinematic representations of migration, the speeches of Nicolas Sarkozy and the interventions of contemporary art in the war in Afghanistan. From various theoretical points of departure, they all demonstrate the importance of the universal in the description of political aesthetic practice in a globalising world.
Download or read book Lotman s Cultural Semiotics and the Political written by Andrey Makarychev and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yuri Lotman (1922-1993) was a prominent Russian intellectual and theorist. This book presents a new reading of his semiotic and philosophical legacy. The authors analyse Lotman's semiotics in a series of temporal contexts, starting with the rigidity of Soviet-era ideologies, through to the post-Soviet de-politicization that - paradoxically enough - ended with the reproduction of Soviet-style hegemonic discourse in the Kremlin and ultimately reignited politically divisive conflicts between Russia and Europe. The book demonstrates how Lotman's ideas cross disciplinary boundaries and their relevance to many European theorists of cultural studies, discourse analysis and political philosophy. Lotman lived and worked in Estonia, which, even under Soviet rule, maintained its own borderland identity located at the intersection of Russian and European cultural flows. The authors argue that in this context Lotman’s theories are particularly revealing in relation to Russian-European interactions and communications, both historically and in a more contemporary sense.
Download or read book Theorizing Contemporary Anarchism written by Iwona Janicka and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The turn of the Millennium demonstrated a fully-fledged revival and fusion of various left-wing social movements with differing agendas. Movements for women's, black, indigenous, LGTB and animal liberation as well as ecological, anti-nuclear and anti-war groups unified against the global capital. Considering the diverse emphases of these movements, is there a philosophical framework that could help us understand their nature and their modes of operation in the 21st century? This book provides a set of conceptual tools offering a theoretical model of 'slow' social transformation, a modality of social change that explicitly differs from the irruptive model of a revolution or a paradigm-changing event. Instead, it proposes the two concepts of mimetic contagion and solidarity with singularity which allow us to understand what is currently happening in the activist milieu. By bringing together some of today's most important thinkers, including Butler, Girard, Badiou, and Sloterdijk this book suggests a philosophical lens to look at the alternative living projects that contemporary left-wing activists undertake in practice. At the heart of their projects lie the pressing concerns that these contemporary philosophers currently debate. Breaking from the conceptual apparatus of the Marxian tradition, Theorizing Contemporary Anarchism instead takes Hegelian concepts and feeds them through the thought of contemporary theorists in order to form an original, productive, and inclusive scaffold with which to understand today's world of social and political movements.
Download or read book Critique of Political Decolonization written by Bernard Forjwuor and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-24 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is political independence? As a political act, what was it sanctioned to accomplish? Is formal colonialism over, or a condition in the present, albeit mutated and evolved? In Critique of Political Decolonization, Bernard Forjwuor challenges what, in normative scholarship, has become a persistent conflation of two different concepts: political decolonization and political independence. This scholarly volume is an antinormative and critical refutation of the decolonial accomplishment of political independence or self-determination in Ghana. He argues that political independence is insufficiently a decolonial claim because it is framed within the context of a country, where a permanent colonial settlement was never deemed necessary for the consolidation of future colonial political obligations. So, while territorial dissolution was politically engineered by Ghanaians, the colonial merely reconstitutes itself in different legal and ideological forms. Forjwuor offers new methodological, theoretical, and conceptual approaches to engaging the questions of colonialism, political independence, political decolonization, justice, and freedom, and constructs multiple conceptual bridges between traditional disciplinary fields of inquiry including politics, history, law, African studies, economic history, critical theory, and philosophy and political theory. Using the Ghanaian experience as a rich case study, Forjwuor rethinks what colonialism and decolonization mean, and asserts that decolonization is primarily a question of justice.
Download or read book Post Fukushima Activism written by Azumi Tamura and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-23 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political disillusionment is widespread in contemporary society. In Japan, the search for the ‘outside’ of a stagnant reality sometimes leads marginalised young people to a disastrous image of social change. The Fukushima nuclear disaster was the realisation of such an image, triggering the largest wave of activism since the 1960s. The disaster revealed the interconnected nature of contemporary society. The protesters regretted that their past indifference to politics prefigured such a catastrophe and became motivated to protest in the streets. They did not share any totalising ideology or predetermined collective identity. Instead, the activism provided a space for each body to encounter others who forced them to feel and think, which also introduced an ethical dimension to their politics. In this book, Azumi Tamura proposes a concept of politics as a series of endless experiments based on creative responses to unexpected forces. Instead of searching for a transcendental reference for politics, she investigates an immanent force within individuals that motivates them to become involved in political action. Referencing Deleuzian philosophy, Tamura provides a different epistemological and ontological approach to the social movement studies. She suggests social movements themselves generate knowledge about how one may live better in a complex society and where our lives are exposed to uncertainty. This knowledge is neither empirical knowledge, nor normative political theory of ‘how we should live’. Instead, social movements bring affective knowledge into politics as they offer a space for experimenting with ‘how we might live.’ The encounter with such knowledge galvanizes our desire for ‘how we want to live’ and encourages new experiments.
Download or read book Radical Democracy and Collective Movements Today written by Alexandros Kioupkiolis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 'Arab spring', the Spanish indignados, the Greek aganaktismenoi and the Occupy Wall Street movement all share a number of distinctive traits; they made extensive use of social networking and were committed to the direct democratic participation of all as they co-ordinated and conducted their actions. Leaderless and self-organized, they were socially and ideologically heterogeneous, dismissing fixed agendas or ideologies. Still, the assembled multitudes that animated these mobilizations often claimed to speak in the name of ’the people’, and they aspired to empowered forms of egalitarian self-government in common. Similar features have marked collective resistances from the Zapatistas and the Seattle protests onwards, giving rise to theoretical and practical debates over the importance of these ideological and political forms. By engaging with the controversy between the autonomous, biopolitical ’multitude’ of Hardt and Negri and the arguments in favour of the hegemony of ’the people’ advanced by J. Rancière, E. Laclau, C. Mouffe and S. Zizek the central aim of this book is to discuss these instances of collective mobilization, to probe the innovative practices and ideas they have developed and to debate their potential to reinvigorate democracy whilst seeking something better than ’disaster capitalism’.
Download or read book The Bloomsbury Companion to Anarchism written by Ruth Kinna and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bloomsbury Companion to Anarchism is a comprehensive reference work to support research in anarchism. The book considers the different approaches to anarchism as an ideology and explains the development of anarchist studies from the early twentieth century to the present day. It is unique in that it highlights the relationship between theory and practice, pays special attention to methodology, presents non-English works, key terms and concepts, and discusses new directions for the field. Focusing on the contemporary movement, the work outlines significant shifts in the study of anarchist ideas and explores recent debates. The Companion will appeal to scholars in this growing field, whether they are interested in the general study of anarchism or in more specific areas. Featuring the work of key scholars, The Bloomsbury Companion to Anarchism will be an essential tool for both the scholar and the activist.
Download or read book Comparative Law as Transnational Law written by Russell A. Miller and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assembles the works of scholars from around the world, forming a contextual demonstration of the increasing encounters and tensions among legal cultures. In offering different approaches to an understanding of transnational law, the chapters also bring out the important consequences of a more global outlook in legal scholarship, legal practice, and legal education.
Download or read book The New Pynchon Studies written by Joanna Freer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-09 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this collection are at the forefront of Pynchon studies, representing distinctively twenty-first century approaches to his work.
Download or read book What is Radical Politics Today written by J. Pugh and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A crisis makes you rethink your life. The recent economic crisis is no exception. All of us are now thinking how the world could be run differently. Despite this, a radical alternative has hardly emerged to mobilize the masses. Written for the public and students, this book explores the character and spirit of radical politics in our times.
Download or read book Social Movements The Key Concepts written by Graeme Chesters and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-10-04 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social Movements: The Key Concepts provides an insightful, contemporary introduction to some of the frequently encountered terms and groups that are central to the study of collective action and social and political activism. Following an A-Z format, the entries defined and discussed are drawn from the following areas: the ‘old’ social movements of the nineteenth century the ‘new’ social movements of the 1960s and 1970s the rise of contemporary ‘network’ movements. Key American, European and global social movements are addressed, with each entry related to contemporary developments and emergent tendencies within the field. Including helpful references for further study, this concise and up-to-date guide is of relevance for those studying a range of disciplines, including sociology, politics, cultural studies and human geography.
Download or read book The Evolution of Migration Management in the Global North written by Christina Oelgemoller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Evolution of Migration Management in the Global North explores how the radically violent migration management paradigm that dominates today's international migration has been assembled. Drawing on unique archive material, it shows how a forum of diplomats and civil servants constructed the 'transit country' as a site in which the illegal migrant became the main actor to be vilified. Policy-makers are divided between those who oppose migration, and those who support it, so long as it is properly managed. Any other position is generally seen at best as utopian. This volume advances a new way of conceptualizing policy-making in international migration at the regional and international level. Introducing the concept of 'informal plurilateralism', Oelgemöller explores how the Inter-Governmental Consultations on Asylum, Migration and Refugees (IGC), created the hegemonic paradigm of 'Migration Management', thus enabling today's specific ways the 'migrant' has their juridico-political status violently denied. This raises crucial questions about what democracy is and about the way in which the value of a human being is established, granted or denied. Inviting debate in a field which is often under-theorized, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of International Relations, Migration Studies and International Relations Theory.
Download or read book What Is Public History Globally written by Paul Ashton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the globe, history has gone public. With the rise of the internet, family historians are now delving into archives continents apart. Activists look into and recreate the past to promote social justice or environmental causes. Dark and difficult pasts are confronted at sites of commemoration. Artists draw on memory and the past to study the human condition and make meaning in the present. As a result of this democratisation of history, public history movements have now risen to prominence. This groundbreaking edited collection takes a comprehensive look at public history throughout the world. Divided into three sections - Background, Definitions and Issues; Approaches and Methods; and Sites of Public History - it contextualises public history in eleven different countries, explores the main research skills and methods of the discipline and illustrates public history research with a variety of global case studies. What is Public History Globally? provides an in-depth examination of the ways in which ordinary people become active participants in historical processes and it will be an invaluable resource for advance undergraduates and postgraduates studying public history, museology and heritage studies.
Download or read book Rethinking Contemporary Feminist Politics written by J. Dean and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-07-21 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking Contemporary Feminist Politics puts forward a timely analysis of contemporary feminism. Critically engaging with both narratives of feminist decline and re-emergence, it draws on poststructuralist political theory to assess current forms of activism in the UK and present a provocative account of recent developments in feminist politics.
Download or read book Native American Survivance Memory and Futurity written by Birgit Däwes and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-25 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 11 Ecstatic Vision, Blue Ravens, Wild Dreams: The Urgency of the Future in Gerald Vizenor's Art -- Contributors -- Index
Download or read book The Polemics of Ressentiment written by Sjoerd van Tuinen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-05-17 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of populism, cynicism, fanaticism and fundamentalism challenges us to reconsider the problem of ressentiment. Characterized by Nietzsche as the self-poisoning of the will through internalising trauma in the form of a postponed and imaginary revenge, the concept of ressentiment is making a comeback in political discourse. Unlike resentment, the feeling of injustice, ressentiment is an intrinsically polemical notion. It implies a political drama in which there is no inherent good sense in its application and no universal criterion. Drawing on psychoanalysis, political theory, media theory and philosophy, this book examines a wide variety of ideological contexts, offering an examination of the divergent senses in which the concept of ressentiment is used today.
