Download or read book Responses to Modernity written by Joseph Frank and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book consists of essays and reviews that address social, political, and cultural issues which arose in connection with literature broadly conceived in the wake of the First World War, and extending throughout the twentieth century. The first portion of the volume concerns France, with both essays on individual writers such as Paul Valéry, Jacques Maritain, Albert Camus, André Malraux, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Yves Bonnefoy and a piece on French intellectuals between the wars.The second part concerns Germany and Romania, with essays on Ernst Juenger, Gottfried Benn, Erich Kahler, E. M. Cioran, and others. The volume concludes with essays on problems of literary criticism, in dialogue with such critics as Gary Saul Morson, Ian Watt, T. S. Eliot, and R. P. Blackmur. These essays also discuss the history of the novel and the question of "realism."
Download or read book A Singular Modernity written by Fredric Jameson and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-06-17 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concepts of modernity and modernism are amongst the most controversial and vigorously debated in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory. In this intervention, Fredric Jameson-perhaps the most influential and persuasive theorist of postmodernity-excavates and explores these notions in a fresh and illuminating manner.The extraordinary revival of discussions of modernity, as well as of new theories of artistic modernism, demands attention in its own right. It seems clear that the (provisional) disappearance of alternatives to capitalism plays its part in the universal attempt to revive 'modernity' as a social ideal. Yet the paradoxes of the concept illustrate its legitimate history and suggest some rules for avoiding its misuse as well. In this major interpretation of the problematic, Jameson concludes that both concepts are tainted, but nonetheless yield clues as to the nature of the phenomena they purported to theorize. His judicious and vigilant probing of both terms-which can probably not be banished at this late date-helps us clarify our present political and artistic situations.
Download or read book Essays on Boredom and Modernity written by Barbara Dalle Pezze and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2009 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past thirty years saw a growing academic interest in the phenomenon of boredom. If initially the analyses were mostly a-historical, now the historicity of boredom is widely recognised, though often it is taken as evidence of its permanence as a constant "quality" of the human condition, expression of a metaphysical malady inherent to the fact of being human. New trends in the literature focus on the peculiar relationship between boredom and modernity and attempt to embrace the new social, cultural and political factors which provoked the epochal change of modernity and relate them to a change in the parameters of human experience and the crisis of subjectivity. The very changes that characterise modernity are the same that led to the "democratisation" of boredom: modernity and boredom are shown to be inextricably connected and inseparable. This volume aims at contributing to the growing body of literature on boredom with a number of essays which reflect on the connection of boredom and modernity and focus on particular texts, authors, or aspects of the phenomenon. The approach is multidisciplinary, in keeping with the pervasiveness of the phenomenon in our culture and societies, with essays reflecting on philosophy, literature, film, media and psychology.
Download or read book Antinomies of Modernity written by Sucheta Mazumdar and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-04-21 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVA collection of essays arguing for a global and economically based modernity driven by capitalist development./div
Download or read book Judaism and Modernity written by Gillian Rose and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reinterpretation of thinkers from Benjamin and Rosenzweig to Simone Weil and Derrida Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays challenges the philosophical presentation of Judaism as the sublime ‘other’ of modernity. Here, Gillian Rose develops a philosophical alternative to deconstruction and post-modernism by critically re-engaging the social and political issues at stake in every reconstruction.
Download or read book Transition to Modernity written by Ernest Gellner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-16 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World languages and human dispersals : a minimalist view / Colin Renfrew -- Nomads and oases in Central Asia / A.M. Khazanov -- Why poverty was inevitable in traditional societies / E.A. Wrigley -- On a little known chapter of Mediterranean history / Karl R. Popper -- Ernest Gellner and the escape to modernity / Alan Macfarlane -- The emergence of modern European nationalism / Michael Mann -- Sovereign individuals / Ronald Dore -- Science, politics, enchantment / Perry Anderson -- Deconstructing post-modernism : Gellner and Crocodile Dundee / Joseph Agassi -- A methodology without presuppositions? / John Watkins -- Gellner's positivism / I.C. Jarvie -- Left versus Right in French political ideology / Louis Dumont -- Property, justice and common good after socialism / John Dunn -- Social contract, democracy and freedom / Gerard Radnitzky -- Thoughts on liberalisation / Jose Merquior -- Peace, peace at last? / John A. Hall.
Download or read book Between Reason and Experience written by Andrew Feenberg and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-04-09 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading philosopher of technology calls for the democratic coordination of technical rationality with everyday experience. The technologies, markets, and administrations of today's knowledge society are in crisis. We face recurring disasters in every domain: climate change, energy shortages, economic meltdown. The system is broken, despite everything the technocrats claim to know about science, technology, and economics. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that today powerful technologies have unforeseen effects that disrupt everyday life; the new masters of technology are not restrained by the lessons of experience, and accelerate change to the point where society is in constant turmoil. In Between Reason and Experience, leading philosopher of technology Andrew Feenberg makes a case for the interdependence of reason—scientific knowledge, technical rationality—and experience. Feenberg examines different aspects of the tangled relationship between technology and society from the perspective of critical theory of technology, an approach he has pioneered over the past twenty years. Feenberg points to two examples of democratic interventions into technology: the Internet (in which user initiative has influenced design) and the environmental movement (in which science coordinates with protest and policy). He examines methodological applications of critical theory of technology to the case of the French Minitel computing network and to the relationship between national culture and technology in Japan. Finally, Feenberg considers the philosophies of technology of Heidegger, Habermas, Latour, and Marcuse. The gradual extension of democracy into the technical sphere, Feenberg argues, is one of the great political transformations of our time.
Download or read book Habitations of Modernity written by Dipesh Chakrabarty and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2002-07-15 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Habitations of Modernity, Dipesh Chakrabarty explores the complexities of modernism in India and seeks principles of humaneness grounded in everyday life that may elude grand political theories. The questions that motivate Chakrabarty are shared by all postcolonial historians and anthropologists: How do we think about the legacy of the European Enlightenment in lands far from Europe in geography or history? How can we envision ways of being modern that speak to what is shared around the world, as well as to cultural diversity? How do we resist the tendency to justify the violence accompanying triumphalist moments of modernity? Chakrabarty pursues these issues in a series of closely linked essays, ranging from a history of the influential Indian series Subaltern Studies to examinations of specific cultural practices in modern India, such as the use of khadi—Gandhian style of dress—by male politicians and the politics of civic consciousness in public spaces. He concludes with considerations of the ethical dilemmas that arise when one writes on behalf of social justice projects.
Download or read book The Landscape of Modernity written by David Ward and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1997-04-23 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creating the modern city - Planning for New York City - Real estate values, zoning, density, intervention - Building the vertical city - Empire State Building - Going from home to work - Subways, transit politics - Sweatshop migration - Identity - Little Italy's decline - Jewish neighbourhoods - Cities of light - Street lighting.
Download or read book Aesthetics and Modernity written by Agnes Heller and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Aesthetics and Modernity brings together Agnes Heller's most recent essays around the topics of aesthetic genres such as painting, music, literature and comedy, aesthetic reception, and embodiment. The essays draw on Heller's deep appreciation of aesthetics in all its forms from the classical to the Renaissance and the contemporary periods. Heller's recent work on aesthetics explores the complex status of artworks within the context of the history of modernity, and she engages this task with a critical recognition of modernity's pitfalls. This collection highlights these pitfalls in the context of continuing possibilities for aesthetics and our relationship with works of art, and it throws light on Heller's theory of emotions and feelings and her theory of modernity. Aesthetics and Modernity collects the essential essays of Agnes Heller and is a must-read for anyone interested in Heller's major contributions to philosophy. John Rundell is associate professor of social theory at the University of Melbourne. "--Book jacket.
Download or read book Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity written by Maurizio Passerin d'Entrèves and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of ten essays offers the first systematic assessment of JürgenHabermas's Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, a book that defended the rational potential of themodern age against the depiction of modernity as a spent epoch. The essays (of which four are newlycommissioned, five were published in the journal Praxis International, and one -- by Habermas --first appeared in translation in New Critique) are divided into two sections: Critical Rejoindersand Thematic Reformulations.An opening essay by d'Entrèves sets out the main issues and orients thedebate between Habermas and the postmodernists by identifying two different senses ofresponsibility: a responsibility to act versus a responsibility to otherness (an openness todifference, dissonance, and ambiguity). These are linked with two alternative understandings of theprimary function of language: action-orienting versus world-disclosing. This is a fruitful way oflooking at the issues that Habermas has raised in his attempt to resurrect and complete the projectof Enlightenment.Habermas's essay discusses the main themes of his book in the context of a criticalengagement with neoconservative cultural and political trends. The main body of essays offer aninteresting collection of points of view, for and against Habermas's position by philosophers,social scientists, intellectual historians, and literary critics.SECTIONS & CONTRIBUTORS :Introduction, Maurizio Passerin d'Entrèves. Modernity versus Postmodernity, Jürgen Habermas.Critical Rejoinders : Fred Dallmayr. Christopher Norris. David C. Hoy. James Schmidt. JoelWhitebook. Thematic Reformulations : James Bohman. Diana Coole. Jay M. Bernstein. DavidIngram.
Download or read book Modernism in the Streets written by Marshall Berman and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays tracing the intellectual life of a quintessential New York City writer and thinker Marshall Berman was one of the great urbanists and Marxist cultural critics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and his brilliant, nearly sui generis book All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is a masterpiece of the literature on modernism. But like many New York intellectuals, the essay was his characteristic form, accommodating his multifarious interests and expressing his protean, searching exuberant mind. This collection includes early essays from and on the radical ’60s, on New York City, on literary figures from Kafka to Pamuk, and late essays on rock, hip hop, and gentrification. Concluding with his last essay, completed just before his death in 2013, this book is Berman’s intellectual autobiography, tracing his career as a thinker through the way he read the “signs in the street.””
Download or read book Latin American Cinema written by Lisa Shaw and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2005-03-09 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renewed interest in Latin American film industries has opened a host of paths of scholarly exploration. Productions from different countries reflect particular social attitudes, political climates and self-conceptions, and must be considered separately and as a whole. The search for national identity is a key component of Latin American films in a time of decreasing cultural diversity and pressures to westernize. Globalization and falling government support have fueled cross-border collaborations, calling into question the idea of a movie's "nationality," and leaving some nations' film industries on the brink of collapse. Whether thriving or barely surviving, struggling to remain distinct or embracing globalization on its own terms, addressing the government or society, Latin American cinema remains vibrant, offering a wealth of material to scholars of all stripes. These collected essays explore important elements of Latin American cinema and its associated national film industries. The first section of essays examines the impact of modernization on both Latin American screen images and the industry itself, offering modern and historical perspectives. The second section focuses on filmmakers who deal with issues of gender and sexuality, whether sexual transgression, the role of female characters, or societal attitudes towards sex and nudity. The final section of essays discusses the relationship between national identity and Latin American film industries: how movies are used to create a sense of self; Uruguay's ongoing identity crisis; and Brazil's use of Hollywood's stereotypical depiction of the country to depict itself. Photographs and an annotated bibliography accompany each essay, and an index supplements the text.
Download or read book Endgames written by Albrecht Wellmer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A common theme of this set of thirteen essays by one of the major figures in contemporary German philosophy is the idea of a postmetaphysical modernity. In his preface Wellmer relates the title of his book, Endgames, to this common theme: The historical utopias of the Marxist tradition and the programs of ultimate justification in the Kantian tradition are both endgames within metaphysics, the deconstruction of those utopias and programs of ultimate justification are endgames played with metaphysics, and the game with an end as ultimate telos--the end(s) of history, the end(s) of knowledge, the end(s) of human life--is metaphysics. The title, Endgames, finally also refers polemically to postmodernist games with an end of modernity; as opposed to these, Wellmer defends the fragile moral and political substance of the modernity that postmodernists attempt to overcome--and that sense of what needs to be preserved of the modern tradition for a postmetaphysical modernity is what makes his writings unique. In the first of the book's three parts, "Negative and Communicative Freedom," Wellmer focuses on political philosophy, examining in particular the links and tensions between liberal basic rights and modern ideas of democracy. In Part II, "Postmetaphysical Perspectives," he attempts to develop a postmetaphysical perspective on aesthetics and metaphysics (with and against Adorno), on the problem of truth (with and against Richard Rorty, Jürgen Habermas, and Karl-Otto Apel), and on hermeneutics (with and against Hans-Georg Gadamer and Karl-Otto Apel). Part III, "Images of the Times," contains occasional pieces on Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Frankfurt School, Hans Jonas, and architecture. The book closes with an appended critical essay on Hannah Arendt, reflecting the importance of Arendt's political philosophy to Wellmer's work.
Download or read book Hearing Cultures written by Veit Erlmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-24 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vision is typically treated as the defining sense of the modern era and a powerful vehicle for colonial and postcolonial domination. This is in marked contrast to the almost total absence of accounts of hearing in larger cultural processes. Hearing Cultures is a timely examination of the elusive, often evocative, and sometimes cacophonous auditory sense - from the intersection of sound and modernity, through to the relationship between audio-technological advances and issues of personal and urban space. As cultures and communities grapple with the massive changes wrought by modernization and globalization, Hearing Cultures presents an important new approach to understanding our world. It answers such intriguing questions as: Did people in Shakespeare's time hear differently from us? In what way does technology affect our ears? Why do people in Egypt increasingly listen to taped religious sermons? Why did Enlightenment doctors believe that music was an essential cure? What happens acoustically in cross-cultural first encounters? Why do Runa Indians in the Amazon basin now consider onomatopoetic speech child's talk? The ear, as much as the eye, nose, mouth and hand, offers a way into experience. All five senses are instruments that record, interpret and engage with the world. This book shows how sound offers a refreshing new lens through which to examine culture and complex social issues.
Download or read book The Writer of Modern Life written by Walter Benjamin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this book Benjamin reveals Baudelaire as a social poet of the very first rank. More than a series of studies of Baudelaire, these essays show the extent to which Benjamin identifies with the poet and enable him to explore his own notion of heroism."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Modernist Papers written by Fredric Jameson and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural critic Fredric Jameson, renowned for his incisive studies of the passage of modernism to postmodernism, returns to the movement that dramatically broke with all tradition in search of progress for the first time since his acclaimed A Singular Modernity . The Modernist Papers is a tour de froce of anlysis and criticism, in which Jameson brings his dynamic and acute thought to bear on the modernist literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Jameson discusses modernist poetics, including intensive discussions of the work of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Wallace Stevens, Joyce, Proust, and Thomas Mann. He explores the peculiarties of the American literary field, taking in William Carlos Williams and the American epic, and examines the language theories of Gertrude Stein. Refusing to see modernism as simply a Western phenomenon he also pays close attention to its Japanese expression; while the complexities of a late modernist representation of twentieth-century politics are articulated in a concluding section on Peter Weiss’s novel The Aesthetics of Resistance. Challenging our previous understanding of the literature of this pperiod, this monumental work will come to be regarded as the classic study of modernism.
