Download or read book Politics and the Imagination written by Raymond Geuss and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-07 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In politics, utopians do not have a monopoly on imagination. Even the most conservative defenses of the status quo, Raymond Geuss argues, require imaginative acts of some kind. In this collection of recent essays, including his most overtly political writing yet, Geuss explores the role of imagination in politics, particularly how imaginative constructs interact with political reality. He uses decisions about the war in Iraq to explore the peculiar ways in which politicians can be deluded and citizens can misunderstand their leaders. He also examines critically what he sees as one of the most serious delusions of western political thinking--the idea that a human society is always best conceived as a closed system obeying fixed rules. And, in essays on Don Quixote, museums, Celan's poetry, Heidegger's brother Fritz, Richard Rorty, and bourgeois philosophy, Geuss reflects on how cultural artifacts can lead us to embrace or reject conventional assumptions about the world. While paying particular attention to the relative political roles played by rule-following, utilitarian calculations of interest, and aspirations to lead a collective life of a certain kind, Geuss discusses a wide range of related issues, including the distance critics need from their political systems, the extent to which history can enlighten politics, and the possibility of utopian thinking in a world in which action retains its urgency.
Download or read book The Politics of Imagining Asia written by Hui Wang and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-15 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this bold, provocative collection, Wang Hui confronts some of the major issues concerning modern China and the status quo of contemporary Chinese thought. The book’s overarching theme is the possibility of an alternative modernity that does not rely on imported conceptions of Chinese history and its legacy. Wang Hui argues that current models, based largely on Western notions of empire and the nation-state, fail to account for the richness and diversity of pre-modern Chinese historical practice. At the same time, he refrains from offering an exclusively Chinese perspective and placing China in an intellectual ghetto. Navigating terrain on regional language and politics, he draws on China’s unique past to expose the inadequacies of European-born standards for assessing modern China’s evolution. He takes issue particularly with the way in which nation-state logic has dominated politically charged concerns like Chinese language standardization and “The Tibetan Question.” His stance is critical—and often controversial—but he locates hope in the kinds of complex, multifaceted arrangements that defined China and much of Asia for centuries. The Politics of Imagining Asia challenges us not only to re-examine our theories of “Asia” but to reconsider what “Europe” means as well. As Theodore Huters writes in his introduction, “Wang Hui’s concerns extend beyond China and Asia to an ambition to rethink world history as a whole.”
Download or read book Imagining World Politics written by L.H.M. Ling and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-03 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a non-Western feminist perspective on world politics and international relations. Creative, innovative, and challenging, it seeks completely to transform contemporary Eurocentric and masculinist IR by re-presenting it in non-Western, non-masculinist, and non-academic terms. Drawing on Daoist dialectics, the stories of Sihar and Shenya aim to redress such hegemonic imbalance by completing the IR story. To the yang of power politics, this book offers a yin of fairy-tale. (Both are equally fantastical but to different purposes.) To the yang of binary categories like Self vs Other, West vs Rest, hypermasculinity vs hyperfemininity, Sihar and Shenya show their yin complementarities and complicities, inside and out, top and bottom, center and periphery. And to the yang of intransigent hegemony, Sihar & Shenya explores the yin of emancipation through porous, water-like thought and behavior through venues like aesthetics and emotions. From this basis, we begin to see another world with another kind of politics. Written with students of IR and world politics in mind, this book offers a postcolonial bridge for IR/WP. Following an academic introduction to assist the reader, Ling moves away from traditional scholarship and into three interlocking fables: Book I shows what an alternative world could look and feel like. Book II makes the implications for IR/WP more explicit. It draws on the traditional Chinese notion of the five movements (wu xing) -- fire, metal, earth, wood, and water -- to illustrate iconic elements of IR/WP -- power, wealth, security, love, and knowledge -- and how they could change according to circumstance and context. Epilogue/Introduction: The Return brings the reader back into the Western world and focuses on modern-day PhD student Wanda who is troubled by what she is learning, and searches for a different perspective. Engaging with the substantive problematiques at the heart of international relations studies, this work is a unique and innovative resource for all students and scholars of international relations and world politics.
Download or read book The Politics of Imagination written by Chiara Bottici and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics of Imagination offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the contemporary relationship between politics and the imagination. What role does our capacity to form images play in politics? And can we define politics as a struggle for people’s imagination? As a result of the increasingly central place of the media in our lives, the political role of imagination has undergone a massive quantitative and a qualitative change. As such, there has been a revival of interest in the concept of imagination, as the intimate connections between our capacity to form images and politics becomes more and more evident. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and theoretical outlooks, The Politics of Imagination examines how the power of imagination reverberates in the various ambits of social and political life: in law, history, art, gender, economy, religion and the natural sciences. And it will be of considerable interest to those with contemporary interests in philosophy, political philosophy, political science, legal theory, gender studies, sociology, nationalism, identity studies, cultural studies, and media studies.
Download or read book Imaginal Politics written by Chiara Bottici and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the radical, creative capacity of our imagination and the social imaginary we are immersed in is an intermediate space philosophers have termed the imaginal, populated by images or (re)presentations that are presences in themselves. Offering a new, systematic understanding of the imaginal and its nexus with the political, Chiara Bottici brings fresh perspective to the formation of political and power relationships and the paradox of a world rich in imagery yet seemingly devoid of imagination. Bottici begins by defining the difference between the imaginal and the imaginary, locating the imaginal's root meaning in the image and its ability to both characterize a public and establish a set of activities within that public. She identifies the imaginal's critical role in powering representative democracies and its amplification through globalization. She then addresses the troublesome increase in images now mediating politics and the transformation of politics into empty spectacle. The spectacularization of politics has led to its virtualization, Bottici observes, transforming images into processes with an uncertain relationship to reality, and, while new media has democratized the image in a global society of the spectacle, the cloned image no longer mediates politics but does the act for us. Bottici concludes with politics' current search for legitimacy through an invented ideal of tradition, a turn to religion, and the incorporation of human rights language.
Download or read book Imagining Interest in Political Thought written by Stephen G. Engelmann and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-09-05 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVEngelmann revisits Jeremy Bentham's work in the context of later liberal political theorists./div
Download or read book The Politics of Dialogic Imagination written by Katsuya Hirano and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-21 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Politics of Dialogic Imagination, Katsuya Hirano seeks to understand why, with its seemingly unrivaled power, the Tokugawa shogunate of early modern Japan tried so hard to regulate the ostensibly unimportant popular culture of Edo (present-day Tokyo)—including fashion, leisure activities, prints, and theater. He does so by examining the works of writers and artists who depicted and celebrated the culture of play and pleasure associated with Edo’s street entertainers, vagrants, actors, and prostitutes, whom Tokugawa authorities condemned to be detrimental to public mores, social order, and political economy. Hirano uncovers a logic of politics within Edo’s cultural works that was extremely potent in exposing contradictions between the formal structure of the Tokugawa world and its rapidly changing realities. He goes on to look at the effects of this logic, examining policies enacted during the next era—the Meiji period—that mark a drastic reconfiguration of power and a new politics toward ordinary people under modernizing Japan. Deftly navigating Japan’s history and culture, The Politics of Dialogic Imaginationprovides a sophisticated account of a country in the process of radical transformation—and of the intensely creative culture that came out of it.
Download or read book Rule Breaking and Political Imagination written by Kenneth A. Shepsle and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Imagination may be thought of as a ‘work-around.’ It is a resourceful tactic to ‘undo’ a rule by creating a path around it without necessarily defying it. . . . Transgression, on the other hand, is rule breaking. There is no pretense of reinterpretation; it is defiance pure and simple. Whether imagination or disobedience is the source, constraints need not constrain, ties need not bind.” So writes Kenneth A. Shepsle in his introduction to Rule Breaking and Political Imagination. Institutions are thought to channel the choices of individual actors. But what about when they do not? Throughout history, leaders and politicians have used imagination and transgression to break with constraints upon their agency. Shepsle ranges from ancient Rome to the United States Senate, and from Lyndon B. Johnson to the British House of Commons. He also explores rule breaking in less formal contexts, such as vigilantism in the Old West and the CIA’s actions in the wake of 9/11. Entertaining and thought-provoking, Rule Breaking and Political Imagination will prompt a reassessment of the nature of institutions and remind us of the critical role of political mavericks.
Download or read book Collective Dreams written by Keally D. McBride and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2007-08-09 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we go about imagining different and better worlds for ourselves? Collective Dreams looks at ideals of community, frequently embraced as the basis for reform across the political spectrum, as the predominant form of political imagination in America today. Examining how these ideals circulate without having much real impact on social change provides an opportunity to explore the difficulties of practicing critical theory in a capitalist society. Different chapters investigate how ideals of community intersect with conceptions of self and identity, family, the public sphere and civil society, and the state, situating community at the core of the most contested political and social arenas of our time. Ideals of community also influence how we evaluate, choose, and build the spaces in which we live, as the author’s investigations of Celebration, Florida, and of West Philadelphia show.Following in the tradition of Walter Benjamin, Keally McBride reveals how consumer culture affects our collective experience of community as well as our ability to imagine alternative political and social orders. Taking ideals of community as a case study, Collective Dreams also explores the structure and function of political imagination to answer the following questions: What do these oppositional ideals reveal about our current political and social experiences? How is the way we imagine alternative communities nonetheless influenced by capitalism, liberalism, and individualism? How can these ideals of community be used more effectively to create social change?
Download or read book Imagining Afghanistan written by Nivi Manchanda and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative exploration of how colonial interventions in Afghanistan have been made possible through representations of the country as 'backward'.
Download or read book Imagining America at War written by Cynthia Weber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-24 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten films released between 9/11 and Gulf War II reflect raging debates about US foreign policy and what it means to be an American. Tracing the portrayal of America in the films Pearl Harbor (World War II); We Were Soldiers and The Quiet American (the Vietnam War); Behind Enemy Lines, Black Hawk Down and Kandahar (episodes of humanitarian intervention); Collateral Damage and In the Bedroom (vengeance in response to loss); Minority Report (futurist pre-emptive justice); and Fahrenheit 9/11 (an explicit critique of Bush’s entire war on terror), Cynthia Weber presents a stimulating new study of how Americans construct their identity and the moral values that inform their foreign policy. This is not just another book about post-9/11 America. It introduces the concept of 'moral grammars of war', and explains how they are articulated: Many Americans asked in the wake of 9/11 – not only 'why do they hate us?' but 'what does it mean to be a moral America(n) and how might such an America(n) act morally in contemporary international politics? This text explores how these questions were answered at the intersections of official US foreign policy and post-9/11 popular films. It also details US foreign policy formation in relation to traditional US narratives about US identity ‘who we think we were/are’, 'who we wish we’d never been', 'who we really are', and 'who we might become' as well as in relation to their foundations in nationalist discourses of gender and sexuality. This book will be of great interest to students of American Studies, US Foreign Policy, Contemporary US History, Cultural Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Film Studies.
Download or read book Re imagining Political Community written by Daniele Archibugi and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding world politics today means acknowledging that the state is no longer the only actor in international relations. The interstate system is increasingly challenged by new transnational forces and institutions: multinational companies, cross-border coalitions of social interest groups, globally oriented media, and a growing number of international agencies. These forces increasingly influence interstate decisions and set the agenda of world politics. Though these phenomena have been discussed in the recent literature of international relations, little attention has been given to their impact on political life within and between communities. This book aims to explore the changing meaning of political community in a world of regional and global social and economic relations. The authors of the essays in this volume, who reflect a variety of academic disciplines, reconsider some of the key terms of political association, such as legitimacy, sovereignty, identity, and citizenship. Their common approach is to generate an innovative account of what democracy means today and how it can be reconceptualized to include subnational as well as transnational levels of political organization. Inspired by Immanuel Kant’s cosmopolitan principles, the authors conclude that favorable conditions exist for a further development of democracy--locally, nationally, regionally, and globally.
Download or read book Imagining Socialism written by Mark A. Allison and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Socialism names a form of collective life that has never been fully realized; consequently, it is best understood as a goal to be imagined. So this study argues, and thereby uncovers an aesthetic impulse that animates some of the most consequential socialist writing, thought, and practice of the long nineteenth century. Imagining Socialism explores this tradition of radical activism, investigating the diverse ways that British socialists--from Robert Owen to the mid-century Christian Socialists to William Morris--marshalled the resources of the aesthetic in their efforts to surmount politics and develop non-governmental forms of collective life. Their ambitious attempts at social regeneration led some socialists to explore the liberatory possibilities afforded by cooperative labor, women's emancipation, political violence, and the power of the arts themselves. Imagining Socialism demonstrates that, far from being confined to the socialist revival of the fin de siècle, important socialist experiments with the emancipatory potential of the aesthetic in Britain may be found throughout the period it calls the socialist century--and may still inspire us today.
Download or read book Imagining Miami written by Sheila L. Croucher and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Miami has long captured the world's attention in provocative ways. During the 1980s, a series of violent racial disturbances focused national and international attention there as analysts and observers scrambled to explain the demise of the "Magic City." What has emerged is a popular image of Miami as an urban area in which three distinct ethnic groups- Hispanics, Blacks, and Anglos- are pitted against one another in a battle for limited political, economic, and social resources. Sheila L. Croucher uses Miami as a laboratory in which to explore the social and political construction of ethnic identities and ethnic group conflict. Incorporating interviews with community leaders, politicians, journalists, and business people, as well as periodical and popular literature on Miami, this book examines how social constructs emerge and become accepted, as well as how these definitions reflect the pull of vested interests locally, nationally, and even internationally.
Download or read book Imagining Collective Futures written by Constance de Saint-Laurent and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a commonly held assumption among cultural, social, and political psychologists that imagining the future of societies we live in has the potential to change how we think and act in the world. However little research has been devoted to whether this effect exists in collective imaginations, of social groups, communities and nations, for instance. This book explores the part that imagination and creativity play in the construction of collective futures, and the diversity of outlets in which these are presented, from fiction and cultural symbols to science and technology. The authors discuss this effect in social phenomena such as in intergroup conflict and social change, and focus on several cases studies to illustrate how the imagination of collective futures can guide social and political action. This book brings together theoretical and empirical contributions from cultural, social, and political psychology to offer insight into our constant (re)imagination of the societies in which we live.
Download or read book Imagining Apocalyptic Politics in the Anthropocene written by Earl T. Harper and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together scholars from English literature, geography, politics, the arts, environmental humanities and sociology, Imagining Apocalyptic Politics in the Anthropocene contributes to the emerging debate between bodies of thought first incepted by scholars such as Mouffe, Whyte, Kaplan, Hunt, Swyngedouw and Malm about how apocalyptic events, narratives and imaginaries interact with societal and individual agency historically and in the current political moment. Exploring their own empirical and philosophical contexts, the authors examine the forms of political acting found in apocalyptic imaginaries and reflect on what this means for contemporary society. By framing their arguments around either pre-apocalyptic, peri-apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic narratives and events, a timeline emerges throughout the volume which shows the different opportunities for political agency the anthropocenic subject can enact at the various stages of apocalyptic moments. Featuring a number of creative interventions exclusively produced for the work from artists and fiction writers who engage with the themes of apocalypse, decline, catastrophe and disaster, this innovative book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the politics of climate change, the environmental humanities, literary criticism and eco-criticism.
Download or read book Imagining the Future Science and American Democracy Easyread Large Edition written by Yuval Levin and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From stem cell research to global warming, human cloning, evolution, and beyond, political debates about science in recent years have fallen into the familiar categories of America's culture wars. Imagining the Future explores the meaning of science and technology in American politics today. The science debates, Yuval Levin argues, expose the deepest strengths and greatest weaknesses of both the left and the right, and present serious challenges to American democratic self-government. What do arguments about embryos, climate, or the origins of man reveal about contemporary America? Why do issues involving science seem to divide us along the same fault lines as so many other issues in our political life? Is science morally neutral, or is it an endeavor filled with moral promise - and peril? Are American conservatives really waging war on science? Is the American left justified in calling itself the party of science? Most of the science debates, Levin concludes, are not about particular theories or facts or technologies. Rather, they come down to a profound dispute between liberals and conservatives about the right way to think about the future. Science is only one subject of this broader dispute; but today's science debates can illuminate the contours of our politics and clarify the rift at the heart of our polity.
