Download or read book The Politics of Cultural Despair written by Fritz R. Stern and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study in the pathology of cultural criticism. By analyzing the thought and influence of three leading critics of modern Germany, this study will demonstrate the dangers and dilemmas of a particular type of cultural despair. Lagarde, Langbehn, and Moeller van den Bruck-their active lives spanning the years from the middle of the past century to the threshold of Hitler's Third Reich-attacked, often incisively and justly, the deficiencies of German culture and the German spirit. But they were more than the critics of Germany's cultural crisis; they were its symptoms and victims as well. Unable to endure the ills which they diagnosed and which they had experienced in their own lives, they sought to become prophets who would point the way to a national rebirth. Hence, they propounded all manner of reforms, ruthless and idealistic, nationalistic and utopian. It was this leap from despair to utopia across all existing reality that gave their thought its fantastic quality.

Download or read book The Politics of Cultural Despair written by Fritz Richard Stern and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1974 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An enlightening and solidly documented book of great value to those who would like to trace the ideolgoical roots behind the most erratic and dramatic politics phases of modern Germany."--"American Political Science Review""If only because it presents the intellectual and emotional background to National Socialism with rare clarity and penetrating analysis of its several and often sharply contrasting components, the ably written and profoundly interesting book...would be of importance....With its useful footnotes, selective bibliography and good index Professor Stern's study is American scholarship at its best."-"International Affairs"

Download or read book The Politics of Cultural Despair written by Fritz Richard Stern and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1961 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The American Culture of Despair written by Richard K. Fenn and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-18 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent developments have made many social scientists and commentators wonder whether the United States is still a relatively modern, secular, and democratic society. Instead, America shows signs of the cultural despair that preceded the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany. Taking a careful look at such critical moments as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Depression, the assassination of President Lincoln, and the eves both of the Civil War and of the American Revolution, this book shows that Americans have long shown authoritarian and even fascist tendencies: signs of despair that the nation is running out of time. In these critical moments, it finds evidence of a regressive cycle consisting of crisis, followed by the sanctification of central authority, and further crisis. With its deep roots in Anglo-American culture, the current crisis awaits decisive resolution.

Download or read book Moments of Despair written by David Silkenat and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-03-07 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Civil War era, black and white North Carolinians were forced to fundamentally reinterpret the morality of suicide, divorce, and debt as these experiences became pressing issues throughout the region and nation. In Moments of Despair, David Silkenat explores these shifting sentiments. Antebellum white North Carolinians stigmatized suicide, divorce, and debt, but the Civil War undermined these entrenched attitudes, forcing a reinterpretation of these issues in a new social, cultural, and economic context in which they were increasingly untethered from social expectations. Black North Carolinians, for their part, used emancipation to lay the groundwork for new bonds of community and their own interpretation of social frameworks. Silkenat argues that North Carolinians' attitudes differed from those of people outside the South in two respects. First, attitudes toward these cultural practices changed more abruptly and rapidly in the South than in the rest of America, and second, the practices were interpreted through a prism of race. Drawing upon a robust and diverse body of sources, including insane asylum records, divorce petitions, bankruptcy filings, diaries, and personal correspondence, this innovative study describes a society turned upside down as a consequence of a devastating war.

Download or read book Twilight of Democracy written by Anne Applebaum and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of French Politics and Culture written by Marion Demossier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of French Politics and Culture provides a detailed survey of the highly differentiated field of research on French politics, society and culture across the social sciences and humanities. The handbook includes contributions from the most eminent authors in their respective fields who bring their authority to bear on the task of outlining the current state-of-the art research in French Studies across disciplinary boundaries. As such, it represents an innovative as well as an authoritative survey of the field, representing an opportunity for a critical examination of the contrasts and the continuities in methodological and disciplinary orientations in a single volume. The Routledge Handbook of French Politics and Culture will be essential reading and an authoritative reference for scholars, students, researchers and practitioners involved in, and actively concerned about, research on French politics, society and culture.

Download or read book Identity and Pleasure written by Ariel Heryanto and published by NUS Press. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identity and Pleasure: The Politics of Indonesian Screen Culture critically examines what media and screen culture reveal about the ways urban-based Indonesians attempted to redefine their identity in the first decade of this century. Through a richly nuanced analysis of expressions and representations found in screen culture (cinema, television and social media), it analyses the waves of energy and optimism, and the disillusionment, disorientation and despair, that arose in the power vacuum that followed the dramatic collapse of the militaristic New Order government. While in-depth analyses of identity and political contestation within the nation are the focus of the book, trans-national engagements and global dimensions are a significant part of the story in each chapter. The author focuses on contemporary cultural politics in Indonesia, but each chapter contextualizes current circumstances by setting them within a broader historical perspective.

Download or read book Imagining Politics written by Stephen Benedict Dyson and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagining Politics critically examines two interpretations of government. The first comes from pop culture fictions about politics, the second from academic political science. Stephen Benedict Dyson argues that televised political fictions and political science theories are attempts at meaning-making, reflecting and shaping how a society thinks about its politics. By taking fiction seriously, and by arguing that political science theory is homologous to fiction, the book offers a fresh perspective on both, using fictions such as The West Wing, House of Cards, Borgen, Black Mirror, and Scandal to challenge the assumptions that construct the discipline of political science itself. Imagining Politics is also about a political moment in the West. Two great political shocks—Brexit and the election of Donald Trump—are set in a new context here. Dyson traces how Brexit and Trump campaigned against our image of politics as usual, and won.

Download or read book Moral Panic and the Politics of Anxiety written by SEAN HIER and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-23 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moral Panic and the Politics of Anxiety is a collection of original essays written by some of the world’s leading social scientists. It seeks to provide unique insight into the importance of moral panic as a routine feature of everyday life, whilst also developing an integrated framework for moral panic research by widening the scope of scholarship in the area. Many of the key twenty-first century contributions to moral panic theory have moved beyond the parameters of the sociology of deviance to consider the importance of moral panic for identity formation, national security, industrial risk, and character formation. Reflecting this growth, the book brings together recognized moral panic researchers with prominent scholars in moral regulation, social problems, cultural fear, and health risks, allowing for a more careful and critical discussion around the cultural and political significance of moral panic to emerge. This book will prove valuable reading for both undergraduate and postgraduate students on courses such as politics and the media, regulatory policy, the body and identity, theory and political sociology, and sociology of culture.

Download or read book Evidence of Being written by Darius Bost and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-12-21 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evidence of Being opens on a grim scene: Washington DC’s gay black community in the 1980s, ravaged by AIDS, the crack epidemic, and a series of unsolved murders, seemingly abandoned by the government and mainstream culture. Yet in this darkest of moments, a new vision of community and hope managed to emerge. Darius Bost’s account of the media, poetry, and performance of this time and place reveals a stunning confluence of activism and the arts. In Washington and New York during the 1980s and ’90s, gay black men banded together, using creative expression as a tool to challenge the widespread views that marked them as unworthy of grief. They created art that enriched and reimagined their lives in the face of pain and neglect, while at the same time forging a path toward bold new modes of existence. At once a corrective to the predominantly white male accounts of the AIDS crisis and an openhearted depiction of the possibilities of black gay life, Evidence of Being above all insists on the primacy of community over loneliness, and hope over despair.

Download or read book Why Voice Matters written by Nick Couldry and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2010-06-14 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the best books I have read in years about what it means to engage neoliberalism through a critical framework that highlights those narratives and stories that affirm both our humanity and our longing for justice. It should be read by everyone concerned with what it might mean to not only dream about democracy but to engage it as a lived experience and political possibility. - Henry Giroux, McMaster University "An important and original book that offers a fresh critique of neoliberalism and its contribution to the contemporary crisis of ‘voice’. Couldry’s own voice is clear and impassioned - an urgent must-read." - Rosalind Gill, King’s College London For more than thirty years neoliberalism has declared that market functioning trumps all other social, political and economic values. In this book, Nick Couldry passionately argues for voice, the effective opportunity for people to speak and be heard on what affects their lives, as the only value that can truly challenge neoliberal politics. But having voice is not enough: we need to know our voice matters. Insisting that the answer goes much deeper than simply calling for ′more voices′, whether on the streets or in the media, Couldry presents a dazzling range of analysis from the real world of Blair and Obama to the social theory of Judith Butler and Amartya Sen. Why Voice Matters breaks open the contradictions in neoliberal thought and shows how the mainstream media not only fails to provide the means for people to give an account of themselves, but also reinforces neoliberal values. Moving beyond the despair common to much of today′s analysis, Couldry shows us a vision of a democracy based on social cooperation and offers the resources we need to build a new post-neoliberal politics.

Download or read book America The Farewell Tour written by Chris Hedges and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chris Hedges’s profound and unsettling examination of America in crisis is “an exceedingly…provocative book, certain to arouse controversy, but offering a point of view that needs to be heard” (Booklist), about how bitter hopelessness and malaise have resulted in a culture of sadism and hate. America, says Pulitzer Prize­–winning reporter Chris Hedges, is convulsed by an array of pathologies that have arisen out of profound hopelessness, a bitter despair, and a civil society that has ceased to function. The opioid crisis; the retreat into gambling to cope with economic distress; the pornification of culture; the rise of magical thinking; the celebration of sadism, hate, and plagues of suicides are the physical manifestations of a society that is being ravaged by corporate pillage and a failed democracy. As our society unravels, we also face global upheaval caused by catastrophic climate change. All these ills presage a frightening reconfiguration of the nation and the planet. Donald Trump rode this disenchantment to power. In his “forceful and direct” (Publishers Weekly) America: The Farewell Tour, Hedges argues that neither political party, now captured by corporate power, addresses the systemic problem. Until our corporate coup d’état is reversed these diseases will grow and ravage the country. “With sharply observed detail, Hedges writes a requiem for the American dream” (Kirkus Reviews) and seeks to jolt us out of our complacency while there is still time.

Download or read book Political Culture and Political Development written by Lucian W. Pye and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 5 in the Studies in Political Development Series. Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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 Culture and Politics written by Raymond Williams and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brand new collection of the essential essays from one of the founders of cultural studies, Raymond Williams Raymond Williams was a pioneering scholar of cultural and society, and one of the outstanding intellectuals of the twentieth century. In this, a collection of difficult to find essays, some of which are published for the first time, Williams emerges as not only one of the great writers of materialist criticism, but also a thoroughly engaged political writer. Published to coincide with the centenary of his birth and showing the full range of his work, from his early writings on the novel and society, to later work on ecosocialism and the politics of modernism, Politics and Culture shows Williams at both his most accessible and his most penetrating.An essential book for all those interested in the politics of culture in the twentieth century, and the development of Williams's work.

Download or read book Landscape of Hope and Despair written by Julie Peteet and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-06-03 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly half of the world's eight million Palestinians are registered refugees, having faced partition and exile. Landscape of Hope and Despair examines this refugee experience in Lebanon through the medium of spatial practices and identity, set against the backdrop of prolonged violence. Julie Peteet explores how Palestinians have dealt with their experience as refugees by focusing attention on how a distinctive Palestinian identity has emerged from and been informed by fifty years of refugee history. Concentrating ethnographic scrutiny on a site-specific experience allows the author to shed light on the mutually constitutive character of place and cultural identification. Palestinian refugee camps are contradictory places: sites of grim despair but also of hope and creativity. Within these cramped spaces, refugees have crafted new worlds of meaning and visions of the possible in politics. In the process, their historical predicament was a point of departure for social action and thus became radically transformed. Beginning with the calamity of 1948, Landscape of Hope and Despair traces the dialectic of place and cultural identification through the initial despair of the 1950s and early 1960s to the tumultuous days of the resistance and the violence of the Lebanese civil war and its aftermath. Most significantly, this study invokes space, place, and identity to construct an alternative to the received national narratives of Palestinian society and history. The moving stories told here form a larger picture of these refugees as a people struggling to recreate their sense of place and identity and add meaning to their surroundings through the use of culture and memory.