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Body Utopianism
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Book Synopsis Body Utopianism by : Franziska Bork Petersen
Download or read book Body Utopianism written by Franziska Bork Petersen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-07-04 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates how desires to transform our bodies can bring utopia to the present, and how utopian practices often lead to distinctly dystopian or anti-utopian outcomes. It is the first comprehensive study to address the paradoxical relationship between bodies and utopianism. Franziska Bork Petersen discusses doping, bodybuilding and cosmetic surgery alongside practices such as retouching the ‘body as image’ on social media, and looks at how fashion modelling and performance ‘estrange’ the body. Techniques and technologies to transform our bodies are increasingly accessible and suggest an excessive identification of the body as lacking. To ‘be a body’ in a culturally meaningful way, we incessantly improve our bodily appearance and capacity. The book therefore addresses the utopianism inherent in a cultural understanding of bodies as increasingly controllable.
Book Synopsis Utopian Bodies and the Politics of Transgression by : Lucy Sargisson
Download or read book Utopian Bodies and the Politics of Transgression written by Lucy Sargisson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-22 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we want? What do we believe to be wrong with the world? How can we best change it? How should we live? Given the world as it is, how can we best achieve our dreams and desires? Utopian Bodies is, quite simply, a new approach to thinking about theory. Using the dominant themes of green and feminist politics, this fascinating and original text creates a new notion of utopian thought and life - "transgressive utopianism". This new concept is not a blueprint for an ideal polity; instead it demonstrates an approach to the world that is both idealistic and pragmatic, focussing on bodies of thought in relation to bodies of people: communities. Also spanning philosophy, political theory and deconstruction, this book is especially relevant today as the millennium marks a time of resurgence in utopian studies
Book Synopsis Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context by : David Der-wei Wang
Download or read book Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context written by David Der-wei Wang and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-05 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces decisively demonstrates the extent to which utopianism has shaped political thought, cultural imaginaries, and social engagement after it was introduced into the Chinese context in the nineteenth century. In fact, pursuit of utopia has often led to action—such as the Chinese Revolution and the Umbrella Movement—and contested consequences. Covering a time span that goes from the late Qing to our days, the authors show that few ideas have been as influencing as utopia, which has compellingly shaped the imaginaries that underpin China’s historical change. Utopianism contributed to the formation of the Chinese state itself—shaping the thought of key figures of the late Qing and early Republican eras such as Kang Youwei and Sun Yat-sen—and outlived the labyrinthine debates of the second half of the twentieth century, both under Mao’s rule and during the post-socialist era. Even in the current times of dystopian narratives, a period in which utopia seems to be less influential than in the past, its manifestations persistently provide lifelines against fatalism or cynicism. This collection shows how profoundly utopian ideas have nurtured both the thought of crucial figures during these historical times, the new generation of mainland Chinese and Sinophone intellectuals, and the hopes of twenty-first-century Hong Kong activists. “Wang, Leung, and Zhang’s collection is a timely contribution to utopian studies built on consistent, coherent, boundary-crossing approaches. Interdisciplinary in its very sense, the essays bring intellectual history, literary studies, philosophy, and political theories together in dialogue. Of particular note are the essays that situate Hong Kong in a literary tradition that connects China, Hong Kong, and the beyond.” —Mingwei Song, Wellesley College “Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context is an impressive intellectual undertaking. The essays are highly engaging and offer powerful, multi-faceted approaches to utopianism in contemporary Chinese thought and practice. Stimulating and informative, the book as a whole addresses the dynamic interplay between the utopian and dystopian, thereby inspiring clarity in political thought and action in the present moment.” —Robin Visser, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Book Synopsis Marginal Bodies, Trans Utopias by : Caterina Nirta
Download or read book Marginal Bodies, Trans Utopias written by Caterina Nirta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although over the last two decades there has been a proliferation of gender studies, transgender has largely remained institutionalised as an ‘umbrella term’ that encapsulates all forms of gender understandings differing from what are thought to be gender norms. In both theoretical and medical literature, trans identity has been framed within a paradigm of awkwardness or discomfort, self-dislike or dysfunctional mental health. Marginal Bodies, Trans Utopias is a multidisciplinary book that draws primarily from Deleuze and post-structuralism in order to reformulate the concept of utopia and ground it in the materiality of the present. Through a radically new conceptualisation of the time and space of utopia, it analyses empirical findings from trans video diaries on the Internet belonging to transgender individuals. In doing so, this volume offers new insights into the everyday challenges faced by these subjectivities, with case studies focusing on: the legal/social impact of the UK’s Gender Recognition Act 2004, boundaries of public and private as evidenced within public toilets, and the narrative of the ‘wrong body’. Contextualising and applying Deleuzian concepts such as ‘difference’ and ‘marginal’ to the context of the research, Nirta helps the reader to understand trans as ‘unity’ rather than as a ‘mind-body mismatch’. Contributing to the reading and understanding of trans lived experience, this book shall be of interest to postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Transgender Studies, Critical Studies, Sociology of Gender and Philosophy of Time.
Book Synopsis Utopian Bodies and the Politics of Transgression by : Lucy Sargisson
Download or read book Utopian Bodies and the Politics of Transgression written by Lucy Sargisson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-22 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we want? What do we believe to be wrong with the world? How can we best change it? How should we live? Given the world as it is, how can we best achieve our dreams and desires? Utopian Bodies is, quite simply, a new approach to thinking about theory. Using the dominant themes of green and feminist politics, this fascinating and original text creates a new notion of utopian thought and life - "transgressive utopianism". This new concept is not a blueprint for an ideal polity; instead it demonstrates an approach to the world that is both idealistic and pragmatic, focussing on bodies of thought in relation to bodies of people: communities. Also spanning philosophy, political theory and deconstruction, this book is especially relevant today as the millennium marks a time of resurgence in utopian studies
Book Synopsis Contemporary Feminist Utopianism by : Lucy Sargisson
Download or read book Contemporary Feminist Utopianism written by Lucy Sargisson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-11-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new and challenging entry into the debates between feminism and postmodernism, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism challenges some basic preconceptions about the role of political theory today. Sargisson explores current debates within utopian studies, feminist theory and poststructuralist deconstruction. Utopian thinking is offered as a route out of the dilemma of contemporary feminism as well as a way of conceptualizing its current situation. This book provides an exploration of, and exercise in, utopian thought.
Download or read book Utopian Drama written by Siân Adiseshiah and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-06 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for The TaPRA David Bradby Monograph Prize 2023 As the first full-length study to analyse utopian plays in Western drama from antiquity to the present, Utopian Drama: In Search of a Genre offers an illuminating appraisal of the objectives of utopianism as manifested in drama through the ages, and carefully ascertains the added value that live performance brings to the persuasion of utopian thought. Siân Adiseshiah scrutinises the distinctive intervention of utopian drama through its examination alongside the utopian prose tradition – in this way, the book establishes new ways of approaching utopian aesthetics and new ways of interpreting utopian drama. This book provides fresh understandings of the generic features of utopian plays, identifies the gains of establishing a new genre, and ascertains ways in which this genre functions as political theatre. Referring to over 40 plays, of which 18 are examined in detail, Utopian Drama traces the emergence of the utopian play in the Western tradition from ancient Greek Comedy to experimental contemporary work. Works discussed in detail include plays by Aristophanes, Margaret Cavendish, George Bernard Shaw, Howard Brenton, Claire MacDonald, Cesi Davidson, and Mojisola Adebayo. As well as offering extended attention to the work of these playwrights, the book reflects on the development of utopian drama through history, notes the persistent features, tropes, and conventions of utopian plays, and considers the implications of their registration for both theatre studies and utopian studies.
Book Synopsis The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed by : Laurence Davis
Download or read book The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed written by Laurence Davis and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Description of the seductions - and snares - of self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society. This title, an edited collection of original essays on "Le Guin's The Dispossessed", represents an exploration of the political ramifications of this work by a wide interdisciplinary swath of scholars from around the world.
Download or read book Thinking Utopia written by Jörn Rüsen and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the breakdown of socialist and communist systems in the East, it had become fashionable to declare the so-called "end of utopia" ("end of history," "end of narratives"). The authors of this volume do not share this view but think that it is time to rehabilitate utopian thought. The political concept of Utopia that has given its name to these transcendental projections onto the world has been too narrow to describe and analyze the moving forces of the mind perceiving human existence beyond reality. By broadening the perspectives of utopian studies, these essays enable the reader to reconstruct scholarly paradigms and strategies of utopian, complex and holistic thinking in modern cosmology, philosophy, sociology, in literary, historical and political sciences, and to compare traditions and ways of Western utopian thought to the practice in the East.
Book Synopsis The Individual and Utopia by : Clint Jones
Download or read book The Individual and Utopia written by Clint Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central to the idea of a perfect society is the idea that communities must be strong and bound together with shared ideologies. However, while this may be true, rarely are the individuals that comprise a community given primacy of place as central to a strong communal theory. This volume moves away from the dominant, current macro-level theorising on the subject of identity and its relationship to and with globalising trends, focusing instead on the individual’s relationship with utopia so as to offer new interpretive approaches for engaging with and examining utopian individuality. Interdisciplinary in scope and bringing together work from around the world, The Individual and Utopia enquires after the nature of the utopian as citizen, demonstrating the inherent value of making the individual central to utopian theorizing and highlighting the methodologies necessary for examining the utopian individual. The various approaches employed reveal what it is to be an individual yoked by the idea of citizenship and challenge the ways that we have traditionally been taught to think of the individual as citizen. As such, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social theory, philosophy, literature, cultural studies, architecture, and feminist thought, whose work intersects with political thought, utopian theorizing, or the study of humanity or human nature.
Book Synopsis We, Other Utopians by : Eva Šlesingerová
Download or read book We, Other Utopians written by Eva Šlesingerová and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We, Other Utopians is the first book to analyze the topics of genome editing/recombinant DNA on the basis of ethnographic research in the post-communist context. The book focuses on the topics of human DNA editing and genome repair on two levels. First, inspired by texts analyzing the concept of life and the body in general, it conceptually and analytically works with various approaches to engineered life and embodiments from the perspective of anthropology, sociology, and science and technology studies. Second, it presents an analysis of artificial life, and biotechnological embodiments on concrete technologies – genome editing, recombinant DNA, and biological computing. The book explores the theme of genome editing based on ethnographic research conducted at a biochemical laboratory in the Czech Republic. The fieldwork was carried out from 2017 to 2019, mainly in a lab focusing on DNA damages and genomic risk of complex diseases or genetic vulnerabilities like breast cancer, infertility, and ageing. Recombinant DNA is understood here as the exchange of DNA strands to produce and design new nucleotide sequence arrangements to heal or enhance human bodies and health in the future. The book analyzes various economies of hope, hype, expectations, politics, and poetics of false promises and better or worse predictions from the point of view of sociology, anthropology, and science and technology studies.
Book Synopsis Rethinking Utopia by : David M. Bell
Download or read book Rethinking Utopia written by David M. Bell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over five hundred years since it was named, utopia remains a vital concept for understanding and challenging the world(s) we inhabit, even in – or rather because of – the condition of ‘post-utopianism’ that supposedly permeates them. In Rethinking Utopia David M. Bell offers a diagnosis of the present through the lens of utopia and then, by rethinking the concept through engagement with utopian studies, a variety of ‘radical’ theories and the need for decolonizing praxis, shows how utopianism might work within, against and beyond that which exists in order to provide us with hope for a better future. He proposes paying a ‘subversive fidelity’ to utopia, in which its three constituent terms: ‘good’ (eu), ‘place’ (topos), and ‘no’ (ou) are rethought to assert the importance of immanent, affective relations. The volume engages with a variety of practices and forms to articulate such a utopianism, including popular education/critical pedagogy; musical improvisation; and utopian literature. The problems as well as the possibilities of this utopianism are explored, although the problems are often revealed to be possibilities, provided they are subject to material challenge. Rethinking Utopia offers a way of thinking about (and perhaps realising) utopia that helps overcome some of the binary oppositions structuring much thinking about the topic. It allows utopia to be thought in terms of place and process; affirmation and negation; and the real and the not-yet. It engages with the spatial and affective turns in the social sciences without ever uncritically being subsumed by them; and seeks to make connections to indigenous cosmologies. It is a cautious, careful, critical work punctuated by both pessimism and hope; and a refusal to accept the finality of this or any world.
Download or read book Black Utopias written by Jayna Brown and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-11 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Black Utopias Jayna Brown takes up the concept of utopia as a way of exploring alternative states of being, doing, and imagining in Black culture. Musical, literary, and mystic practices become utopian enclaves in which Black people engage in modes of creative worldmaking. Brown explores the lives and work of Black women mystics Sojourner Truth and Rebecca Cox Jackson, musicians Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra, and the work of speculative fiction writers Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler as they decenter and destabilize the human, radically refusing liberal humanist ideas of subjectivity and species. Brown demonstrates that engaging in utopian practices Black subjects imagine and manifest new genres of existence and forms of collectivity. For Brown, utopia consists of those moments in the here and now when those excluded from the category human jump into other onto-epistemological realms. Black people—untethered from the hope of rights, recognition, or redress—celebrate themselves as elements in a cosmic effluvium.
Book Synopsis The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures by : Peter Marks
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures written by Peter Marks and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures celebrates a literary genre already over 500 years old. Specially commissioned essays from established and emerging international scholars reflect the vibrancy of utopian vision, and its resiliency as idea, genre, and critical mode. Covering politics, environment, geography, body and mind, and social organization, the volume surveys current research and maps new areas of study. The chapters include investigations of anarchism, biopolitics, and postcolonialism and study film, art, and literature. Each essay considers central questions and key primary works, evaluates the most recent research, and outlines contemporary debates. Literatures of Africa, Australia, China, Latin America, and the Middle East are discussed in this global, cross-disciplinary, and comprehensive volume.
Book Synopsis Utopia(s) - Worlds and Frontiers of the Imaginary by : Maria do Rosário Monteiro
Download or read book Utopia(s) - Worlds and Frontiers of the Imaginary written by Maria do Rosário Monteiro and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of Utopia springs from a natural desire of transformation, of evolution pertaining to humankind and, therefore, one can find expressions of “utopian” desire in every civilization. Having to do explicitly with human condition, Utopia accompanies closely cultural evolution, almost as a symbiotic organism. Maintaining its roots deeply attached to ancient myths, utopian expression followed, and sometimes preceded cultural transformation. Through the next almost five hundred pages (virtually one for each year since Utopia was published) researchers in the fields of Architecture and Urbanism, Arts and Humanities present the results of their studies within the different areas of expertise under the umbrella of Utopia. Past, present, and future come together in one book. They do not offer their readers any golden key. Many questions will remain unanswered, as they should. The texts presented in Proportion Harmonies and Identities - UTOPIA(S) WORLDS AND FRONTIERS OF THE IMAGINARY were compiled with the intent to establish a platform for the presentation, interaction and dissemination of researches. It aims also to foster the awareness and discussion on the topics of Harmony and Proportion with a focus on different utopian visions and readings relevant to the arts, sciences and humanities and their importance and benefits for the community at large.
Book Synopsis A Christian Utopia by : Stephen J. Gaudet
Download or read book A Christian Utopia written by Stephen J. Gaudet and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first century of the Common Era, the Romans could boast of being the most pious society in the known world. They possessed a highly structured societal organization with a well-defined hierarchy where everyone knew their place and the personal and interpersonal duties associated therewith. It was understood that their success was due in large part to maintaining a relationship with the gods. Yet at the same time, social inequality and lack of justice for its members was ubiquitous and merely part of the fabric of that society. Into this milieu steps Saul of Tarsus, later known as the Apostle Paul. Based upon the authentic corpus of Paul, a new utopian society was envisaged--a society based on equality and justice for all, not just for the elite. This eschatological community is in sharp contrast with Imperial Rome. Following the death of Paul, writers invoking Paul's authority by claiming that their texts were authored by the apostle himself, continued writing letters to various Christian communities. However, their texts differed in significant ways from Paul's vision. Yet these corrupted texts have survived and influenced the development of Christianity for two millennia. It is imperative to retrieve the true vision of Paul for a world in serious need of that eschatological vision.
Book Synopsis Planet Utopia by : Mark Featherstone
Download or read book Planet Utopia written by Mark Featherstone and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The key figure of the capitalist utopia is the individual who is ultimately free. The capitalist’s ideal society is designed to protect this freedom. However, within Planet Utopia: Utopia, Dystopia, Globalisation, Featherstone argues that capitalist utopian vision, which is most clearly expressed in theories of global finance, is no longer sustainable today. This book concerns the status of utopian thinking in contemporary global society and the possibility of imagining alternative ways of living outside of capitalism. Using a range of sociological and philosophical theories to write the first intellectual history of the capitalist utopia in English, Featherstone provokes the reader into thinking about ways of moving beyond this model of organising social life through sociological modes of thought. Indeed, this enlightening volume seeks to show how utopian thinking about the way people should live has been progressively captured by capitalism with the result that it is difficult to imagine alternatives to capitalist society today. Presenting sociology and sociological thinking as a utopian alternative to the capitalist utopia, Planet Utopia will appeal to postgraduate and postdoctoral students interested in subjects including Sociology, Social Theory, Cultural Studies, Cultural Theory and Continental Philosophy.
