Scandals And Abstraction

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Scandals and Abstraction

Author : Leigh Claire La Berge
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 019937287X
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis Scandals and Abstraction by : Leigh Claire La Berge

Download or read book Scandals and Abstraction written by Leigh Claire La Berge and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The greed, excess, and decadence of the long 1980s has been famously chronicled, critiqued, and satirized in epochal works like White Noise by Don DeLillo, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, and Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. Leigh Claire La Berge offers an in-depth study of these fictions alongside the key moments of financial history that inform them, contending that throughout the 1980s, novelists, journalists, and filmmakers began to reimagine the capitalist economy as one that was newly personal, masculine, and anxiety producing. The study's first half links the linguistic to the technological by exploring the arrival of ATMs and their ubiquity in postmodern American literature. In transformative readings of novels such as White Noise and American Psycho, La Berge traces how the ATM serves as a symbol of anxious isolation and the erosion of interpersonal communication. A subsequent chapter on Ellis' novel and Jane Smiley's Good Faith explores how male protagonists in each develop unique associations between money and masculinity. The second half of the monograph features chapters that attend to works-most notably Oliver Stone's Wall Street and Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities-that capture aspects of the arrogance and recklessnessthat led to the savings-and-loan crisis and the 1987 stock market crash. Concluding with a coda on the recent Occupy Wall Street Movement and four short stories written in its wake, Scandals and Abstraction demonstrates how economic forces continue to remain a powerful presence in today's fiction"--

Abstraction & Economy

Author : Eva Maria Stadler
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3111371344
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (113 download)

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Book Synopsis Abstraction & Economy by : Eva Maria Stadler

Download or read book Abstraction & Economy written by Eva Maria Stadler and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-04-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opposing a regime of accumulation and abstraction This anthology explores the tension between abstraction and economics from the perspectives of art, art theory, art history, as well as law, sociology, philosophy, and economics. It poses questions about the current challenges of a global capitalist economy with claims to expansive growth in relation to aesthetics, technology, and democracy. The relationship between abstraction and economics is discussed in a series of theoretical and artistic contributions. The main focus is on the role of art in mediating between the concrete and the abstract, on formalist approaches to art theory, and on the social and economic cues that help us trace the aesthetic regime of capitalism. Ultimately, this book asks, “how can artistic-aesthetic practices counteract the regime of accumulation and abstraction?” The visual arts in a socioeconomic context Reflecting on the relationship between abstraction and economics from capitalist-critical, decolonial, ecological, and queer-feminist perspectives Contributions by Brenna Bhandar, Christina von Braun, Sabeth Buchmann, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Sven Lütticken, R. H. Quaytman, Marina Vishmidt, and others Look inside

In the Mind But Not From There

Author : Gean Moreno
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1788730690
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (887 download)

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Book Synopsis In the Mind But Not From There by : Gean Moreno

Download or read book In the Mind But Not From There written by Gean Moreno and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artists and critics explore the concept of Real Abstraction to help understand contemporary cultural production In the Mind, But Not From There: Real Abstraction and Contemporary Art considers how the Marxian concept of Real Abstraction--originally developed by Alfred Sohn Rethel, and recently updated by Alberto Toscano--might help to define the economic, social, political, and cultural complexities of our contemporary moment. In doing so, this volume brings together noted contemporary artists, literary critics, curators, historians, and social theorists who connect the concept of Real Abstraction with contemporary cultural production. Theoretical and artistic contributions from Benjamin Noys, Paul Chan, Joao Enxuto and Erica Love, Marina Vishmidt, Sven Lütticken, and many others help to map out the relationship between political economy and artistic production in the realm of contemporary, globalized cultural exchange. This anthology places economic and social analyses alongside creative projects and visual essays to consider the many angles of contemporary art, and how inquiry into the the production of abstraction through material and social processes can be used to better understand, and hopefully change, the conditions under which art is made, seen, and circulated today. Published in collaboration with [NAME] publications.

It's Abstraction, Concretely

Author : John McGreal
Publisher : Troubador Publishing Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1788036425
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (88 download)

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Book Synopsis It's Abstraction, Concretely by : John McGreal

Download or read book It's Abstraction, Concretely written by John McGreal and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John McGreal's three new books – It’s Abstraction, Concretely, It’s Figuration, Groundly and It’s Representation, Really – continue the ‘It’ Series published by Matador since 2010. They constitute another stage in an artistic journey exploring the visual and audial dialectic of mark, word and image that began over 25 years ago. Emerging out of the first books on the Bibliograph published in 2016, initiated with It’s Nothing, Seriously, these new texts retain some of the same structural features. The Bibliographs contain the same focus on repetition and variation in meaning of their dominant motifs of representation, abstraction and figuration which have framed philosophical discourse on epistemology and ontology in aesthetics; their chance placement in each Bibliograph interspersed with one another displaying and enhancing similarities and differences. At the same time these works constitute a development in the aesthetic form of the Bibliograph. In earlier works on Nothing, Absence and Silence, it was just a question of finding and transferring given textual references from their source to construct their Bibliographs, with the focus being on the strategic position of the latter within each book. In these new works, the concern has been with working on the line and shape of the references themselves, with their enhanced spacial form as well as that of each Bibliograph as a whole. In shaping and spacing the referential images, the place of words and letters became as important as their semantic & syntactical role. Expansion and contraction of whole words was used to enhance this process. Under such detailed attention their breakdown into particles of language, into part-words and single letters was a result. The recombination of elements produced new words in a process of restrangement with new sequences of letters having visual rather than semantic value. The play on prefixes of dominant motifs yielded new words as did tmesis. This concern with the form of referential images does not preclude an equal commitment to their content. The aleatory character of textual entries in each Bibliograph encourage the reader to let his or her mind go; to read in a new way on diverse contemporary issues across conventional boundaries in the arts and sciences at several levels of physical, psychical and social reproduction.

HUD Scandals

Author : Irving Welfeld
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351514741
Total Pages : 191 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (515 download)

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Book Synopsis HUD Scandals by : Irving Welfeld

Download or read book HUD Scandals written by Irving Welfeld and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mention the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the word scandal comes to mind. When it comes to recent history, the association is quite accurate; in 1989-90 congressional panels were investigating -abuses, favoritism, and mismanagement- at HUD; in 1954 HUD's predecessor, the Federal Housing Administration, was targeted by the FBI for involvement in fraudulent home-improvement schemes; in the 1970s HUD was scrutinized for lax lending standards, blatant overappraisals, and shoddy housing. In this ground-breaking volume, Irving Welfeld, a senior analyst with HUD, describes and explains these sensational episodes as well as a series of hidden blunders that have cost taxpayers billions of dollars. In this thorough, firsthand account, Welfeld provides not only soundly documented history, but analyses of events that arrive at different interpretations than Congress reached in its investigations. Throughout, his readings ask hard and probing questions: Where were the overseers--the media, Congress, the General Accounting Office, the Office of Management and Budget? To what extent is poor management the root cause of HUD's failures? Will tighter regulation help in keeping out corruption? After his comprehensive survey of the scene, Welfeld goes the final step and offers solutions: a set of programs that would minimize secrecy on the part of federal administrators and the temptation to abuse the public trust. Most importantly, the programs outlined here will enable HUD to more effectively fulfill its mission to see that there is decent affordable housing for all Americans. HUD Scandals will be of interest to scholars of public administration, political scientists, and analysts of housing issues.

Corporate Responses to Financial Crime

Author : Petter Gottschalk
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030514528
Total Pages : 147 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (35 download)

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Book Synopsis Corporate Responses to Financial Crime by : Petter Gottschalk

Download or read book Corporate Responses to Financial Crime written by Petter Gottschalk and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-08-17 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This brief extends studies on how corporations respond to scandals by examining the evolution of the accounts that corporate agents develop after a scandal becomes public. Guided by the theory of accounts and a recently developed perspective on crisis management, its examines how the accounts developed by thirteen corporations caught up in highly publicized scandals changed from the time of initial exposure to the issuance of an investigative report. This brief continues the discussion of the broader managerial and social implications of the analysis of accounts, and analyses their effect on our understanding of the ability of corporations to weather serious scandals. It includes four case studies; from Switzerland, Moldova, Denmark, and Norway respectively.

Theory of the Gimmick

Author : Sianne Ngai
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674245318
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Theory of the Gimmick by : Sianne Ngai

Download or read book Theory of the Gimmick written by Sianne Ngai and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christian Gauss Award Shortlist Winner of the ASAP Book Prize A Literary Hub Book of the Year “Makes the case that the gimmick...is of tremendous critical value...Lies somewhere between critical theory and Sontag’s best work.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Ngai exposes capitalism’s tricks in her mind-blowing study of the time- and labor-saving devices we call gimmicks.” —New Statesman “One of the most creative humanities scholars working today...My god, it’s so good.” —Literary Hub “Ngai is a keen analyst of overlooked or denigrated categories in art and life...Highly original.” —4Columns “It is undeniable that part of what makes Ngai’s analyses of aesthetic categories so appealing...is simply her capacity to speak about them brilliantly.” —Bookforum “A page turner.” —American Literary History Deeply objectionable and yet strangely attractive, the gimmick comes in many guises: a musical hook, a financial strategy, a striptease, a novel of ideas. Above all, acclaimed theorist Sianne Ngai argues, the gimmick strikes us both as working too little (a labor-saving trick) and working too hard (a strained effort to get our attention). When we call something a gimmick, we register misgivings that suggest broader anxieties about value, money, and time, making the gimmick a hallmark of capitalism. With wit and critical precision, Ngai explores the extravagantly impoverished gimmick across a range of examples: the fiction of Thomas Mann, Helen DeWitt, and Henry James; the video art of Stan Douglas; the theoretical writings of Stanley Cavell and Theodor Adorno. Despite its status as cheap and compromised, the gimmick emerges as a surprisingly powerful tool in this formidable contribution to aesthetic theory.

The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 44

Author : Markus Wessendorf
Publisher : Camden House (NY)
ISBN 13 : 0985195673
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (851 download)

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Book Synopsis The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 44 by : Markus Wessendorf

Download or read book The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 44 written by Markus Wessendorf and published by Camden House (NY). This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annual volume, this time featuring special sections on Brecht's dramatic fragments and on comedy in post-Brechtian theater, along with a variety of other contributions.

Speculative Fictions

Author : Elizabeth Hewitt
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192602993
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (926 download)

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Book Synopsis Speculative Fictions by : Elizabeth Hewitt

Download or read book Speculative Fictions written by Elizabeth Hewitt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-26 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speculative Fictions places Alexander Hamilton at the center of American literary history to consider the important intersections between economics and literature. By studying Hamilton as an economic and imaginative writer, it argues that we can recast the conflict with the Jeffersonians as a literary debate about the best way to explain and describe modern capitalism, and explores how various other literary forms allow us to comprehend the complexities of a modern global economy in entirely new ways. Speculative Fictions identifies two overlooked literary genres of the late eighteenth-century as exemplary of this narrative mode. It asks that we read periodical essays and Black Atlantic captivity narratives with an eye not towards bourgeois subject formation, but as descriptive analyses of economic systems. In doing so, we discover how these two literary genres offer very different portraits of a global economy than that rendered by the novel, the imaginative genre we are most likely to associate with modern capitalism. Developing an aesthetic appreciation for the speculative, digressive, and unsystematic plotlines of these earlier narratives has the capacity to generate new imaginative projects with which to make sense of our increasingly difficult economic world.

Dead Pledges

Author : Annie McClanahan
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503600696
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis Dead Pledges by : Annie McClanahan

Download or read book Dead Pledges written by Annie McClanahan and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dead Pledges is the first book to explore the ways that U.S. culture—from novels and poems to photojournalism and horror movies—has responded to the collapse of the financialized consumer credit economy in 2008. Connecting debt theory to questions of cultural form, this book argues that artists, filmmakers, and writers have re-imagined what it means to owe and to own in a period when debt is what makes our economic lives possible. Encompassing both popular entertainment and avant-garde art, the post-crisis productions examined here help to map the landscape of contemporary debt: from foreclosure to credit scoring, student debt to securitized risk, microeconomic theory to anti-eviction activism. A searing critique of the ideology of debt, Dead Pledges dismantles the discourse of moral obligation so often invoked to make us repay. Debt is no longer a source of economic credibility, it contends, but a system of dispossession that threatens the basic fabric of social life.

Finance Fictions

Author : Arne De Boever
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 0823279189
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (232 download)

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Book Synopsis Finance Fictions by : Arne De Boever

Download or read book Finance Fictions written by Arne De Boever and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finance Fictions takes the measure of what it means to live in a world ruled by high finance by examining the tension between psychosis and realism that plays out in the contemporary finance novel. When the things traded at the center of the economy cease to be things at all, but highly abstracted speculations, how do we come to see the real? What sorts of narrative can accurately approach the actual workings of a neoliberal economy marked by accelerating cycles of market crashes, economic and political crisis, and austerity? Revisiting such twentieth-century classics of the genre as Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, De Boever argues that the twenty-first century is witnessing the birth of a new kind of realistic novel that can make sense of complex financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and digital algorithms operating at speeds faster than what human beings or computers can record. If in 1989 Wolfe could still urge novelists to work harder to “tame the billion-footed beast of reality,” today’s economic reality confronts us with a difference that is qualitative rather than quantitative: a new financial ontology requiring new modes of thinking and writing. Mobilizing the philosophical thought of Quentin Meillassoux in the close reading of finance novels by Robert Harris, Michel Houellebecq, Ben Lerner and less well-known works of conceptual writing such as Mathew Timmons’ Credit, Finance Fictions argues that realism is in for a speculative update if it wants to take on the contemporary economy—an “if” whose implications turn out to be deeply political. Part literary study and part philosophical inquiry, Finance Fictions seeks to contribute to a new mindset for creative and critical work on finance in the twenty-first century.

Scandal of Colonial Rule

Author : James Epstein
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 110700330X
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Scandal of Colonial Rule by : James Epstein

Download or read book Scandal of Colonial Rule written by James Epstein and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-22 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dramatic history of the British public's confrontation with the iniquities of nineteenth-century colonial rule. James Epstein uses the trial of the first governor of Trinidad for the torture of a freewoman of color to reassess the nature of British colonialism and the ways in which empire troubled the metropolitan imagination.

Rhetorics of Democracy in the Americas

Author : Adriana Angel
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271089466
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Rhetorics of Democracy in the Americas by : Adriana Angel

Download or read book Rhetorics of Democracy in the Americas written by Adriana Angel and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2021-02-26 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy is venerated in US political culture, in part because it is our democracy. As a result, we assume that the government and institutions of the United States represent the true and right form of democracy, needed by all. This volume challenges this commonplace belief by putting US politics in the context of the Americas more broadly. Seeking to cultivate conversations among and between the hemispheres, this collection examines local political rhetorics across the Americas. The contributors—scholars of communication from both North and South America—recognize democratic ideals as irreducible to a single national perspective and reflect on the ways social minorities in the Western Hemisphere engage in unique political discourses. The essays consider current rhetorics in the United States on American exceptionalism, immigration, citizenship, and land rights alongside current cultural and political events in Latin America, such as corruption in Guatemala, women’s activism in Ciudad Juárez, representation in Venezuela, and media bias in Brazil. Through a survey of these rhetorics, this volume provides a broad analysis of democracy. It highlights institutional and cultural differences in the Americas and presents a hemispheric democracy that is both more pluralistic and more agonistic than what is believed about the system in the United States. In addition to the editors, the contributors include José Cortez, Linsay M. Cramer, Pamela Flores, Alberto González, Amy N. Heuman, Christa J. Olson, Carlos Piovezani, Clara Eugenia Rojas Blanco, Abraham Romney, René Agustín de los Santos, and Alejandra Vitale.

Corruption Scandals and their Global Impacts

Author : Omar E. Hawthorne
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351390813
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (513 download)

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Book Synopsis Corruption Scandals and their Global Impacts by : Omar E. Hawthorne

Download or read book Corruption Scandals and their Global Impacts written by Omar E. Hawthorne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-11 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corruption scandals receive significant press coverage and scrutiny from practitioners of global governance, and bilateral and multilateral donors. Across the globe, the annual publication of TI’s CPI and World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators elicits spirited denials and accusations of targeting, of neo-colonialism. Poor measures on corruption indices and the ensuing negative publicity can have serious consequences both externally, through a freeze or retraction of donor funding, and internally, through reducing the availability of public funds, and harming the credibility of serving governments and institutions. Corruption Scandals and their Global Impacts tracks several major corruption scandals across the world in a comparative analysis to assess the full impact of global corruption. Over the course of the book, the contributors deliberate the exposure and reporting of corruption scandals, demonstrate how corruption inhibits development on different levels and across different countries, the impact it has on the country in question, how citizens and authorities respond to corruption, and some local, regional and global policy and legislative measures to combat corruption. The chapters examine the transnational manifestation of corruption scandals around the world, from developed countries and regions such as the United States and the European Union, to BRIC countries Brazil and Russia, to developing countries such as Belarus, Jamaica, Kenya and Nigeria. In each case, chapters highlight the scandal, its impact, the local, regional and global responses, and the subsequent global perceptions of the country. Concluding with a review of the global impacts of corruption scandals, this book provides an important comparative analysis which will be useful to students and scholars of international development and politics, as well as to development practitioners, donors, politicians and policy makers.

Power of Scandal

Author : P. Johannes Ehrat, SJ
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
ISBN 13 : 1442661682
Total Pages : 425 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (426 download)

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Book Synopsis Power of Scandal by : P. Johannes Ehrat, SJ

Download or read book Power of Scandal written by P. Johannes Ehrat, SJ and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2011-03-05 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are there events that are inherently scandalous? Power of Scandal finds that the very idea of 'scandal' is derived not from an event, but from public opinion - which, in turn, is construed by media narratives. Scandal is powerful because of its ability to challenge institutions by destabilizing their legitimacy. The media plays an integral role in the creation of scandal because it interprets real events as purposeful actions for the public. Examining the ubiquity of scandals in today's mass media, Johannes Ehrat's conclusions are fresh and surprising. Ehrat applies classic semiotic and pragmatic thought to contemporary media issues, mainly moralist discourse from sex abuse cases to the phenomenon of televangelism. Arguing that sociological and communications studies of scandal have ignored the media's constructed nature, Ehrat focuses on how meaningful public narrative is produced. By examining the parallel worlds of media and public opinion, Power of Scandal uses an alternative heuristic for understanding mass communication that is both rigorous and sophisticated.

Unexceptional Politics

Author : Emily Apter
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1784780871
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (847 download)

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Book Synopsis Unexceptional Politics by : Emily Apter

Download or read book Unexceptional Politics written by Emily Apter and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unexceptional Politics develops a vocabulary of terms drawn from a wide range of media (political fiction, art, film, and TV serials), highlighting the scams, imbroglios, information trafficking, brinkmanship, and parliamentary procedures that obstruct and block progressive politics. The book proposes a new mode of dialectical resistance, countering notions of the "state of exception" embedded in theories of the "Political" from Thomas Hobbes to Carl Schmitt. Apter advances a critical model of micro-politics, or "politics with a small 'p,'" that offers a way of representing a politics that has generally eluded our conceptual grasp, and that has been unintelligible or resistant to classical political theory. Confronting us with the realization that we really do not know what politics is, where it begins and ends, or how its micro-events should be described, this experimental glossary opens the possibility of confronting the contingent and immaterial conditions of politicking that contribute to disturbance and interference within the institutional structures of our capitalo-parliamentarist systems of rule.

Downward Mobility

Author : Katherine Binhammer
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421437627
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Downward Mobility by : Katherine Binhammer

Download or read book Downward Mobility written by Katherine Binhammer and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do the stories we tell about money shape our economies? Beginning in the late eighteenth century, as constant growth became the economic norm throughout Europe, fictional stories involving money were overwhelmingly about loss. Novel after novel tells the tale of bankruptcy and financial failure, of people losing everything and ending up in debtor's prison, of inheritances lost and daughters left orphaned and poor. In Downward Mobility, Katherine Binhammer argues that these stories of ruin are not simple tales about the losers of capitalism but narratives that help manage speculation of capital's inevitable collapse. Bringing together contemporary critical finance studies with eighteenth-century literary history, Binhammer demonstrates the centrality of the myth of downward mobility to the cultural history of capitalism—and to the emergence of the novel in Britain. Deftly weaving economic history and formal analysis, Binhammer reveals how capitalism requires the novel's complex techniques to render infinite economic growth imaginable. She also explains why the novel's signature formal developments owe their narrative dynamics to the contradictions within capital's form. Combining new archival research on the history of debt with original readings of sentimental novels, including Frances Burney's Cecilia and Camilla, Sarah Fielding's David Simple, and Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield, Downward Mobility registers the value of literary narrative in interpreting the complex sequences behind financial capitalism, especially the belief in infinite growth that has led to current environmental crises. An audacious epilogue arms humanists with the argument that, in order to save the planet from unsustainable growth, we need to read more novels.