The Disappearance of Rituals

Download The Disappearance of Rituals PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Polity
ISBN 13 : 9781509542765
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (427 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Disappearance of Rituals by : Byung-Chul Han

Download or read book The Disappearance of Rituals written by Byung-Chul Han and published by Polity. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Untrammelled neoliberalism and the inexorable force of production have produced a 21st century crisis of community: a narcissistic cult of authenticity and mass turning-inward are among the pathologies engendered by it. We are individuals afloat in an atomised society, where the loss of the symbolic structures inherent in ritual behaviour has led to overdependence on the contingent to steer identity. Avoiding saccharine nostalgia for the rituals of the past, Han provides a genealogy of their disappearance as a means of diagnosing the pathologies of the present. He juxtaposes a community without communication – where the intensity of togetherness in silent recognition provides structure and meaning – to today’s communication without community, which does away with collective feelings and leaves individuals exposed to exploitation and manipulation by neoliberal psycho-politics. The community that is invoked everywhere today is an atrophied and commoditized community that lacks the symbolic power to bind people together. For Han, it is only the mutual praxis of recognition borne by the ritualistic sharing of the symbolic between members of a community which creates the footholds of objectivity allowing us to make sense of time. This new book by one of the most creative cultural theorists writing today will be of interest to a wide readership.

Ritual Failure

Download Ritual Failure PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Sidestone Press
ISBN 13 : 9088902208
Total Pages : 174 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (889 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Ritual Failure by : Vasiliki G. Koutrafouri

Download or read book Ritual Failure written by Vasiliki G. Koutrafouri and published by Sidestone Press. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Ritual Failure’ is a new concept in archaeology adopted from the discipline of anthropology. Resilient religious systems disappearing, strict believers and faithful practitioners not performing their rites, entire societies changing their customs: how does a religious ritual system transform, change or disappear, leaving only traces of its past glory? Do societies change and then their ritual? Or do customs change first, in turn provoking wider cultural shifts in society? Archaeology possesses the tools and methodologies to explore these questions over the long term; from the emergence of a system, to its peak, and then its decay and disappearance, and in relation to wider social and chronological developments. The collected papers in this book introduce the concept of ‘ritual failure’ to archaeology. The analysis explores ways in which ritual may have been instrumental in sustaining cultural continuity during demanding social conditions, or how its functionality might have failed – resulting in discontinuity, change or collapse. The collected papers draw attention to those turbulent social times of change for which ritual practices are a sensitive indicator within the archaeological record. The book reviews archaeological evidence and theoretical approaches, and suggests models which could explain socio-cultural change through ritual failure. The concept of ‘ritual failure’ is also often used to better understand other themes, such as identity and wider social, economic and political transformations, shedding light on the social conditions that forced or introduced change. This book will engage those interested in ritual theory and practices, but will also appeal to those interested in exploring new avenues to understanding cultural change. From transformations in the use of ritual objects to the risks inherent in practicing ritual, from ritual continuity in customs to sudden and profound change, from the Neolithic Near East to Roman Europe and Iron Age Africa, this book explores what happens when ritual fails.

The Scent of Time

Download The Scent of Time PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509516085
Total Pages : 120 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Scent of Time by : Byung-Chul Han

Download or read book The Scent of Time written by Byung-Chul Han and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his philosophical reflections on the art of lingering, acclaimed cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han argues that the value we attach today to the vita activa is producing a crisis in our sense of time. Our attachment to the vita activa creates an imperative to work which degrades the human being into a labouring animal, an animal laborans. At the same time, the hyperactivity which characterizes our daily routines robs human beings of the capacity to linger and the faculty of contemplation. It therefore becomes impossible to experience time as fulfilling. Drawing on a range of thinkers including Heidegger, Nietzsche and Arendt, Han argues that we can overcome this temporal crisis only by revitalizing the vita contemplativa and relearning the art of lingering. For what distinguishes humans from other animals is the capacity for reflection and contemplation, and when life regains this capacity, this art of lingering, it gains in time and space, in duration and vastness.

Psychopolitics

Download Psychopolitics PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1784785776
Total Pages : 96 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (847 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Psychopolitics by : Byung-Chul Han

Download or read book Psychopolitics written by Byung-Chul Han and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring how neoliberalism has discovered the productive force of the psyche Byung-Chul Han, a star of German philosophy, continues his passionate critique of neoliberalism, trenchantly describing a regime of technological domination that, in contrast to Foucault’s biopower, has discovered the productive force of the psyche. In the course of discussing all the facets of neoliberal psychopolitics fueling our contemporary crisis of freedom, Han elaborates an analytical framework that provides an original theory of Big Data and a lucid phenomenology of emotion. But this provocative essay proposes counter models too, presenting a wealth of ideas and surprising alternatives at every turn.

The Burnout Society

Download The Burnout Society PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804797501
Total Pages : 69 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Burnout Society by : Byung-Chul Han

Download or read book The Burnout Society written by Byung-Chul Han and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-12 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our competitive, service-oriented societies are taking a toll on the late-modern individual. Rather than improving life, multitasking, "user-friendly" technology, and the culture of convenience are producing disorders that range from depression to attention deficit disorder to borderline personality disorder. Byung-Chul Han interprets the spreading malaise as an inability to manage negative experiences in an age characterized by excessive positivity and the universal availability of people and goods. Stress and exhaustion are not just personal experiences, but social and historical phenomena as well. Denouncing a world in which every against-the-grain response can lead to further disempowerment, he draws on literature, philosophy, and the social and natural sciences to explore the stakes of sacrificing intermittent intellectual reflection for constant neural connection.

The Expulsion of the Other

Download The Expulsion of the Other PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 150952309X
Total Pages : 100 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Expulsion of the Other by : Byung-Chul Han

Download or read book The Expulsion of the Other written by Byung-Chul Han and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The days of the Other are over in this age of excessive communication, information and consumption. What used to be the Other, be it as friend, as Eros or as hell, is now indistinguishable from the self in our narcissistic desire to assimilate everything and everyone until there are no boundaries left. The result is a 'terror of the Same', lives in which we no longer pursue knowledge, insight and experience but are instead reduced to the echo chambers and illusory encounters offered by social media. In extreme cases, this feeling of disorientation and senselessness is compensated through self-harm, or even harming others through acts of terrorism. Byung-Chul Han argues that our times are characterized not by external repression but by an internal depression, whereby the destructive pressure comes not from the Other but from the self. It is only by returning to a society of listeners and lovers, by acknowledging and desiring the Other, that we can seek to overcome the isolation and suffering caused by this crushing process of total assimilation.

The Osiris Ritual

Download The Osiris Ritual PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Tor Books
ISBN 13 : 1429937750
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Osiris Ritual by : George Mann

Download or read book The Osiris Ritual written by George Mann and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A steampunk mystery adventure featuring immortality, artifacts, and intrepid sleuths Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbes Sir Maurice Newbury, Gentleman Investigator for the Crown, imagines life will be a little quieter after his dual successes solving The Affinity Bridge affair. But he hasn't banked on his villainous predecessor, Knox, who is hell-bent on achieving immortality, not to mention a secret agent who isn't quite what he seems.... So continues an adventure quite unlike any other, a thrilling steampunk mystery and the second in the series of Newbury & Hobbes investigations. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Work's Intimacy

Download Work's Intimacy PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745637469
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (456 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Work's Intimacy by : Melissa Gregg

Download or read book Work's Intimacy written by Melissa Gregg and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways. This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way.

What is Power?

Download What is Power? PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509516115
Total Pages : 120 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis What is Power? by : Byung-Chul Han

Download or read book What is Power? written by Byung-Chul Han and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-12-28 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Power is a pervasive phenomenon yet there is little consensus on what it is and how it should be understood. In this book the cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han develops a fresh and original perspective on the nature of power, shedding new light on this key feature of social and political life. Power is commonly defined as a causal relation: an individual’s power is the cause that produces a change of behaviour in someone else against the latter’s will. Han rejects this view, arguing that power is better understood as a mediation between ego and alter which creates a complex array of reciprocal interdependencies. Power can also be exercised not only against the other but also within and through the other, and this involves a much higher degree of mediation. This perspective enables us to see that power and freedom are not opposed to one another but are manifestations of the same power, differing only in the degree of mediation. This highly original account of power will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy and of social, political and cultural theory, as well as to anyone seeking to understand the many ways in which power shapes our lives today.

Saving Beauty

Download Saving Beauty PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509515135
Total Pages : 120 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Saving Beauty by : Byung-Chul Han

Download or read book Saving Beauty written by Byung-Chul Han and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-10-27 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beauty today is a paradox. The cult of beauty is ubiquitous but it has lost its transcendence and become little more than an aspect of consumerism, the aesthetic dimension of capitalism. The sublime and unsettling aspects of beauty have given way to corporeal pleasures and 'likes', resulting in a kind of 'pornography' of beauty. In this book, cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han reinvigorates aesthetic theory for our digital age. He interrogates our preoccupation with all things slick and smooth, from Jeff Koon's sculptures and the iPhone to Brazilian waxing. Reaching far deeper than our superficial reactions to viral videos and memes, Han reclaims beauty, showing how it manifests itself as truth, temptation and even disaster. This wide-ranging and profound exploration of beauty, encompassing ethical and political considerations as well as aesthetic, will appeal to all those interested in cultural and aesthetic theory, philosophy and digital media.

The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual

Download The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Lindhardt og Ringhof
ISBN 13 : 8726586460
Total Pages : 14 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (265 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual by : Arthur Conan Doyle

Download or read book The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual written by Arthur Conan Doyle and published by Lindhardt og Ringhof. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reginald Musgrave, a school friend of Holmes, saw his butler searching through private family papers. The butler Brunton got caught red handed with an ancestral ritual of the Musgraves as well. The ritual seemed worthless to the family but Brunton was determined to decipher it. A few days after Brunton disappeared. "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual" is a part of "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes". Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Scotland and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After his studies, he worked as a ship’s surgeon on various boats. During the Second Boer War, he was an army doctor in South Africa. When he came back to the United Kingdom, he opened his own practice and started writing crime books. He is best known for his thrilling stories about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. He published four novels and more than 50 short-stories starring the detective and Dr Watson, and they play an important role in the history of crime fiction. Other than the Sherlock Holmes series, Doyle wrote around thirty more books, in genres such as science-fiction, fantasy, historical novels, but also poetry, plays, and non-fiction.

Small Acts of Disappearance

Download Small Acts of Disappearance PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781922146939
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (469 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Small Acts of Disappearance by : Fiona Wright

Download or read book Small Acts of Disappearance written by Fiona Wright and published by . This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Small Acts of Disappearance is a collection of ten essays that describes the author's affliction with an eating disorder which begins in high school, and escalates into life-threatening anorexia over the next ten years. Fiona Wright is a highly regarded poet and critic, and her account of her illness is informed by a keen sense of its contradictions and deceptions, and by an awareness of the empowering effects of hunger, which is unsparing in its consideration of the author's own actions and motivations. The essays offer perspectives on the eating disorder at different stages in Wright's life, at university, where she finds herself in a radically different social world to the one she grew up in, in Sri Lanka as a fledgling journalist, in Germany as a young writer, in her hospital treatments back in Sydney. They combine research, travel writing, memoir, and literary discussions of how writers like Christina Stead, Carmel Bird, Tim Winton, John Berryman and Louise Gluck deal with anorexia and addiction; together with accounts of family life, and detailed and humorous views of hunger-induced situations of the kind that are so compelling in Wright's poetry.

Platforms and Cultural Production

Download Platforms and Cultural Production PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509540520
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Platforms and Cultural Production by : Thomas Poell

Download or read book Platforms and Cultural Production written by Thomas Poell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-10-14 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The widespread uptake of digital platforms – from YouTube and Instagram to Twitch and TikTok – is reconfiguring cultural production in profound, complex, and highly uneven ways. Longstanding media industries are experiencing tremendous upheaval, while new industrial formations – live-streaming, social media influencing, and podcasting, among others – are evolving at breakneck speed. Poell, Nieborg, and Duffy explore both the processes and the implications of platformization across the cultural industries, identifying key changes in markets, infrastructures, and governance at play in this ongoing transformation, as well as pivotal shifts in the practices of labor, creativity, and democracy. The authors foreground three particular industries – news, gaming, and social media creation – and also draw upon examples from music, advertising, and more. Diverse in its geographic scope, Platforms and Cultural Production builds on the latest research and accounts from across North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and China to reveal crucial differences and surprising parallels in the trajectories of platformization across the globe. Offering a novel conceptual framework grounded in illuminating case studies, this book is essential for students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to understand how the institutions and practices of cultural production are transforming – and what the stakes are for understanding platform power.

An Imaginary Racism

Download An Imaginary Racism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509530665
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis An Imaginary Racism by : Pascal Bruckner

Download or read book An Imaginary Racism written by Pascal Bruckner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Islamophobia’ is a term that has existed since the nineteenth century. But in recent decades, argues Pascal Bruckner in his controversial new book, it has become a weapon used to silence criticism of Islam. The term allows those who brandish it in the name of Islam to ‘freeze’ the latter, making reform difficult. Whereas Christianity and Judaism have been rejuvenated over the centuries by external criticism, Islam has been shielded from critical examination and has remained impervious to change. This tendency is exacerbated by the hypocrisy of those Western defenders of Islam who, in the name of the principles of the Enlightenment, seek to muzzle its critics while at the same time demanding the right to chastise and criticize other religions. These developments, argues Bruckner, are counter-productive for Western democracies as they struggle with the twin challenges of immigration and terrorism. The return of religion in those democracies must not be equated with the defence of fanaticism, and the right to religious freedom must go hand in hand with freedom of expression, an openness to criticism, and a rejection of all forms of extremism. There are already more than enough forms of racism; there is no need to imagine more. While all violence directed against Muslims is to be strongly condemned and punished, defining these acts as ‘Islamophobic’ rather than criminal does more to damage Islam and weaken the position of Muslims than to strengthen them.

Seduction

Download Seduction PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509521593
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Seduction by : Rachel O'Neill

Download or read book Seduction written by Rachel O'Neill and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within the so-called seduction community, the ability to meet and attract women is understood as a skill which heterosexual men can cultivate through practical training and personal development. Though it has been an object of media speculation – and frequent sensationalism – for over a decade, this cultural formation remains poorly understood. In the first book-length study of the industry, Rachel O’Neill takes us into the world of seduction seminars, training events, instructional guidebooks and video tutorials. Pushing past established understandings of ‘pickup artists’ as pathetic, pathological or perverse, she examines what makes seduction so compelling for those drawn to participate in this sphere. Seduction vividly portrays how the twin rationalities of neoliberalism and postfeminism are reorganising contemporary intimate life, as labour-intensive and profit-orientated modes of sociality consume other forms of being and relating. It is essential reading for students and scholars of gender, sexuality, sociology and cultural studies, as well as anyone who wants to understand the seduction industry’s overarching logics and internal workings.

The Agony of Eros

Download The Agony of Eros PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262339250
Total Pages : 88 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Agony of Eros by : Byung-Chul Han

Download or read book The Agony of Eros written by Byung-Chul Han and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. Byung-Chul Han is one of the most widely read philosophers in Europe today, a member of the new generation of German thinkers that includes Markus Gabriel and Armen Avanessian. In The Agony of Eros, a bestseller in Germany, Han considers the threat to love and desire in today's society. For Han, love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. In a world of fetishized individualism and technologically mediated social interaction, it is the Other that is eradicated, not the self. In today's increasingly narcissistic society, we have come to look for love and desire within the “inferno of the same.” Han offers a survey of the threats to Eros, drawing on a wide range of sources—Lars von Trier's film Melancholia, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Fifty Shades of Grey, Michel Foucault (providing a scathing critique of Foucault's valorization of power), Martin Buber, Hegel, Baudrillard, Flaubert, Barthes, Plato, and others. Han considers the “pornographication” of society, and shows how pornography profanes eros; addresses capitalism's leveling of essential differences; and discusses the politics of eros in today's “burnout society.” To be dead to love, Han argues, is to be dead to thought itself. Concise in its expression but unsparing in its insight, The Agony of Eros is an important and provocative entry in Han's ongoing analysis of contemporary society. This remarkable essay, an intellectual experience of the first order, affords one of the best ways to gain full awareness of and join in one of the most pressing struggles of the day: the defense, that is to say—as Rimbaud desired it—the “reinvention” of love. —from the foreword by Alain Badiou

Race After Technology

Download Race After Technology PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509526439
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Race After Technology by : Ruha Benjamin

Download or read book Race After Technology written by Ruha Benjamin and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life. This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture. Visit the book's free Discussion Guide here.