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Utopian Pulse
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Download or read book Utopian Pulse written by Ines Doujak and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This...illustrated book brings together a range of international artists and art theorists to explore and create practices ignited by a utopian impulse. Grounded in the idea that utopian imaginations are needed to organise society differently, the book explores how art practice engaged in the present can give light to necessarily incomplete alternative futures."--Back cover.
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 Exploring the Utopian Impulse by : Michael J. Griffin
Download or read book Exploring the Utopian Impulse written by Michael J. Griffin and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2007 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A series of essays by an international and trans-disciplinary group of contributors which explores the nature and extent of the utopian impulse. Working across a range of historical periods and cultures, the book investigates key aspects of utopian theory, texts, and socio-political practices.
Book Synopsis Notes on Nowhere by : Jennifer Burwell
Download or read book Notes on Nowhere written by Jennifer Burwell and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Notes on Nowhere was first published in 1997. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The term utopia implies both "good place" and "nowhere." Since Sir Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516, debates about utopian models of society have sought to understand the implications of these somewhat contradictory definitions. In Notes on Nowhere, author Jennifer Burwell uses a cross section of contemporary feminist science fiction to examine the political and literary meaning of utopian writing and utopian thought. Burwell provides close readings of the science fiction novels of five feminist writers-Marge Piercy, Sally Gearhart, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, and Monique Wittig-and poses questions central to utopian writing: Do these texts promote a tradition in which narratives of the ideal society have been used to hide rather than reveal violence, oppression, and social divisions? Can a feminist critical utopia offer a departure from this tradition by using utopian narratives to expose contradiction and struggle as central aspects of the utopian impulse? What implications do these questions have for those who wish to retain the utopian impulse for emancipatory political uses? As one way of answering these questions, Burwell compares two "figures" that inform utopian writing and social theory. The first is the traditional abstract "revolutionary" subject who contradicts existing conditions and who points us to the ideal body politic. The second, "resistant," subject is partial, concrete, and produced by conditions rather than operating outside of them. In analyzing contemporary changes in the subject's relationship to social space, Burwell draws from and revises "standpoint approaches" that tie visions of social transformation to a group's position within existing conditions. By exploring the dilemmas, antagonisms, and resolutions within the critical literary feminist utopia, Burwell creates connections to a similar set of problems and resolutions characterizing "nonliterary" discourses of social transformation such as feminism, gay and lesbian studies, and Marxism. Notes on Nowhere makes an original, significant, and persuasive contribution to our understanding of the political and literary dimensions of the utopian impulse in literature and social theory. Jennifer Burwell teaches in the Department of English at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
Book Synopsis The Utopian Impulse in Latin America by : K. Beauchesne
Download or read book The Utopian Impulse in Latin America written by K. Beauchesne and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-10-24 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the concept of utopia in Latin America from the earliest accounts of the New World to current cultural production, the carefully selected essays in this volume represent the latest research on the topic by some of the most important Latin Americanists working in North American academia today.
Book Synopsis Raymond Williams at 100 by : Paul Stasi
Download or read book Raymond Williams at 100 written by Paul Stasi and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-04-07 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raymond Williams was “by common consent” one of the “two most commanding intellectual figures in the New Left that emerged in Britain at the turn of the sixties,” the other being Edward Thompson. Williams published in 1961 a text entitled “The Future of Marxism.” In that essay, Williams has some remarkable things to say about imperialism, the successes of actually existing socialism, balanced against its failures, and the continued relevance of socialism as the horizon of human liberation. He also makes a characteristic methodological point: “the relation between systems of thought and actual history is both complex and surprising.” The future of Marxism, that is to say, will not depend on dogma, but will instead rest on historical developments, on how well are able to actualize Marx’s ideals in our own unique conjuncture. This volume takes up the challenge of reading and extending Williams’s thought in light of the actual history that has occurred since his passing but with the same ideal of socialism as its guiding horizon. If there is one thread visible throughout all of Williams’s work, it is the felt presence of a living, thinking individual, of a person continually testing ideas in experience in order to see whether they fit the world they are meant to describe. The aim of this volume, timed to coincide with what would have been Williams’s 100th birthday, is to test his ideas in our own experience and to engage Williams’s work in ways that move past the familiar terrain that has grown around it. We now know that “experience” is a dangerous category, that “community” can be hijacked by the right as much as the left, and that “tradition” contains as much conflict as commonality. Those committed to Williams’s work can easily find textual arguments or developments across his career to answer these charges, and they have. What our volume offers is a set of arguments by younger scholars influenced by Williams’s writings that moves past some of these debates, extending Williams’s work into the 21st century, testing and weighing his ideas in light of recent developments and contemporary intellectual culture. In doing so, we treat Williams’s thought as one of those “resources of hope,” which he famously suggested would sustain us. At a time of deepening inequality and austerity and growing rightward reaction, and yet simultaneously, and with seeming dialectical necessity, a renewed investment in socialism, Williams might be exactly the kind of figure we need.
Download or read book The Art of Useless written by Calvin Hui and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since embarking on economic reforms in 1978, the People’s Republic of China has also undergone a sweeping cultural reorganization, from proletarian culture under Mao to middle-class consumer culture today. Under these circumstances, how has a Chinese middle class come into being, and how has consumerism become the dominant ideology of an avowedly socialist country? The Art of Useless offers an innovative way to understand China’s unprecedented political-economic, social, and cultural transformations, showing how consumer culture helps anticipate, produce, and shape a new middle-class subjectivity. Examining changing representations of the production and consumption of fashion in documentaries and films, Calvin Hui traces how culture contributes to China’s changing social relations through the cultivation of new identities and sensibilities. He explores the commodity chain of fashion on a transnational scale, from production to consumption to disposal, as well as media portrayals of the intersections of clothing with class, gender, and ethnicity. Hui illuminates key cinematic narratives, such as a factory worker’s desire for a high-quality suit in the 1960s, an intellectual’s longing for fashionable clothes in the 1980s, and a white-collar woman’s craving for brand-name commodities in the 2000s. He considers how documentary films depict the undersides of consumption—exploited laborers who fantasize about the products they manufacture as well as the accumulation of waste and its disposal—revealing how global capitalism renders migrant factory workers, scavengers, and garbage invisible. A highly interdisciplinary work that combines theoretical nuance with masterful close analyses, The Art of Useless is an innovative rethinking of the emergence of China’s middle-class consumer culture.
Book Synopsis The Pulse of Modernism by : Robert Michael Brain
Download or read book The Pulse of Modernism written by Robert Michael Brain and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Brain traces the origins of artistic modernism to specific technologies of perception developed in late-nineteenth-century laboratories. Brain argues that the thriving fin-de-siècle field of “physiological aesthetics,” which sought physiological explanations for the capacity to appreciate beauty and art, changed the way poets, artists, and musicians worked and brought a dramatic transformation to the idea of art itself.
Download or read book Higher Ground written by Sally Kitch and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-07 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many feminists love a utopia—the idea of restarting humanity from scratch or transforming human nature in order to achieve a prescribed future based on feminist visions. Some scholars argue that feminist utopian fiction can be used as a template for creating such a future. However, Sally L. Kitch argues that associating feminist thought with utopianism is a mistake. Drawing on the history of utopian thought, as well as on her own research on utopian communities, Kitch defines utopian thinking, explores the pitfalls of pursuing social change based on utopian ideas, and argues for a "higher ground" —a contrasting approach she calls realism. Replacing utopianism with realism helps to eliminate self-defeating notions in feminist theory, such as false generalization, idealization, and unnecessary dichotomies. Realistic thought, however, allows feminist theory to respond to changing circumstances, acknowledge sameness as well as difference, value the past and the present, and respect ideological give-and-take. An important critique of feminist thought, Kitch concludes with a clear, exciting vision for a feminist future without utopia.
Book Synopsis Nomad Citizenship by : Eugene W. Holland
Download or read book Nomad Citizenship written by Eugene W. Holland and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exposes social and labor contracts as masks for foundational and ongoing global violence
Book Synopsis Cinema of Anxiety by : Vincent F. Rocchio
Download or read book Cinema of Anxiety written by Vincent F. Rocchio and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "new" realism of Italian cinema after World War II represented and in many ways attempted to contain the turmoil of a society struggling to rid itself of Fascism while fighting off the threat of radical egalitarianism at the same time. In this boldly revisionist book, Vincent F. Rocchio combines Lacanian psychoanalysis with narratology and Marxist critical theory to examine the previously neglected relationship between Neorealist films and the historical spectators they address. Rocchio builds his analysis around case studies of the films Rome: Open City, Bicycle Thieves, La Terra Trema, Bitter Rice, and Senso. Through the lens of psychoanalysis, he challenges the traditional understanding of Neorealism as a progressive cinema and instead reveals the anxieties it encodes: a society in political turmoil, an economic system in collapse, and a national cinema in ruins; while war, occupation, collaboration, and retaliation remain a part of everyday life. These case studies demonstrate how Lacanian psychoanalysis can play a key role in analyzing the structure of cinematic discourse and its strategies of containment. As one of the first books outside of feminist film theory to bring the ideas of Lacan to theories of cinema, this book offers innovative methods that reinvigorate film analysis. Clear and detailed insights into both Italian culture and the films under investigation will make this engaging reading for anyone interested in film and cultural studies.
Download or read book Playing Dystopia written by Gerald Farca and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Video games permeate our everyday existence. They immerse players in fascinating gameworlds and exciting experiences, often inviting them in various ways to reflect on the enacted events. Gerald Farca explores the genre of dystopian video games and the player's aesthetic response to their nightmarish gameworlds. Players, he argues, will gradually come to see similarities between the virtual dystopia and their own ›offline‹ environment, thus learning to stay wary of social and political developments. In his analysis, Farca draws from a variety of research fields, such as literary theory and game studies, combining them into a coherent theory of aesthetic response to dystopian games.
Book Synopsis Russian Experimental Fiction by : Edith W. Clowes
Download or read book Russian Experimental Fiction written by Edith W. Clowes and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the three decades following Stalin's death, major underground Russian writers have subverted Soviet ideology by using parody to draw attention to its basis in utopian thought. Referring to utopian writing as diverse as Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, and Orwell's Animal Farm, they have tested notions of truth, reality, and representation. They have gone beyond their precursors by experimenting with the tensions between ludic and didactic art. Edith Clowes explores these "meta-utopian" narratives, which address a wide range of attitudes toward utopia, to expose the challenge that literary play poses to dogmatism and to elucidate the sense of renewal it can bring to social imagination. Using both structural analysis and reception theory, she introduces readers outside Russia to a fascinating body of literature that includes Aleksandr Zinoviev's The Yawning Heights, Abram Terts's Liubimov, Vladimir Voinovich's Moscow 2042, and Liudmila Petrushevskaia's "The New Robinsons.". Not advocating its own utopian alternative to current social realities, meta-utopian fiction investigates the function of a deep human impulse to imagine, project, and enforce alternative social orders. Clowes examines the technical innovations meta-utopian writers have made in style, image, and narrative structure that inform fresh modes of social imagination. Her analysis leads to an inquiry into the intended and real audiences of this fiction, and into the ways its authors try to move them toward more sophisticated social discourse. Originally published in 1993. 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.
Book Synopsis The Pre-occupation of Postcolonial Studies by : Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Download or read book The Pre-occupation of Postcolonial Studies written by Fawzia Afzal-Khan and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pre-Occupation of Postcolonial Studies contains essays by both leading figures and younger scholars engaged in the field of postcolonial studies. In this state-of-the-field reader, editors Fawzia Afzal-Khan and Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks have created a dynamic forum for contributors from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary vantage points to question both the limits and the limitations of postcolonial thought. Since it burst on the academic scene as the "hot" new disciplinary field during the final decade of the twentieth century, postcolonial studies has faced criticism from those who question its "troubling" trajectories, its sometimes suspect epistemological and pedagogical methods, and its relatively narrow focus. With diverse essays that emerge from such disciplines as South Asian, Latin American, Arab, and Jewish studies, this volume responds to skeptics and adherers alike, addressing not only the broad theoretical issues at stake within the field but also the position of the field itself within the academy, as well as its relationship to modern, postmodern, and Marxist discourses. Contributors offer critiques on ahistorical and universalizing tendencies in postcolonial work and confront the need for scholars to attend to issues of class, ideology, and the effects of neocolonial practices. Seeking to broaden the field's traditionally literary spectrum of methodologies, these essayists take up large thematic issues to examine specific sites of colonial activities with all of their historical, political, and cultural significance. Closing the volume is an insightful interview with Homi Bhabha, in which he discusses postcolonial studies in the context of contemporary cultural politics and theory. The Pre-Occupation of Postcolonial Studies not only offers an overview of the discipline but also pushes and pulls at the edges of postcolonial studies, offering a comprehensive view of the field's diversity of thought and envisioning clear pathways for its future. Contributors. Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Ali Behdad, Homi Bhabha, Daniel Boyarin, Neil Larsen, Saree Makdisi, Joseph Massad, Walter Mignolo, Hamid Naficy, Ngugi Wa Thingo, Timothy B. Powell, R. Radhakrishnan, Bruce Robbins, Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, Ella Shohat, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
Book Synopsis Critical Communication Theory by : Sue Curry Jansen
Download or read book Critical Communication Theory written by Sue Curry Jansen and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2002-11-19 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking at issues of globalization, science, politics, gender, etc. this book advocates a new agenda not only for communication research, but also for the writing that comes out of it.
Book Synopsis Utopia Reimagined: European Living in 2050 by : Simu Abedin
Download or read book Utopia Reimagined: European Living in 2050 written by Simu Abedin and published by Simu Abedin. This book was released on 2024-01-19 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simu Abedin's "Utopia Reimagined: European Living in 2050" offers a compelling and visionary exploration into the potential future of European societies. In this thought-provoking journey, Abedin paints a utopian landscape where unity, sustainability, and technological innovation converge to shape a harmonious and transformative European living experience. The book unfolds as a tapestry, weaving together diverse threads of societal evolution, ethical considerations, and the profound human desire for a better tomorrow. Abedin invites readers to transcend the limitations of the present and immerse themselves in a future where artificial intelligence coexists ethically with humanity, energy is harnessed sustainably, and education becomes a lifelong journey. The chapters of "Utopia Reimagined" envision a Europe where crises are met with unity and resilience, where cultural diversity converges into a harmonious mosaic, and where the pursuit of well-being is guided by collective values that transcend borders. Abedin's vision extends beyond the realms of imagination, contemplating realistic intersections of technological advancement and the evolving human consciousness. From the ethics of genetic engineering to the role of philanthropy and social impact, Abedin navigates the complexities of a utopian future, addressing challenges and opportunities with a discerning gaze. The book is a prelude to possibilities, a call to envision and actively participate in the creation of a European living experience that transcends the constraints of the present. "Utopia Reimagined" is not just a projection of fanciful dreams; it is an earnest exploration of the potential pathways that lie ahead. Abedin's narrative challenges readers to question existing norms, contemplate a future where the human spirit soars in the pursuit of collective well-being, and actively engage in shaping a more harmonious and prosperous European tomorrow. As readers turn the pages of "Utopia Reimagined," they are invited to dream alongside Abedin, explore the contours of a utopian vision that might inspire present-day actions, and contribute to the ongoing narrative of a future where European living in 2050 is marked by unity, sustainability, and a commitment to the well-being of all.
Book Synopsis Music and the Environment in Dystopian Narrative by : Heidi Hart
Download or read book Music and the Environment in Dystopian Narrative written by Heidi Hart and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music and the Environment in Dystopian Narrative: Sounding the Disaster investigates the active role of music in film and fiction portraying climate crisis. From contemporary science fiction and environmental film to “Anthropocene opera,” the most arresting eco-narratives draw less on background music than on the power of sound to move fictional action and those who receive it. Beginning with a reflection on a Mozart recording on the 1970s’ Voyager Golden Record, this book explores links between music and violence in Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2017 novel The Book of Joan, songless speech in the opera Persephone in the Late Anthropocene, interrupted lyricism in the eco-documentary Expedition to the End of the World, and dread-inducing hurricane music in the Brecht-Weill opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. In all of these works, music allows for a state of critical vulnerability in its hearers, communicating planetary crisis in an embodied way.
