Utopia's Doom

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Author :
Publisher : Art & Religion
ISBN 13 : 9789042934689
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (346 download)

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Book Synopsis Utopia's Doom by : P. VandenBroeck

Download or read book Utopia's Doom written by P. VandenBroeck and published by Art & Religion. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The so-called Garden of Delights by Jheronimus Bosch (c. 1450-1516), now located in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, was painted over half a millennium ago yet remains an absolutely iconic work in European art history. The highly complex and enigmatic image has frequently been interpreted as a paradisaical utopia, in which people indulge playfully in erotic pleasure in harmony with nature. It is a visual utopia framed before Thomas More had actually coined the word in a book whose entirely unfrivolous blueprint for society could hardly differ more from Bosch's phantasm. More traditional art historians have identified Bosch's masterpiece as a painted warning against the sins of the body, more specifically that of 'lust', citing the image of Hell in the right wing in support. Paul Vandenbroeck argues that these two interpretations need not preclude one another: Bosch painted a phantasmagorical false paradise that leads inexorably to ruin. He drew his inspiration from folk ideas about a semi-earthly, semi-supernatural erotic paradise or Grail, in which those who entered could live in a dream-world of unbridled pleasure. But only until Judgement Day, upon which they would all wind up in Hell. As far as 'right-thinking' town-dwellers were concerned from their vantage point within a 'bourgeois civilizing offensive', belief in such an existence was dangerous, if not diabolical nonsense - tantamount to the 'Cult of Adam' and the indiscriminate sexual promiscuity of the late-medieval Sect of the Free Spirit. In large swathes of countryside throughout Europe, however, people were familiar with 'ecstatics', those 'born with the caul', who were able to access this other world. Bosch's magisterial work is simultaneously a reflection on the first and last times, on passions and moral norms, human beings and Nature. A Nature which, although also part of God's creation, was permeated with malevolent and highly dangerous sexual urges, which human beings were required to keep in check. For whom did Bosch paint this enormous triptych? Since the discoveries of Prof. J.K. Steppe of Leuven University, art historians have tended to identify the patron as Henry III of Nassau or, more recently, his uncle, Engelbert II. This book presents an unexpected alternative hypothesis.

History in Times of Unprecedented Change

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350095079
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis History in Times of Unprecedented Change by : Zoltán Boldizsár Simon

Download or read book History in Times of Unprecedented Change written by Zoltán Boldizsár Simon and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-13 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our understanding of ourselves and the world as historical has drastically changed since the postwar period, yet this emerging historical sensibility has not been appropriately explained in a coherent theory of history. In this book, Zoltán Simon argues that instead of seeing the past, the present and the future together on a temporal continuum as history, we now expect unprecedented change to happen in the future (in visions of the future of technology, ecology and nuclear warfare) and we look at the past by assuming that such changes have already happened. This radical theory of history challenges narrative conceptualizations of history which assume a past potential of humanity unfolding over time to reach future fulfillment and seeks new ways of conceptualizing the altered socio-cultural concerns Western societies are currently facing. By creating a novel set of concepts to make sense of our altered historical condition regarding both history understood as the course of human affairs and historical writing, History in Times of Unprecedented Change offers a highly original and engaging take on the state of history and historical theory in the present and beyond.

Doom

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593297385
Total Pages : 497 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis Doom by : Niall Ferguson

Download or read book Doom written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "All disasters are in some sense man-made." Setting the annus horribilis of 2020 in historical perspective, Niall Ferguson explains why we are getting worse, not better, at handling disasters. Disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises. and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet in 2020 the responses of many developed countries, including the United States, to a new virus from China were badly bungled. Why? Why did only a few Asian countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? While populist leaders certainly performed poorly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work--pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters. In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Ferguson has studied the foibles of modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online fragmentation. Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics, cliodynamics, and network science, Doom offers not just a history but a general theory of disasters, showing why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are getting worse at handling them. Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn, if we want to handle the next crisis better, and to avoid the ultimate doom of irreversible decline.

The End of Doom

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Author :
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1466861444
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis The End of Doom by : Ronald Bailey

Download or read book The End of Doom written by Ronald Bailey and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past five decades there have been many, many forecasts of impending environmental doom. They have universally been proven wrong. Meanwhile, those who have bet on human resourcefulness have almost always been correct. In his widely praised book Ecoscam, Ronald Bailey strongly countered environmentalist alarmism, using facts to demonstrate just how wildly overstated many claims of impending ecological doom really were. Now, twenty years later, the Reason Magazine science correspondent is back to assess the future of humanity and the global biosphere. Bailey finds, contrary to popular belief, that many present ecological trends are quite positive. Including: Falling cancer incidence rates in the United States. The likelihood of a declining world population by mid-century. The abundant return of agricultural land to nature as the world reaches peak farmland. A proven link between increases in national wealth and reductions in air and water pollution Global warming is a problem, but the cost of clean energy could soon fall below that of fossil fuels. In The End of Doom, Bailey avoids polemics and offers a balanced, fact-based and ultimately hopeful perspective on our current environmental situation. Now isn't that a breath of fresh air?

Canary-birds Naturaliz'd in Utopia. A Canto

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 16 pages
Book Rating : 4.R/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Canary-birds Naturaliz'd in Utopia. A Canto by :

Download or read book Canary-birds Naturaliz'd in Utopia. A Canto written by and published by . This book was released on 1709 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Walt's Utopia

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Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786498366
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (864 download)

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Book Synopsis Walt's Utopia by : Priscilla Hobbs

Download or read book Walt's Utopia written by Priscilla Hobbs and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-07-02 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "Happiest Place on Earth" opened in 1955 during a trying time in American life--the Cold War. Disneyland was envisioned as a utopian resort where families could play together and escape the tension of the "real world." Since its construction, the park has continually been updated to reflect changing American culture. The park's themed features are based on familiar Disney stories and American history and folklore. They reflect the hopes of a society trying to understand itself in the wake of World War II. This book takes a fresh look at the park, analyzing its cultural narrative by looking beyond consumerism and corporate marketing to how Disney helped America cope during the Cold War and beyond.

Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations

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Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393254550
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations by : Nicholas Carr

Download or read book Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations written by Nicholas Carr and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A freewheeling, sharp-shooting indictment of a tech-besotted culture. With razor wit, Nicholas Carr cuts through Silicon Valley’s unsettlingly cheery vision of the technological future to ask a hard question: Have we been seduced by a lie? Gathering a decade’s worth of posts from his blog, Rough Type, as well as his seminal essays, Utopia Is Creepy is “Carr’s best hits for those who missed the last decade of his stream of thoughtful commentary about our love affair with technology and its effect on our relationships” (Richard Cytowic, New York Journal of Books). Carr draws on artists ranging from Walt Whitman to the Clash, while weaving in the latest findings from science and sociology. Carr’s favorite targets are those zealots who believe so fervently in computers and data that they abandon common sense. Cheap digital tools do not make us all the next Fellini or Dylan. Social networks, diverting as they may be, are not vehicles for self-enlightenment. And “likes” and retweets are not going to elevate political discourse. Utopia Is Creepy compels us to question the technological momentum that has trapped us in its flow. “Resistance is never futile,” argues Carr, and this book delivers the proof.

Sustainable Utopias

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674249143
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Sustainable Utopias by : Jennifer L. Allen

Download or read book Sustainable Utopias written by Jennifer L. Allen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To reclaim a sense of hope for the future, German activists in the late twentieth century engaged ordinary citizens in innovative projects that resisted alienation and disenfranchisement. By most accounts, the twentieth century was not kind to utopian thought. The violence of two world wars, Cold War anxieties, and a widespread sense of crisis after the 1973 global oil shock appeared to doom dreams of a better world. The eventual victory of capitalism and, seemingly, liberal democracy relieved some fears but exchanged them for complacency and cynicism. Not, however, in West Germany. Jennifer Allen showcases grassroots activism of the 1980s and 1990s that envisioned a radically different society based on community-centered politicsÑa society in which the democratization of culture and power ameliorated alienation and resisted the impotence of end-of-history narratives. BerlinÕs History Workshop liberated research from university confines by providing opportunities for ordinary people to write and debate the story of the nation. The Green Party made the politics of direct democracy central to its program. Artists changed the way people viewed and acted in public spaces by installing objects in unexpected environments, including the Stolpersteine: paving stones, embedded in residential sidewalks, bearing the names of Nazi victims. These activists went beyond just trafficking in ideas. They forged new infrastructures, spaces, and behaviors that gave everyday people real agency in their communities. Undergirding this activism was the environmentalist concept of sustainability, which demanded that any alternative to existing society be both enduring and adaptable. A rigorous but inspiring tale of hope in action, Sustainable Utopias makes the case that it is still worth believing in human creativity and the labor of citizenship.

Journey through Utopia

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000734714
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Journey through Utopia by : Marie Louise Berneri

Download or read book Journey through Utopia written by Marie Louise Berneri and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this title, originally published in 1950, the author has set out to give a description and a critical assessment of the most important (not necessarily the most famous) Utopian writings since Plato first gave, in his Republic, a literary form to the dreams of a Golden Age and of ideal societies which had doubtless been haunting man since the beginning of the conscious discussion of social problems. It is more than a mere compilation and criticism of Utopias, it brings out in a striking way the close and fateful relationship between Utopian thought and social reality, and takes its place among the important books which had appeared in the previous few years, warning us, from various points of view, of the doom that awaits those who are foolish enough to put their trust in an ordered and regimented world.

Inventions of Nemesis

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691211647
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis Inventions of Nemesis by : Douglas Mao

Download or read book Inventions of Nemesis written by Douglas Mao and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging reevaluation of utopian literature and philosophy, from Plato to Chang-Rae Lee Examining literary and philosophical writing about ideal societies from Greek antiquity to the present, Inventions of Nemesis offers a striking new take on utopia’s fundamental project. Noting that utopian imagining has often been propelled by an angry conviction that society is badly arranged, Douglas Mao argues that utopia’s essential aim has not been to secure happiness, order, or material goods, but rather to establish a condition of justice in which all have what they ought to have. He also makes the case that hostility to utopias has frequently been associated with a fear that they will transform humanity beyond recognition, doing away with the very subjects who should receive justice in a transformed world. Further, he shows how utopian writing speaks to contemporary debates about immigration, labor, and other global justice issues. Along the way, Inventions of Nemesis connects utopia to the Greek concept of nemesis, or indignation at a wrong ordering of things, and advances fresh readings of dozens of writers and thinkers—from Plato, Thomas More, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edward Bellamy, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and H. G. Wells to John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Fredric Jameson, Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Chang-Rae Lee. Ambitious and timely, Inventions of Nemesis offers a vital reconsideration of what it really means to imagine an ideal society.

Bentham's Prison : A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary

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Author :
Publisher : Clarendon Press
ISBN 13 : 0191590819
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (915 download)

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Book Synopsis Bentham's Prison : A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary by : Janet Semple

Download or read book Bentham's Prison : A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary written by Janet Semple and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1993-07-08 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the end of the eighteenth century, Jeremy Bentham devised a scheme for a prison that he called the panopticon. It soon became an obsession. For twenty years he tried to build it; in the end he failed, but the story of his attempt offers fascinating insights into both Bentham's complex character and the ideas of the period. Basing her analysis on hitherto unexamined manuscripts, Janet Semple chronicles Bentham's dealings with the politicians as he tried to put his plans into practice. She assesses the panopticon in the context of penal philosophy and eighteenth-century punishment and discusses it as an instrument of the modern technology of subjection as revealed and analysed by Foucault. Her entertainingly written study is full of drama: at times it is hilariously funny, at others it approaches tragedy. It illuminates a subject of immense historical importance and which is particularly relevant to modern controversies about penal policy.

Dissident Marxism and Utopian Eco-Socialism in the German Democratic Republic

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Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004687866
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (46 download)

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Book Synopsis Dissident Marxism and Utopian Eco-Socialism in the German Democratic Republic by : Alexander Amberger

Download or read book Dissident Marxism and Utopian Eco-Socialism in the German Democratic Republic written by Alexander Amberger and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rudolf Bahro, Wolfgang Harich and Robert Havemann were probably the best-known critics of the DDR’s ruling Socialist Unity Party. Yet they saw themselves as Marxists, and their demands extended far beyond a democratisation of real socialism. When environmental issues became more important in the West in the 1970s, the Party treated it as an ideological manoeuvre of the class enemy. The three dissidents saw things differently: they combined socialism and ecology, adopting a utopian perspective frowned upon by the state. In doing so, they created political concepts that were unique for the Eastern Bloc. Alexander Amberger introduces them, relates them to each other, and poses the question of their relevance then and now.

Victorian Visions of Suburban Utopia

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198861443
Total Pages : 577 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis Victorian Visions of Suburban Utopia by : Nathaniel Robert Walker

Download or read book Victorian Visions of Suburban Utopia written by Nathaniel Robert Walker and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-11-26 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of British and American Utopian writing of the 1800s in the context of developments in real architectural, political, and cultural life. The book studies utopian visions published in the UK and the USA in the 1800s by writers such Robert Owen, James Silk Buckingham, Edward Bellamy, and William Morris.

The Concept of Utopia

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Publisher : Syracuse University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780815625131
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (251 download)

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Book Synopsis The Concept of Utopia by : Ruth Levitas

Download or read book The Concept of Utopia written by Ruth Levitas and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Probes the contested concept of utopia, examining the different ways in which it has been used by commentators and theorists in both liberal and Marxist radiations. The works of Karl Mannheim, Georges Sorel, Ernst Bloch, William Morris, and Herbert Marcuse are studied. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Green Utopias

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745684750
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (456 download)

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Book Synopsis Green Utopias by : Lisa Garforth

Download or read book Green Utopias written by Lisa Garforth and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmentalism has relentlessly warned about the dire consequences of abusing and exploiting the planet's natural resources, imagining future wastelands of ecological depletion and social chaos. But it has also generated rich new ideas about how humans might live better with nature. Green Utopias explores these ideas of environmental hope in the post-war period, from the environmental crisis to the end of nature. Using a broad definition of Utopia as it exists in Western policy, theory and literature, Lisa Garforth explains how its developing entanglement with popular culture and mainstream politics has shaped successive green future visions and initiatives. In the face of apocalyptic, despairing or indifferent responses to contemporary ecological dilemmas, utopias and the utopian method seem more necessary than ever. This distinctive reading of green political thought and culture will appeal across the social sciences and humanities to all interested in why green utopias continue to matter in the cultivation of ecological values and the emergence of new forms of human and non-human well-being.

Food Utopias

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 131765773X
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (176 download)

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Book Synopsis Food Utopias by : Paul V. Stock

Download or read book Food Utopias written by Paul V. Stock and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-01-09 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food is a contentious and emotive issue, subject to critiques from multiple perspectives. Alternative food movements – including the different articulations of local, food miles, seasonality, food justice, food knowledge and food sovereignty – consistently invoke themes around autonomy, sufficiency, cooperation, mutual aid, freedom, and responsibility. In this stimulating and provocative book the authors link these issues to utopias and intentional communities. Using a food utopias framework presented in the introduction, they examine food stories in three interrelated and complementary ways: utopias as critique of existing systems; utopias as engagement with experimentation of the novel, the forgotten, and the hopeful in the future of the food system; and utopias as process that recognizes the time and difficulty inherent in changing the status quo. The chapters address theoretical aspects of food utopias and also present case studies from a range of contexts and regions, including Argentina, Italy, Switzerland and USA. These focus on key issues in contemporary food studies including equity, locality, the sacred, citizenship, community and food sovereignty. Food utopias offers ways forward to imagine a creative and convivial food system.

Annihilation and Utopia

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135027250
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (35 download)

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Book Synopsis Annihilation and Utopia by : Errol E. Harris

Download or read book Annihilation and Utopia written by Errol E. Harris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1966. The main purpose of this book is not philosophical speculation, but to draw the obvious conclusions from political and historical facts about the prospects and methods of human political survival. The central theme is developed in the context of problems which cause most anxiety today: the mounting arms race, the unstable balance of power, the rapid growth of population, racial conflicts and ideological incompatibilities.