Author: Berber Bevernage
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 041582298X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
This book is centered around the thesis that the way one deals with historical injustice and the ethics of history is strongly dependent on the way one conceives of historical time; that the concept of time traditionally used by historians is structurally more compatible with the perpetrators' than the victims' point of view.
History, Memory, and State-Sponsored Violence
Author: Berber Bevernage
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 041582298X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
This book is centered around the thesis that the way one deals with historical injustice and the ethics of history is strongly dependent on the way one conceives of historical time; that the concept of time traditionally used by historians is structurally more compatible with the perpetrators' than the victims' point of view.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 041582298X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
This book is centered around the thesis that the way one deals with historical injustice and the ethics of history is strongly dependent on the way one conceives of historical time; that the concept of time traditionally used by historians is structurally more compatible with the perpetrators' than the victims' point of view.
Salt in the Sand
Author: Lessie Jo Frazier
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822389665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
Book Description
Salt in the Sand is a compelling historical ethnography of the interplay between memory and state violence in the formation of the Chilean nation-state. The historian and anthropologist Lessie Jo Frazier focuses on northern Chile, which figures prominently in the nation’s history as a site of military glory during the period of national conquest, of labor strikes and massacres in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, and of state detention and violence during World War II and the Cold War. It was also the site of a mass-grave excavation that galvanized the national human rights movement in 1990, during Chile’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. Frazier analyzes the creation of official and alternative memories of specific instances of state violence in northern Chile from 1890 to the present, tracing how the form and content of those memories changed over time. In so doing, she shows how memory works to create political subjectivities mobilized for specific political projects within what she argues is the always-ongoing process of nation-state formation. Frazier’s broad historical perspective on political culture challenges the conventional periodization of modern Chilean history, particularly the idea that the 1973 military coup marked a radical break with the past. Analyzing multiple memories of state violence, Frazier innovatively shapes social and cultural theory to interpret a range of sources, including local and national government archives, personal papers, popular literature and music, interviews, architectural and ceremonial commemorations, and her ethnographic observations of civic associations, women's and environmental groups, and human rights organizations. A masterful integration of extensive empirical research with sophisticated theoretical analysis, Salt in the Sand is a significant contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship on human rights, democratization, state formation, and national trauma and reconciliation.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822389665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
Book Description
Salt in the Sand is a compelling historical ethnography of the interplay between memory and state violence in the formation of the Chilean nation-state. The historian and anthropologist Lessie Jo Frazier focuses on northern Chile, which figures prominently in the nation’s history as a site of military glory during the period of national conquest, of labor strikes and massacres in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, and of state detention and violence during World War II and the Cold War. It was also the site of a mass-grave excavation that galvanized the national human rights movement in 1990, during Chile’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. Frazier analyzes the creation of official and alternative memories of specific instances of state violence in northern Chile from 1890 to the present, tracing how the form and content of those memories changed over time. In so doing, she shows how memory works to create political subjectivities mobilized for specific political projects within what she argues is the always-ongoing process of nation-state formation. Frazier’s broad historical perspective on political culture challenges the conventional periodization of modern Chilean history, particularly the idea that the 1973 military coup marked a radical break with the past. Analyzing multiple memories of state violence, Frazier innovatively shapes social and cultural theory to interpret a range of sources, including local and national government archives, personal papers, popular literature and music, interviews, architectural and ceremonial commemorations, and her ethnographic observations of civic associations, women's and environmental groups, and human rights organizations. A masterful integration of extensive empirical research with sophisticated theoretical analysis, Salt in the Sand is a significant contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship on human rights, democratization, state formation, and national trauma and reconciliation.
A Misplaced Massacre
Author: Ari Kelman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674071034
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
In the early morning of November 29, 1864, with the fate of the Union still uncertain, part of the First Colorado and nearly all of the Third Colorado volunteer regiments, commanded by Colonel John Chivington, surprised hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho people camped on the banks of Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado Territory. More than 150 Native Americans were slaughtered, the vast majority of them women, children, and the elderly, making it one of the most infamous cases of state-sponsored violence in U.S. history. A Misplaced Massacre examines the ways in which generations of Americans have struggled to come to terms with the meaning of both the attack and its aftermath, most publicly at the 2007 opening of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. This site opened after a long and remarkably contentious planning process. Native Americans, Colorado ranchers, scholars, Park Service employees, and politicians alternately argued and allied with one another around the question of whether the nation’s crimes, as well as its achievements, should be memorialized. Ari Kelman unearths the stories of those who lived through the atrocity, as well as those who grappled with its troubling legacy, to reveal how the intertwined histories of the conquest and colonization of the American West and the U.S. Civil War left enduring national scars. Combining painstaking research with storytelling worthy of a novel, A Misplaced Massacre probes the intersection of history and memory, laying bare the ways differing groups of Americans come to know a shared past.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674071034
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
In the early morning of November 29, 1864, with the fate of the Union still uncertain, part of the First Colorado and nearly all of the Third Colorado volunteer regiments, commanded by Colonel John Chivington, surprised hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho people camped on the banks of Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado Territory. More than 150 Native Americans were slaughtered, the vast majority of them women, children, and the elderly, making it one of the most infamous cases of state-sponsored violence in U.S. history. A Misplaced Massacre examines the ways in which generations of Americans have struggled to come to terms with the meaning of both the attack and its aftermath, most publicly at the 2007 opening of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. This site opened after a long and remarkably contentious planning process. Native Americans, Colorado ranchers, scholars, Park Service employees, and politicians alternately argued and allied with one another around the question of whether the nation’s crimes, as well as its achievements, should be memorialized. Ari Kelman unearths the stories of those who lived through the atrocity, as well as those who grappled with its troubling legacy, to reveal how the intertwined histories of the conquest and colonization of the American West and the U.S. Civil War left enduring national scars. Combining painstaking research with storytelling worthy of a novel, A Misplaced Massacre probes the intersection of history and memory, laying bare the ways differing groups of Americans come to know a shared past.
Victims and Warriors
Author: Casey High
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252039058
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
"Casey High weaves together memories, facts and fantasies as these occur in contemporary Ecuadorian Amazonia, offering us a fascinating picture of Waorani life today. This highly original book takes us a step further in the understanding of current sociocultural transformations among Amazonian indigenous peoples." --Carlos Fausto, National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252039058
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
"Casey High weaves together memories, facts and fantasies as these occur in contemporary Ecuadorian Amazonia, offering us a fascinating picture of Waorani life today. This highly original book takes us a step further in the understanding of current sociocultural transformations among Amazonian indigenous peoples." --Carlos Fausto, National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Violence as a Generative Force
Author: Max Bergholz
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462
Book Description
During two terrifying days and nights in early September 1941, the lives of nearly two thousand men, women, and children were taken savagely by their neighbors in Kulen Vakuf, a small rural community straddling today’s border between northwest Bosnia and Croatia. This frenzy—in which victims were butchered with farm tools, drowned in rivers, and thrown into deep vertical caves—was the culmination of a chain of local massacres that began earlier in the summer. In Violence as a Generative Force, Max Bergholz tells the story of the sudden and perplexing descent of this once peaceful multiethnic community into extreme violence. This deeply researched microhistory provides provocative insights to questions of global significance: What causes intercommunal violence? How does such violence between neighbors affect their identities and relations? Contrary to a widely held view that sees nationalism leading to violence, Bergholz reveals how the upheavals wrought by local killing actually created dramatically new perceptions of ethnicity—of oneself, supposed "brothers," and those perceived as "others." As a consequence, the violence forged new communities, new forms and configurations of power, and new practices of nationalism. The history of this community was marked by an unexpected explosion of locally executed violence by the few, which functioned as a generative force in transforming the identities, relations, and lives of the many. The story of this largely unknown Balkan community in 1941 provides a powerful means through which to rethink fundamental assumptions about the interrelationships among ethnicity, nationalism, and violence, both during World War II and more broadly throughout the world.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462
Book Description
During two terrifying days and nights in early September 1941, the lives of nearly two thousand men, women, and children were taken savagely by their neighbors in Kulen Vakuf, a small rural community straddling today’s border between northwest Bosnia and Croatia. This frenzy—in which victims were butchered with farm tools, drowned in rivers, and thrown into deep vertical caves—was the culmination of a chain of local massacres that began earlier in the summer. In Violence as a Generative Force, Max Bergholz tells the story of the sudden and perplexing descent of this once peaceful multiethnic community into extreme violence. This deeply researched microhistory provides provocative insights to questions of global significance: What causes intercommunal violence? How does such violence between neighbors affect their identities and relations? Contrary to a widely held view that sees nationalism leading to violence, Bergholz reveals how the upheavals wrought by local killing actually created dramatically new perceptions of ethnicity—of oneself, supposed "brothers," and those perceived as "others." As a consequence, the violence forged new communities, new forms and configurations of power, and new practices of nationalism. The history of this community was marked by an unexpected explosion of locally executed violence by the few, which functioned as a generative force in transforming the identities, relations, and lives of the many. The story of this largely unknown Balkan community in 1941 provides a powerful means through which to rethink fundamental assumptions about the interrelationships among ethnicity, nationalism, and violence, both during World War II and more broadly throughout the world.
Where Memory Dwells
Author: Macarena Gomez-Barris
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520255844
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
"Where Memory Dwells is a crucial contribution to the current debate on political violence. Macarena Gómez-Barris has researched exhaustively on the Chilean post-dictatorship to find the deep relationship between what happened in Chile on September 11, 1973 and what is going on today, in Chile and in the world."—Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott, University of Arkansas "This book offers intriguing insights on the symbolic, aesthetic, and personal aspects of memory-making by activists, survivors, and artists during the afterlife of the Pinochet dictatorship. The author shows how specific cultural actors wrestle creatively with the dilemma of how to represent experiences of atrocity that defy our ability to know, narrate, and depict them, yet prove crucial to the building of a democratic culture."—Steve Stern, Alberto Flores Galindo Professor, University of Wisconsin "Macarena Gomez-Barris takes the reader on an often personal journey through the 'memoryscape of terror' of the Chilean dictatorship in Chile and Chilean culture in exile. This book makes a poignant and compelling contribution to the study of traumatic memory in Latin America."—Marita Sturken, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication studies, New York University "Where Memory Dwells offers an immensely luminous rearticulation of the 1990s 'politics of memory' theme for the twenty-first century. Illustrating the profound relevance of memory studies to political theory, Gómez-Barris shows with great lucidity how the remembering and forgetting of state terror are entwined with global and local forces of the neoliberal economy, nationalism, and universal human rights discourse. Where Memory Dwells exemplifies the best efforts of a sociological approach to memory as cultural mediation of power. It should be read by anyone interested in the critical work that collective memory may perform for our societies in transition.”—Lisa Yoneyama, Author of Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory "Where Memory Dwells is a creatively researched and exquisitely thoughtful study of the memory of state terror as it lives and hides in complex and politically activated cultural practices. Gómez-Barris's exploration of how authoritarianism and social injustice are remembered, forgotten, and redressed by nations, citizens, and exiles is a beautiful achievement, one with an immediate relevance for us today."—Avery F. Gordon, author of Ghostly Matters
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520255844
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
"Where Memory Dwells is a crucial contribution to the current debate on political violence. Macarena Gómez-Barris has researched exhaustively on the Chilean post-dictatorship to find the deep relationship between what happened in Chile on September 11, 1973 and what is going on today, in Chile and in the world."—Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott, University of Arkansas "This book offers intriguing insights on the symbolic, aesthetic, and personal aspects of memory-making by activists, survivors, and artists during the afterlife of the Pinochet dictatorship. The author shows how specific cultural actors wrestle creatively with the dilemma of how to represent experiences of atrocity that defy our ability to know, narrate, and depict them, yet prove crucial to the building of a democratic culture."—Steve Stern, Alberto Flores Galindo Professor, University of Wisconsin "Macarena Gomez-Barris takes the reader on an often personal journey through the 'memoryscape of terror' of the Chilean dictatorship in Chile and Chilean culture in exile. This book makes a poignant and compelling contribution to the study of traumatic memory in Latin America."—Marita Sturken, Professor of Media, Culture and Communication studies, New York University "Where Memory Dwells offers an immensely luminous rearticulation of the 1990s 'politics of memory' theme for the twenty-first century. Illustrating the profound relevance of memory studies to political theory, Gómez-Barris shows with great lucidity how the remembering and forgetting of state terror are entwined with global and local forces of the neoliberal economy, nationalism, and universal human rights discourse. Where Memory Dwells exemplifies the best efforts of a sociological approach to memory as cultural mediation of power. It should be read by anyone interested in the critical work that collective memory may perform for our societies in transition.”—Lisa Yoneyama, Author of Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory "Where Memory Dwells is a creatively researched and exquisitely thoughtful study of the memory of state terror as it lives and hides in complex and politically activated cultural practices. Gómez-Barris's exploration of how authoritarianism and social injustice are remembered, forgotten, and redressed by nations, citizens, and exiles is a beautiful achievement, one with an immediate relevance for us today."—Avery F. Gordon, author of Ghostly Matters
Religion, Violence, Memory, and Place
Author: Oren Baruch Stier
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253347998
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 591
Book Description
Scholars from a variety of disciplines explore the intersections of violence, memory, and sacred space
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253347998
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 591
Book Description
Scholars from a variety of disciplines explore the intersections of violence, memory, and sacred space
Ethics and Time in the Philosophy of History
Author: Natan Elgabsi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350279110
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
This interdisciplinary volume connects the philosophy of history to moral philosophy with a unique focus on time. Taking in a range of intellectual traditions, cultural, and geographical contexts, the volume provides a rich tapestry of approaches to time, morality, culture, and history. By extending the philosophical discussion on the ethical importance of temporality, the editors disentangle some of the disciplinary tensions between analytical and hermeneutic philosophy of history, cultural theory, meta-ethical theory, and normative ethics. The ethical and existential character of temporality reveals itself within a collection that resists the methodological underpinnings of any one philosophical school. The book's distinctive cross-cultural approach ensures a wide range of perspectives with contributions on life and death in Japanese philosophy, ethics and time in Maori philosophy, non-traditional temporalities and philosophical anthropology, as well as global approaches to ethics. These new directions of study highlight the importance of the ethical in the temporal, inviting further points of departure in this burgeoning field.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350279110
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
This interdisciplinary volume connects the philosophy of history to moral philosophy with a unique focus on time. Taking in a range of intellectual traditions, cultural, and geographical contexts, the volume provides a rich tapestry of approaches to time, morality, culture, and history. By extending the philosophical discussion on the ethical importance of temporality, the editors disentangle some of the disciplinary tensions between analytical and hermeneutic philosophy of history, cultural theory, meta-ethical theory, and normative ethics. The ethical and existential character of temporality reveals itself within a collection that resists the methodological underpinnings of any one philosophical school. The book's distinctive cross-cultural approach ensures a wide range of perspectives with contributions on life and death in Japanese philosophy, ethics and time in Maori philosophy, non-traditional temporalities and philosophical anthropology, as well as global approaches to ethics. These new directions of study highlight the importance of the ethical in the temporal, inviting further points of departure in this burgeoning field.
Memory Ireland
Author: Oona Frawley
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 081565264X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
Recent years have seen cultural memory become a significant element in area studies and the humanities. Ireland, with its trauma-filled history and huge global diaspora, presents a fascinating subject for work in this vein. This series as a whole seeks to construct a landscape of cultural memory in Ireland, looking to map—through an examination of various historical moments, spaces, and cultural forms—the ways in which cultural memory shifts over time. Volume 3 focuses on the impact of trauma on cultural memory by considering two cruxes, the Famine and the Troubles, as formative to the study of Irish cultural memory. Topics include hunger strikes, monuments to the Famine, trauma and the politics of memory in the Irish peace process, and Ulster Loyalist battles in the twenty-first century. Gathering the work of leading scholars such as Graham Dawson, Richard Kearney, Margaret Kelleher, David Lloyd, and Joseph Valente, this collection is an essential contribution to the field of Irish studies.
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 081565264X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
Recent years have seen cultural memory become a significant element in area studies and the humanities. Ireland, with its trauma-filled history and huge global diaspora, presents a fascinating subject for work in this vein. This series as a whole seeks to construct a landscape of cultural memory in Ireland, looking to map—through an examination of various historical moments, spaces, and cultural forms—the ways in which cultural memory shifts over time. Volume 3 focuses on the impact of trauma on cultural memory by considering two cruxes, the Famine and the Troubles, as formative to the study of Irish cultural memory. Topics include hunger strikes, monuments to the Famine, trauma and the politics of memory in the Irish peace process, and Ulster Loyalist battles in the twenty-first century. Gathering the work of leading scholars such as Graham Dawson, Richard Kearney, Margaret Kelleher, David Lloyd, and Joseph Valente, this collection is an essential contribution to the field of Irish studies.
The Violence of Organized Forgetting
Author: Henry A. Giroux
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
ISBN: 0872866203
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
"Giroux refuses to give in or give up. The Violence of Organized Forgetting is a clarion call to imagine a different America--just, fair, and caring--and then to struggle for it."--Bill Moyers "Henry Giroux has accomplished an exciting, brilliant intellectual dissection of America's somnambulent voyage into anti-democratic political depravity. His analysis of the plight of America's youth is particularly heartbreaking. If we have a shred of moral fibre left in our beings, Henry Giroux sounds the trumpet to awaken it to action to restore to the nation a civic soul."--Dennis J. Kucinich, former US Congressman and Presidential candidate "Giroux lays out a blistering critique of an America governed by the tenets of a market economy. . . . He cites French philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman's concept of the 'disimagination machine' to describe a culture and pedagogical philosophy that short-circuits citizens' ability to think critically, leaving the generation now reaching adulthood unprepared for an 'inhospitable' world. Picking apart the current malaise of 21st-century digital disorder, Giroux describes a world in which citizenship is replaced by consumerism and the functions of engaged governance are explicitly beholden to corporations."--Publishers Weekly In a series of essays that explore the intersections of politics, popular culture, and new forms of social control in American society, Henry A. Giroux explores how state and corporate interests have coalesced to restrict civil rights, privatize what's left of public institutions, and diminish our collective capacity to participate as engaged citizens of a democracy. From the normalization of mass surveillance, lockdown drills, and a state of constant war, to corporate bailouts paired with public austerity programs that further impoverish struggling families and communities, Giroux looks to flashpoints in current events to reveal how the forces of government and business are at work to generate a culture of mass forgetfulness, obedience and conformity. In The Violence of Organized Forgetting, Giroux deconstructs the stories created to control us while championing the indomitable power of education, democracy, and hope. Henry A. Giroux is a world-renowned educator, author and public intellectual. He currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. The Toronto Star has named Henry Giroux “one of the twelve Canadians changing the way we think." More Praise for Henry A. Giroux's The Violence of Organized Forgetting: "I can think of no book in the last ten years as essential as this. I can think of no other writer who has so clinically dissected the crisis of modern life and so courageously offered a possibility for real material change."--John Steppling, playwright, and author of The Shaper, Dogmouth, and Sea of Cortez "A timely study if there ever was one, The Violence of Organized Forgetting is a milestone in the struggle to repossess the common sense expropriated by the American power elite to be redeployed in its plot to foil the popular resistance against rising social injustice and decay of political democracy."--Zygmunt Bauman, author of Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? among other works Prophetic and eloquent, Giroux gives us, in this hard-hitting and compelling book, the dark scenario of Western crisis where ignorance has become a virtue and wealth and power the means of ruthless abuse of workers, of the minorities and of immigrants. However, he remains optimistic in his affirmation of radical humanity, determined as he is to relate himself to a fair and caring world unblemished by anti-democratic political depravity."--Shelley Walia, Frontline
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
ISBN: 0872866203
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
"Giroux refuses to give in or give up. The Violence of Organized Forgetting is a clarion call to imagine a different America--just, fair, and caring--and then to struggle for it."--Bill Moyers "Henry Giroux has accomplished an exciting, brilliant intellectual dissection of America's somnambulent voyage into anti-democratic political depravity. His analysis of the plight of America's youth is particularly heartbreaking. If we have a shred of moral fibre left in our beings, Henry Giroux sounds the trumpet to awaken it to action to restore to the nation a civic soul."--Dennis J. Kucinich, former US Congressman and Presidential candidate "Giroux lays out a blistering critique of an America governed by the tenets of a market economy. . . . He cites French philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman's concept of the 'disimagination machine' to describe a culture and pedagogical philosophy that short-circuits citizens' ability to think critically, leaving the generation now reaching adulthood unprepared for an 'inhospitable' world. Picking apart the current malaise of 21st-century digital disorder, Giroux describes a world in which citizenship is replaced by consumerism and the functions of engaged governance are explicitly beholden to corporations."--Publishers Weekly In a series of essays that explore the intersections of politics, popular culture, and new forms of social control in American society, Henry A. Giroux explores how state and corporate interests have coalesced to restrict civil rights, privatize what's left of public institutions, and diminish our collective capacity to participate as engaged citizens of a democracy. From the normalization of mass surveillance, lockdown drills, and a state of constant war, to corporate bailouts paired with public austerity programs that further impoverish struggling families and communities, Giroux looks to flashpoints in current events to reveal how the forces of government and business are at work to generate a culture of mass forgetfulness, obedience and conformity. In The Violence of Organized Forgetting, Giroux deconstructs the stories created to control us while championing the indomitable power of education, democracy, and hope. Henry A. Giroux is a world-renowned educator, author and public intellectual. He currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. The Toronto Star has named Henry Giroux “one of the twelve Canadians changing the way we think." More Praise for Henry A. Giroux's The Violence of Organized Forgetting: "I can think of no book in the last ten years as essential as this. I can think of no other writer who has so clinically dissected the crisis of modern life and so courageously offered a possibility for real material change."--John Steppling, playwright, and author of The Shaper, Dogmouth, and Sea of Cortez "A timely study if there ever was one, The Violence of Organized Forgetting is a milestone in the struggle to repossess the common sense expropriated by the American power elite to be redeployed in its plot to foil the popular resistance against rising social injustice and decay of political democracy."--Zygmunt Bauman, author of Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? among other works Prophetic and eloquent, Giroux gives us, in this hard-hitting and compelling book, the dark scenario of Western crisis where ignorance has become a virtue and wealth and power the means of ruthless abuse of workers, of the minorities and of immigrants. However, he remains optimistic in his affirmation of radical humanity, determined as he is to relate himself to a fair and caring world unblemished by anti-democratic political depravity."--Shelley Walia, Frontline