Author: Nivi Manchanda
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108491235
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
An innovative exploration of how colonial interventions in Afghanistan have been made possible through representations of the country as 'backward'.
Author: Alla Ivanchikova
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 161249580X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 381
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Book Description
Imagining Afghanistan examines how Afghanistan has been imagined in literary and visual texts that were published after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion—the era that propelled Afghanistan into the center of global media visibility. Through an analysis of fiction, graphic novels, memoirs, drama, and film, the book demonstrates that writing and screening “Afghanistan” has become a conduit for understanding our shared post-9/11 condition. “Afghanistan” serves as a lens through which contemporary cultural producers contend with the moral ambiguities of twenty-first-century humanitarianism, interpret the legacy of the Cold War, debate the role of the U.S. in the rise of transnational terror, and grapple with the long-term impact of war on both human and nonhuman ecologies. Post-9/11 global Afghanistan literary production remains largely NATO-centric insofar as it is marked by an uncritical investment in humanitarianism as an approach to Third World suffering and in anti-communism as an unquestioned premise. The book’s first half exposes how persisting anti-socialist biases—including anti-statist bias—not only shaped recent literary and visual texts on Afghanistan, resulting in a distorted portrayal of its tragic history, but also informed these texts’ reception by critics. In the book’s second half, the author examines cultural texts that challenge this limited horizon and forge alternative ways of representing traumatic histories. Captured by the author through the concepts of deep time, nonhuman witness, and war as a multispecies ecology, these new aesthetics bring readers a sophisticated portrait of Afghanistan as a rich multispecies habitat affected in dramatic ways by decades of war but not annihilated.
Author: Mark Isaacs
Publisher: Hardie Grant Publishing
ISBN: 1743586043
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
A story of peace in a land of unending war. This is a story of hope and resilience in Afghanistan, a country constantly under siege from within and without. Refugee advocate, activist and acclaimed author Mark Isaacs takes us inside a remarkable and unlikely peace project established in one of the most war-torn, violent countries in the world, Afghanistan. After decades of war, few Afghans remember what it is like to live in peace, and many have never known a time without war. Yet, a group of Afghan youth, male and female, have come together – led by the charismatic and idealistic Insaan – to form a model community, a microcosm of how a new Afghanistan could be: a place of peaceful coexistence, a nation without violence and war that embraces the values of peace and humanity. Mark takes us on a journey to the streets of Kabul, where day-to-day life involves terror and extreme danger, and lives alongside these inspirational and courageous young people in 'The Community’. Mark reveals their personal stories of trauma and loss that ultimately lead them to defy the risks and stand up to demand peace, a seemingly impossible dream. He witnesses their acts of non-violent protest, their small steps in making life better, their setbacks and struggles, but mostly their bravery and hope for a future that shines with peace.
Author: Solvejg Nitzke
Publisher: Transcript Verlag, Roswitha Gost, Sigrid Nokel u. Dr. Karin Werner
ISBN: 9783837639568
Category : Cultural Studies
Languages : en
Pages : 172
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Book Description
While concepts of Earth have a rich tradition, more recent examples show a distinct quality: though ideas of wholeness might still be related to mythical, religious, or utopian visions of the past, "Earth" itself has become available as a whole. This raises several questions: How are the notions of one Earth or our planet imagined and distributed? What is the role of cultural imagination and practices of signification in the imagination of "the Earth"? Which theoretical models can be used or need to be developed to describe processes of imagining planet Earth? This collection invites a wide range of perspectives from different fields of the humanities to explore the means of imagining Earth.
Author: Martin J. Bayly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107118050
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351
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Book Description
A new perspective on empire, international relations and foreign policy through attention to British colonial knowledge on Afghanistan from 1808 to 1878.
Author: Robert Vitalis
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503612341
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197
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Book Description
“A valuable addition to the new wave of critical studies on the history of oil and energy policy”—and a bracing corrective to longstanding myths (James M. Gustafson, Diplomatic History). Conventional wisdom tells us that the US military presence in the Persian Gulf is what guarantees American access to oil; that the “special” relationship with Saudi Arabia is necessary to stabilize an otherwise volatile market; and that these assumptions in turn provide Washington enormous leverage over Europe and Asia. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. Robert Vitalis debunks the myths of “oilcraft”, a line of magical thinking closer to witchcraft than statecraft. Oil is a commodity like any other: bought, sold, and subject to market forces. Vitalis exposes the suspect fears of oil scarcity and investigates the geopolitical impact of these false beliefs. In particular, Vitalis shows how we can reconsider the question of the US-Saudi special relationship, which confuses and traps many into unnecessarily accepting what they imagine is a devil’s bargain. Freeing ourselves from the spell of oilcraft won’t be easy, but the benefits make it essential.
Author: Robert L. Grenier
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476712085
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
The director of the American-Afghan war describes how he orchestrated the defeat of the Taliban in the region by forging separate alliances with warlords, Taliban dissidents, and the Pakistani intelligence service.
Author: Hui Wang
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674061357
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
In this bold, provocative collection, Wang Hui confronts some of the major issues concerning modern China and the status quo of contemporary Chinese thought. The book’s overarching theme is the possibility of an alternative modernity that does not rely on imported conceptions of Chinese history and its legacy. Wang Hui argues that current models, based largely on Western notions of empire and the nation-state, fail to account for the richness and diversity of pre-modern Chinese historical practice. At the same time, he refrains from offering an exclusively Chinese perspective and placing China in an intellectual ghetto. Navigating terrain on regional language and politics, he draws on China’s unique past to expose the inadequacies of European-born standards for assessing modern China’s evolution. He takes issue particularly with the way in which nation-state logic has dominated politically charged concerns like Chinese language standardization and “The Tibetan Question.” His stance is critical—and often controversial—but he locates hope in the kinds of complex, multifaceted arrangements that defined China and much of Asia for centuries. The Politics of Imagining Asia challenges us not only to re-examine our theories of “Asia” but to reconsider what “Europe” means as well. As Theodore Huters writes in his introduction, “Wang Hui’s concerns extend beyond China and Asia to an ambition to rethink world history as a whole.”
Author: Elisabeth Leake
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107126029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
This book explores why the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands have remained largely independent of state controls throughout the twentieth century.
Author: David Levinthal
Publisher: powerHouse Books
ISBN: 9781576874882
Category : Afghan War, 2001-
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Dealing with war in any context is a difficult and problematic venture. Acclaimed photographer Levinthal uses toy soldiers and plastic Humvees to explore and understand the ongoing conflict in Iraq. Although this may seem too light and playful, this is not just a recreation of the Iraq War, but a societal commentary about the imaging and imagining of war through the use of direct signifiers. Never before has there been such a massive production of toys directly related to a current and unresolved conflict.
