The Politics of Nothing

The Politics of Nothing PDF Author: Clare Monagle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317967313
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
This book questions what sovereignty looks like when it is de-ontologised; when the nothingness at the heart of claims to sovereignty is unmasked and laid bare. Drawing on critical thinkers in political theology, such as Schmitt, Agamben, Nancy, Blanchot, Paulhan, The Politics of Nothing asks what happens to the political when considered in the frame of the productive potential of the nothing? The answers are framed in terms of the deep intellectual histories at our disposal for considering these fundamental questions, carving out trajectories inspired by, for example, Peter Lombard, Shakespeare and Spinoza. This book offers a series of sensitive and creative reflections that suggest the possibilities offered by thinking through sovereignty via the frame of nihilism. This book was originally published as a special issue of Culture, Theory and Critique.

The Politics of Nothing

The Politics of Nothing PDF Author: Clare Monagle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317967313
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
This book questions what sovereignty looks like when it is de-ontologised; when the nothingness at the heart of claims to sovereignty is unmasked and laid bare. Drawing on critical thinkers in political theology, such as Schmitt, Agamben, Nancy, Blanchot, Paulhan, The Politics of Nothing asks what happens to the political when considered in the frame of the productive potential of the nothing? The answers are framed in terms of the deep intellectual histories at our disposal for considering these fundamental questions, carving out trajectories inspired by, for example, Peter Lombard, Shakespeare and Spinoza. This book offers a series of sensitive and creative reflections that suggest the possibilities offered by thinking through sovereignty via the frame of nihilism. This book was originally published as a special issue of Culture, Theory and Critique.

Politics of Nature

Politics of Nature PDF Author: Bruno Latour
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674039963
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
A major work by one of the more innovative thinkers of our time, Politics of Nature does nothing less than establish the conceptual context for political ecology—transplanting the terms of ecology into more fertile philosophical soil than its proponents have thus far envisioned. Bruno Latour announces his project dramatically: “Political ecology has nothing whatsoever to do with nature, this jumble of Greek philosophy, French Cartesianism and American parks.” Nature, he asserts, far from being an obvious domain of reality, is a way of assembling political order without due process. Thus, his book proposes an end to the old dichotomy between nature and society—and the constitution, in its place, of a collective, a community incorporating humans and nonhumans and building on the experiences of the sciences as they are actually practiced. In a critique of the distinction between fact and value, Latour suggests a redescription of the type of political philosophy implicated in such a “commonsense” division—which here reveals itself as distinctly uncommonsensical and in fact fatal to democracy and to a healthy development of the sciences. Moving beyond the modernist institutions of “mononaturalism” and “multiculturalism,” Latour develops the idea of “multinaturalism,” a complex collectivity determined not by outside experts claiming absolute reason but by “diplomats” who are flexible and open to experimentation.

The Power of Nothing to Lose

The Power of Nothing to Lose PDF Author: William L. Silber
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063011549
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Following books by Malcolm Gladwell and Dan Ariely, noted economics professor William L. Silber explores the Hail Mary effect, from its origins in sports to its applications to history, nature, politics, and business. A quarterback like Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers gambles with a Hail Mary pass at the end of a football game when he has nothing to lose -- the risky throw might turn defeat into victory, or end in a meaningless interception. Rodgers may not realize it, but he has much in common with figures such as George Washington, Rosa Parks, Woodrow Wilson, and Adolph Hitler, all of whom changed the modern world with their risk-loving decisions. In The Power of Nothing to Lose, award-winning economist William Silber explores the phenomenon in politics, war, and business, where situations with a big upside and limited downside trigger gambling behavior like with a Hail Mary. Silber describes in colorful detail how the American Revolution turned on such a gamble. The famous scene of Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas night to attack the enemy may not look like a Hail Mary, but it was. Washington said days before his risky decision, “If this fails I think the game will be pretty well up.” Rosa Parks remained seated in the white section of an Alabama bus, defying local segregation laws, an act that sparked the modern civil rights movement in America. It was a life-threatening decision for her, but she said, “I was not frightened. I just made up my mind that as long as we accepted that kind of treatment it would continue, so I had nothing to lose.” The risky exploits of George Washington and Rosa Parks made the world a better place, but demagogues have inflicted great damage with Hail Marys. Towards the end of World War II, Adolph Hitler ordered a desperate counterattack, the Battle of the Bulge, to stem the Allied advance into Germany. He said, “The outcome of the battle would spell either life or death for the German nation.” Hitler failed to change the war’s outcome, but his desperate gamble inflicted great collateral damage, including the worst wartime atrocity on American troops in Europe. Silber shares these illuminating insights on these figures and more, from Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump, asylum seekers to terrorists and rogue traders. Collectively they illustrate that downside protection fosters risky undertakings, that it changes the world in ways we least expect.

We've Learnt Nothing from History

We've Learnt Nothing from History PDF Author: M. Asghar Khan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199064847
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
In this book, Air Marshal (Retired) M. Asghar Khan presents an insider's view of Pakistan's struggle for democracy from the 1960s to the present. The book expounds on the early entry of Pakistan's armed forces into the country's politics and the author's opposition to military rule that beganin 1968 with the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy. This movement resulted in the ouster of President Muhammad Ayub Khan in 1969 after eleven years of military rule. The author describes his continued opposition to autocratic and dictatorial rule, especially General Yahya Khan's policy ofbrutal suppression through military action in East Pakistan. He also recounts his strong criticism of the General's refusal to hand over power to Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and the Awami League - winners of the first-ever free and fair general elections held in Pakistan.The author recalls Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's rise to political power during the 1970s, and General Ziaul Haq's dogmatic and iron-fisted military rule during the 1980s, and elaborates on some pertinent features of Pakistan's domestic and international situation. The book concludes with the author'sassessment of General Pervez Musharraf's five years in power consequent upon the re-entry of the armed forces in the country's politics in 1999, after a brief and tumultuous interlude with democracy.

Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being

Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being PDF Author: David Walsh
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268096759
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Readers expecting a traditional philosophical work will be surprised and delighted by David Walsh’s Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being, his highly original reflection on the transcendental nature of the person. A specialist in political theory, Walsh breaks new ground in this volume, arguing, as he says in the introduction, “that the person is transcendence, not only as an aspiration, but as his or her very reality. Nothing is higher. That is what Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being strives to acknowledge.” The analysis of the person is the foundation for thinking about political community and human dignity and rights. Walsh establishes his notion of the person in the first four chapters. He begins with the question as to whether science can in any sense talk about persons. He then examines the person’s core activities, free choice and knowledge, and reassesses the claims of the natural sciences. He considers the ground of the person and of interpersonal relationships, including our relationship with God. The final three chapters explore the unfolding of the person, imaginatively in art, in the personal “time” of history, and in the “space” of politics. Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being is a new way of philosophizing that is neither subjective nor objective but derived from the persons who can consider such perspectives. The book will interest students and scholars in contemporary political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and any groups interested in the person, personalism, and metaphysics.

Do Nothing

Do Nothing PDF Author: Celeste Headlee
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 1984824740
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
“A welcome antidote to our toxic hustle culture of burnout.”—Arianna Huffington “This book is so important and could truly save lives.”—Elizabeth Gilbert “A clarion call to work smarter [and] accomplish more by doing less.”—Adam Grant We work feverishly to make ourselves happy. So why are we so miserable? Despite our constant search for new ways to optimize our bodies and minds for peak performance, human beings are working more instead of less, living harder not smarter, and becoming more lonely and anxious. We strive for the absolute best in every aspect of our lives, ignoring what we do well naturally and reaching for a bar that keeps rising higher and higher. Why do we measure our time in terms of efficiency instead of meaning? Why can’t we just take a break? In Do Nothing, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee illuminates a new path ahead, seeking to institute a global shift in our thinking so we can stop sabotaging our well-being, put work aside, and start living instead of doing. As it turns out, we’re searching for external solutions to an internal problem. We won’t find what we’re searching for in punishing diets, productivity apps, or the latest self-improvement schemes. Yet all is not lost—we just need to learn how to take time for ourselves, without agenda or profit, and redefine what is truly worthwhile. Pulling together threads from history, neuroscience, social science, and even paleontology, Headlee examines long-held assumptions about time use, idleness, hard work, and even our ultimate goals. Her research reveals that the habits we cling to are doing us harm; they developed recently in human history, which means they are habits that can, and must, be broken. It’s time to reverse the trend that’s making us all sadder, sicker, and less productive, and return to a way of life that allows us to thrive.

"Write Nothing about Politics"

Author: Barbara von Haeften
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628953276
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
Barbara von Haeften’s memoir provides us with a moving account of the life of her husband Hans Bernd von Haeften, a lawyer, diplomat, and member of the Kreisau Circle resistance group in Nazi Germany. The Kreisau Circle participated in the assassination attempt of Hitler on July 20, 1944, carried out by Claus von Stauffenberg and Werner von Haeften, Hans’s brother. The Circle had also developed extensive plans for a new government to be put into place after the removal of Hitler. Drawing on personal letters and clear memories, this biography describes the life and political activity of an extraordinary man who was executed in the struggle to save Germany from the disastrous consequences of Hitler’s regime, and it sheds light on Barbara von Haeften’s knowledge of and participation in the resistance movement.

The Politics of the Real

The Politics of the Real PDF Author: D. C. Schindler
Publisher: New Polity Press
ISBN: 1736506617
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
Schindler shows that liberalism is wrong, not because it has simply “relegated God to the private,” but because it has inverted the world: giving us power without authority, in what becomes a closed, necessarily totalitarian, horizon. Here, nothing else can be done with the transcendent God but to find a quiet little place to keep him, harmless and out of the way. When we let God out, a cosmic hierarchy of act—of participation in Being Himself—explodes into view. And this changes everything. A true integralism, a true postliberalism, moves politics back into a cosmos that is itself analogically ordered to participation in the life of God. With The Politics of the Real, Schindler has elevated the postliberal conversation. — Andrew Willard Jones Director of Catholic Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville and author of Before Church and State

Nativism and Slavery

Nativism and Slavery PDF Author: Tyler Anbinder
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195089227
Category : Antislavery movements
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
Although the United States has always portrayed itself as a sanctuary for the world's victim's of poverty and oppression, anti-immigrant movements have enjoyed remarkable success throughout American history. None attained greater prominence than the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, a fraternal order referred to most commonly as the Know Nothing party. Vowing to reduce the political influence of immigrants and Catholics, the Know Nothings burst onto the American political scene in 1854, and by the end of the following year they had elected eight governors, more than one hundred congressmen, and thousands of other local officials including the mayors of Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago. After their initial successes, the Know Nothings attempted to increase their appeal by converting their network of lodges into a conventional political organization, which they christened the "American Party." Recently, historians have pointed to the Know Nothings' success as evidence that ethnic and religious issues mattered more to nineteenth-century voters than better-known national issues such as slavery. In this important book, however, Anbinder argues that the Know Nothings' phenomenal success was inextricably linked to the firm stance their northern members took against the extension of slavery. Most Know Nothings, he asserts, saw slavery and Catholicism as interconnected evils that should be fought in tandem. Although the Know Nothings certainly were bigots, their party provided an early outlet for the anti-slavery sentiment that eventually led to the Civil War. Anbinder's study presents the first comprehensive history of America's most successful anti-immigrant movement, as well as a major reinterpretation of the political crisis that led to the Civil War.

Powerless Science?

Powerless Science? PDF Author: Soraya Boudia
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781782382362
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
In spite of decades of research on toxicants, along with the growing role of scientific expertise in public policy and the unprecedented rise in the number of national and international institutions dealing with environmental health issues, problems surrounding contaminants and their effects on health have never appeared so important, sometimes to the point of appearing insurmountable. This calls for a reconsideration of the roles of scientific knowledge and expertise in the definition and management of toxic issues, which this book seeks to do. It looks at complex historical, social, and political dynamics, made up of public controversies, environmental and health crises, economic interests, and political responses, and demonstrates how and to what extent scientific knowledge about toxicants has been caught between scientific, economic, and political imperatives. Soraya Boudia is Professor of Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée. Her scholarly work focuses on the transnational government of technological and health environmental risks. She has co-edited a special issue of History and Technology, "Risk and risk Society in Historical Perspective" (2007), and Toxicants, Health and Regulations Since 1945 (Pickering & Chatto, 2013), both with Nathalie Jas. Nathalie Jas is a Senior Researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). A historian and a STS scholar, her scholarly work analyses the intensification of agriculture and its social, environmental, and health effects. She has co-edited a special issue of History and Technology, "Risk and risk Society in Historical Perspective" (2007), and Toxicants, Health and Regulations Since 1945 (Pickering & Chatto, 2013), both with Soraya Boudia.