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Author: Donald A. Crosby
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143840008X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 474
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Book Description
This book is our century's most comprehensive and wise treatment of nihilism in all of its guises, comparing favorably with Rosen, Cavell, and indeed with Spengler. Crosby argues that our culture is genuinely haunted by nihilism expressing itself in the fideism of fundamentalism as well as in the debilitating alienation from all orientation. This results from a one-sided development of Western culture. Unlike most writers on this topic, Crosby acknowledges many sources colluding to frame the culture of nihilism, including "the death of God," the objectification of nature, the meaninglessness of suffering in a mechanical universe, the ephemerality of time in a world where value does not accumulate, the arbitrariness of historicized reason, the reduction of value to will, and the alienation of the Cartesian ego. These sources are reviewed in the first two parts of the book with the result that the phenomenon of nihilism becomes understandable. In its third and fourth parts, Crosby provides a critical analysis of the religious and philosophical forces leading to nihilism by discussing authors from the early modern period through Dostoyevsky, Sartre, Russell, and Derrida. He shows that these forces are skewed and impoverished and should not be allowed to determine our situation. The comprehensive attention to detail and the multi-perspectival interpretation demonstrates as well as asserts the richness of the culture that puts nihilism in its place. Part Five, finally, rephrases the criticism of the sources of nihilism in positive ways. Part Four in particular is a tour de force of philosophical argument. Its richness of nuance, plurality of views examined, and adroitness of critical interpretation provide cumulatively a powerful, non-nihilistic reading of the philosophic tradition. The force of the argument derives from its comprehensive, cumulative character. Crosby distinguishes and relates five areas of nihilism: political, moral, epistemological, cosmic, and existential. Throughout the book, he illustrates and examines these as they are expressed in literature and art, in daily life and practical affairs, and in philosophy. The book is richly erudite in its marshalling of consciousness from so many domains.
Author: Kathryn Troy
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438466099
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
Explores the significance of Indian control spirits as a dominating force in nineteenth-century American Spiritualism. The Specter of the Indian unveils the centrality of Native American spirit guides during the emergent years of American Spiritualism. By pulling together cultural and political history; the studies of religion, race, and gender; and the ghostly, Kathryn Troy offers a new layer of understanding to the prevalence of mystically styled Indians in American visual and popular culture. The connections between Spiritualist print and contemporary Indian policy provide fresh insight into the racial dimensions of social reform among nineteenth-century Spiritualists. Troy draws fascinating parallels between the contested belief of Indians as fading from the world, claims of returned apparitions, and the social impetus to provide American Indians with a means of existence in white America. Rather than vanishing from national sight and memory, Indians and their ghosts are shown to be ever present. This book transports the readers into dimly lit parlor rooms and darkened cabinets and lavishes them with detailed séance accounts in the words of those who witnessed them. Scrutinizing the otherworldly whisperings heard therein highlights the voices of mediums and those they sought to channel, allowing the author to dig deep into Spiritualist belief and practice. The influential presence of Indian ghosts is made clear and undeniable.
Author: Donald A. Crosby
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143840008X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 474
Get Book
Book Description
This book is our century's most comprehensive and wise treatment of nihilism in all of its guises, comparing favorably with Rosen, Cavell, and indeed with Spengler. Crosby argues that our culture is genuinely haunted by nihilism expressing itself in the fideism of fundamentalism as well as in the debilitating alienation from all orientation. This results from a one-sided development of Western culture. Unlike most writers on this topic, Crosby acknowledges many sources colluding to frame the culture of nihilism, including "the death of God," the objectification of nature, the meaninglessness of suffering in a mechanical universe, the ephemerality of time in a world where value does not accumulate, the arbitrariness of historicized reason, the reduction of value to will, and the alienation of the Cartesian ego. These sources are reviewed in the first two parts of the book with the result that the phenomenon of nihilism becomes understandable. In its third and fourth parts, Crosby provides a critical analysis of the religious and philosophical forces leading to nihilism by discussing authors from the early modern period through Dostoyevsky, Sartre, Russell, and Derrida. He shows that these forces are skewed and impoverished and should not be allowed to determine our situation. The comprehensive attention to detail and the multi-perspectival interpretation demonstrates as well as asserts the richness of the culture that puts nihilism in its place. Part Five, finally, rephrases the criticism of the sources of nihilism in positive ways. Part Four in particular is a tour de force of philosophical argument. Its richness of nuance, plurality of views examined, and adroitness of critical interpretation provide cumulatively a powerful, non-nihilistic reading of the philosophic tradition. The force of the argument derives from its comprehensive, cumulative character. Crosby distinguishes and relates five areas of nihilism: political, moral, epistemological, cosmic, and existential. Throughout the book, he illustrates and examines these as they are expressed in literature and art, in daily life and practical affairs, and in philosophy. The book is richly erudite in its marshalling of consciousness from so many domains.
Author: Anke Birkenmaier
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813938805
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Arguing that race has been the specter that has haunted many of the discussions about Latin American regional and national cultures today, Anke Birkenmaier shows how theories of race and culture in Latin America evolved dramatically in the period between the two world wars. In response to the rise of scientific racism in Europe and the American hemisphere in the early twentieth century, anthropologists joined numerous writers and artists in founding institutions, journals, and museums that actively pushed for an antiracist science of culture, questioning pseudoscientific theories of race and moving toward more broadly conceived notions of ethnicity and culture. Birkenmaier surveys the work of key figures such as Cuban historian and anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, Haitian scholar and novelist Jacques Roumain, French anthropologist and museum director Paul Rivet, and Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre, focusing on the transnational networks of scholars in France, Spain, and the United States to which they were connected. Reviewing their essays, scientific publications, dictionaries, novels, poetry, and visual arts, the author traces the cultural study of Latin America back to these interdisciplinary discussions about the meaning of race and culture in Latin America, discussions that continue to provoke us today.
Author: Jenny Elder Moke
Publisher: Disney Electronic Content
ISBN: 1368066763
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
A female Indiana Jones meets Tomb Raider when Samantha Knox receives a mysterious field diary and finds herself thrust into a treacherous plot. After stealing a car and jumping on a train, chased by a group dangerous pursuers, Sam finds out what’s so special about this book: it contains a cipher that leads to a cursed jade statue that could put an end to all mankind.
Author: Michael L. Fleisher
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781401204747
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"Originally published in single magazine form in Adventure Comics 431-440, Wrath of the spectre 1-4"--T.p. verso.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004371680
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293
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Book Description
Specter of Peace challenges historians to take peace as seriously as violence. Early American peacemaking was a productive discourse of moral ordering fundamentally concerned with regulating violence. Histories of peacemaking, the volume argues, sharpens our understanding of colonialism and empire.
Author: Ari Finkelstein
Publisher:
ISBN: 0520298721
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
In the generation after Constantine the Great elevated Christianity to a dominant position in the Roman Empire, his nephew, the Emperor Julian, sought to reinstate the old gods to their former place of prominence--in the face of intense opposition from the newly powerful Christian church. In early 363 c.e., while living in Syrian Antioch, Julian redoubled his efforts to hellenize the Roman Empire by turning to an unlikely source: the Jews. With a war against Persia on the horizon, Julian thought it crucial that all Romans propitiate the true gods and gain their favor through proper practice. To convince his people, he drew on Jews, whom he characterized as Judeans, using their scriptures, institutions, practices, and heroes sometimes as sources for his program and often as models to emulate. In The Specter of the Jews, Ari Finkelstein examines Julian's writings and views on Jews as Judeans, a venerable group whose religious practices and values would help delegitimize Christianity and, surprisingly, shape a new imperial Hellenic pagan identity.
Author: Keith Gouveia
Publisher: Crossroad Press
ISBN: 1637890680
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 291
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Book Description
Edgar Allan Poe, American writer, poet, critic, and Steampunk Ghostbuster! Poe has always had a close and personal relationship with death. Once he used his pen to keep his demons at bay, but after the death of his beloved wife Virginia, he is taking a more direct approach. Poe has invented The Specter Eliminator, a portable device capable of extinguishing spirits. With it, he moonlights as a ghost hunter while trying to raise the funds to start his one magazine, The Stylus. When Poe is tasked with clearing a malevolent spirit from a Georgia mansion, he meets a rival ghost hunter who is very interested in the Specter Eliminator. Poe refuses to join forces and the rival makes it clear he will have Poe’s invention one way or another. Join Edgar Allan Poe as he uncovers an insidious plot to enslave the dead and revolutionize modern warfare in this steampunk, ghost-hunting adventure that takes you from Boston, Massachusetts, to the Wild West.
Author: Ching Kwan Lee
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022634083X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
Unnatural capital: Chinese state investment and its travails in Africa -- Varieties of accumulation: profit maximization and beyond -- Labor bargains: regimes of exploitation and exclusion -- Managerial ethos: collective asceticism versus individual careerism -- Contesting capital: aspiration and capacity from below -- Eventful global China -- Appendix: an ethnographer's odyssey: the mundane and the sublime of researching China in Zambia
Author: Mun Young Cho
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 080146742X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
Despite massive changes to its economic policies, China continues to define itself as socialist; since 1949 and into the present, the Maoist slogan "Serve the People" has been a central point of moral and political orientation. Yet several decades of market-based reforms have resulted in high urban unemployment, transforming the proletariat vanguard into a new urban poor. How do unemployed workers come to terms with their split status, economically marginalized but still rhetorically central to the way China claims to understand itself? How does a state dedicated to serving "the people" manage the poverty of its citizens? Mun Young Cho addresses these questions in a book based on more than two years of fieldwork in a decaying residential area of Harbin in the northeast province of Heilongjiang.Cho analyzes the different experiences of poverty among laid-off urban workers and recent rural-to-urban migrants, two groups that share a common economic duress in China's Rustbelt cities but who rarely unite as one class owed protection by the state. Impoverished workers, she shows, seek protection and recognition by making claims about "the people" and what they deserve. They redeploy the very language that the party-state had once used to venerate them, although their claim often contradicts government directives regarding how "the people" should be reborn as self-managing subjects. The slogan "serve the people" is no longer a promise of the party-state but rather a demand made by the unemployed and the poor.
