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Author: Guy Stevenson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030477606
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
This book offers a radical new reading of the 1950s and 60s American literary counterculture. Associated nostalgically with freedom of expression, romanticism, humanist ideals and progressive politics, the period was steeped too in opposite ideas – ideas that doubted human perfectibility, spurned the majority for a spiritually elect few, and had their roots in earlier politically reactionary avant-gardes. Through case studies of icons in the counterculture – the controversial sexual revolutionary Henry Miller, Beat Generation writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs and self-proclaimed ‘philosopher of hip’, Norman Mailer – Guy Stevenson explores a set of paradoxes at its centre: between romantic optimism and modernist pessimism; between brutal rhetoric and emancipatory desires; and between social egalitarianism and spiritual elitism. Such paradoxes, Stevenson argues, help explain the cultural and political worlds these writers shaped – in their time and beyond.
Author: Guy Stevenson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030477606
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book offers a radical new reading of the 1950s and 60s American literary counterculture. Associated nostalgically with freedom of expression, romanticism, humanist ideals and progressive politics, the period was steeped too in opposite ideas – ideas that doubted human perfectibility, spurned the majority for a spiritually elect few, and had their roots in earlier politically reactionary avant-gardes. Through case studies of icons in the counterculture – the controversial sexual revolutionary Henry Miller, Beat Generation writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs and self-proclaimed ‘philosopher of hip’, Norman Mailer – Guy Stevenson explores a set of paradoxes at its centre: between romantic optimism and modernist pessimism; between brutal rhetoric and emancipatory desires; and between social egalitarianism and spiritual elitism. Such paradoxes, Stevenson argues, help explain the cultural and political worlds these writers shaped – in their time and beyond.
Author: Kate Soper
Publisher: Open Court Publishing Company
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 166
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Book Description
"Why, in present-day French writing, are we most likely to encounter the word "humanist" only as a term of glib dismissal? In this introduction to the controversy over "humanism", Kate Soper explains how the argument (developed by existentialists and Marxist humanists), that human experience and action play a fundamental role in "making history", has fallen into disrepute. 'Humanism and anti-humanism' shows how the "humanist" standpoint emerged in the post-war period, out of a convergence of arguments derived from Hegel, Marx, Husserl, and Heidegger, then traces its elaboration within existentialism and Marxism, and finally examines the "anti-humanist" reaction in the works of Lèvi-Strauss, Foucault, Althusser, Lacan, and Derrida. Soper clearly explains what is at stake in the debate between "humanists" and "anti-humanists", and contends that this can be understood only in the context of Cold War politics and the crisis for Marxism presented by Stalinism. 'Humanism and anti-humanism' is written from a position of critical sympathy with "humanism" and is aimed chiefly at readers with no previous knowledge of Continental philosophy." -- book cover.
Author: G.V. Loewen
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency
ISBN: 1682352455
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 576
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Book Description
The drive to overcome nature is a projection of the anxiety about succumbing to our own nature. Inevitably, this conflict creates a vicious circle. For in subduing nature to our technical goals - themselves arranged so that our human frailty is to be overcome - we end up destroying the world in which we must live. Of late, we have begun to recognize this viciousness, both in our acts and more profoundly, in our thoughts. Yet the attempt to lose our nature by losing Nature holds an even deeper conflict: "The most effective means of escaping spiritual trial is to become spiritless, and the sooner the better. If only taken care of in time, everything takes care of itself." (Kierkegaard, 1844). Social philosopher G.V. Loewen is the author of forty books on ethics, education, aesthetics, religion, health and social theory, and more recently, metaphysical adventure fiction. He was a professor in the interdisciplinary human sciences for two decades. "The Penumbra of Personhood is not only the cumulative effect and expression of the primordial characters of Dasein, flung along with my being into the world," writes the author, "it is also the most graceful and eloquent response to the unknown that we possess. It is, in its own thrown essence, the fullest divergence from any violence of the reactionary or technique of the manager. It is objectively what we are and thus what we have to offer our own time." Ironically, the State has to contend not with history, the writing of which it mainly controls, but rather morality, part of the pre-State metaphysics and a version of collective human vanity that also claims to be timeless. If it is at first striking that even in our time, morality has retained such a hold, on second glance it is at least not surprising. It has ironically become the weapon of the private person, and this is very much against its own cosmogonical backdrop. Morality is shared, as is belief that the one stems from the other, and in this they are quite unlike either ethics or opinion, also having become the pedestal upon which any demagogue can be placed. The uttering of a "higher law" betrays the moralist at every turn. Even if the State can delicately navigate these potentially dangerous currents while affording to ignore mere moral editorializing - an inevitable whirlpool in any democracy at least - if enough "private" people recognize that their misgivings are shared, morality can once again assume a vestige of its former mantle. It becomes a rip-tide of conventional "wisdom" against which this or that elected regime may ride or be ridden over. If this is the most vulgar expression of Dasein's will to life, and even ontically, will to freedom, then it cannot be ignored by the reflective person. It is the final avenue of appeal in a rationalist social organization. Equipped with its own divinity, morality finds that it still has some suasion in the courts, certainly within many families, and in the schools. It is society's "back door man," to use an old Blues phrase, to point up its consistent vulgarity.
Author: Piotr Fast
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 9
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Book Description
Author: Zhang Na
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527588513
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 365
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Book Description
This book explores the integration of narratology with posthumanism by examining a large scope of narratives in science fiction over nearly half a century in a range of major Anglophone countries. Based on the rhizome of posthumanism, analysis of the posthuman narrative embodiments in selected contemporary Anglophone science fiction, it investigates Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Ian Watson’s The Jonah Kit (1975), Iain Banks’ The Bridge (1986) and Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2 (1995) as exemplifying various aspects of posthuman becoming-other. The book shows that, in the reactive logic of nihilism, the becoming-other posthuman, rather than posing a threat, proves to be the companion and savior of human beings, whose apocalyptic sacrifice brings back the all-too-human humanity to the chaotic world of presence.
Author: Ken Goffman
Publisher: Villard
ISBN: 0307414833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
As long as there has been culture, there has been counterculture. At times it moves deep below the surface of things, a stealth mode of being all but invisible to the dominant paradigm; at other times it’s in plain sight, challenging the status quo; and at still other times it erupts in a fiery burst of creative–or destructive–energy to change the world forever. But until now the countercultural phenomenon has been one of history’s great blind spots. Individual countercultures have been explored, but never before has a book set out to demonstrate the recurring nature of counterculturalism across all times and societies, and to illustrate its dynamic role in the continuous evolution of human values and cultures. Countercultural pundit and cyberguru R. U. Sirius brilliantly sets the record straight in this colorful, anecdotal, and wide-ranging study based on ideas developed by the late Timothy Leary with Dan Joy. With a distinctive mix of scholarly erudition and gonzo passion, Sirius and Joy identify the distinguishing characteristics of countercultures, delving into history and myth to establish beyond doubt that, for all their surface differences, countercultures share important underlying principles: individualism, anti-authoritarianism, and a belief in the possibility of personal and social transformation. Ranging from the Socratic counterculture of ancient Athens and the outsider movements of Judaism, which left indelible marks on Western culture, to the Taoist, Sufi, and Zen Buddhist countercultures, which were equally influential in the East, to the famous countercultural moments of the last century–Paris in the twenties, Haight-Ashbury in the sixties, Tropicalismo, women’s liberation, punk rock–to the cutting-edge countercultures of the twenty-first century, which combine science, art, music, technology, politics, and religion in astonishing (and sometimes disturbing) new ways, Counterculture Through the Ages is an indispensable guidebook to where we’ve been . . . and where we’re going.
Author: Karina Jakubowicz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000359166
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 215
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Book Description
This book explores the shifting and negotiated boundaries of religion, spirituality, and secular thinking in Britain and North America during the twentieth century. It contributes to a growing scholarship that problematises secularization theory, arguing that religion and spirituality increasingly took diverse new forms and identities, rather than simply being replaced by a monolithic secularity. The volume examines the way that thinkers, writers, and artists manipulated and reimagined orthodox belief systems in their work, using the notion of heresy to delineate the borders of what was considered socially and ethically acceptable. It includes topics such as psychospiritual approaches in medicine, countercultures and religious experience, and the function of blasphemy within supposedly secular politics. The book argues that heresy and heretical identities established fluid borderlands. These borderlands not only blur simple demarcations of the religious and secular in the twentieth century, but also infer new forms of heterodoxy through an exchange of ideas. This collection of essays offers a nuanced take on a topic that pervades the study of religion. It will be of great use to scholars of Heresy Studies, Religious Studies and Comparative Religion, Social Anthropology, History, Literature, Philosophy, and Cultural Studies.
Author: Jan Miernowski
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319322761
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
This book employs perspectives from continental philosophy, intellectual history, and literary and cultural studies to breach the divide between early modernist and modernist thinkers. It turns to early modern humanism in order to challenge late 20th-century thought and present-day posthumanism. This book addresses contemporary concerns such as the moral responsibility of the artist, the place of religious beliefs in our secular societies, legal rights extended to nonhuman species, the sense of ‘normality’ applied to the human body, the politics of migration, individual political freedom and international terrorism. It demonstrates how early modern humanism can bring new perspectives to postmodern antihumanism and even invite us to envision a humanism of the future.
Author: Robert Black
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Renaissance
Languages : en
Pages :
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Author: Aaron Jaffe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501386360
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
The Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920–1991) has been recognized as a decisive past master in the emergence of contemporary media theory and media archeology. His work engages and also rethinks several mythologies of modernity, devising new methodologies, experimental literary practices, and expanded hermeneutics that trouble traditional practices of literary/literate knowledge, shared experience, reception, and communication. Working within an expanded concept of modernism, Flusser presciently noted the power inherent in algorithmic information apparatuses to reshape our fundamental conceptions of culture and history. In an increasingly technological world, Flusser's form of experimental theory-fiction pits philosophy against cybernetics as it forces the category of “the human” to confront the inhuman world of animals and machines. The contributors to Understanding Flusser, Understanding Modernism engage with the multiplicity of Flusser's thought as they provide a general analysis of his work, engage in comparative readings with other philosophers, and offer expanded conceptualizations of modernism. The final section of the volume includes an extended glossary clarifying the playful terminology used by Flusser, which will be a valuable resource for experts and students alike.
