Eccentric Culture

Eccentric Culture PDF Author: Rémi Brague
Publisher: Burns & Oates
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Western culture, which influenced the whole world, came from Europe. But its roots are not there. They are in Athens and Jerusalem. European culture takes its bearing from references that are not in Europe: Europe is eccentric. What makes the West unique? What is the driving force behind its culture? Remi Brague takes up these questions in Eccentric Culture. This is not another dictionary of European culture, nor a measure of the contributions of a particular individual, religion, or national tradition. The author's interest is especially, with regard to the transmission of that culture, to articulate the dynamic tension that has propelled Europe and more generally the West toward civilization. It is this mainspring of European culture, this founding principle, that Brague calls "Roman". Yet the author's intent is not to write a history of Europe, and less yet to defend the historical reality of the Roman Empire. Brague rather isolates and generalizes one aspect of that history or, one might say, cultural myth, of ancient Rome. The Roman attitude senses its own incompleteness and recognizes the call to borrow from what went before it. Historically, it has led the West to borrow from the great traditions of Jerusalem and Athens: primarily the Jewish and Christian tradition, on the one hand, and the classical Greek tradition on the other. Nowhere does the author find this Roman character so strongly present as in the Christian and particularly Catholic attitude toward the incarnation. At once an appreciation of the richness and diversity of the sources and their fruit, Eccentric Culture points as well to the fragility of their nourishing principle. As such, Brague finds in it notonly a means of understanding the past, but of projecting a future in (re)proposing to the West, and to Europe in particular, a model relationship of what is proper to it. An international bestseller (translated from the original French edition of Europe, La Voie Romaine), this work has been or is presently being translated into thirteen languages.

Eccentric Culture

Eccentric Culture PDF Author: Rémi Brague
Publisher: Burns & Oates
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book

Book Description
Western culture, which influenced the whole world, came from Europe. But its roots are not there. They are in Athens and Jerusalem. European culture takes its bearing from references that are not in Europe: Europe is eccentric. What makes the West unique? What is the driving force behind its culture? Remi Brague takes up these questions in Eccentric Culture. This is not another dictionary of European culture, nor a measure of the contributions of a particular individual, religion, or national tradition. The author's interest is especially, with regard to the transmission of that culture, to articulate the dynamic tension that has propelled Europe and more generally the West toward civilization. It is this mainspring of European culture, this founding principle, that Brague calls "Roman". Yet the author's intent is not to write a history of Europe, and less yet to defend the historical reality of the Roman Empire. Brague rather isolates and generalizes one aspect of that history or, one might say, cultural myth, of ancient Rome. The Roman attitude senses its own incompleteness and recognizes the call to borrow from what went before it. Historically, it has led the West to borrow from the great traditions of Jerusalem and Athens: primarily the Jewish and Christian tradition, on the one hand, and the classical Greek tradition on the other. Nowhere does the author find this Roman character so strongly present as in the Christian and particularly Catholic attitude toward the incarnation. At once an appreciation of the richness and diversity of the sources and their fruit, Eccentric Culture points as well to the fragility of their nourishing principle. As such, Brague finds in it notonly a means of understanding the past, but of projecting a future in (re)proposing to the West, and to Europe in particular, a model relationship of what is proper to it. An international bestseller (translated from the original French edition of Europe, La Voie Romaine), this work has been or is presently being translated into thirteen languages.

The WEIRDest People in the World

The WEIRDest People in the World PDF Author: Joseph Henrich
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374710457
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A Bloomberg Best Non-Fiction Book of 2020 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2020 A Human Behavior & Evolution Society Must-Read Popular Evolution Book of 2020 A bold, epic account of how the co-evolution of psychology and culture created the peculiar Western mind that has profoundly shaped the modern world. Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world. Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history. Includes black-and-white illustrations.

Eccentric Modernisms

Eccentric Modernisms PDF Author: Tirza True Latimer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520288866
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
What if we ascribe significance to aesthetic and social divergences rather than waving them aside as anomalous? What if we look closely at what does not appear central, or appears peripherally, or does not appear at all, viewing ellipses, outliers, absences, and outtakes as significant? Eccentric Modernisms places queer demands on art history, tracing the relational networks connecting cosmopolitan eccentrics who cultivated discrepant strains of modernism in America during the 1930s and 1940s. Building on the author’s earlier studies of Gertrude Stein and other lesbians who participated in transatlantic cultural exchanges between the world wars, this book moves in a different direction, focusing primarily on the gay men who formed Stein’s support network and whose careers, in turn, she helped to launch, including the neo-romantic painters Pavel Tchelitchew and writer-editor Charles Henri Ford. Eccentric Modernisms shows how these “eccentric modernists” bucked trends by working collectively, reveling in disciplinary promiscuity and sustaining creative affiliations across national and cultural boundaries.

The Hearing Trumpet

The Hearing Trumpet PDF Author: Leonora Carrington
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681374641
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
An old woman enters into a fantastical world of dreams and nightmares in this surrealist classic admired by Björk and Luis Buñuel. Leonora Carrington, painter, playwright, and novelist, was a surrealist trickster par excellence, and The Hearing Trumpet is the witty, celebratory key to her anarchic and allusive body of work. The novel begins in the bourgeois comfort of a residential corner of a Mexican city and ends with a man-made apocalypse that promises to usher in the earth’s rebirth. In between we are swept off to a most curious old-age home run by a self-improvement cult and drawn several centuries back in time with a cross-dressing Abbess who is on a quest to restore the Holy Grail to its rightful owner, the Goddess Venus. Guiding us is one of the most unexpected heroines in twentieth-century literature, a nonagenarian vegetarian named Marian Leatherby, who, as Olga Tokarczuk writes in her afterword, is “hard of hearing” but “full of life.”

The Aesthetics of Strangeness

The Aesthetics of Strangeness PDF Author: W. Puck Brecher
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This book provides a corrective to existing scholarship on eccentric artists by reconsidering the sudden and dramatic emergence of aesthetic strangeness during the mid Edo period. It explains how through the period, eccentricity and madness developed and

Eccentricity and the Cultural Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Paris

Eccentricity and the Cultural Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Paris PDF Author: Miranda Gill
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191562416
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
What did it mean to call someone 'eccentric' in nineteenth-century Paris? And why did breaking with convention arouse such ambivalent responses in middle-class readers, writers, and spectators? From high society to Bohemia and the demi-monde to the madhouse, the scandal of nonconformism provoked anxiety, disgust, and often secret yearning. In a culture preoccupied by the need for order yet simultaneously drawn to the values of freedom and innovation, eccentricity continually tested the boundaries of bourgeois identity, ultimately becoming inseparable from it. This interdisciplinary study charts shifting French perceptions of the anomalous and bizarre from the 1830s to the fin de siècle, focusing on three key issues. First, during the July Monarchy eccentricity was linked to fashion, dandyism, and commodity culture; to many Parisians it epitomized the dangerous seductions of modernity and the growing prestige of the courtesan. Second, in the aftermath of the 1848 Revolution eccentricity was associated with the Bohemian artists and performers who inhabited 'the unknown Paris', a zone of social exclusion which middle-class spectators found both fascinating and repugnant. Finally, the popularization of medical theories of national decline in the latter part of the century led to decreasing tolerance for individual difference, and eccentricity was interpreted as a symptom of hidden insanity and deformity. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including etiquette manuals, fashion magazines, newspapers, novels, and psychiatric treatises, the study highlights the central role of gender in shaping perceptions of eccentricity. It provides new readings of works by major French writers and illuminates both well-known and neglected figures of Parisian modernity, from the courtesan and Bohemian to the female dandy and circus freak.

Eccentric Edinburgh

Eccentric Edinburgh PDF Author: Benedict Le Vay
Publisher: Bradt Travel Guides
ISBN: 9781841620985
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
"You don't just visit Edinburgh; you fall in love with the place." The best-selling author of Eccentric Britain takes you away from the obvious tartanalia and into Auld Reekie's hidden corners to find spooky stories, weird buildings, mad judges and strange customs. Benedict le Vay also asks the pressing questions that others avoid: Is the Scottish Parliament a monumental cock-up? Was the Stewart dynasty really useless? Should you eat deep-fried Mars Bars...?

Eccentric Spaces, Hidden Histories

Eccentric Spaces, Hidden Histories PDF Author: David Bialock
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804767644
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
After The Tale of Genji (c. 1000), the greatest work of classical Japanese literature is the historical narrative The Tale of the Heike (13th-14th centuries). In addition to opening up fresh perspectives on the Heike narratives, this study also draws attention to a range of problems centered on the interrelationship between narrative, ritual space, and Japan's changing views of China as they bear on depictions of the emperor's authority, warriors, and marginal population going all the way back to the Nara period. By situating the Heike in this long temporal framework, the author sheds light on a hidden history of royal authority that was entangled in Daoist and yin-yang ideas in the Nara period, practices centered on defilement in the Heian period, and Buddhist doctrines pertaining to original enlightenment in the medieval period, all of which resurface and combine in Heike's narrative world. In introducing for the first time the full range of Heike narrative to students and scholars of Japanese literature, the author argues that we must also reexamine our understanding of the literature, ritual, and culture of the Heian and Nara periods.

Destination Culture

Destination Culture PDF Author: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520209664
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
With the question, "What does it mean to show?", the author explores the agency of display in museums and tourist attractions. She looks at how objects are made to perform their meaning by being collected and how techniques of display, not just the things shown, convey a powerful message.

Fabulous

Fabulous PDF Author: Madison Moore
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300204701
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
An exploration of what it means to be fabulous--and why eccentric style, fashion, and creativity are more political than ever Prince once told us not to hate him 'cause he's fabulous. But what does it mean to be fabulous? Is fabulous style only about labels, narcissism, and selfies--looking good and feeling gorgeous? Or can acts of fabulousness be political gestures, too? What are the risks of fabulousness? And in what ways is fabulous style a defiant response to the struggles of living while marginalized? madison moore answers these questions in a timely and fascinating book that explores how queer, brown, and other marginalized outsiders use ideas, style, and creativity in everyday life. Moving from catwalks and nightclubs to the street, moore dialogues with a range of fabulous and creative powerhouses, including DJ Vjuan Allure, voguing superstar Lasseindra Ninja, fashion designer Patricia Field, performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon, and a wide range of other aesthetic rebels from the worlds of art, fashion, and nightlife. In a riveting synthesis of autobiography, cultural analysis, and ethnography, moore positions fabulousness as a form of cultural criticism that allows those who perform it to thrive in a world where they are not supposed to exist.