Author: David J. Halperin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503612120
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Book Description
A voyage of exploration to the outer reaches of our inner lives. UFOs are a myth, says David J. Halperin—but myths are real. The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It's about us, our longings and terrors, and especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence. This is a book about UFOs that goes beyond believing in them or debunking them and to a fresh understanding of what they tell us about ourselves as individuals, as a culture, and as a species. In the 1960s, Halperin was a teenage UFOlogist, convinced that flying saucers were real and that it was his life's mission to solve their mystery. He would become a professor of religious studies, with traditions of heavenly journeys his specialty. With Intimate Alien, he looks back to explore what UFOs once meant to him as a boy growing up in a home haunted by death and what they still mean for millions, believers and deniers alike. From the prehistoric Balkans to the deserts of New Mexico, from the biblical visions of Ezekiel to modern abduction encounters, Intimate Alien traces the hidden story of the UFO. It's a human story from beginning to end, no less mysterious and fantastic for its earthliness. A collective cultural dream, UFOs transport us to the outer limits of that most alien yet intimate frontier, our own inner space.
Intimate Alien
Author: David J. Halperin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503612120
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Book Description
A voyage of exploration to the outer reaches of our inner lives. UFOs are a myth, says David J. Halperin—but myths are real. The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It's about us, our longings and terrors, and especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence. This is a book about UFOs that goes beyond believing in them or debunking them and to a fresh understanding of what they tell us about ourselves as individuals, as a culture, and as a species. In the 1960s, Halperin was a teenage UFOlogist, convinced that flying saucers were real and that it was his life's mission to solve their mystery. He would become a professor of religious studies, with traditions of heavenly journeys his specialty. With Intimate Alien, he looks back to explore what UFOs once meant to him as a boy growing up in a home haunted by death and what they still mean for millions, believers and deniers alike. From the prehistoric Balkans to the deserts of New Mexico, from the biblical visions of Ezekiel to modern abduction encounters, Intimate Alien traces the hidden story of the UFO. It's a human story from beginning to end, no less mysterious and fantastic for its earthliness. A collective cultural dream, UFOs transport us to the outer limits of that most alien yet intimate frontier, our own inner space.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503612120
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Book Description
A voyage of exploration to the outer reaches of our inner lives. UFOs are a myth, says David J. Halperin—but myths are real. The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It's about us, our longings and terrors, and especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence. This is a book about UFOs that goes beyond believing in them or debunking them and to a fresh understanding of what they tell us about ourselves as individuals, as a culture, and as a species. In the 1960s, Halperin was a teenage UFOlogist, convinced that flying saucers were real and that it was his life's mission to solve their mystery. He would become a professor of religious studies, with traditions of heavenly journeys his specialty. With Intimate Alien, he looks back to explore what UFOs once meant to him as a boy growing up in a home haunted by death and what they still mean for millions, believers and deniers alike. From the prehistoric Balkans to the deserts of New Mexico, from the biblical visions of Ezekiel to modern abduction encounters, Intimate Alien traces the hidden story of the UFO. It's a human story from beginning to end, no less mysterious and fantastic for its earthliness. A collective cultural dream, UFOs transport us to the outer limits of that most alien yet intimate frontier, our own inner space.
The Soul of Popular Culture
Author: Mary Lynn Kittelson
Publisher: Open Court Publishing
ISBN: 9780812693638
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
In The Soul of Popular Culture, leading writers and critics, many of them influenced by the thought of C. G. Jung, draw upon the insights of depth psychology to delve into the meanings of TV programs like Star Trek and Fawlty Towers, movies such as The Piano and The Silence of the Lambs, and other contemporary media, as well as the public preoccupation with such issues as abortion, AIDS, the O.J. Simpson trial, and our enduring fascination with Elvis.
Publisher: Open Court Publishing
ISBN: 9780812693638
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
In The Soul of Popular Culture, leading writers and critics, many of them influenced by the thought of C. G. Jung, draw upon the insights of depth psychology to delve into the meanings of TV programs like Star Trek and Fawlty Towers, movies such as The Piano and The Silence of the Lambs, and other contemporary media, as well as the public preoccupation with such issues as abortion, AIDS, the O.J. Simpson trial, and our enduring fascination with Elvis.
Semiotic Encounters
Author: Sarah Säckel
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042027142
Category : Intertextuality
Languages : en
Pages : 277
Book Description
Semiotic Encounters: Text, Image and Trans-Nation aims at opening up scholarly debates on the contemporary challenges of intertextuality in its various intersections with postcolonial and visual culture studies. Commencing with three theoretical contributions, which work towards the creation of frameworks under which intertextuality can be (re)viewed today, the volume then explores textual and visual encounters in a number of case studies. While (a) the dimension of the intertextual in the traditional sense (as specified e.g. by Genette) and (b) the widening of the concept towards visual and digital culture govern the structure of the volume, questions of the transnational and/or postcolonial form a recurrent subtext. The volume's combination of theoretical discussions and case studies, which predominantly deal with 'English classics' and their rewritings, film adaptations and/or rereadings, will mainly attract graduate students and scholars working on contemporary literary theory, visual culture and postcolonial literatures.
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042027142
Category : Intertextuality
Languages : en
Pages : 277
Book Description
Semiotic Encounters: Text, Image and Trans-Nation aims at opening up scholarly debates on the contemporary challenges of intertextuality in its various intersections with postcolonial and visual culture studies. Commencing with three theoretical contributions, which work towards the creation of frameworks under which intertextuality can be (re)viewed today, the volume then explores textual and visual encounters in a number of case studies. While (a) the dimension of the intertextual in the traditional sense (as specified e.g. by Genette) and (b) the widening of the concept towards visual and digital culture govern the structure of the volume, questions of the transnational and/or postcolonial form a recurrent subtext. The volume's combination of theoretical discussions and case studies, which predominantly deal with 'English classics' and their rewritings, film adaptations and/or rereadings, will mainly attract graduate students and scholars working on contemporary literary theory, visual culture and postcolonial literatures.
Essays and Letters
Author: Friedrich Hölderlin
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141938919
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
One of Germany's greatest poets, Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) was also a prose writer of intense feeling, intelligence and perception. This new translation of selected letters and essays traces the life and thoughts of this extraordinary writer. Hölderlin's letters to friends and fellow writers such as Hegel, Schiller and Goethe describe his development as a poet, while those written to his family speak with great passion of his beliefs and aspirations, as well as revealing money worries and, finally, the tragic unravelling of his sanity. These works examine Hölderlin's great preoccupations - the unity of existence, the relationship between art and nature and, above all, the spirit of the writer.
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141938919
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
One of Germany's greatest poets, Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) was also a prose writer of intense feeling, intelligence and perception. This new translation of selected letters and essays traces the life and thoughts of this extraordinary writer. Hölderlin's letters to friends and fellow writers such as Hegel, Schiller and Goethe describe his development as a poet, while those written to his family speak with great passion of his beliefs and aspirations, as well as revealing money worries and, finally, the tragic unravelling of his sanity. These works examine Hölderlin's great preoccupations - the unity of existence, the relationship between art and nature and, above all, the spirit of the writer.
Baudelaire and the Aesthetics of Bad Faith
Author: Susan Blood
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804780865
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Book Description
This is a study of Baudelaire's canonization in the critical debates of the twentieth century, focusing particularly on his role in the development of a modernist consciousness. Much recent work on Baudelaire assumes his modernism by emphasizing his relationship to current critical preoccupations—by sounding him out on issues of race and gender, for example, or by "correcting" his politics. The author begins from the premise that this updating of Baudelaire mistakenly takes him for our contemporary. Instead, she attempts to treat modernism as a historical problem by seeing Baudelaire as engaged in a more difficult dialogue with twentieth-century critics. The book concentrates on two key moments in the literary history of the twentieth century, the periods following each world war. At these junctures French intellectuals intensely reconsidered their cultural patrimony and articulated something like a modernist consciousness. Baudelaire stood at the center of this process, becoming a sacred figure of modernism, and his poetry contributed to a radical reorienting of aesthetic sensibilities. For the post-World War I period, the author focuses on Paul Valéry's essay "Baudelaire's Situation"; for post-World War II, on the virulent debate between Jean-Paul Sartre and Georges Bataille over the question of Baudelaire's "bad faith." She argues that Sartre's resistance to the sacralization of Baudelaire and to the continuing formulation of a modernist ideology actually suggests a valuable way of rethinking Baudelaire's poetry and critiquing the modern consciousness. She attempts to show that something like an "aesthetics of bad faith" exists, and that it is a useful concept for understanding modernism in relationship to its own history. Throughout, Baudelaire's poetry is examined in detail, with a focus on its relationship to his writings on caricature, on the problem of the "secret architecture," and on the place of allegory in a symbolist poetics. In the closing chapter, the author analyzes Baudelaire's denunciation of photography, which reveals the various tensions (or "bad faith") implicit in the modernist consciousness.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804780865
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Book Description
This is a study of Baudelaire's canonization in the critical debates of the twentieth century, focusing particularly on his role in the development of a modernist consciousness. Much recent work on Baudelaire assumes his modernism by emphasizing his relationship to current critical preoccupations—by sounding him out on issues of race and gender, for example, or by "correcting" his politics. The author begins from the premise that this updating of Baudelaire mistakenly takes him for our contemporary. Instead, she attempts to treat modernism as a historical problem by seeing Baudelaire as engaged in a more difficult dialogue with twentieth-century critics. The book concentrates on two key moments in the literary history of the twentieth century, the periods following each world war. At these junctures French intellectuals intensely reconsidered their cultural patrimony and articulated something like a modernist consciousness. Baudelaire stood at the center of this process, becoming a sacred figure of modernism, and his poetry contributed to a radical reorienting of aesthetic sensibilities. For the post-World War I period, the author focuses on Paul Valéry's essay "Baudelaire's Situation"; for post-World War II, on the virulent debate between Jean-Paul Sartre and Georges Bataille over the question of Baudelaire's "bad faith." She argues that Sartre's resistance to the sacralization of Baudelaire and to the continuing formulation of a modernist ideology actually suggests a valuable way of rethinking Baudelaire's poetry and critiquing the modern consciousness. She attempts to show that something like an "aesthetics of bad faith" exists, and that it is a useful concept for understanding modernism in relationship to its own history. Throughout, Baudelaire's poetry is examined in detail, with a focus on its relationship to his writings on caricature, on the problem of the "secret architecture," and on the place of allegory in a symbolist poetics. In the closing chapter, the author analyzes Baudelaire's denunciation of photography, which reveals the various tensions (or "bad faith") implicit in the modernist consciousness.
UFOs, the Absurd, and the Limit of Anthropological Knowledge
Author: Diana Espírito Santo
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040099246
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
This book offers an ethnographic and conceptual analysis of contemporary UFO phenomena, focusing specifically on Chilean ufology and the ufological “absurd”, nonsensical instances for their experiencers in which there is no conceptual way out. It asks how anthropology can come to terms with what is not said, what is not known, what is in the dark, or even with what both “is” and “is not”. The work draws on three years of participant observation with empirical ufologists, amateur sky watchers, and contactees of varying kinds in Chile. The chapters mobilize three main bodies of literature to elucidate the ufological absurd: negative theology, anthropology of play and deceit, and the physics of dark matter. They explore notions of parallax, paradox, and trickster anthropology. The author takes UFO phenomena, specifically the absurd aspects, as a heuristic with which to posit a conversation between domains; a conversation which highlights darknesses, finiteness, and the limits of representation and media in anthropology, one that could perhaps signal the route to a new language. Consideration is given to how not-knowing can be a space of extreme productiveness for the discipline. The argument put forward is that only by doing an anthropology that looks outside of itself for conceptual inspiration can we come to terms with the non-representable, the un-conceptualizable, the fully paradoxical. This innovative book will be of particular interest to scholars of anthropological theory and religion.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040099246
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
This book offers an ethnographic and conceptual analysis of contemporary UFO phenomena, focusing specifically on Chilean ufology and the ufological “absurd”, nonsensical instances for their experiencers in which there is no conceptual way out. It asks how anthropology can come to terms with what is not said, what is not known, what is in the dark, or even with what both “is” and “is not”. The work draws on three years of participant observation with empirical ufologists, amateur sky watchers, and contactees of varying kinds in Chile. The chapters mobilize three main bodies of literature to elucidate the ufological absurd: negative theology, anthropology of play and deceit, and the physics of dark matter. They explore notions of parallax, paradox, and trickster anthropology. The author takes UFO phenomena, specifically the absurd aspects, as a heuristic with which to posit a conversation between domains; a conversation which highlights darknesses, finiteness, and the limits of representation and media in anthropology, one that could perhaps signal the route to a new language. Consideration is given to how not-knowing can be a space of extreme productiveness for the discipline. The argument put forward is that only by doing an anthropology that looks outside of itself for conceptual inspiration can we come to terms with the non-representable, the un-conceptualizable, the fully paradoxical. This innovative book will be of particular interest to scholars of anthropological theory and religion.
Religion and Outer Space
Author: Eric Michael Mazur
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000904695
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
Religion and Outer Space examines religion in and on the final frontier. This book offers a first-of-its-kind roadmap for thinking about complex encounters of religion and outer space. A multidisciplinary group of scholarly experts takes up some of the most intriguing scientific, spiritual, trade/commercial, and even military dimensions of the complex entanglements of religion and outer space. Attending to the historical reality that the interconnections between religion and the heavens are as old as religions themselves, the volume starts with an examination of "outer space" elements in the most sacred writings of the world’s religions. It then explores some of the religious questions inevitable in this encounter, analyzing cultural constructions (both literary and actual) of religion and outer space. It ends with examinations of the role of religion in the very real and very present business of space exploration. What might motivate the spread of religion (or at least fantasies of religion in its myriad possibilities) into new interior and exterior dimensions of the cosmos? Only the future will tell. Religion and Outer Space is essential reading for students and academics with an interest in religion and space, religion and science, space exploration, religion and science fiction, popular culture, and religion in America.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000904695
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
Religion and Outer Space examines religion in and on the final frontier. This book offers a first-of-its-kind roadmap for thinking about complex encounters of religion and outer space. A multidisciplinary group of scholarly experts takes up some of the most intriguing scientific, spiritual, trade/commercial, and even military dimensions of the complex entanglements of religion and outer space. Attending to the historical reality that the interconnections between religion and the heavens are as old as religions themselves, the volume starts with an examination of "outer space" elements in the most sacred writings of the world’s religions. It then explores some of the religious questions inevitable in this encounter, analyzing cultural constructions (both literary and actual) of religion and outer space. It ends with examinations of the role of religion in the very real and very present business of space exploration. What might motivate the spread of religion (or at least fantasies of religion in its myriad possibilities) into new interior and exterior dimensions of the cosmos? Only the future will tell. Religion and Outer Space is essential reading for students and academics with an interest in religion and space, religion and science, space exploration, religion and science fiction, popular culture, and religion in America.
Handbook of UFO Religions
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004435530
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 560
Book Description
The Handbook of UFO Religions, edited by esteemed scholar of new religions Benjamin E. Zeller, offers the most expansive and detailed study of the persistent, popular, and global phenomenon of religious engagements with ideas about extraterrestrial life. The present work considers not only new religions founded on ideas about extraterrestrials and UFOs, but how those within more mainstream religions have responded to the science, scientific speculation, and popular culture involving extraterrestrials, UFOs, and related concepts. Global in reach, it includes chapters considering South and East Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and draws on several interdisciplinary methods. In addition, the handbook traces connections between UFO religiosity and cultural patterns such as science and scientism, esoterism and occultism, millennialism, and popular culture.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004435530
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 560
Book Description
The Handbook of UFO Religions, edited by esteemed scholar of new religions Benjamin E. Zeller, offers the most expansive and detailed study of the persistent, popular, and global phenomenon of religious engagements with ideas about extraterrestrial life. The present work considers not only new religions founded on ideas about extraterrestrials and UFOs, but how those within more mainstream religions have responded to the science, scientific speculation, and popular culture involving extraterrestrials, UFOs, and related concepts. Global in reach, it includes chapters considering South and East Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and draws on several interdisciplinary methods. In addition, the handbook traces connections between UFO religiosity and cultural patterns such as science and scientism, esoterism and occultism, millennialism, and popular culture.
Tunguska
Author: Andy Bruno
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108898025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325
Book Description
In 1908, thunderous blasts and blazing fires from the sky descended upon the desolate Tunguska territory of Siberia. The explosion knocked down an area of forest larger than London and was powerful enough to obliterate Manhattan. The mysterious nature of the event has prompted a wide array of speculation and investigation, including from those who suspected that aliens from outer space had been involved. In this deeply researched account of the Tunguska explosion and its legacy in Russian society, culture, and the environment, Andy Bruno recounts the intriguing history of the disaster and researchers' attempts to understand it. Taking readers inside the numerous expeditions and investigations that have long occupied scientists, he foregrounds the significance of mystery in environmental history. His engaging and accessible account shows how the explosion has shaped the treatment of the landscape, how uncertainty allowed unusual ideas to enter scientific conversations, and how cosmic disasters have influenced the past and might affect the future.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108898025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325
Book Description
In 1908, thunderous blasts and blazing fires from the sky descended upon the desolate Tunguska territory of Siberia. The explosion knocked down an area of forest larger than London and was powerful enough to obliterate Manhattan. The mysterious nature of the event has prompted a wide array of speculation and investigation, including from those who suspected that aliens from outer space had been involved. In this deeply researched account of the Tunguska explosion and its legacy in Russian society, culture, and the environment, Andy Bruno recounts the intriguing history of the disaster and researchers' attempts to understand it. Taking readers inside the numerous expeditions and investigations that have long occupied scientists, he foregrounds the significance of mystery in environmental history. His engaging and accessible account shows how the explosion has shaped the treatment of the landscape, how uncertainty allowed unusual ideas to enter scientific conversations, and how cosmic disasters have influenced the past and might affect the future.
Legendary Figures
Author: Clayton Koelb
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803227392
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
Legendary Figures examines revolutionary views of the past that have played a crucial role in European and American literature of the last 150 years. Clayton Koelb traces these new approaches to history through an impressive range of novels,øfrom Flaubert?s Salammb– to Christa Wolf?s Cassandra. Koelb argues that this new ?historical sense,? which arose in the mid?nineteenth century, gained eloquent expression in Flaubert?s writings. What is crucial about the new historical sense is that it views the past as essentially ?alien? and ?other.? The connection between past and present may be powerful, but it is always indirect and difficult to negotiate. As a result, the past seems exotic and unattainable, the object of nostalgia and desire. Koelb distinguishes this sense of history, with its persistent discontinuities between past and present, from the more continuous and progressive views of history of novelists like Sir Walter Scott and such philosophers as Hegel, Marx, and Luk¾cs. In their writings, history ?proceeds according to the laws of cause and effect, and each epoch can be understood as both the result of the previous one and the cause of the next.? In contrast, the modernist writers that Koelb examines?Flaubert, Pater, Mann, Broch, Wilder, Yourcenar, and Wolf?imagine a past that is ?mythic? and ?legendary? and thus a metaphor for everything distant, complicated, unattainable, and unknowable.
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803227392
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
Legendary Figures examines revolutionary views of the past that have played a crucial role in European and American literature of the last 150 years. Clayton Koelb traces these new approaches to history through an impressive range of novels,øfrom Flaubert?s Salammb– to Christa Wolf?s Cassandra. Koelb argues that this new ?historical sense,? which arose in the mid?nineteenth century, gained eloquent expression in Flaubert?s writings. What is crucial about the new historical sense is that it views the past as essentially ?alien? and ?other.? The connection between past and present may be powerful, but it is always indirect and difficult to negotiate. As a result, the past seems exotic and unattainable, the object of nostalgia and desire. Koelb distinguishes this sense of history, with its persistent discontinuities between past and present, from the more continuous and progressive views of history of novelists like Sir Walter Scott and such philosophers as Hegel, Marx, and Luk¾cs. In their writings, history ?proceeds according to the laws of cause and effect, and each epoch can be understood as both the result of the previous one and the cause of the next.? In contrast, the modernist writers that Koelb examines?Flaubert, Pater, Mann, Broch, Wilder, Yourcenar, and Wolf?imagine a past that is ?mythic? and ?legendary? and thus a metaphor for everything distant, complicated, unattainable, and unknowable.