The Semblance of Identity

The Semblance of Identity PDF Author: Christopher Lee
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804783705
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The history of Asian American literature reveals the ongoing attempt to work through the fraught relationship between identity politics and literary representation. This relationship is especially evident in literary works which claim that their content represents the socio-historical world. The Semblance of Identityargues that the reframing of the field as a critical, rather than identity-based, project nonetheless continues to rely on the logics of identity. Drawing on the writings of philosopher and literary critic Georg Lukacs, Christopher Lee identifies a persistent composite figure that he calls the "idealized critical subject," which provides coherence to oppositional knowledge projects and political practices. He reframes identity as an aesthetic figure that tries to articulate the subjective conditions for knowledge. Harnessing Theodor Adorno's notion of aesthetic semblance, Lee offers an alternative account of identity as a figure akin to modern artwork. Like art, Lee argues, identity provides access to imagined worlds that in turn wage a critique of ongoing histories and realities of racialization. This book assembles a transnational archive of literary texts by Eileen Chang, Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-rae Lee, Michael Ondaatje, and Jose Garcia Villa, revealing the intersections of subjectivity and representation, and drawing our attention to their limits.

The Semblance of Identity

The Semblance of Identity PDF Author: Christopher Lee
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804783705
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
The history of Asian American literature reveals the ongoing attempt to work through the fraught relationship between identity politics and literary representation. This relationship is especially evident in literary works which claim that their content represents the socio-historical world. The Semblance of Identityargues that the reframing of the field as a critical, rather than identity-based, project nonetheless continues to rely on the logics of identity. Drawing on the writings of philosopher and literary critic Georg Lukacs, Christopher Lee identifies a persistent composite figure that he calls the "idealized critical subject," which provides coherence to oppositional knowledge projects and political practices. He reframes identity as an aesthetic figure that tries to articulate the subjective conditions for knowledge. Harnessing Theodor Adorno's notion of aesthetic semblance, Lee offers an alternative account of identity as a figure akin to modern artwork. Like art, Lee argues, identity provides access to imagined worlds that in turn wage a critique of ongoing histories and realities of racialization. This book assembles a transnational archive of literary texts by Eileen Chang, Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Chang-rae Lee, Michael Ondaatje, and Jose Garcia Villa, revealing the intersections of subjectivity and representation, and drawing our attention to their limits.

Theodor Adorno and the Century of Negative Identity

Theodor Adorno and the Century of Negative Identity PDF Author: Eric Oberle
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503606074
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Identity has become a central feature of national conversations: identity politics and identity crises are the order of the day. We celebrate identity when it comes to personal freedom and group membership, and we fear the power of identity when it comes to discrimination, bias, and hate crimes. Drawing on Isaiah Berlin's famous distinction between positive and negative liberty, Theodor Adorno and the Century of Negative Identity argues for the necessity of acknowledging a dialectic within the identity concept. Exploring the intellectual history of identity as a social idea, Eric Oberle shows the philosophical importance of identity's origins in American exile from Hitler's fascism. Positive identity was first proposed by Frankfurt School member Erich Fromm, while negative identity was almost immediately put forth as a counter-concept by Fromm's colleague, Theodor Adorno. Oberle explains why, in the context of the racism, authoritarianism, and the hard-right agitation of the 1940s, the invention of a positive concept of identity required a theory of negative identity. This history in turn reveals how autonomy and objectivity can be recovered within a modern identity structured by domination, alterity, ontologized conflict, and victim blaming.

Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism

Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism PDF Author: Jonathan Tran
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197587909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Any serious consideration of Asian American life forces us to reframe the way we talk about racism and antiracism. There are two contemporary approaches to antiracist theory and practice. The first emphasizes racial identity to the exclusion of political economy, making racialized life in America illegible. This approach's prevalence, in the academy and beyond, now rises to the level of established doctrine. The second approach views racial identity as the function of a particular political economy--what is called "racial capitalism>--and therefore analytically subordinates racial identity to political economy. Jonathan Tran develops arguments in favor of this second approach. He does so by means of an extended analysis of two case studies: a Chinese migrant settlement in the Mississippi Delta (1868-1969) and the Redeemer Community Church in the Bayview/Hunters Point section of San Francisco (1969-present). While his analysis is focused on particular groups and persons, he uses it to examine more broadly racial capitalism's processes and commitments at the sites of their structural and systemic unfolding. In pursuing a research agenda that pushes beyond the narrow confines of racial identity, Tran reaches back to trusted modes of analysis that have been obscured by the prevailing antiracist orthodoxy and proposes reframing antiracism in terms of a theologically salient account of political economy.

Generation Identity

Generation Identity PDF Author: Markus Willinger
Publisher: Arktos
ISBN: 1907166416
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
The denial of the European peoples' right to their own heritage, history and even their physical homelands has become part of the cultural fundament of the modern West. Mass immigration, selective and vilifying propaganda, and a constant barrage of perverse or, at best, pointless consumer culture all contribute to the transformation of Europe into a non-entity. Her native population consists mostly of atomistic individuals, lacking any semblance of purpose or direction, increasingly victimised by a political system with no interest in the people it governs. There are many views on how this came to be, but the revolt of May 1968 was certainly of singular importance in creating the apolitical, self-destructive situation that postmodern Europe is in today. This book presents the author's take on the ideology of the budding identitarian movement. Willinger presents a crystal-clear image of what has gone wrong, and indicates the direction in which we should look for our solutions. Moving seamlessly between the spheres of radical politics and existential philosophy, Generation Identity explains in a succinct, yet poetic fashion what young Europeans must say - or should say - to the corrupt representatives of the decrepit social structures dominating our continent. This is not a manifesto, it is a declaration of war.

The New Development Management

The New Development Management PDF Author: Sadhvi Dar
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1848132646
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
'Development management' is an idea that blends the seemingly innocuous claims of managerialism with notions of modernity and utopian ideals of 'third world' progress. This book views both phenomena as problematic and modernizing interventions. In doing so, it overturns and reclaims such ideas as participation, community, governance, NGOs, and civil society. The contributors argue that the practices of development are often threaded together by the language of managerialism - reports, logframe, encounters with the boss - yet all of these serve to further development's disengagement from the mundane. In voicing such concerns about the way development is going, and about the encroachment of managerialism, The New Development Management will breathe fresh life into post-development debates.

After Identity

After Identity PDF Author: Robert Zacharias
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271076569
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
For decades, the field of Mennonite literature has been dominated by the question of Mennonite identity. After Identity interrogates this prolonged preoccupation and explores the potential to move beyond it to a truly post-identity Mennonite literature. The twelve essays collected here view Mennonite writing as transitioning beyond a tradition concerned primarily with defining itself and its cultural milieu. What this means for the future of Mennonite literature and its attendant criticism is the question at the heart of this volume. Contributors explore the histories and contexts—as well as the gaps—that have informed and diverted the perennial focus on identity in Mennonite literature, even as that identity is reread, reframed, and expanded. After Identity is a timely reappraisal of the Mennonite literature of Canada and the United States at the very moment when that literature seems ready to progress into a new era. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Ervin Beck, Di Brandt, Daniel Shank Cruz, Jeff Gundy, Ann Hostetler, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Royden Loewen, Jesse Nathan, Magdalene Redekop, Hildi Froese Tiessen, and Paul Tiessen.

The New Social Theory Reader

The New Social Theory Reader PDF Author: Steven Seidman
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415188074
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
This comprehensive reader will give undergraduate students a structured introduction to the writers and works which have shaped the exciting and yet daunting field of social theory. Throughout the text, key figures are placed in debate with each other and the editorial introductions give an orienting overview of the main points at stake and the areas of agreement and disagreement between the protagonists. The first section sets out some of the main schools of thought, including Habermas and Honneth on New Critical Theory, Bourdieu and Luhmann on Institutional Structuralism and Jameson and Hall on Cultural Studies. Thereafter the reader becomes issues based, looking at: * Justice and Truth * Nationalism, Multiculturalism, Globalisation * gender, sexuality, race, post-coloniality The New SocialTheory Readeris an essential companion for students who will not just use it on their theory course but return to it again and again for theoretical foundations for substantive subjects and issues.

Rethinking Sexual Identity in Education

Rethinking Sexual Identity in Education PDF Author: Susan Birden
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742542952
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Rethinking Sexual Identity in Education responds to the wide-spread abuse of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning persons (LGBTQs) in diverse educational environments by utilizing published narratives of LGBTQs' educational experiences. Conceptualizing a praxis for LGBTQ allies to use in teaching and learning about sexual identity in ways that can transform educational practices and policies, this work bridges gaps between theory and practice, liberal and postmodern thought, invention and intervention. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Interior Design and Identity

Interior Design and Identity PDF Author: Susie McKellar
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719067297
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
This chronologically arranged set of case studies looks at how interior design has constantly redefined itself as a manifestation of culture, from the eighteenth-century to the present day. The book looks at the amateur activities of female "home makers" in search of creative outlets and married couples seeking to modernize their homes as well as the contributions of early professional (female) "interior decorators," and later, (male) "interior designers." It also considers the more anonymous role of commercial enterprises, such as hairdressing salons, cruise ships or modern offices. Issues relating to interiority, gender, and the relationship of the public sphere are also considered opening up a new level of design historical enquiry.

Geographies of Identity

Geographies of Identity PDF Author: Jill Darling
Publisher: punctum books
ISBN: 1685710123
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Geographies of Identity: Narrative Forms, Feminist Futures explores identity and American culture through hybrid, prose work by women, and expands the strategies of cultural poetics practices into the study of innovative narrative writing. Informed by Judith Butler, Homi Bhabha, Harryette Mullen, Julia Kristeva, and others, this project further considers feminist identity politics, race, and ethnicity as cultural content in and through poetic and non/narrative forms. The texts reflected on here explore literal and figurative landscapes, linguistic and cultural geographies, sexual borders, and spatial topographies. Ultimately, they offer non-prescriptive models that go beyond expectations for narrative forms, and create textual webs that reflect the diverse realities of multi-ethnic, multi-oriented, multi-linguistic cultural experiences. Readings of Gertrude Stein's A Geographical History of America, Renee Gladman's Juice, Pamela Lu's Pamela: A Novel, Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely, Juliana Spahr's The Transformation, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictée, Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera, and Layli Long Soldier's WHEREAS show how alternatively narrative modes of writing can expand access to representation, means of identification, and subjective agency, and point to horizons of possibility for new futures. These texts critique essentializing practices in which subjects are defined by specific identity categories, and offer complicated, contextualized, and historical understandings of identity formation through the textual weaving of form and content.