Author: Raphael Kabo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135028856X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Featuring readings of contemporary utopian poetry and fiction from authors such as Juliana Spahr, Mohsin Hamid, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lidia Yukavitch, and Cory Doctorow, this book investigates the commons - a form of organisation based on collectivity, communalism and sharing - as a type of transition between capitalist precarity and crisis and anti-capitalist futures. Each of the texts under examination was written in opposition to a particular crisis of the capitalist present - inequality, political representation, mobility, and climate change - and develops a particular mode of utopian 'commoning'. Through its examination of these writers, crises and texts, this book reaffirms the use of utopianism as a tool for generating and representing alternative futures for a world in the midst of ongoing planetary crisis.
Utopia Beyond Capitalism in Contemporary Literature
Author: Raphael Kabo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135028856X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Featuring readings of contemporary utopian poetry and fiction from authors such as Juliana Spahr, Mohsin Hamid, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lidia Yukavitch, and Cory Doctorow, this book investigates the commons - a form of organisation based on collectivity, communalism and sharing - as a type of transition between capitalist precarity and crisis and anti-capitalist futures. Each of the texts under examination was written in opposition to a particular crisis of the capitalist present - inequality, political representation, mobility, and climate change - and develops a particular mode of utopian 'commoning'. Through its examination of these writers, crises and texts, this book reaffirms the use of utopianism as a tool for generating and representing alternative futures for a world in the midst of ongoing planetary crisis.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135028856X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Book Description
Featuring readings of contemporary utopian poetry and fiction from authors such as Juliana Spahr, Mohsin Hamid, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lidia Yukavitch, and Cory Doctorow, this book investigates the commons - a form of organisation based on collectivity, communalism and sharing - as a type of transition between capitalist precarity and crisis and anti-capitalist futures. Each of the texts under examination was written in opposition to a particular crisis of the capitalist present - inequality, political representation, mobility, and climate change - and develops a particular mode of utopian 'commoning'. Through its examination of these writers, crises and texts, this book reaffirms the use of utopianism as a tool for generating and representing alternative futures for a world in the midst of ongoing planetary crisis.
Utopia, Equity and Ideology in Urban Texts
Author: Michael G. Kelly
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303125855X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Utopia, Equity and Ideology in Urban Texts: Fair and Unfair Cities explores the complex interrelations of three key critical topics across a diverse range of urban writing. Interrogating the links and tensions between aesthetic and political priorities in the representation and imagining of urban life, the volume engages with work from a wide variety of linguistic and cultural origins and across a range of textual practices having the urban phenomenon as a common framing concern. Individual contributions discussing genre and literary fiction, poetic writing, documentary and essayistic texts, planning manifestos and municipal communications materials serve to demonstrate that the nuanced treatments of urban experience and potential which may be gleaned from across this textual spectrum act as a pragmatic corrective to purely conceptual approaches. As such, the volume consolidates the emerging dialogue between the fields of utopian studies and literary urban studies, understanding these as complementary approaches to the reading of the city and its textual prolongations.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303125855X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Utopia, Equity and Ideology in Urban Texts: Fair and Unfair Cities explores the complex interrelations of three key critical topics across a diverse range of urban writing. Interrogating the links and tensions between aesthetic and political priorities in the representation and imagining of urban life, the volume engages with work from a wide variety of linguistic and cultural origins and across a range of textual practices having the urban phenomenon as a common framing concern. Individual contributions discussing genre and literary fiction, poetic writing, documentary and essayistic texts, planning manifestos and municipal communications materials serve to demonstrate that the nuanced treatments of urban experience and potential which may be gleaned from across this textual spectrum act as a pragmatic corrective to purely conceptual approaches. As such, the volume consolidates the emerging dialogue between the fields of utopian studies and literary urban studies, understanding these as complementary approaches to the reading of the city and its textual prolongations.
The Routledge Companion to Literatures and Crisis
Author: Silvia Pellicer-Ortín
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040130461
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 689
Book Description
The Routledge Companion to Literatures and Crisis provides deep insight into a complex and multi-layered phenomenon. The third decade of the twenty-first century is being marked by a polycrisis caused by various world crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, armed conflicts and climate change leading to economic, geopolitical, environmental, health and security crises. Featuring 42 chapters, the collection examines crises through literary texts in relation to the environment, finance, migration and diaspora, war, human rights, values and identity, health, politics, terrorism and technology. It illuminates the many faces of the current permacrisis as well as the multifarious crises of the past and their representation in literatures across ages and cultures—from the Viking wars, Black Death in mediaeval Europe, technology in ancient China and the crisis of power in Elizabethan England to imperial biopower in nineteenth-century India, the genocides in the twentieth century, upsurge of domestic violence during the Covid lockdown in Spain and the development of AI. The Companion connects diverse cultures, disciplines and academic traditions to show how and why literature, media and art can voice all types of crises across times. It will be a key resource for students and researchers in a broad range of areas including literature, film studies, narrative studies, cultural studies, international politics and ecocriticism. Chapters: Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040130461
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 689
Book Description
The Routledge Companion to Literatures and Crisis provides deep insight into a complex and multi-layered phenomenon. The third decade of the twenty-first century is being marked by a polycrisis caused by various world crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, armed conflicts and climate change leading to economic, geopolitical, environmental, health and security crises. Featuring 42 chapters, the collection examines crises through literary texts in relation to the environment, finance, migration and diaspora, war, human rights, values and identity, health, politics, terrorism and technology. It illuminates the many faces of the current permacrisis as well as the multifarious crises of the past and their representation in literatures across ages and cultures—from the Viking wars, Black Death in mediaeval Europe, technology in ancient China and the crisis of power in Elizabethan England to imperial biopower in nineteenth-century India, the genocides in the twentieth century, upsurge of domestic violence during the Covid lockdown in Spain and the development of AI. The Companion connects diverse cultures, disciplines and academic traditions to show how and why literature, media and art can voice all types of crises across times. It will be a key resource for students and researchers in a broad range of areas including literature, film studies, narrative studies, cultural studies, international politics and ecocriticism. Chapters: Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.
The Many Worlds of Anglophone Literature
Author: Silvia Anastasijevic
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350374091
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Book Description
On what terms and concepts can we ground the comparative study of Anglophone literatures and cultures around the world today? What, if anything, unites the novels of Witi Ihimaera, the speculative fiction of Nnedi Okorafor, the life-writings by Stuart Hall, and the emerging Anglophone Arab literature by writers like Omar Robert Hamilton? This volume explores the globality of Anglophone fiction both as a conceptual framing and as a literary imaginary. It highlights the diversity of lives and worlds represented in Anglophone writing, as well as the diverse imaginations of transnational connections articulated in it. Featuring a variety of internationally renowned scholars, this book thinks through Anglophone literature not as a problematic legacy of colonial rule or as exoticizing commodity in a global literary marketplace but examines it as an inherently transcultural literary medium. Contributors provide new insights into how it facilitates the articulation of divergent experiences of modernity and the critique of hierarchies and inequalities within, among, and beyond post-colonial societies.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350374091
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Book Description
On what terms and concepts can we ground the comparative study of Anglophone literatures and cultures around the world today? What, if anything, unites the novels of Witi Ihimaera, the speculative fiction of Nnedi Okorafor, the life-writings by Stuart Hall, and the emerging Anglophone Arab literature by writers like Omar Robert Hamilton? This volume explores the globality of Anglophone fiction both as a conceptual framing and as a literary imaginary. It highlights the diversity of lives and worlds represented in Anglophone writing, as well as the diverse imaginations of transnational connections articulated in it. Featuring a variety of internationally renowned scholars, this book thinks through Anglophone literature not as a problematic legacy of colonial rule or as exoticizing commodity in a global literary marketplace but examines it as an inherently transcultural literary medium. Contributors provide new insights into how it facilitates the articulation of divergent experiences of modernity and the critique of hierarchies and inequalities within, among, and beyond post-colonial societies.
New Global Realism
Author: Gabriele Lazzari
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350385689
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
A comparative study of contemporary realist novels that employ totality as a method and a formal principle to represent the social and economic inequalities of the present, this book examines writing in English, Italian, Kannada, and Spanish by authors from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Italy, India and Mexico. By theorizing four modalities of totalization employed by contemporary realist writers, this book explores the current resurgence of realism and challenges critical approaches that consider it naive or formally unsophisticated. Instead, it argues that realist novels offer a self-conscious and serious representation of the world we inhabit while actively envisioning new social designs and political configurations. Through comparative studies of novels by Fernanda Melchor, NoViolet Bulawayo, Vivek Shanbhag, Nicola Lagioia, Igiaba Scego, Yaa Gyasi and Roberto Bolaño, this book further explains why realism can be a powerful antidote to the skepticism about the possibility of making truth-claims in humanist research.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350385689
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
A comparative study of contemporary realist novels that employ totality as a method and a formal principle to represent the social and economic inequalities of the present, this book examines writing in English, Italian, Kannada, and Spanish by authors from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Italy, India and Mexico. By theorizing four modalities of totalization employed by contemporary realist writers, this book explores the current resurgence of realism and challenges critical approaches that consider it naive or formally unsophisticated. Instead, it argues that realist novels offer a self-conscious and serious representation of the world we inhabit while actively envisioning new social designs and political configurations. Through comparative studies of novels by Fernanda Melchor, NoViolet Bulawayo, Vivek Shanbhag, Nicola Lagioia, Igiaba Scego, Yaa Gyasi and Roberto Bolaño, this book further explains why realism can be a powerful antidote to the skepticism about the possibility of making truth-claims in humanist research.
A World Beyond Work?
Author: Ana Cecilia Dinerstein
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1787691438
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
This book mounts a forceful critique of fashionable thinking on the possibility of a post-work, post-capitalist society achieved through automation, a basic income and the reduction of working hours to zero, suggesting this popular utopia is nothing of the sort.
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1787691438
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
This book mounts a forceful critique of fashionable thinking on the possibility of a post-work, post-capitalist society achieved through automation, a basic income and the reduction of working hours to zero, suggesting this popular utopia is nothing of the sort.
Consuming the Romantic Utopia
Author: Eva Illouz
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520917995
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 390
Book Description
To what extent are our most romantic moments determined by the portrayal of love in film and on TV? Is a walk on a moonlit beach a moment of perfect romance or simply a simulation of the familiar ideal seen again and again on billboards and movie screens? In her unique study of American love in the twentieth century, Eva Illouz unravels the mass of images that define our ideas of love and romance, revealing that the experience of "true" love is deeply embedded in the experience of consumer capitalism. Illouz studies how individual conceptions of love overlap with the world of clichés and images she calls the "Romantic Utopia." This utopia lives in the collective imagination of the nation and is built on images that unite amorous and economic activities in the rituals of dating, lovemaking, and marriage. Since the early 1900s, advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks, and snack foods to success in love and happiness. Illouz reveals that, ultimately, every cliché of romance—from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses—is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of consumption: material goods and happiness are available to all. Engaging and witty, Illouz's study begins with readings of ads, songs, films, and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in order to analyze the ways in which mass messages are internalized. Combining extensive historical research, interviews, and postmodern social theory, Illouz brings an impressive scholarship to her fascinating portrait of love in America.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520917995
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 390
Book Description
To what extent are our most romantic moments determined by the portrayal of love in film and on TV? Is a walk on a moonlit beach a moment of perfect romance or simply a simulation of the familiar ideal seen again and again on billboards and movie screens? In her unique study of American love in the twentieth century, Eva Illouz unravels the mass of images that define our ideas of love and romance, revealing that the experience of "true" love is deeply embedded in the experience of consumer capitalism. Illouz studies how individual conceptions of love overlap with the world of clichés and images she calls the "Romantic Utopia." This utopia lives in the collective imagination of the nation and is built on images that unite amorous and economic activities in the rituals of dating, lovemaking, and marriage. Since the early 1900s, advertisers have tied the purchase of beauty products, sports cars, diet drinks, and snack foods to success in love and happiness. Illouz reveals that, ultimately, every cliché of romance—from an intimate dinner to a dozen red roses—is constructed by advertising and media images that preach a democratic ethos of consumption: material goods and happiness are available to all. Engaging and witty, Illouz's study begins with readings of ads, songs, films, and other public representations of romance and concludes with individual interviews in order to analyze the ways in which mass messages are internalized. Combining extensive historical research, interviews, and postmodern social theory, Illouz brings an impressive scholarship to her fascinating portrait of love in America.
Utopian Horizons
Author: Zsolt Cziganyik
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633861810
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
The 500th anniversary of Thomas More?s Utopia has directed attention toward the importance of utopianism. This book investigates the possibilities of cooperation between the humanities and the social sciences in the analysis of 20th century and contemporary utopian phenomena. The papers deal with major problems of interpreting utopias, the relationship of utopia and ideology, and the highly problematic issue as to whether utopia necessarily leads to dystopia. Besides reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary utopian investigations, the eleven essays effectively represent the constructive attitudes of utopian thought, a feature that not only defines late 20th- and 21st-century utopianism, but is one of the primary reasons behind the rising importance of the topic. The volume?s originality and value lies not only in the innovative theoretical approaches proposed, but also in the practical application of the concept of utopia to a variety of phenomena which have been neglected in the utopian studies paradigm, especially to the rarely discussed Central European texts and ideologies.
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633861810
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
The 500th anniversary of Thomas More?s Utopia has directed attention toward the importance of utopianism. This book investigates the possibilities of cooperation between the humanities and the social sciences in the analysis of 20th century and contemporary utopian phenomena. The papers deal with major problems of interpreting utopias, the relationship of utopia and ideology, and the highly problematic issue as to whether utopia necessarily leads to dystopia. Besides reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary utopian investigations, the eleven essays effectively represent the constructive attitudes of utopian thought, a feature that not only defines late 20th- and 21st-century utopianism, but is one of the primary reasons behind the rising importance of the topic. The volume?s originality and value lies not only in the innovative theoretical approaches proposed, but also in the practical application of the concept of utopia to a variety of phenomena which have been neglected in the utopian studies paradigm, especially to the rarely discussed Central European texts and ideologies.
That Winter the Wolf Came
Author: Juliana Spahr
Publisher: Commune Editions
ISBN: 9781934639177
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Renewed poetry of struggle at the intersection of ecological and economic catastrophe--feminist, ferocious, and finally celebratory.
Publisher: Commune Editions
ISBN: 9781934639177
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Renewed poetry of struggle at the intersection of ecological and economic catastrophe--feminist, ferocious, and finally celebratory.
Capitalism on Edge
Author: Albena Azmanova
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231530609
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 130
Book Description
The wake of the financial crisis has inspired hopes for dramatic change and stirred visions of capitalism’s terminal collapse. Yet capitalism is not on its deathbed, utopia is not in our future, and revolution is not in the cards. In Capitalism on Edge, Albena Azmanova demonstrates that radical progressive change is still attainable, but it must come from an unexpected direction. Azmanova’s new critique of capitalism focuses on the competitive pursuit of profit rather than on forms of ownership and patterns of wealth distribution. She contends that neoliberal capitalism has mutated into a new form—precarity capitalism—marked by the emergence of a precarious multitude. Widespread economic insecurity ails the 99 percent across differences in income, education, and professional occupation; it is the underlying cause of such diverse hardships as work-related stress and chronic unemployment. In response, Azmanova calls for forging a broad alliance of strange bedfellows whose discontent would challenge not only capitalism’s unfair outcomes but also the drive for profit at its core. To achieve this synthesis, progressive forces need to go beyond the old ideological certitudes of, on the left, fighting inequality and, on the right, increasing competition. Azmanova details reforms that would enable a dramatic transformation of the current system without a revolutionary break. An iconoclastic critique of left orthodoxy, Capitalism on Edge confronts the intellectual and political impasses of our time to discern a new path of emancipation.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231530609
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 130
Book Description
The wake of the financial crisis has inspired hopes for dramatic change and stirred visions of capitalism’s terminal collapse. Yet capitalism is not on its deathbed, utopia is not in our future, and revolution is not in the cards. In Capitalism on Edge, Albena Azmanova demonstrates that radical progressive change is still attainable, but it must come from an unexpected direction. Azmanova’s new critique of capitalism focuses on the competitive pursuit of profit rather than on forms of ownership and patterns of wealth distribution. She contends that neoliberal capitalism has mutated into a new form—precarity capitalism—marked by the emergence of a precarious multitude. Widespread economic insecurity ails the 99 percent across differences in income, education, and professional occupation; it is the underlying cause of such diverse hardships as work-related stress and chronic unemployment. In response, Azmanova calls for forging a broad alliance of strange bedfellows whose discontent would challenge not only capitalism’s unfair outcomes but also the drive for profit at its core. To achieve this synthesis, progressive forces need to go beyond the old ideological certitudes of, on the left, fighting inequality and, on the right, increasing competition. Azmanova details reforms that would enable a dramatic transformation of the current system without a revolutionary break. An iconoclastic critique of left orthodoxy, Capitalism on Edge confronts the intellectual and political impasses of our time to discern a new path of emancipation.