Author: Elisabeth Bronfen
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813553997
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 303
Book Description
Specters of War looks at the way war has been brought to the screen in various genres and at different historical moments throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Elisabeth Bronfen asserts that Hollywood has emerged as a place where national narratives are created and circulated so that audiences can engage with fantasies, ideologies, and anxieties that take hold at a given time, only to change with the political climate. Such cultural reflection is particularly poignant when it deals with America’s traumatic history of war. The nation has no direct access to war as a horrific experience of carnage and human destruction; we understand our relation to it through images and narratives that transmit and interpret it for us. Bronfen does not discuss actual conflicts but the films by which we have come to know and remember them, including All Quiet on the Western Front, The Best Years of Our Lives, Miracle at St. Anna, The Deer Hunter, and Flags of Our Fathers. Battles and campaigns, the home front and women-who-wait narratives, war correspondents, and court martials are also explored as instruments of cultural memory. Bronfen argues that we are haunted by past wars and by cinematic re-conceptualizations of them, and reveals a national iconography of redemptive violence from which we seem unable to escape.
Specters of War
Author: Elisabeth Bronfen
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813553997
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 303
Book Description
Specters of War looks at the way war has been brought to the screen in various genres and at different historical moments throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Elisabeth Bronfen asserts that Hollywood has emerged as a place where national narratives are created and circulated so that audiences can engage with fantasies, ideologies, and anxieties that take hold at a given time, only to change with the political climate. Such cultural reflection is particularly poignant when it deals with America’s traumatic history of war. The nation has no direct access to war as a horrific experience of carnage and human destruction; we understand our relation to it through images and narratives that transmit and interpret it for us. Bronfen does not discuss actual conflicts but the films by which we have come to know and remember them, including All Quiet on the Western Front, The Best Years of Our Lives, Miracle at St. Anna, The Deer Hunter, and Flags of Our Fathers. Battles and campaigns, the home front and women-who-wait narratives, war correspondents, and court martials are also explored as instruments of cultural memory. Bronfen argues that we are haunted by past wars and by cinematic re-conceptualizations of them, and reveals a national iconography of redemptive violence from which we seem unable to escape.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813553997
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 303
Book Description
Specters of War looks at the way war has been brought to the screen in various genres and at different historical moments throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Elisabeth Bronfen asserts that Hollywood has emerged as a place where national narratives are created and circulated so that audiences can engage with fantasies, ideologies, and anxieties that take hold at a given time, only to change with the political climate. Such cultural reflection is particularly poignant when it deals with America’s traumatic history of war. The nation has no direct access to war as a horrific experience of carnage and human destruction; we understand our relation to it through images and narratives that transmit and interpret it for us. Bronfen does not discuss actual conflicts but the films by which we have come to know and remember them, including All Quiet on the Western Front, The Best Years of Our Lives, Miracle at St. Anna, The Deer Hunter, and Flags of Our Fathers. Battles and campaigns, the home front and women-who-wait narratives, war correspondents, and court martials are also explored as instruments of cultural memory. Bronfen argues that we are haunted by past wars and by cinematic re-conceptualizations of them, and reveals a national iconography of redemptive violence from which we seem unable to escape.
The Spectre of War
Author: Jonathan Haslam
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691233764
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 504
Book Description
A bold new history showing that the fear of Communism was a major factor in the outbreak of World War II The Spectre of War looks at a subject we thought we knew—the roots of the Second World War—and upends our assumptions with a masterful new interpretation. Looking beyond traditional explanations based on diplomatic failures or military might, Jonathan Haslam explores the neglected thread connecting them all: the fear of Communism prevalent across continents during the interwar period. Marshalling an array of archival sources, including records from the Communist International, Haslam transforms our understanding of the deep-seated origins of World War II, its conflicts, and its legacy. Haslam offers a panoramic view of Europe and northeast Asia during the 1920s and 1930s, connecting fascism’s emergence with the impact of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. World War I had economically destabilized many nations, and the threat of Communist revolt loomed large in the ensuing social unrest. As Moscow supported Communist efforts in France, Spain, China, and beyond, opponents such as the British feared for the stability of their global empire, and viewed fascism as the only force standing between them and the Communist overthrow of the existing order. The appeasement and political misreading of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy that followed held back the spectre of rebellion—only to usher in the later advent of war. Illuminating ideological differences in the decades before World War II, and the continuous role of pre- and postwar Communism, The Spectre of War provides unprecedented context for one of the most momentous calamities of the twentieth century.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691233764
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 504
Book Description
A bold new history showing that the fear of Communism was a major factor in the outbreak of World War II The Spectre of War looks at a subject we thought we knew—the roots of the Second World War—and upends our assumptions with a masterful new interpretation. Looking beyond traditional explanations based on diplomatic failures or military might, Jonathan Haslam explores the neglected thread connecting them all: the fear of Communism prevalent across continents during the interwar period. Marshalling an array of archival sources, including records from the Communist International, Haslam transforms our understanding of the deep-seated origins of World War II, its conflicts, and its legacy. Haslam offers a panoramic view of Europe and northeast Asia during the 1920s and 1930s, connecting fascism’s emergence with the impact of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. World War I had economically destabilized many nations, and the threat of Communist revolt loomed large in the ensuing social unrest. As Moscow supported Communist efforts in France, Spain, China, and beyond, opponents such as the British feared for the stability of their global empire, and viewed fascism as the only force standing between them and the Communist overthrow of the existing order. The appeasement and political misreading of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy that followed held back the spectre of rebellion—only to usher in the later advent of war. Illuminating ideological differences in the decades before World War II, and the continuous role of pre- and postwar Communism, The Spectre of War provides unprecedented context for one of the most momentous calamities of the twentieth century.
Specter of the Past: Star Wars Legends (The Hand of Thrawn)
Author: Timothy Zahn
Publisher: Random House Worlds
ISBN: 0553298046
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 420
Book Description
Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn makes his triumphant return to the Star Wars(r) universe in this first of an epic new two-volume series in which the New Republic must face its most dangerous enemy yet--a dead Imperial warlord. The Empire stands at the brink of total collapse. But they have saved their most heinous plan for last. First a plot is hatched that could destroy the New Republic in a bloodbath of genocide and civil war. Then comes the shocking news that Grand Admiral Thrawn--the most cunning and ruthless warlord in history--has apparently returned from the dead to lead the Empire to a long-prophesied victory. Facing incredible odds, Han and Leia begin a desperate race against time to prevent the New Republic from unraveling in the face of two inexplicable threats--one from within and one from without. Meanwhile, Luke teams up with Mara Jade, using the Force to track down a mysterious pirate ship with a crew of clones. Yet, perhaps most dangerous of all, are those who lurk in the shadows, orchestrating a dark plan that will turn the New Republic and the Empire into their playthings.
Publisher: Random House Worlds
ISBN: 0553298046
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 420
Book Description
Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn makes his triumphant return to the Star Wars(r) universe in this first of an epic new two-volume series in which the New Republic must face its most dangerous enemy yet--a dead Imperial warlord. The Empire stands at the brink of total collapse. But they have saved their most heinous plan for last. First a plot is hatched that could destroy the New Republic in a bloodbath of genocide and civil war. Then comes the shocking news that Grand Admiral Thrawn--the most cunning and ruthless warlord in history--has apparently returned from the dead to lead the Empire to a long-prophesied victory. Facing incredible odds, Han and Leia begin a desperate race against time to prevent the New Republic from unraveling in the face of two inexplicable threats--one from within and one from without. Meanwhile, Luke teams up with Mara Jade, using the Force to track down a mysterious pirate ship with a crew of clones. Yet, perhaps most dangerous of all, are those who lurk in the shadows, orchestrating a dark plan that will turn the New Republic and the Empire into their playthings.
Specters of Revolution
Author: Alexander Avina
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019939668X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
The 1960s represented a revolutionary moment around the globe. In rural Mexico, several guerrilla groups organized to fight against the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Specters of Revolution chronicles two peasant guerrilla organizations led by schoolteachers, the National Revolutionary Civil Association (ACNR) and the Party of the Poor (PDLP), which waged revolutionary armed struggles to overthrow the PRI. Both emerged to fight decades of massacres and everyday forms of terror committed by the government against citizen social movements that demanded the redemption of constitutional rights. This book reveals that these movements developed after years of seeking legal, constitutional pathways of redress, focused on economic justice and electoral rights, and became subject to brutal counterinsurgencies. Relying upon recently declassified intelligence and military documents and oral histories, it documents how long-held rural utopian ideals drove peasant political action that gradually became radicalized in the face of persistent state terror and violence. Placing Mexico into the broader history of post-1945 Latin America, Specters of Revolution explodes the myth that Mexico constituted an island of relative peace and stability surrounded by a sea of military dictatorships during the Cold War.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019939668X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
The 1960s represented a revolutionary moment around the globe. In rural Mexico, several guerrilla groups organized to fight against the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Specters of Revolution chronicles two peasant guerrilla organizations led by schoolteachers, the National Revolutionary Civil Association (ACNR) and the Party of the Poor (PDLP), which waged revolutionary armed struggles to overthrow the PRI. Both emerged to fight decades of massacres and everyday forms of terror committed by the government against citizen social movements that demanded the redemption of constitutional rights. This book reveals that these movements developed after years of seeking legal, constitutional pathways of redress, focused on economic justice and electoral rights, and became subject to brutal counterinsurgencies. Relying upon recently declassified intelligence and military documents and oral histories, it documents how long-held rural utopian ideals drove peasant political action that gradually became radicalized in the face of persistent state terror and violence. Placing Mexico into the broader history of post-1945 Latin America, Specters of Revolution explodes the myth that Mexico constituted an island of relative peace and stability surrounded by a sea of military dictatorships during the Cold War.
Between Specters of War and Visions of Peace
Author: Gerald M. Mara
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190903937
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, recurring political violence at both state and non-state levels has eroded confidence in the progressively peaceful character of international relations, and has unsettled the parameters of political thought. Frames of peace and frames of war have, throughout Western thought, colored the questions that we ask about politics, the descriptions of the pragmatic and moral alternatives that we face, and the ideas and metaphors that we use at any given moment. These frames, as this book argues, also obscure too much of political life. Gerald M. Mara proposes, instead, a political philosophy that takes both war and peace seriously, and a style of theory committed to questioning rather than closure. He challenges two powerful currents in contemporary political philosophy: the verdict that "premodern" or "metaphysical" texts cannot speak to modern and postmodern societies and the insistence that all forms of political theory be some form of democratic theory. Mara reexamines seminal texts in the history of political theory, from Thucydides to Jacques Derrida, and from Machiavelli to Judith Butler, to examine how frames of reference of war and peace have structured both the writing of these texts, as well as interpretations of them. The result is not a linear history of ideas, but a series of conversations between them, and a democratic justification for moving beyond democratic theory.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190903937
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, recurring political violence at both state and non-state levels has eroded confidence in the progressively peaceful character of international relations, and has unsettled the parameters of political thought. Frames of peace and frames of war have, throughout Western thought, colored the questions that we ask about politics, the descriptions of the pragmatic and moral alternatives that we face, and the ideas and metaphors that we use at any given moment. These frames, as this book argues, also obscure too much of political life. Gerald M. Mara proposes, instead, a political philosophy that takes both war and peace seriously, and a style of theory committed to questioning rather than closure. He challenges two powerful currents in contemporary political philosophy: the verdict that "premodern" or "metaphysical" texts cannot speak to modern and postmodern societies and the insistence that all forms of political theory be some form of democratic theory. Mara reexamines seminal texts in the history of political theory, from Thucydides to Jacques Derrida, and from Machiavelli to Judith Butler, to examine how frames of reference of war and peace have structured both the writing of these texts, as well as interpretations of them. The result is not a linear history of ideas, but a series of conversations between them, and a democratic justification for moving beyond democratic theory.
Specters of Marx
Author: Jacques Derrida
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136758607
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
Prodigiously influential, Jacques Derrida gave rise to a comprehensive rethinking of the basic concepts and categories of Western philosophy in the latter part of the twentieth century, with writings central to our understanding of language, meaning, identity, ethics and values. In 1993, a conference was organized around the question, 'Whither Marxism?’, and Derrida was invited to open the proceedings. His plenary address, 'Specters of Marx', delivered in two parts, forms the basis of this book. Hotly debated when it was first published, a rapidly changing world and world politics have scarcely dented the relevance of this book.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136758607
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
Prodigiously influential, Jacques Derrida gave rise to a comprehensive rethinking of the basic concepts and categories of Western philosophy in the latter part of the twentieth century, with writings central to our understanding of language, meaning, identity, ethics and values. In 1993, a conference was organized around the question, 'Whither Marxism?’, and Derrida was invited to open the proceedings. His plenary address, 'Specters of Marx', delivered in two parts, forms the basis of this book. Hotly debated when it was first published, a rapidly changing world and world politics have scarcely dented the relevance of this book.
Specters of Revolt
Author: Richard Gilman-Opalsky
Publisher: Duncan Baird Publishers
ISBN: 1910924377
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
In 1848, Karl Marx declared that a communist specter was haunting Europe. In 1994, Jacques Derrida considered how the specter of Marx would haunt the post-Cold War world. In Specters of Revolt Gilman-Opalsky argues that the world is haunted by revolt, by the possibility of events that interrupt and disrupt the world, that throw its reality and justice into question. But recent revolt is neither decisively communist nor decisively Marxist. Gilman-Opalsky develops a theory of revolt that accounts for its diverse critical content about autonomy, everyday life, anxiety, experience, knowledge, and possibility. The 1994 uprising of the Mexican Zapatistas set the stage for new forms of revolt against a newly expanded power of capital. In the 20 years since, on up through the recent phase of global uprisings that began in 2008 with the Greek revolts, insurrection has spoken in the "Arab Spring", in Spain, Turkey, Brazil, and in the U.S. in Occupy Wall Street, Ferguson, and Baltimore, among other places. In light of recent global uprisings, Gilman-Opalsky aims to move beyond the critical theory of revolt to an understanding of revolt as theory itself. Making use of diverse sources from Raoul Vaneigem and Felix Guattari to Julia Kristeva and Raya Dunayevskaya, Specters of Revolt explores upheaval as thinking, the intellect of insurrection, and philosophy from below.
Publisher: Duncan Baird Publishers
ISBN: 1910924377
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
In 1848, Karl Marx declared that a communist specter was haunting Europe. In 1994, Jacques Derrida considered how the specter of Marx would haunt the post-Cold War world. In Specters of Revolt Gilman-Opalsky argues that the world is haunted by revolt, by the possibility of events that interrupt and disrupt the world, that throw its reality and justice into question. But recent revolt is neither decisively communist nor decisively Marxist. Gilman-Opalsky develops a theory of revolt that accounts for its diverse critical content about autonomy, everyday life, anxiety, experience, knowledge, and possibility. The 1994 uprising of the Mexican Zapatistas set the stage for new forms of revolt against a newly expanded power of capital. In the 20 years since, on up through the recent phase of global uprisings that began in 2008 with the Greek revolts, insurrection has spoken in the "Arab Spring", in Spain, Turkey, Brazil, and in the U.S. in Occupy Wall Street, Ferguson, and Baltimore, among other places. In light of recent global uprisings, Gilman-Opalsky aims to move beyond the critical theory of revolt to an understanding of revolt as theory itself. Making use of diverse sources from Raoul Vaneigem and Felix Guattari to Julia Kristeva and Raya Dunayevskaya, Specters of Revolt explores upheaval as thinking, the intellect of insurrection, and philosophy from below.
Planetary Specters
Author: Neel Ahuja
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469664488
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221
Book Description
Neel Ahuja tracks the figure of the climate refugee in public media and policy over the past decade, arguing that journalists, security experts, politicians, and nongovernmental organizations have often oversimplified climate change and obfuscated the processes that drive mass migration. To understand the systemic reasons for displacement, Ahuja argues, it is necessary to reframe climate disaster as interlinked with the history of capitalism and the global politics of race, wherein racist presumptions about agrarian underdevelopment and Indigenous knowledge mask how financial, development, migration, and climate adaptation policies reproduce growing inequalities. Drawing on the work of Cedric Robinson and theories of racial capitalism, Ahuja considers how the oil industry transformed the economic and geopolitical processes that lead to displacement. From South Asia to the Persian Gulf, Europe, and North America, Ahuja studies how Asian trade, finance, and labor connections have changed the nature of race, borders, warfare, and capitalism since the 1970s. Ultimately, Ahuja argues that only by reckoning with how climate change emerges out of longer histories of race, colonialism, and capitalism can we begin to build a sustainable and just future for those most affected by environmental change.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469664488
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221
Book Description
Neel Ahuja tracks the figure of the climate refugee in public media and policy over the past decade, arguing that journalists, security experts, politicians, and nongovernmental organizations have often oversimplified climate change and obfuscated the processes that drive mass migration. To understand the systemic reasons for displacement, Ahuja argues, it is necessary to reframe climate disaster as interlinked with the history of capitalism and the global politics of race, wherein racist presumptions about agrarian underdevelopment and Indigenous knowledge mask how financial, development, migration, and climate adaptation policies reproduce growing inequalities. Drawing on the work of Cedric Robinson and theories of racial capitalism, Ahuja considers how the oil industry transformed the economic and geopolitical processes that lead to displacement. From South Asia to the Persian Gulf, Europe, and North America, Ahuja studies how Asian trade, finance, and labor connections have changed the nature of race, borders, warfare, and capitalism since the 1970s. Ultimately, Ahuja argues that only by reckoning with how climate change emerges out of longer histories of race, colonialism, and capitalism can we begin to build a sustainable and just future for those most affected by environmental change.
Specters of Mother India
Author: Mrinalini Sinha
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822387972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387
Book Description
Specters of Mother India tells the complex story of one episode that became the tipping point for an important historical transformation. The event at the center of the book is the massive international controversy that followed the 1927 publication of Mother India, an exposé written by the American journalist Katherine Mayo. Mother India provided graphic details of a variety of social ills in India, especially those related to the status of women and to the particular plight of the country’s child wives. According to Mayo, the roots of the social problems she chronicled lay in an irredeemable Hindu culture that rendered India unfit for political self-government. Mother India was reprinted many times in the United States, Great Britain, and India; it was translated into more than a dozen languages; and it was reviewed in virtually every major publication on five continents. Sinha provides a rich historical narrative of the controversy surrounding Mother India, from the book’s publication through the passage in India of the Child Marriage Restraint Act in the closing months of 1929. She traces the unexpected trajectory of the controversy as critics acknowledged many of the book’s facts only to overturn its central premise. Where Mayo located blame for India’s social backwardness within the beliefs and practices of Hinduism, the critics laid it at the feet of the colonial state, which they charged with impeding necessary social reforms. As Sinha shows, the controversy became a catalyst for some far-reaching changes, including a reconfiguration of the relationship between the political and social spheres in colonial India and the coalescence of a collective identity for women.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822387972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387
Book Description
Specters of Mother India tells the complex story of one episode that became the tipping point for an important historical transformation. The event at the center of the book is the massive international controversy that followed the 1927 publication of Mother India, an exposé written by the American journalist Katherine Mayo. Mother India provided graphic details of a variety of social ills in India, especially those related to the status of women and to the particular plight of the country’s child wives. According to Mayo, the roots of the social problems she chronicled lay in an irredeemable Hindu culture that rendered India unfit for political self-government. Mother India was reprinted many times in the United States, Great Britain, and India; it was translated into more than a dozen languages; and it was reviewed in virtually every major publication on five continents. Sinha provides a rich historical narrative of the controversy surrounding Mother India, from the book’s publication through the passage in India of the Child Marriage Restraint Act in the closing months of 1929. She traces the unexpected trajectory of the controversy as critics acknowledged many of the book’s facts only to overturn its central premise. Where Mayo located blame for India’s social backwardness within the beliefs and practices of Hinduism, the critics laid it at the feet of the colonial state, which they charged with impeding necessary social reforms. As Sinha shows, the controversy became a catalyst for some far-reaching changes, including a reconfiguration of the relationship between the political and social spheres in colonial India and the coalescence of a collective identity for women.
Specters of World Literature
Author: Mattar Karim Mattar
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474467067
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
At the heart of this book is a spectral theory of world literature that draws on Edward Said, Aamir Mufti, Jacques Derrida and world-systems theory to assess how the field produces local literature as an "e;other"e; that haunts its universalising, assimilative imperative with the force of the uncanny. It takes the Middle Eastern novel as both metonym and metaphor of a spectral world literature. It explores the worlding of novels from the Middle East in recent years, and, focusing on the pivotal sites of Middle Eastern modernity (Egypt, Turkey, Iran), argues that lost to their global production, circulation and reception is their constitution in the logic of spectrality. With the intention of redressing this imbalance, it critically restores their engagements with the others of Middle Eastern modernity and shows, through a new reading of the Middle Eastern novel, that world literature is always-already haunted by its others, the ghosts of modernity.
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474467067
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
At the heart of this book is a spectral theory of world literature that draws on Edward Said, Aamir Mufti, Jacques Derrida and world-systems theory to assess how the field produces local literature as an "e;other"e; that haunts its universalising, assimilative imperative with the force of the uncanny. It takes the Middle Eastern novel as both metonym and metaphor of a spectral world literature. It explores the worlding of novels from the Middle East in recent years, and, focusing on the pivotal sites of Middle Eastern modernity (Egypt, Turkey, Iran), argues that lost to their global production, circulation and reception is their constitution in the logic of spectrality. With the intention of redressing this imbalance, it critically restores their engagements with the others of Middle Eastern modernity and shows, through a new reading of the Middle Eastern novel, that world literature is always-already haunted by its others, the ghosts of modernity.