Subversive Spinoza: (UN) Contemporary Variations PDF Download

Author: Antonio Negri
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719066474
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Antoni Negri spells out the philosophical credo that inspired his radical renewal of Marxism and his compelling analysis of the modern state and the global economy by means of an inspiring reading of the challenging metaphysics of the 17th-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher Spinoza.

Author: Christian Haines
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823286967
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Critics of American exceptionalism usually view it as a destructive force eroding the radical energies of social movements and aesthetic practices. In A Desire Called America, Christian P. Haines confronts a troubling paradox: Some of the most provocative political projects in the United States are remarkably invested in American exceptionalism. Riding a strange current of U.S. literature that draws on American exceptionalism only to overturn it in the name of utopian desire, Haines reveals a tradition of viewing the United States as a unique and exemplary political model while rejecting exceptionalism’s commitments to nationalism, capitalism, and individualism. Through Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William S. Burroughs, and Thomas Pynchon, Haines brings to light a radically different version of the American dream—one in which political subjects value an organization of social life that includes democratic self-governance, egalitarian cooperation, and communal property. A Desire Called America brings utopian studies and the critical discourse of biopolitics to bear upon each other, suggesting that utopia might be less another place than our best hope for confronting authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and a resurgent exclusionary nationalism.

Author: Wayne Hudson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317177576
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Given the central role played by religion in early-modern Britain, it is perhaps surprising that historians have not always paid close attention to the shifting and nuanced subtleties of terms used in religious controversies. In this collection particular attention is focussed upon two of the most contentious of these terms: ’atheism’ and ’deism’, terms that have shaped significant parts of the scholarship on the Enlightenment. This volume argues that in the seventeenth and eighteenth century atheism and deism involved fine distinctions that have not always been preserved by later scholars. The original deployment and usage of these terms were often more complicated than much of the historical scholarship suggests. Indeed, in much of the literature static definitions are often taken for granted, resulting in depictions of the past constructed upon anachronistic assumptions. Offering reassessments of the historical figures most associated with ’atheism’ and ’deism’ in early modern Britain, this collection opens the subject up for debate and shows how the new historiography of deism changes our understanding of heterodox religious identities in Britain from 1650 to 1800. It problematises the older view that individuals were atheist or deists in a straightforward sense and instead explores the plurality and flexibility of religious identities during this period. Drawing on the most recent scholarship, the volume enriches the debate about heterodoxy, offering new perspectives on a range of prominent figures and providing an overview of major changes in the field.

Author: David Eden
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317176839
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Autonomy: Capital, Class and Politics explores and critiques one of the most dynamic terrains of political theory, sometimes referred to as 'Autonomist Marxism' or post-Operaismo. This theory shot to prominence with the publication of Empire by Hardt and Negri and has been associated with cutting edge developments in political and cultural practice; yet there exists no work that critically examines it in its contemporary breadth. Taking three divergent manifestations of Autonomist Marxism found in the works of Antonio Negri and Paulo Virno, the Midnight Notes Collective and John Holloway, David Eden examines how each approach questions the nature of class and contemporary capitalism and how they extrapolate politics. Not only is such juxtaposition both fruitful and unprecedented but Eden then constructs critiques of each approach and draws out deeper common concerns. Suggesting a novel rethinking of emancipatory praxis, this book provides a much needed insight into the current tensions and clashes within society and politics.

Author: Fred Dallmayr
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 081313434X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Sustainability has become a compelling topic of domestic and international debate as the world searches for effective solutions to accumulating ecological problems. In Return to Nature? An Ecological Counterhistory, Fred Dallmayr demonstrates how nature has been marginalized, colonized, and abused in the modern era. Although nature was regarded as a matrix that encompassed all beings in premodern and classical thought, modern Western thinkers tend to disregard this original unity, essentially exiling nature from human life. By means of a philosophical counterhistory leading from Spinoza to Dewey and beyond, the book traces successive efforts to correct this tendency. Grounding his writing in a holistic relationism that reconnects humanity with ecology, Dallmayr pleads for the reintroduction of nature into contemporary philosophical discussion and sociopolitical practice. Return to Nature? unites learning, intelligence, sensibility, and moral passion to offer a multifaceted history of philosophy with regard to our place in the natural world. Dallmayr’s visionary writings provide an informed foundation for environmental policy and represent an impassioned call to reclaim nature in our everyday lives.

Author: A. Kiarina Kordela
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472593219
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Spinoza's political thought has been subject to a significant revival of interest in recent years. As a response to difficult times, students and scholars have returned to this founding figure of modern philosophy as a means to help reinterpret and rethink the political present. Spinoza's Authority Volume I: Resistance and Power in Ethics makes a significant contribution to this ongoing reception and utilization of Spinoza's political thought by focusing on his posthumously published Ethics. By taking the concept of authority as an original framework, this books asks: How is authority related to ethics, ontology, and epistemology? What are the social, historical and representational processes that produce authority and resistance? And what are the conditions of effective resistance? Spinoza's Authority features a roster of internationally established theorists of Spinoza's work, and covers key elements of Spinoza's political philosophy, including: questions of authority, the resistance to authority, sovereign power, democratic control, and the role of Spinoza's "multitudes".

Author: Guido Ruivenkamp
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1786991810
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
In the wake of socialism’s demise and liberalism’s loss of direction, new ideas are needed for the next major realignment of the social and political domain. Making a unique contribution to the idea of ‘the commons’, this book offers a radical form of direct democracy with real-world implications. But whereas much of the current scholarship has looked at the commons from the perspective of governance, this book instead focuses on ‘commoning’ as social practice. Perspectives on Commoning argues that the commons are not just resources external to us, but are a function or characterisation of what we do. Thus, we can talk of the act of commoning, positioning our behaviour beyond the domains of the private and the public, beyond the dichotomy of capitalism versus socialism. Covering everything from biopolitics to urban spaces, this impressive range of international contributors address the commons as both theory and history, providing a useful review of current conceptions as well as practical proposals for the future. A unique consolidation of philosophy, sociology and economics, the book shows how a new understanding of the commons as practice will help to achieve its full emancipatory potential.

Author: Romand Coles
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813145546
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 543

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Book Description
Written by both well-established and rising new scholars, Radical Future Pasts seeks to open up new possibilities for the practical application of political thought. Unlike conventional "state of the discipline" collections, this volume does not summarize where the field of political theory has been. Rather than accept traditional versions of the political past, the contributors reinterpret both canonical and current texts to demonstrate how politics can be theorized and applied in new ways.

Author: Julian Reid
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1847796567
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Newly available in paperback, this book overturns existing understandings of the origins and futures of the War on Terror for the purposes of International Relations theory. It demonstrates why this is not a war in defence of the integrity of human life, but a war over the political constitution of life in which the limitations of liberal accounts of humanity are a fundamental cause of the conflict. The question of the future of humanity is posed by this war, but only in the sense that its resolution depends on our abilities to move beyond the limits of dominant understandings of the human and its politics. Theorising with and beyond the works of Foucault, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Virilio and Negri, this book examines the possibilities for such a movement. What forms does human life take, it asks, when liberal understandings of humanity are no longer understood as horizons to strive for, but impositions against which the human must struggle in order to fulfil its destiny? What forms does the human assume when war against liberal regimes becomes the determining condition of its possibility? Answers to such questions are pressing, this book argues, if we earnestly desire an escape from the current impasses of international politics.

Author: John Fox
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137507985
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
Marx, the Body, and Human Nature shows that the body and the broader material world played a far more significant role in Marx's theory than previously recognised. It provides a fresh 'take' on Marx's theory, revealing a much more open, dynamic and unstable conception of the body, the self, and human nature.