Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity PDF Download

Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity PDF full book. Access full book title Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity by Matthew H. Bowker. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.

Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity

Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity PDF Author: Matthew H. Bowker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317975103
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
What does it mean to describe something or someone as absurd? Why did absurd philosophy and literature become so popular amidst the violent conflicts and terrors of the mid- to late-twentieth century? Is it possible to understand absurdity not as a feature of events, but as a psychological posture or stance? If so, what are the objectives, dynamics, and repercussions of the absurd stance? And in what ways has the absurd stance continued to shape postmodern thought and contemporary culture? In Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity, Matthew H. Bowker offers a surprising account of absurdity as a widespread endeavor to make parts of our experience meaningless. In the last century, he argues, fears about subjects’ destructive desires have combined with fears about rationality in a way that has made the absurd stance seem attractive. Drawing upon diverse sources from philosophy, literature, politics, psychoanalysis, theology, and contemporary culture, Bowker identifies the absurd effort to make aspects of our histories, our selves, and our public projects meaningless with postmodern revolts against reason and subjectivity. Weaving together analyses of the work of Albert Camus, Georges Bataille, Judith Butler, Emmanuel Levinas, and others with interview data and popular narratives of apocalypse and survival, Bowker shows that the absurd stance and the postmodern revolt invite a kind of bargain, in which meaning is sacrificed in exchange for the survival of innocence. Bowker asks us to consider that the very premise of this bargain is false: that ethical subjects and healthy communities cannot be created in absurdity. Instead, we must make meaningful even the most shocking losses, terrors, and destructive powers with which we live. Bowker's book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in the fields of political science, philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis, sociology, and cultural studies.

Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity

Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity PDF Author: Matthew H. Bowker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317975103
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
What does it mean to describe something or someone as absurd? Why did absurd philosophy and literature become so popular amidst the violent conflicts and terrors of the mid- to late-twentieth century? Is it possible to understand absurdity not as a feature of events, but as a psychological posture or stance? If so, what are the objectives, dynamics, and repercussions of the absurd stance? And in what ways has the absurd stance continued to shape postmodern thought and contemporary culture? In Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity, Matthew H. Bowker offers a surprising account of absurdity as a widespread endeavor to make parts of our experience meaningless. In the last century, he argues, fears about subjects’ destructive desires have combined with fears about rationality in a way that has made the absurd stance seem attractive. Drawing upon diverse sources from philosophy, literature, politics, psychoanalysis, theology, and contemporary culture, Bowker identifies the absurd effort to make aspects of our histories, our selves, and our public projects meaningless with postmodern revolts against reason and subjectivity. Weaving together analyses of the work of Albert Camus, Georges Bataille, Judith Butler, Emmanuel Levinas, and others with interview data and popular narratives of apocalypse and survival, Bowker shows that the absurd stance and the postmodern revolt invite a kind of bargain, in which meaning is sacrificed in exchange for the survival of innocence. Bowker asks us to consider that the very premise of this bargain is false: that ethical subjects and healthy communities cannot be created in absurdity. Instead, we must make meaningful even the most shocking losses, terrors, and destructive powers with which we live. Bowker's book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in the fields of political science, philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis, sociology, and cultural studies.

Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity

Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity PDF Author: Matthew H. Bowker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317975111
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Book Description
What does it mean to describe something or someone as absurd? Why did absurd philosophy and literature become so popular amidst the violent conflicts and terrors of the mid- to late-twentieth century? Is it possible to understand absurdity not as a feature of events, but as a psychological posture or stance? If so, what are the objectives, dynamics, and repercussions of the absurd stance? And in what ways has the absurd stance continued to shape postmodern thought and contemporary culture? In Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity, Matthew H. Bowker offers a surprising account of absurdity as a widespread endeavor to make parts of our experience meaningless. In the last century, he argues, fears about subjects’ destructive desires have combined with fears about rationality in a way that has made the absurd stance seem attractive. Drawing upon diverse sources from philosophy, literature, politics, psychoanalysis, theology, and contemporary culture, Bowker identifies the absurd effort to make aspects of our histories, our selves, and our public projects meaningless with postmodern revolts against reason and subjectivity. Weaving together analyses of the work of Albert Camus, Georges Bataille, Judith Butler, Emmanuel Levinas, and others with interview data and popular narratives of apocalypse and survival, Bowker shows that the absurd stance and the postmodern revolt invite a kind of bargain, in which meaning is sacrificed in exchange for the survival of innocence. Bowker asks us to consider that the very premise of this bargain is false: that ethical subjects and healthy communities cannot be created in absurdity. Instead, we must make meaningful even the most shocking losses, terrors, and destructive powers with which we live. Bowker's book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in the fields of political science, philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis, sociology, and cultural studies.

Albert Camus and the Political Philosophy of the Absurd

Albert Camus and the Political Philosophy of the Absurd PDF Author: Matthew H. Bowker
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780739181362
Category : Absurd (Philosophy).
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In Albert Camus and the Political Philosophy of the Absurd: Ambivalence, Resistance, and Creativity, Matthew H. Bowker takes an interdisciplinary approach to Albert Camus' political philosophy by reading absurdity itself as a metaphor for the psychosocial dynamics of ambivalence, resistance, integration, and creativity. Decoupling absurdity from its ontological aspirations and focusing instead on its psychological and phenomenal contours, Bowker discovers an absurdist foundation for ethical and political practice.

Unity in the Book of Isaiah

Unity in the Book of Isaiah PDF Author: Benedetta Rossi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567705943
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Book Description
Building on previous holistic readings of the Book of Isaiah, this collection approaches Isaiah through the concept of unity. Contributors outline research that point to new directions in the unity movement and, in the process, bring it under a critical gaze, considering the perennial challenges to unity reading and thus problematizing the very concept of unity. Divided into four parts, the book provides methodological reflections on reading Isaiah as a unity, and examines historical and redactional readings, literary readings and contextual or reader-orientated readings. Topics include how the figure of Jacob functions as a unifying motif in the final form of the book, Isaiah 1 as an example of the relevance of local structure for global coherence and how woman as a root metaphor of Zion not only bears revelatory significance but also serves as a theological linchpin for a more holistic reading of the book. Overall, the book highlights the continued promise of holistic readings for diverse methods and varied approaches to the Book of Isaiah.

D.W. Winnicott and Political Theory

D.W. Winnicott and Political Theory PDF Author: Matthew H. Bowker
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137575336
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Book Description
In this volume, the work of British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott is set in conversation with some of today’s most talented psychodynamically-sensitive political thinkers. The editors and contributors demonstrate that Winnicott’s thought contains underappreciated political insights, discoverable in his reflections on the nature of the maturational process, and useful in working through difficult impasses confronting contemporary political theorists. Specifically, Winnicott’s psychoanalytic theory and practice offer a framework by which the political subject, destabilized and disrupted in much postmodern and contemporary thinking, may be recentered. Each chapter in this volume, in its own way, grapples with this central theme: the potential for authentic subjectivity and inter-subjectivity to arise within a nexus of autonomy and dependence, aggression and civility, destructiveness and care. This volume is unique in its contribution to the growing field of object-relations-oriented political and social theory. It will be of interest to political scientists, psychologists, and scholars of related subjects in the humanities and social sciences.

The Politics of Economic Life

The Politics of Economic Life PDF Author: Martin Beckstein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317426258
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Book Description
In recent years, economic life has become increasingly politicized: now, every company has a ‘philosophy’, promising its customers some ethical surplus in return for buying their products; consumers shop for change; workers engage in individualized forms of employee activism such as whistleblowing; and governments contribute to the re-configuration of the economic sphere as a site of political contestation by reminding corporate and private economic actors of their duty to ‘do their bit’. The Politics of Economic Life addresses this trend by exploring the ways in which practices of consumption, work, production, and entrepreneurship are imbued with political strategy and ideology, and assesses the potentials and perils of the politicization of economic activity for democracy in the 21st century.

Hegel and the Metaphysical Frontiers of Political Theory

Hegel and the Metaphysical Frontiers of Political Theory PDF Author: Eric Lee Goodfield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317665236
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
For over one hundred and fifty years G.W.F. Hegel’s ghost has haunted theoretical understanding and practice. His opponents first, and later his defenders, have equally defined their programs against and with his. In this way Hegel’s political thought has both situated and displaced modern political theorizing. This book takes the reception of Hegel’s political thought as a lens through which contemporary methodological and ideological prerogatives are exposed. It traces the nineteenth century origins of the positivist revolt against Hegel’s legacy forward to political science’s turn away from philosophical tradition in the twentieth century. The book critically reviews the subsequent revisionist trend that has eliminated his metaphysics from contemporary considerations of his political thought. It then moves to re-evaluate their relation and defend their inseparability in his major work on politics: the Philosophy of Right. Against this background, the book concludes with an argument for the inherent metaphysical dimension of political theorizing itself. Goodfield takes Hegel’s reception, representation, as well as rejection in Anglo-American scholarship as a mirror in which its metaphysical presuppositions of the political are exceptionally well reflected. It is through such reflection, he argues, that we may begin to come to terms with them. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and readers of political theory and philosophy, Hegel, metaphysics and the philosophy of the social sciences.

The Temporality of Political Obligation

The Temporality of Political Obligation PDF Author: Justin Chandler Mueller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131742641X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Book Description
The Temporality of Political Obligation offers a critique and reconceptualization of the ways in which our political obligations – what we owe to political authorities and communities, and the reasons why we ought to obey their rules – have been traditionally conceptualized, justified, and contested. Drawing from theories of time and temporality, Justin Mueller demonstrates some of the unacknowledged assumptions and theoretical blind spots shared among these ostensibly opposed positions, and the problems and contradictions that this neglect of time poses. Enriching the literature on the philosophers Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze, Mueller demonstrates how their theoretical frameworks on time can be used to analyze a political problem that is usually confined to the concerns of normative liberal democratic theory. Politically, this book provides readers with the means to better identify and analyze the diverse temporalities they encounter in everyday life, and better understand their experiences of them. A welcomed and timely read which will be of interest to scholars involved in recent efforts to engage with the social and political dimensions and consequences of time and temporality.

Political Philosophy, Empathy and Political Justice

Political Philosophy, Empathy and Political Justice PDF Author: Matt Edge
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317701860
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
In this work, Matt Edge offers an innovative approach to political philosophy. He invites the reader to consider the question of political justice from an empathic perspective - if you were asked to construct a theory of justice acceptable to members of a community you were not yourself a part of, how would you succeed in making your proposal acceptable? What tools would you rely on to construct such a theory, and why? Equally, what would make anyone qualified to write such a theory? Using empathy, this remarkable, natural, tool human beings possess for making moral and ethical decisions, and, thereby, placing yourself as someone on the receiving end of the very theory of justice you yourself are constructing, what would you come up with? What set of alterable human structures and systems would you deem acceptable, were you to find yourself in the position of a citizen living under such structures? Political Philosophy, Empathy and Political Justice offers a unique and compelling account of the type of free system required to pass an empathic examination at the heart of these, and related, questions, matters which define all human eras, in the constant search for political and social justice on our diverse planet.

Rethinking Political Judgement

Rethinking Political Judgement PDF Author: MaA!a Mrovlje
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474437168
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
The first book-length study to provide a detailed examination of a distinctive crossroads in the history of the left