Book picks similar to
Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought) by Michael Kelly
philosophy
critical-theory
3-science
philosophy-thought
The Educated Imagination
Northrop Frye - 1963
Dr. Frye offers, in addition, challenging and stimulating ideas for the teaching of literature at lower school levels, designed both to promote an early interest and to lead the student to the knowledge and kaleidoscopic experience found in the study of literature.Dr. Frye's proposals for the teaching of literature include an early emphasis on poetry, the "central and original literary form," intensive study of the Bible, as literature, and the Greek and Latin classics, as these embody all the great enduring themes of western man, and study of the great literary forms: tragedy and comedy, romance and irony.
The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently... and Why
Richard E. Nisbett - 2003
As a result, East Asian thought is “holistic”—drawn to the perceptual field as a whole and to relations among objects and events within that field. By contrast, Westerners focus on salient objects or people, use attributes to assign them to categories, and apply rules of formal logic to understand their behavior. From feng shui to metaphysics, from comparative linguistics to economic history, a gulf separates the children of Aristotle from the descendants of Confucius. At a moment in history when the need for cross-cultural understanding and collaboration have never been more important, The Geography of Thought offers both a map to that gulf and a blueprint for a bridge that will span it.
The Queer Art of Failure
J. Jack Halberstam - 2011
Judith Halberstam proposes “low theory” as a mode of thinking and writing that operates at many different levels at once. Low theory is derived from eccentric archives. It runs the risk of not being taken seriously. It entails a willingness to fail and to lose one’s way, to pursue difficult questions about complicity, and to find counterintuitive forms of resistance. Tacking back and forth between high theory and low theory, high culture and low culture, Halberstam looks for the unexpected and subversive in popular culture, avant-garde performance, and queer art. She pays particular attention to animated children’s films, revealing narratives filled with unexpected encounters between the childish, the transformative, and the queer. Failure sometimes offers more creative, cooperative, and surprising ways of being in the world, even as it forces us to face the dark side of life, love, and libido.
How the Irish Became White
Noel Ignatiev - 1995
He uncovers the roots of conflict between Irish-Americans & African-Americans & draws a powerful connection between the embracing of white supremacy & Irish "success" in 19th century American society.
Living a Feminist Life
Sara Ahmed - 2017
Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique—often by naming and calling attention to problems—and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutions—such as forming support systems—to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.
This Book Will Save You Time
Misir Mahmudov - 2020
Everything else can be made, bought or created. Our life is made up of around 600,000 hours and every second is of infinite value. We live in an attention economy where corporations are fighting for our time with the goal of monetizing our every second. The money we use loses value and devalues our time through inflation. When we work, we are exchanging our limited time for money whose quantity increases every year. It hasn’t always been this way. People used gold as money for a reason; it was also a limited resource. Now, what does the future hold?Valuing your time is the first step to improving your life. Knowing that your time is the only limited resource makes you more selective about the things you do, the people you spend your time with and the assets you choose to store your wealth in. Once you learn to appreciate your time, you will get busy doing the things you love and start making better financial choices.
The Theory of the Novel
György Lukács - 1916
Like many of Lukacs's early essays, it is a radical critique of bourgeois culture and stems from a specific Central European philosophy of life and tradition of dialectical idealism whose originators include Kant, Hegel, Novalis, Marx, Kierkegaard, Simmel, Weber, and Husserl.The Theory of the Novel marks the transition of the Hungarian philosopher from Kant to Hegel and was Lukacs's last great work before he turned to Marxism-Leninism.
Time and Narrative, Volume 1
Paul Ricœur - 1983
Ricoeur here examines the creation of meaning at the textual level, with narrative rather than metaphor as the ruling concern.Ricoeur finds a "healthy circle" between time and narrative: time is humanized to the extent that it portrays temporal experience. Ricoeur proposes a theoretical model of this circle using Augustine's theory of time and Aristotle's theory of plot and, further, develops an original thesis of the mimetic function of narrative. He concludes with a comprehensive survey and critique of modern discussions of historical knowledge, understanding, and writing from Aron and Mandelbaum in the late 1930s to the work of the Annales school and that of Anglophone philosophers of history of the 1960s and 1970s."This work, in my view, puts the whole problem of narrative, not to mention philosophy of history, on a new and higher plane of discussion."—Hayden White, History and Theory "Superb. . . . A fine point of entrance into the work of one of the eminent thinkers of the present intellectual age."—Joseph R. Gusfield, Contemporary Sociology
The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses
Juhani Pallasmaa - 1996
This new, revised and extended edition of this seminal work will not only inspire architects and students to design more holistic architecture, but will enrich the general reader's perception of the world around them. The Eyes of the Skin has become a classic of architectural theory and consists of two extended essays. The first surveys the historical development of the ocular-centric paradigm in western culture since the Greeks, and its impact on the experience of the world and the nature of architecture. The second examines the role of the other senses in authentic architectural experiences, and points the way towards a multi-sensory architecture which facilitates a sense of belonging and integration.
The Inoperative Community
Jean-Luc Nancy - 1986
Contrary to popular Western notions of community, Nancy shows that it is neither a project of fusion nor production. Rather, he argues, community can be defined through the political nature of its resistance against immanent power.
Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence
Hans Blumenberg - 1979
Originally published in the same year as his monumental Work on Myth, Shipwreck with Spectator traces the evolution of the complex of metaphors related to the sea, to shipwreck, and to the role of the spectator in human culture from ancient Greece to modern times. The sea is one of humanity's oldest metaphors for life, and a sea journey, Blumenberg observes, has often stood for our journey through life. We all know the role that shipwrecks can play in this journey, and at some level we have all played witness to others' wrecks, standing in safety and knowing that there is nothing we can do to help, yet fixed comfortably or uncomfortably in our ambiguous role as spectator. Through Blumenberg's seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of letters, from ancient texts through nineteenth-century reminiscences and modern speeches, we see layer upon layer revealed in the meaning humans have given to these metaphors; and in this way we begin to understand what metaphors can do that more straightforward modes of expression cannot. This edition of Shipwreck with Spectator also includes "Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality," an essay that recounts the evolution of Blumenberg's ideas about metaphorology in the years following his early manifesto "Paradigms for a Metaphorology."
The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
Amitav Ghosh - 2016
How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability—at the level of literature, history, and politics—to grasp the scale and violence of climate change.The extreme nature of today’s climate events, Ghosh asserts, make them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the novel; they are automatically consigned to other genres. In the writing of history, too, the climate crisis has sometimes led to gross simplifications; Ghosh shows that the history of the carbon economy is a tangled global story with many contradictory and counterintuitive elements.Ghosh ends by suggesting that politics, much like literature, has become a matter of personal moral reckoning rather than an arena of collective action. But to limit fiction and politics to individual moral adventure comes at a great cost. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence—a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer’s summons to confront the most urgent task of our time.
Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations
Michael Walzer - 1976
He studies a variety of conflicts over the course of history, as well as the testimony of those who have been most directly involved--participants, decision makers, and victims. In his introduction to this new edition, Walzer specifically addresses the moral issues surrounding the war in and occupation of Iraq, reminding us once again that "the argument about war and justice is still a political and moral necessity."
Shackled: A Journey From Political Imprisonment To Freedom
Adam Siddiq - 2017
Following a grand betrayal, Khaled's father and uncles, the respected right-hand men to the King of Afghanistan, become targets of the new regime. Khaled's father is exiled, his uncles are executed, and their families are locked away in a forgotten corner of Kabul. So begins a decades-long struggle in captivity where Khaled faces the hardship of prison life while enduring tragedies as more of his loved ones are executed and succumb to diseases. Despite the tribulations he experiences, Khaled never gives up hope, choosing to make the most of his time by studying five different languages, advanced literature, and philosophy. Eventually, Khaled and his family are released from prison, but are they truly free? Forbidden from leaving the country, one thing continues to haunt Khaled: a longing to reunite with his father. SHACKLED is a raw, heart-opening story about resilience. It follows the Charkhi family from the 1932 coup to the 1979 Soviet invasion. Amidst national and personal upheaval, Khaled finds his freedom by choosing to lead a life of optimism, kindness, joy, and love. Adam Siddiq is the grandson of Khaled Siddiq. Adam wrote SHACKLED alongside his grandfather, Khaled—a shared journey they hope will inspire others to become more involved in the sacred bond between the youth and their elders.
Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture
Michael Kammen - 1991
. . Kammen is a demon researcher who seems to have mined his nuggets from the entire corpus of American cultural history . . . insightful and sardonic." -- Washington Post Book World"This is a big, ambitious book, and Kammen pulls it off admirably. . . . [He] brings a prodigious mind and much scholarly rigor to his task . . . an important book and a revealing look at how Americans look at themselves." -- Milwaukee Journal