Political science and theory Books
Bristol University Press All Roads Lead to Serfdom: Confronting
Book SynopsisLiberal democracies are under increasing pressure. Growing discontent about inequality, lack of political participation and identity have rekindled populism and a shift away from liberal values. This book argues that liberalism’s reliance on a utilitarian policy framework has resulted in increased concentrations of power, restricting freedom and equality. It examines five key areas of public policy: monetary policy, private property and liability, the structure of the state, product markets and labour markets. Drawing on the German ordoliberal tradition and its founding principle of the dispersal of power, the book proposes an alternative public policy framework. In doing so, it offers a practical pathway to realign policy making with liberal ideas.Trade Review“I liked Thomas Aubrey’s short book. It could alternatively be called, Confronting the weaknesses of the Anglo-Saxon economic model. But it does this in a thoughtful way, contrasting the utilitarian tradition of UK/US economic policy with (West) Germany and the “underlying ordoliberal principle of power dispersion.”” The Enlightened EconomistTable of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: The Liberal Order and Its Utilitarian Foundation Chapter 3 the Rise of Ordo Chapter 4 the West German Experiment and the Decline of Ordo Chapter 5 Monetary Policy: The Illiberal Practice of Inflation Targeting Chapter 6 Liability and Private Property: Confronting the Perfect Externalising Machine Chapter 7 Structure of the State: Community and Vitalpolitik Chapter 8 Labour Markets: Continuous Training and Flexibility Chapter 9 Product Markets: Enforcing the Price Mechanism Chapter 10: Confronting Liberalism’s Fatal Flaw Appendix: Methodology Used for Measuring the Dispersal of Public and Private Power by Policy Field
£26.59
Bristol University Press The Internet Left: Ideology in the Age of Social
Book SynopsisDefying the current pessimistic narrative, this book challenges the prevailing assumptions that the political Left is spent, hopeful ideological discourse has collapsed and social media has corroded public debates about politics. Instead, the book argues that ideological activism remains vibrant on the Left, but there is currently no clear way of recognising and analysing this phenomenon. The book fills this gap by first defining what political social media is and then by taking a morphological approach to investigating political ideologies and revealing the ways in which interconnected concepts are arranged. It concludes by coining the term ‘proto-ideologies’ to approach the construction of concepts that generate ideologies in the making.Trade Review"A masterful analysis of left-wing discourse in the age of social media. This book provides an ultimately uplifting account of political social media, contrary to the widespread accusations that it is damaging public debate." Remi Adekoya, University of YorkTable of ContentsPart I 1. Introduction 2. Chaos, Crisis, Decline, Contention 3. ‘A Largeness of Vision and Imagination’: Marxism and Socialism 4. Proto-Ideologies Part II 5. Democratic Marxist Nationalism 6. Identitarian Socialism 7. Contention 8. Conclusion
£72.00
Bristol University Press Claiming and Contesting Representation in Mexico
Book SynopsisThrough innovative conceptual work and original case studies, the book explores important trends in Mexican politics and governance through the lens of representation, including who speaks and stands for whom, on what grounds and in what domains and the challenges they face.
£72.00
Bristol University Press Confucian Governmentality and Socialist Autocracy
Book Synopsis
£72.00
Fordham University Press The Political Logic of Experience: Expression in
Book SynopsisThe Political Logic of Experience argues that experience and phenomenology are essentially political, with profound implications for our understanding of subjectivity, epistemology, experience, the phenomenological method, and politics. Drawing on work from across the phenomenological tradition, it develops an account of expression as the internal relationship uniting knowing, being, and doing with both transcendental conditions and empirical phenomena. This expressive unification generates subjectivity as an expression of particular communities and subjects as an expression of subjectivity. Subjectivity and experience are therefore both revealed to be inherently political prior to their expression in particular subjects. In clarifying the political nature of experience and the constitution of subjectivity, the book puts the work of critical phenomenology in dialogue with transcendental phenomenology to reveal the need for a phenomenological politics: a field tasked with explaining the expressive, co-constitutive, and necessarily political relationships between subjects and their communities. It is only through such a phenomenological politics that we can properly make sense of the epistemological, ontological, and practical significance of issues like racism and sexism, problems that concern our very experience of the world. The book reveals phenomenology to be both essentially political and politically essential, as it emerges within particular communities and shapes and transforms how individuals within those communities experience the world. Touching on issues of transcendental phenomenology, political strategy, historical interpretation and inter-disciplinary phenomenological method, the book argues for foundational claims pertaining to phenomenology, politics, and social criticism that will be of interest to those working in philosophy, gender studies, race, queer theory, transcendental and applied phenomenology, and beyond.Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations | ix Introduction: Experience and the Problem of Expression | 1 1 A Phenomenological Account of Expressivity | 27 2 Material-Spiritual Flesh: The Subjective Implications of Expressivity | 47 3 From Sense to Sensings: The Epistemological Implications of Expressivity | 67 4 Making Sense of Experience: The Transcendental Implications of Expressivity | 87 5 The Subject, Reduction, and Uses of Phenomenology: The Methodological Implications of Expressivity | 113 6 Toward a Phenomenological Politics: The Political Implications of Expressivity | 135 Conclusion: The Logic of Phenomenality | 159 Acknowledgments | 181 Notes | 183 Works Cited | 221 Index | 233
£23.79
Fordham University Press Resounding Events: Adventures of an Academic from
Book SynopsisWinner, David Easton Award for Political Theory, 2023 In Resounding Events, one of the world’s preeminent political theorists reflects on a career as an academic hailing from the working class. From youthful experiences of McCarthyism, to the resurgence of white evangelicalism, to the advent of aspirational fascism and the acceleration of the Anthropocene, Connolly traces a career spent passionately engaged in making a more just, diverse, and equitable world. He surveys the shifting ground upon which politics can be pursued; and he discloses how to be an intellectual in universities that today do not encourage that practice. Far more than a memoir, Resounding Events probes the concerns that have animated Connolly’s work across more than a dozen books by tracing the bumpy imbrications of event, memory and thinking in intellectual life. Connolly experiments with ways to capture various voices that mark a self at any time. An event, as he elaborates it, is what disturbs or inspires thinking as it activates layered sheets of memory. A memory sheet itself assembles recollections, dispositions organized from the past, and vague remains that carry efficacies. Resounding Events shows how resonances between event and memory can help forge new concepts better adjusted to an emergent situation. Addressing tensions between working class experience and norms of the academy, his father’s coma, antiwar protests, the growing disaffection of the white working class, the neoliberalization of the university, climate denialism, and his sister’s experience with workers shifting to Trump, Connolly shows how engaged intellectuals become worthy of the events they encounter.Table of ContentsPrologue: Event, Memory, Thinking . . . | 1 1 Professionals and Intellectuals | 9 2 A Fifty-Yard Dash | 42 3 The Pioneer Valley | 73 4 The Hopkins School of Theory | 108 5 The New Fascist Revolt | 150 Epilogue: Echoes and Spiritualities | 185 Acknowledgments | 193 Notes | 197 Bibliography | 205 Index | 213
£72.25
Fordham University Press Resounding Events: Adventures of an Academic from
Book SynopsisWinner, David Easton Award for Political Theory, 2023 In Resounding Events, one of the world’s preeminent political theorists reflects on a career as an academic hailing from the working class. From youthful experiences of McCarthyism, to the resurgence of white evangelicalism, to the advent of aspirational fascism and the acceleration of the Anthropocene, Connolly traces a career spent passionately engaged in making a more just, diverse, and equitable world. He surveys the shifting ground upon which politics can be pursued; and he discloses how to be an intellectual in universities that today do not encourage that practice. Far more than a memoir, Resounding Events probes the concerns that have animated Connolly’s work across more than a dozen books by tracing the bumpy imbrications of event, memory and thinking in intellectual life. Connolly experiments with ways to capture various voices that mark a self at any time. An event, as he elaborates it, is what disturbs or inspires thinking as it activates layered sheets of memory. A memory sheet itself assembles recollections, dispositions organized from the past, and vague remains that carry efficacies. Resounding Events shows how resonances between event and memory can help forge new concepts better adjusted to an emergent situation. Addressing tensions between working class experience and norms of the academy, his father’s coma, antiwar protests, the growing disaffection of the white working class, the neoliberalization of the university, climate denialism, and his sister’s experience with workers shifting to Trump, Connolly shows how engaged intellectuals become worthy of the events they encounter.Table of ContentsPrologue: Event, Memory, Thinking . . . | 1 1 Professionals and Intellectuals | 9 2 A Fifty-Yard Dash | 42 3 The Pioneer Valley | 73 4 The Hopkins School of Theory | 108 5 The New Fascist Revolt | 150 Epilogue: Echoes and Spiritualities | 185 Acknowledgments | 193 Notes | 197 Bibliography | 205 Index | 213
£21.59
Fordham University Press In the Beginning Was the State: Divine Violence
Book SynopsisThis book explores God’s use of violence as depicted in the Hebrew Bible. Focusing on the Pentateuch, it reads biblical narratives and codes of law as documenting formations of theopolitical imagination. Ophir deciphers the logic of divine rule that these documents betray, with a special attention to the place of violence within it. The book draws from contemporary biblical scholarship, while also engaging critically with contemporary political theory and political theology, including the work of Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, Jan Assmann, Regina Schwartz, and Michael Walzer. Ophir focuses on three distinct theocratic formations: the rule of disaster, where catastrophes are used as means of governance; the biopolitical rule of the holy, where divine violence is spatially demarcated and personally targeted; and the rule of law where divine violence is vividly remembered and its return is projected, anticipated, and yet postponed, creating a prolonged lull for the text’s present. Different as these formations are, Ophir shows how they share an urform that anticipates the main outlines of the modern European state, which has monopolized the entire globe. A critique of the modern state, the book argues, must begin in revisiting the deification of the state, unpacking its mostly repressed theological dimension.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments | vii Introduction | 1 1. Staying with the Violence | 13 Divine Violence—A Trailer, 13 • A Brief Note on Counting and Explaining Away, 21 • Violence, as It Is Unfolding: A Phenomenological Sketch, 24 • Literal Reading and the Biblical Language of Violence, 36 2. Theocracy: The Persistence of an Ancient Lacuna | 45 Theocracy, with and beyond Flavius Josephus, 45 • The Blind Spot: Three Contemporary Readings of Biblical Violence, 53 • On the Attribution of Power and Authority, 74 • Kingship, Anarchy, Theocracy, 79 • Hypothesis, Method, and Stakes, 86 3. The Rule of Disaster: Extinction, Genocides, and Other Calamities | 96 Becoming Political, 96 • From Extinction to Genocide, 99 • Beyond Destruction, 105 • Separation and Disaster, 113 • Violence and Law, 124 • The Sovereign’s Moment, 130 • Scouts in the Land of the Giants: Three Theocratic Formations, 139 4. Holy Power: States of Exception, Targeted Killings, and the Logic of Substitution | 145 Holiness, 145 • Rebellions in the Wilderness, 160 • Substitution and Containment, 178 5. The Time of the Covenant and the Temporalization of Violence | 193 The Experimental Setting: Recalling Violence and Regulating It, 196 • The Covenant and the Curses, 204 • The Weight of the Present, 214 • The Subjects’ Trap, or the People’s Irony, 222 • A Midianite Utopia, 230 Afterword: The Pentateuchal State, and Ours | 241 Notes | 257 Works Cited | 317 Index | 335
£95.20
Fordham University Press Spectacles and Specters: A Performative Theory of
Book SynopsisSpectacles and Specters draws on theories of performativity to conceptualize the entanglements of law and political violence, offering a radical departure from accounts that consider political trials as instrumental in exercising or containing political violence. Legal scholar Başak Ertür argues instead that making sense of the often incalculable interpenetrations of law, politics, and violence in trials requires shifting the focus away from law’s instrumentality to its performativity. Ertür develops a theory of political trials by reconstructing and building on a legacy of critical thought on Nuremberg in close engagement with theories of performativity. She then offers original case studies that introduce a new perspective by looking beyond the Holocaust trials, to the Armenian genocide and its fragmentary legal aftermaths. These cases include the 1921 trial of Soghomon Tehlirian, the 2007-21 Hrant Dink Murder Trial, and the 2015 case before the European Court of Human Rights concerning the denial of the Armenian genocide. Enabling us to capture the various modalities in which the political emerges in, through and in relation to legal forms on the stage of the trial, this focus on law’s performativity also allows us to account for how sovereign schemes can misfire and how trials can come to have unintended political lives and afterlives. Further, it reveals how law is entangled with and perpetuates certain histories of violence, rather than simply ever mastering these histories or providing closure.Table of ContentsPreface | ix Introduction | 1 Performativity and Performance • Performativity and Errancy • Rethinking the Politics of Trials • Law and Violence: An Oblique Address PART I: A PERFORMATIVE THEORY OF POLITICAL TRIALS 1 Theorizing Political Trials | 21 Kirchheimer: Setting the Parameters • Judgment on Nuremberg • Arendt: A Trial of One’s Own? • The Breach That Speaks the Bind • Shklar: “There’s Politics and Politics” • Between Atrocity and Legal Violence 2 The Form and Substance of Doing Justice: Law, Performativity, Performance | 52 Not a Profound Word • Law and Performativity • Masquerade and Fate • The Trial: Performativity and Performance 3 Sovereign Infelicities | 76 Three Scenes • Sovereign Spectacles • Sovereign Performatives? • (Mis)Reading the Performative as Performance • Derrida’s Austin: Sovereign Pretensions • Performing the (Structural) Unconscious • Undoing Sovereignty PART II: TRACING THE SPECTERS IN THE SPECTACLES 4 Ghosts in the Courtroom: The Trial of Soghomon Tehlirian | 103 Talat • Tehlirian • Enter Ghost • The Telegrams • The Haunted Hunter • The Many Lives of Tehlirian • The Politics of Haunting 5 Spectral Legacies: Legal Aftermaths of the Armenian Genocide | 131 Legal Returns • Atemporal Histories of Terror • Process unto Oblivion • “Genocide” as Counter-Memory 6 Law of Denial: The Armenian Genocide before the European Court of Human Rights | 156 The Envoy • The Judge, The Historian, and the Politician • Judging the Presence of the Past Conclusion | 175 Acknowledgments | 187 Notes | 191 Index | 223
£79.90
Fordham University Press Jean-Luc Nancy among the Philosophers
Book SynopsisThis volume focuses on the relational aspect of Jean-Luc Nancy’s thinking. As Nancy himself showed, thinking might be a solitary activity but it is never singular in its dimension. Building on or breaking away from other thoughts, especially those by thinkers who had come before, thinking is always plural, relational. This “singular plural” dimension of thought in Nancy’s philosophical writings demands explication. In this book, some of today’s leading scholars in the theoretical humanities shed light on how Nancy’s thought both shares with and departs from Descartes, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Weil, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, and Lyotard, elucidating “the sharing of voices,” in Nancy’s phrase, between Nancy and these thinkers. Contributors: Georges Van Den Abbeele, Emily Apter, Rodolphe Gasché, Werner Hamacher, Eleanor Kaufman, Marie-Eve Morin, Timothy Murray, Jean-Luc Nancy, and John H. SmithTable of ContentsIntroduction: Jean-Luc Nancy Passes | 1 Irving Goh 1 The Iterative Cogito, or the Sum of Each and Every Time (Reading Descartes with Jean-Luc Nancy) | 21 Georges Van Den Abbeele 2 Nancy with Hegel: The Restless Pleasures of Calculus and the Infinite Opening in Finitude | 52 John H. Smith 3 The World, Absolutely: On Jean-Luc Nancy (and Karl Marx) | 75 Rodolphe Gasché 4 Worldless: Heidegger, Simone Weil, and Anti-Judaism via Nancy | 91 Eleanor Kaufman 5 Flesh and Écart in Merleau-Ponty and Nancy | 111 Marie-Eve Morin 6 Sexistence: Nancy and Lacan | 135 Emily Apter 7 Sublime Seizures in Lyotard and Nancy: The Political Blooming of Art and Technology | 149 Timothy Murray 8 D’avec: Mutations and Mutisms in Jean-Luc Nancy | 166 Werner Hamacher 9 Infinitely Passing (or, Pascal Passes) | 205 Jean-Luc Nancy List of Contributors | 211 Index | 215
£95.20
Fordham University Press Jean-Luc Nancy among the Philosophers
Book SynopsisThis volume focuses on the relational aspect of Jean-Luc Nancy’s thinking. As Nancy himself showed, thinking might be a solitary activity but it is never singular in its dimension. Building on or breaking away from other thoughts, especially those by thinkers who had come before, thinking is always plural, relational. This “singular plural” dimension of thought in Nancy’s philosophical writings demands explication. In this book, some of today’s leading scholars in the theoretical humanities shed light on how Nancy’s thought both shares with and departs from Descartes, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Weil, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, and Lyotard, elucidating “the sharing of voices,” in Nancy’s phrase, between Nancy and these thinkers. Contributors: Georges Van Den Abbeele, Emily Apter, Rodolphe Gasché, Werner Hamacher, Eleanor Kaufman, Marie-Eve Morin, Timothy Murray, Jean-Luc Nancy, and John H. SmithTable of ContentsIntroduction: Jean-Luc Nancy Passes | 1 Irving Goh 1 The Iterative Cogito, or the Sum of Each and Every Time (Reading Descartes with Jean-Luc Nancy) | 21 Georges Van Den Abbeele 2 Nancy with Hegel: The Restless Pleasures of Calculus and the Infinite Opening in Finitude | 52 John H. Smith 3 The World, Absolutely: On Jean-Luc Nancy (and Karl Marx) | 75 Rodolphe Gasché 4 Worldless: Heidegger, Simone Weil, and Anti-Judaism via Nancy | 91 Eleanor Kaufman 5 Flesh and Écart in Merleau-Ponty and Nancy | 111 Marie-Eve Morin 6 Sexistence: Nancy and Lacan | 135 Emily Apter 7 Sublime Seizures in Lyotard and Nancy: The Political Blooming of Art and Technology | 149 Timothy Murray 8 D’avec: Mutations and Mutisms in Jean-Luc Nancy | 166 Werner Hamacher 9 Infinitely Passing (or, Pascal Passes) | 205 Jean-Luc Nancy List of Contributors | 211 Index | 215
£26.99
Fordham University Press Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective
Book SynopsisAn exciting new reflection on the role of artistic collaboration, collectivism, and the politics of group formation in the neoliberal era. The artist and author Ethan Philbrick’s Group Works re-imagines the group by undertaking an historiographic archaeology of group aesthetics and politics. Written against both phobic and romantic accounts of collectivity, Group Works contends that the group emerges as a medium for artists when established forms of collective life break down. Philbrick pairs group pieces in dance, literature, film, and music from the 1960s and 1970s downtown Manhattan scene alongside a series of recent group experiments: Simone Forti’s dance construction, Huddle (1961), is put into relation with contemporary re-performances of Forti’s score and huddling as a feminist political tactic; Samuel Delany’s memoir of communal living, Heavenly Breakfast: An Essay on the Winter of Love (1969/78), speaks to performance artist Morgan Bassichis’s 2017 communal musical adaptation of Larry Mitchell’s 1977 text, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions; Lizzie Borden’s experimental documentary of feminist collectivity, Regrouping (1976), sits alongside visual artist Sharon Hayes’s 2014 piece on Manhattan’s Pier 54, Women of the World Unite! they said; and Julius Eastman’s insurgent piece of chamber music for four pianos, Gay Guerrilla (1979), resonates alongside contemporary projects that take up Eastman’s legacy by artists such as Tiona Nekkia McClodden. By analyzing works that articulate the politics of race, gender, and sexuality as questions of group formation, Philbrick approaches the group not as a stable, idealizable entity but as an ambivalent way to negotiate and contest shifting terms of associational life. Group Works presents an engaging exploration of what happens when small groups become a material and medium for artistic and political experimentation.Table of ContentsIntroduction | 1 1. Huddle | 25 2. Commune | 51 3. Groupuscule | 84 4. Ensemble | 113 Afterword | 141 Acknowledgments | 145 Notes | 147 Index | 169
£68.85
Fordham University Press Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective
Book SynopsisAn exciting new reflection on the role of artistic collaboration, collectivism, and the politics of group formation in the neoliberal era. The artist and author Ethan Philbrick’s Group Works re-imagines the group by undertaking an historiographic archaeology of group aesthetics and politics. Written against both phobic and romantic accounts of collectivity, Group Works contends that the group emerges as a medium for artists when established forms of collective life break down. Philbrick pairs group pieces in dance, literature, film, and music from the 1960s and 1970s downtown Manhattan scene alongside a series of recent group experiments: Simone Forti’s dance construction, Huddle (1961), is put into relation with contemporary re-performances of Forti’s score and huddling as a feminist political tactic; Samuel Delany’s memoir of communal living, Heavenly Breakfast: An Essay on the Winter of Love (1969/78), speaks to performance artist Morgan Bassichis’s 2017 communal musical adaptation of Larry Mitchell’s 1977 text, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions; Lizzie Borden’s experimental documentary of feminist collectivity, Regrouping (1976), sits alongside visual artist Sharon Hayes’s 2014 piece on Manhattan’s Pier 54, Women of the World Unite! they said; and Julius Eastman’s insurgent piece of chamber music for four pianos, Gay Guerrilla (1979), resonates alongside contemporary projects that take up Eastman’s legacy by artists such as Tiona Nekkia McClodden. By analyzing works that articulate the politics of race, gender, and sexuality as questions of group formation, Philbrick approaches the group not as a stable, idealizable entity but as an ambivalent way to negotiate and contest shifting terms of associational life. Group Works presents an engaging exploration of what happens when small groups become a material and medium for artistic and political experimentation.Table of ContentsIntroduction | 1 1. Huddle | 25 2. Commune | 51 3. Groupuscule | 84 4. Ensemble | 113 Afterword | 141 Acknowledgments | 145 Notes | 147 Index | 169
£19.79
Fordham University Press Against the Carceral Archive: The Art of Black
Book SynopsisAgainst the Carceral Archive is a meditation upon what author Damien M. Sojoyner calls the “carceral archival project,” offering a distillation of critical, theoretical, and activist work of prison abolitionists over the past three decades. Working from collections at the Southern California Library (Black Panthers, LA Chapter; the Coalition Against Police Abuse; Urban Policy Research Institute; Mothers Reclaiming Our Children; and the collection of geographer Clyde Woods), it builds upon theories of the archive to examine carcerality as the dominant mode of state governance over Black populations in the United States since the 1960s. Each chapter takes up an element of the carceral archive and its destabilization, destruction, and containment of Black life: its notion of the human and the production of “pejorative blackness,” the intimate connection between police and military in the protection of racial capitalism and its fossil fuel–based economy, the role of technology in counterintelligence, and counterinsurgency logics. Importantly, each chapter also emphasizes the carceral archive’s fundamental failure to destroy “Black communal logics” and radical Black forms of knowledge production, both of which contest the carceral archive and create other forms of life in its midst. Concluding with a statement on the reckoning with the radical traditions of thought and being which liberation requires, Sojoyner offers a compelling argument for how the centering of Blackness enables a structuring of the mind that refuses the violent exploitative tendencies of Western epistemological traditions as viable life-affirming practices.Table of ContentsIntroduction | 1 1 The Human and the Carceral Archival Project | 17 2 Police and the Carceral Archival Project | 32 3 Technology and the Social Sciences as Synergistic Violence | 42 4 Environmental Instability | 59 5 Policing Health and Safety | 72 6 Liberation | 81 Conclusion | 93 Acknowledgments | 103 References | 107
£56.70
Fordham University Press Against the Carceral Archive: The Art of Black
Book SynopsisAgainst the Carceral Archive is a meditation upon what author Damien M. Sojoyner calls the “carceral archival project,” offering a distillation of critical, theoretical, and activist work of prison abolitionists over the past three decades. Working from collections at the Southern California Library (Black Panthers, LA Chapter; the Coalition Against Police Abuse; Urban Policy Research Institute; Mothers Reclaiming Our Children; and the collection of geographer Clyde Woods), it builds upon theories of the archive to examine carcerality as the dominant mode of state governance over Black populations in the United States since the 1960s. Each chapter takes up an element of the carceral archive and its destabilization, destruction, and containment of Black life: its notion of the human and the production of “pejorative blackness,” the intimate connection between police and military in the protection of racial capitalism and its fossil fuel–based economy, the role of technology in counterintelligence, and counterinsurgency logics. Importantly, each chapter also emphasizes the carceral archive’s fundamental failure to destroy “Black communal logics” and radical Black forms of knowledge production, both of which contest the carceral archive and create other forms of life in its midst. Concluding with a statement on the reckoning with the radical traditions of thought and being which liberation requires, Sojoyner offers a compelling argument for how the centering of Blackness enables a structuring of the mind that refuses the violent exploitative tendencies of Western epistemological traditions as viable life-affirming practices.Table of ContentsIntroduction | 1 1 The Human and the Carceral Archival Project | 17 2 Police and the Carceral Archival Project | 32 3 Technology and the Social Sciences as Synergistic Violence | 42 4 Environmental Instability | 59 5 Policing Health and Safety | 72 6 Liberation | 81 Conclusion | 93 Acknowledgments | 103 References | 107
£15.29
Fordham University Press The Civil War and the Summer of 2020
Book SynopsisInvestigates how Americans have remembered violence and resistance since the Civil War, including Confederate monuments, historical markers, college classrooms, and history books. George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020 sparked a national reckoning for the United States that had been 400 years in the making. Millions of Americans took to the streets to protest both the murder and the centuries of systemic racism that already existed among European colonists but transformed with the arrival of the first enslaved African Americans in 1619. The violence needed to enforce that systemic racism for all those years, from the slave driver’s whip to state-sponsored police brutality, attracted the immediate attention of the protesters. The resistance of the protesters echoed generations of African Americans’ resisting the violence and oppression of white supremacy. Their opposition to violence soon spread to other aspects of systemic racism, including a cultural hegemony built on and reinforcing white supremacy. At the heart of this white supremacist culture is the memory of the Civil War era, when in 1861 8 million white Americans revolted against their country to try to safeguard the enslavement of 4 million African Americans. The volume has three interconnected sections that build on one another. The first section, “Violence,” explores systemic racism in the Civil War era and now with essays on slavery, policing, and slave patrols. The second section, titled “Resistance,” shows how African Americans resisted violence for the past two centuries, with essays discussing matters including self-emancipation and African American soldiers. The final section, “Memory,” investigates how Americans have remembered this violence and resistance since the Civil War, including Confederate monuments and historical markers. This volume is intended for nonhistorians interested in showing the intertwined and longstanding connections between systemic racism, violence, resistance, and the memory of the Civil War era in the United States that finally exploded in the summer of 2020.
£68.85
Fordham University Press The Civil War and the Summer of 2020
Book SynopsisInvestigates how Americans have remembered violence and resistance since the Civil War, including Confederate monuments, historical markers, college classrooms, and history books. George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020 sparked a national reckoning for the United States that had been 400 years in the making. Millions of Americans took to the streets to protest both the murder and the centuries of systemic racism that already existed among European colonists but transformed with the arrival of the first enslaved African Americans in 1619. The violence needed to enforce that systemic racism for all those years, from the slave driver’s whip to state-sponsored police brutality, attracted the immediate attention of the protesters. The resistance of the protesters echoed generations of African Americans’ resisting the violence and oppression of white supremacy. Their opposition to violence soon spread to other aspects of systemic racism, including a cultural hegemony built on and reinforcing white supremacy. At the heart of this white supremacist culture is the memory of the Civil War era, when in 1861 8 million white Americans revolted against their country to try to safeguard the enslavement of 4 million African Americans. The volume has three interconnected sections that build on one another. The first section, “Violence,” explores systemic racism in the Civil War era and now with essays on slavery, policing, and slave patrols. The second section, titled “Resistance,” shows how African Americans resisted violence for the past two centuries, with essays discussing matters including self-emancipation and African American soldiers. The final section, “Memory,” investigates how Americans have remembered this violence and resistance since the Civil War, including Confederate monuments and historical markers. This volume is intended for nonhistorians interested in showing the intertwined and longstanding connections between systemic racism, violence, resistance, and the memory of the Civil War era in the United States that finally exploded in the summer of 2020.
£19.79
Fordham University Press Indifference and Repetition; or, Modern Freedom
Book SynopsisIn capitalism human beings act as if they are mere animals. So we hear repeatedly in the history of modern philosophy. Indifference and Repetition examines how modern philosophy, largely coextensive with a particular boost in capitalism’s development, registers the reductive and regressive tendencies produced by capitalism’s effect on individuals and society. Ruda examines a problem that has invisibly been shaping the history of modern, especially rationalist philosophical thought, a problem of misunderstanding freedom. Thinkers like Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Marx claim that there are conceptions and interpretations of freedom that lead the subjects of these interpretations to no longer act and think freely. They are often unwillingly led into unfreedom. It is thus possible that even “freedom” enslaves. Modern philosophical rationalism, whose conceptual genealogy the books traces and unfolds, assigns a name to this peculiar form of domination by means of freedom: indifference. Indifference is a name for the assumption that freedom is something that human beings have: a given, a natural possession. When we think freedom is natural or a possession we lose freedom. Modern philosophy, Ruda shows, takes its shape through repeated attacks on freedom as indifference; it is the owl that begins its flight, so that the days of unfreedom will turn to dusk.Table of ContentsForeword: Frank Ruda’s Philosophical Oeuvre by Alain Badiou | vii Preface to the English Edition: Freedom as Slavery | xi List of Abbreviations | xxv Introduction: Indifference and the History of Philosophical Rationalism | 1 1 Descartes and the Transcendental of All My Future Errors | 13 2 Kant and the Fall into Natural Necessity | 47 3 Hegel, the Dead Disposition, and the Mortification of Freedom | 82 Conclusion: Toward Another Type of Indifference | 113 Translator’s Afterword by Heather H. Yeung | 127 Acknowledgments | 133 Notes | 135 Bibliography | 171 Index | 183
£79.90
Fordham University Press Conflicts: The Poetics and Politics of
Book SynopsisLiron Mor’s book queries what conflict means in the context of Palestine–Israel. Conflict has long been seen as singular and primary: as an “original sin” that necessitates the state and underwrites politics. This book problematizes this universal notion of conflict, revealing its colonial implications and proposing that conflicts are always politically constructed after the fact and are thus to be understood in their various specific forms. The book explores sites of poetic and political strife in Palestine–Israel by combining a comparative study of Hebrew and Arabic literature with political and literary theory. Mor leverages an archive that ranges from the 1930s to the present, from prose and poetry to film and television, to challenge the conception of the Palestinian–Israeli context as a conflict, delineating the colonial history of this concept and showing its inadequacy to Palestine–Israel. Instead, Mor articulates locally specific modes of theorizing the antagonisms and mediations, colonial technologies, and anticolonial practices that make up the fabric of this site. The book thus offers five figurative conflictual concepts that are derived from the poetics of the works: conflict (judgment/ishtibāk), levaṭim (disorienting dilemmas), ikhtifāʾ (anti/colonial disappearance), ḥoḳ (mediating law), and inqisām (hostile severance). In so doing, Conflicts aims to generate a historically and geographically situated mode of theory-making, which defies the separation between the conceptual and the poetic.Table of ContentsIntroduction | 1 1 Conflict (Judgment/Ishtibāk) | 25 2 Levaṭim (Disorienting Dilemmas) | 68 3 Ikhtifāʾ (Anti/colonial Disappearance) | 108 4 Ḥoḳ (Mediating Law) | 153 5 Inqisām (Hostile Severance) | 195 Postscript | 243 Acknowledgments | 251 ' Bibliography | 255 Index | 277
£84.15
Fordham University Press Conflicts: The Poetics and Politics of
Book SynopsisLiron Mor’s book queries what conflict means in the context of Palestine–Israel. Conflict has long been seen as singular and primary: as an “original sin” that necessitates the state and underwrites politics. This book problematizes this universal notion of conflict, revealing its colonial implications and proposing that conflicts are always politically constructed after the fact and are thus to be understood in their various specific forms. The book explores sites of poetic and political strife in Palestine–Israel by combining a comparative study of Hebrew and Arabic literature with political and literary theory. Mor leverages an archive that ranges from the 1930s to the present, from prose and poetry to film and television, to challenge the conception of the Palestinian–Israeli context as a conflict, delineating the colonial history of this concept and showing its inadequacy to Palestine–Israel. Instead, Mor articulates locally specific modes of theorizing the antagonisms and mediations, colonial technologies, and anticolonial practices that make up the fabric of this site. The book thus offers five figurative conflictual concepts that are derived from the poetics of the works: conflict (judgment/ishtibāk), levaṭim (disorienting dilemmas), ikhtifāʾ (anti/colonial disappearance), ḥoḳ (mediating law), and inqisām (hostile severance). In so doing, Conflicts aims to generate a historically and geographically situated mode of theory-making, which defies the separation between the conceptual and the poetic.Table of ContentsIntroduction | 1 1 Conflict (Judgment/Ishtibāk) | 25 2 Levaṭim (Disorienting Dilemmas) | 68 3 Ikhtifāʾ (Anti/colonial Disappearance) | 108 4 Ḥoḳ (Mediating Law) | 153 5 Inqisām (Hostile Severance) | 195 Postscript | 243 Acknowledgments | 251 ' Bibliography | 255 Index | 277
£23.79
Fordham University Press Politics in Captivity
Book SynopsisFrom the 1811 German Coast Slave Rebellion to the 1971 Attica Prison Uprising, from the truancy of enslaved women to the extreme self-discipline exercised by prisoners in solitary confinement, Black Americans have, through time, resisted racial regimes in extraordinary and everyday ways. Though these acts of large and small-scale resistance to slavery and incarceration are radical and transformative, they have often gone unnoticed. This book is about Black rebellion in captivity and the ways that many of the conventional well-worn constructs of academic political theory render its political dimensions obscure and indiscernible. While Hannah Arendt is an unlikely theorist to figure prominently in any discussion of Black politics, her concepts of world and worldlessness offer an indispensable framework for articulating a theory of resistance to chattel and carceral captivity. Politics in Captivity begins by taking seriously the ways in which slavery and inca
£999.99
Broadview Press Ltd The Development of Political Thought in Canada:
Book Synopsis
£24.99
Broadview Press Ltd Classical Debates for the 21st Century:
Book Synopsis
£30.59
University of Calgary Press Filming Politics: Communism and the Portrayal of
Book SynopsisThe National Film Board of Canada (NFB) was created in 1939 to produce, distribute, and promote Canadian cinema both domestically and abroad. During the early years of the NFB, its creative output was largely informed by the turbulent political and social climate the world was facing. World War II, Communism, unemployment, the role of labour unions, and working conditions were all subjects featured by the NFB during the period from 1939 to 1946. In Filming Politics, author Malek Khouri explores the work of the NFB during this period and argues that the political discourse of the films produced by this institution offered a counter-hegemonic portrayal of working class people and presented them as agents of social change. These films also saw an organic link between Canadian struggles for social progress, in the war against fascism and for peace, and those promoted at the time by the Soviet Union. Khouri also analyzes the various social, institutional, and political elements that contributed to the formation of the NFB's discourse. Filming Politics brings to light a number of films from the early years of the NFB, most of which have long been forgotten. Khouri presents a thorough reading of these films and the historical context within which they were produced and viewed. As such he proposes a radically new outlook on the films from how they have been appropriated in previous studies on Canadian cinema.Table of Contents Preface and Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Social Class and the NFB's Early Films in Canadian Film Studies 2. Canadian Film Culture Before the NFB 3. The Development of a Working Class Counter-Hegemonic Movement: A Historical Survey 4. The Establishment of the NFB: A Political and Institutional Overview 5. Out of the Depression and Into the War: NFB Films Between 1939 and 1941 6. Workers and the Politics of Fighting Fascism: NFB Films between 1942 and 1945 7. Workers, Democracy, and Social Welfare in NFB Films between 1942 and 1945 8. Stylistic Trends within the Discourse of NFB War Films 9. The NFB in a Moment of Transition: Workers in NFB Films Between 1945 and 1946 Appendix: Annotated Filmography Bibliography Notes Index
£30.56
Wilfrid Laurier University Press Political Thought in Japanese Historical Writing: From Kojiki (712) to Tokushi Yoron (1712)
Book SynopsisIt was only at the onset of the Tokugawa period (1602-1868) that formal political thought emerged in Japan. Prior to that time Japanese scholars had concentrated, rather, on questions of legitimacy and authority in historical writing., producing a stream of works. Brownlee's illuminating study describes twenty of these important historical works commencing with Kojiki (712) and Nihon Shoki (720) and ending with Tokushi Yoron (1712) by Arai Hakuseki. Historical writing would cease to be the sole vehicle for political discussion in Japan in the eighteenth century as Chinese Confucian thought became dominant. The author illustrates how the first works conceptualized history as imperial history and that subsequent scholars were unable to devise alternative schemes or patterns for history until Arai Hakuseki. Following the first histories, the central concern became the question of the relation of the Emperors to the new powers that arose. Brownlee examines the genre of Historical Tales and how it treated the Fujiwara Regents, the War Tales dealing with warriors at large, and specific works of historical argument depicting the Bakufu in relation to the Emperors. By interposing the works of Gukanshø (1219) by Jien, Jinnø Shøtøki (1339) by Kitabatake Chikafusa and Tokushi Yoron by Arai Hakuseki a clear pattern, demonstrating the sequential development of complexity and sophistication in handling the question, is revealed. Japanese political thought thus developed independently towards rationalism and secularism in early modern times.
£38.21
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Critical Social Theory: Culture, History, and the
Book SynopsisIn this outstanding reinterpretation - and extension - of the Critical Theory tradition, Craig Calhoun surveys the origins, fortunes and prospects of this most influential of theoretical approaches. Moving with ease from the early Frankfurt School to Habermas, to contemporary debates over postmodernism, feminism and nationalism, Calhoun breathes new life into Critical Social Theory, showing how it can learn from the past and contribute to the future.Trade Review"This is social theory at its very best. In a host of domains - concerning cultural difference, postmodernism, the politics of identity, and nationalism - Calhoun breaks new ground." Charles Taylor "This is a very well informed and very rigorous critical survey of Critical Social Theory." Pierre Bourdieu "A brilliant synthesis of theory and history: Calhoun works at the cutting edge, facing the future but carrying his traditions with him." Peter Beilharz "This book explores Critical Theory's origins, but more importantly it also shows how certain contemporary writers, despite not usually being recognised as such, have as much claim to the title 'critical theorist' as did Adorno and Horkheimer. It is this essential extension of critical analysis into today's body of theoretical concerns that gives the book its particular importance." Alan SicaTable of ContentsIntroduction. 1. Rethinking Critical Theory. 2. Interpretation, Comparison and Critique. 3. Cultural Difference and Historical Specificity. 4. Postmodernism as Pseudohistory: The Trivialization of Epochal Change. 5. Habitus, Field and Capital: Historical Specificity in the Theory of Practice. 6. The Standpoint of Critique? Feminist Theory, Social Structure and Learning from Experience. 7. The Politics of Identity and Recognition. 8. Nationalism and Difference: The Politics of Identity Writ Large. Conclusion
£38.90
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Motivating Political Morality
Book SynopsisKnowing what is the right thing to do is one thing. bringing yourself to do it is often quite another. This book is addressed to those who ask, 'Why should I be moral?' It explores strategies and tactics for evoking moral responses from people, especially in political contexts where so much is at stake.Trade Review".a splendid tract detailing some of the arguments by which we can persuade people to act morally." Times Higher Education SupplementTable of ContentsIntroduction. 1. Motives, Moral and Otherwise. Part I: The Moral Tack:. 2. Reciprocity and the Duty of Fair Play. 3. Uncertainty and Impartiality. 4. Non-exploitation. Part II: The Political Tack:. 5. Extending the Franchise. 6. Entrenched Rights and Constitutional Restraints. 7. Publicity, Accountability and Discursive Defensibility. Part III: Conclusions:. 8. Infusing Morality into Politics. 9. Taking Morality out of Politics. References.
£40.80
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The Castoriadis Reader
Book SynopsisCornelius Castoriadis is presently Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is a philosopher, social critic, professional economist, practicing psychoanalyst and one of Europe's foremost thinkers. The Castoriadis Reader provides for the first time an overview of the author's work and encompasses every aspect of his thought.Trade Review"The Castoriadis Reader, with representative extracts from almost fifty years of political and philosophical writing, reflects his long march from Marx back to Aristotle." Scott McLemmee, Lingua Franca "When so many pay superficial tribute to false prophets, how much better to pay serious attention to this true thinker." Nicolas Walter, New Statesman "For those unfamiliar with the thought of Castoriadis, reading his works for the first time is to encounter one of the most original and creative figures of the last half of the twentieth century." David Wallace, TopiaTable of ContentsEditor's Foreword. Acknowledgements. Abbreviations. 1.'The Only Way to Find out If You Can Swim Is to Get into the Water.' An Introductiory Interview (1974). 2. Presentation of Socialisme ou Barbarie An Organ of Critique and Revolutionary Orienation (1949). 3. On the Content of Bureaucracy to the Idea of the Proletariat's Autonomy (1955). On the Content of Socialism, II (1957). 4. Recommencing the Revolution (1964). 5. Marxism and Revolutionary Theory (1964-65). Excerpts. Marxism: A Provisional Assessment. Theory and Revolutionary Project. 6. The Social Imaginary and the Institution (1975). Excerpt. The Social-Historical. 7. The Social Regime in Russia (1978). 8. From Ecology to Autonomy (1980). 9. The Crisis of Western Societies (1982). 10. The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy (1983). 11. The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy (1983). 12. Radical Imagination and the Social Instituting Imaginary (1994). 13. Culture in a Democratic Society (1994). 14. Psychoanalysis and Philosophy (1996). 15. Done and To Be Done (1989). Index.
£103.79
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The Castoriadis Reader
Book SynopsisCornelius Castoriadis is presently Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is a philosopher, social critic, professional economist, practicing psychoanalyst and one of Europe's foremost thinkers. The Castoriadis Reader provides for the first time an overview of the author's work and encompasses every aspect of his thought.Trade Review"The Castoriadis Reader, with representative extracts from almost fifty years of political and philosophical writing, reflects his long march from Marx back to Aristotle." Scott McLemmee, Lingua Franca "When so many pay superficial tribute to false prophets, how much better to pay serious attention to this true thinker." Nicolas Walter, New Statesman "For those unfamiliar with the thought of Castoriadis, reading his works for the first time is to encounter one of the most original and creative figures of the last half of the twentieth century." David Wallace, TopiaTable of ContentsForeword vii Acknowledgements xvi Abbreviations xviii 1.'The Only Way to Find out If You Can Swim Is to Get into the Water’: An Introductory Interview (1974) 1 2. Presentation of Socialisme ou Barbarie: An Organ of Critique and Revolutionary Orientation (1949) 35 3. On the Content of Socialism (1955-1957): Excerpts 40 From the Critique of Bureaucracy to the Idea of the Proletariat's Autonomy (1955) 40 On the Content of Socialism, II (1957) 49 4. Recommencing the Revolution (1964) 106 5. Marxism and Revolutionary Theory (1964-65). Excerpts 139 Marxism: A Provisional Assessment 139 Theory and Revolutionary Project 146 6. The Social Imaginary and the Institution (1975). Excerpt. The Social-Historical 196 7. The Social Regime in Russia (1978) 218 8. From Ecology to Autonomy (1980) 239 9. The Crisis of Western Societies (1982) 253 10. The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy (1983) 267 11. The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy (1983) 290 12. Radical Imagination and the Social Instituting Imaginary (1994) 319 13. Culture in a Democratic Society (1994) 338 14. Psychoanalysis and Philosophy (1996) 349 15. Done and To Be Done (1989) 361 Index 418
£42.70
John Wiley and Sons Ltd A Companion to African-American Philosophy
Book SynopsisThis wide-ranging, multidisciplinary collection of newly commissioned articles brings together distinguished voices in the field of Africana philosophy and African-American social and political thought. Provides a comprehensive critical survey of African-American philosophical thought. Collects wide-ranging, multidisciplinary, newly commissioned articles in one authoritative volume. Serves as a benchmark work of reference for courses in philosophy, social and political thought, cultural studies, and African-American studies. Trade Review"A Companion to African-American Philosophy is an indispensable and elegant guide to a constellation of inquiries into and about African-American thought and the production of that thought." Wahneema Lubiano, Duke University "Authoritative, compendious, and detailed, this landmark publication sets a standard against which every other reference work in the field must be judged." Wilson J. Moses, The Pennsylvania State University "A new convergence of reflections on the African-American experience by some of the most active philosophers in the United States. An important reference work for scholars and a useful tool in the classroom." Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, DePaul University "This is the most thorough compilation of contemporary African-American philosophy I have yet seen. The inclusion of a selection of essays on cultural issues is a great addition. From racism to reparations to rap, these essays show how philosophers can illuminate current debates and eliminate persistent confusions in the mainstream discussions of these topics." Linda Martín Alcoff, Syracuse University "A Companion to African-American Philosophy is a valuable reference source. The editors have done an excellent job of representing the essential themes of African-American philosophical thought as well as notable individuals from the field. Libraries that support black history/studies, philosophy, American studies, and contemporary American thought should definitely purchase the Companion: it is well worth the cost. The novice will especially gain a wealth of information." Reference ReviewsTable of ContentsNotes on Contributors viii Preface xiii Acknowledgments xv Part I Philosophic Traditions Introduction to Part I 3 1 Philosophy and the Afro-American Experience 7 CORNEL WEST 2 African-American Existential Philosophy 33 LEWIS R. GORDON 3 African-American Philosophy: A Caribbean Perspective 48 PAGET HENRY 4 Modernisms in Black 67 FRANK M. KIRKLAND 5 The Crisis of the Black Intellectual 87 HORTENSE J. SPILLERS Part II The Moral and Political Legacy of Slavery Introduction to Part II 107 6 Kant and Knowledge of Disappearing Expression 110 RONALD A. T. JUDY 7 Social Contract Theory, Slavery, and the Antebellum Courts 125 ANITA L. ALLEN AND THADDEUS POPE 8 The Morality of Reparations II 134 BERNARD R. BOXILL Part III Africa and Diaspora Thought Introduction to Part III 151 9 “Afrocentricity”: Critical Considerations 155 LUCIUS T. OUTLAW, JR. 10 African Retentions 168 TOMMY L. LOTT 11 African Philosophy at the Turn of the Century 190 ALBERT G. MOSLEY Part IV Gender, Race, and Racism Introduction to Part IV 199 12 Some Group Matters: Intersectionality, Situated Standpoints, and Black Feminist Thought 205 PATRICIA HILL COLLINS 13 Radicalizing Feminisms from “The Movement Era” 230 JOY A. JAMES 14 Philosophy and Racial Paradigms 239 NAOMI ZACK 15 Racial Classification and Public Policy 255 DAVID THEO GOLDBERG 16 White Supremacy 269 CHARLES W. MILLS Part V Legal and Social Philosophy Introduction to Part V 285 17 Self-Respect, Fairness, and Living Morally 293 LAURENCE M. THOMAS 18 The Legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson 306 MICHELE MOODY-ADAMS 19 Some Reflections on the Brown Decision and Its Aftermath 313 HOWARD McGARY 20 Contesting the Ambivalence and Hostility to Affirmative Action within the Black Community 324 LUKE C. HARRIS 21 Subsistence Welfare Benefits as Property Interests: Legal Theories and Moral Considerations 333 RUDOLPH V. VANTERPOOL 22 Racism and Health Care: A Medical Ethics Issue 349 ANNETTE DULA 23 Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition 360 ANGELA Y. DAVIS Part VI Aesthetic and Cultural Values Introduction to Part VI 373 24 The Harlem Renaissance and Philosophy 381 LEONARD HARRIS 25 Critical Theory, Aesthetics, and Black Modernity 386 LORENZO C. SIMPSON 26 Black Cinema and Aesthetics 399 CLYDE R. TAYLOR 27 Thanatic Pornography, Interracial Rape, and the Ku Klux Klan 407 T. DENEAN SHARPLEY-WHITING 28 Lynching and Burning Rituals in African-American Literature 413 TRUDIER HARRIS-LOPEZ 29 Rap as Art and Philosophy 419 RICHARD SHUSTERMAN 30 Microphone Commandos: Rap Music and Political Ideology 429 BILL E. LAWSON 31 Sports, Political Philosophy, and the African American 436 GERALD EARLY Index 450
£154.76
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The United States and Decolonization in West
Book SynopsisA history of America's tangled involvement in the transition of British and French West African territories to statehood. As an investigation of America's response to the decolonization process in West Africa, The United States and Decolonization in West Africa, 1950-60 fills several important gaps. The history of America's involvement in Africa remains understudied. This book focuses on a neglected decade when the "wind of change" swept across Africa. Critical of the traditional "nationalist" interpretation of the decolonization process in Africa, the author begins his book by placing the transition of British and French West African territories to statehood with a neocolonialist framework. In doing so, he abandons the conventional definitions and usages of "independence" and "decolonization", and makes a compelling case that these are two related but different phenomena. Nwaubani argues that the United States was not a catalyst in the transition process in West Africa, but rather acted in a neocolonialist fashion itself. He also gives a nuanced appraisal of the Cold War, demonstrating that it was not as important as popularly believed in determining US behavior in Africa. The primary focus of the book is on West Africa, with case studiesfocusing on the Ewe, Ghana [including the Volta dam project], and Guinea. But the broad issues discussed are framed in the larger context of sub-Saharan Africa, and against the backdrop of the larger debates about the nature of post-1945 United States diplomacy. Ebere Nwaubani is a member of the History Department, University of Colorado at Boulder.Trade ReviewWell-written and nuanced evaluation of US policy toward Africa. * CHOICE *Nwaubani has produced an excellent study on a neglected aspect of recent African international relations and history that offers new intrepretations and challenges to established ideas about US interests and actions toward the continent. * AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *This is a clearly argued book with considerable interest and some surprising coverage, given the title, which adds to the debate on Cold War, neo-colonialism and the ending of colonial rule. * AFRICAN HISTORY, 2003, Volume 44 *This remains a stimulating and persuasive work, that is clinically constructed, admirably clear and well argued, and that is well sustained by documentary analysis. Nwaubani writes lucidly and has a sharp eye for the telling turn of phrase that illuminates a complex issue. * AFRICAN AFFAIRS, 2003 *Table of ContentsDecolonization in West Africa The Archaeology of Policy Truman's Dual Mandate Minimalism as Policy Ghana: Honeymoon and Estrangement The Political Economy of the Volta Project Guinea: The Weight of Residual Interests Summing Up
£99.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Migration in History: Human Migration in
Book SynopsisA study of migration habits as a global phenomenon. Migration in History explores the nature and complexity of the movement of peoples, cultures, and ideas in historical context. This engaging volume presents essays from a variety of scholars to expand our understanding ofthe longstanding process and history of migration as an established global phenomenon. The articles examine population movements and their demographic, social, political, legal, and cultural causes and consequences in Medieval andModern Europe, South Asia, Israel, and China. Topics addressed include voluntary and forced movements of people within and between regions and nations; movement towards urban centers or dispersal into surrounding countryside; transfers of cultural objects, practices, and technologies; experiences of resocialization and the transfer, reconstruction, and creation of memories, myths, values and symbols; the role of local, national, and transnational legal institutions; the relationship between immigration, assimilation, religion, and acculturation; movement in the interest of ethnic autonomy or secession, and as a response to such dangers as deprivation, religious persecution, and the development of border zones within which populations move and interact. Contributors: David Abraham, Elspeth Carruthers, Hasia R. Diner, Luca Einaudi, Joshua Fogel, Gautam Ghosh, and Carl Ipsen. Anthony T. Grafton teaches European history at Princeton University; Marc S. Rodriguez is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.Trade ReviewThe interdisciplinary and comparative nature of this collection, which includes submissions by economists, anthropologists and historians alike, emphasizes how important the 'longer view' is in the study of migration. . . . This collection takes an important step in viewing the various aspects of migration through time -- thus locating the important and complex processes involved in human migration in historical perspective. -- Bethany Hicks * JOURNAL OF SOCIAL HISTORY, Summer 2009 *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Placing Human Migration in Comparative Perspective - Marc S. Rodriguez Making Territories in the High Middle Ages: The Role of Foundation Charters in the German Colonization of the Vistula RiverVistula River - Elspeth Jane Carruthers La Più Grande Italia: The Italianization of Argentina - Carl Ipsen The (Un)braiding of Time in the 1947 Partition of British India - Gautam Ghosh Prostitutes and Painters: Early Japanese Migrants to Shanghai - Joshua Fogel The Accidental Irish - Hasia R. Diner Policies and Politics of Immigratin Flows in Twentieth-Century Italy and France - Luca Einaudi, Ph.D The Boundaries and Bonds of Citizenship: Recognition and Redistribution in the United States, Germany, and Israel - David Abraham
£85.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Machiavelli's Gospel: The Critique of
Book SynopsisA new reading of The Prince, arguing that the classic text is neither a scientific treatise on politics nor a patriotic tract but rather an artful, elaborated critique of the dominant religion of his time The leading interpretations of The Prince focus on Machiavelli's historical context, but they give little attention to the source on which the moral and political thought of Machiavelli's sixteenth century was based, the Christian Bible. In this study of The Prince, William Parsons plumbs Machiavelli's allusions to the Bible, along with his statements on the Church, and shows that Machiavelli was a careful reader of the Bible and an astute observer of the Church. On this basis Parsons contends that Machiavelli's teaching in The Prince is instructively compared with that of the Church's teacher, Jesus Christ. Parsons thus undertakes what recent interpreters of The Prince have not done: contrast Machiavelli's advice with the teaching of Christ. The result is a new reading of The Prince, revealing in Machiavelli's political thought a systematic critique of the NewTestament and its model for human life, Christ. In this commentary on one of the greatest works on politics ever written, Parsons not only challenges the most recent interpretations of The Prince but also sheds new light onthe classic interpretation that Machiavelli was a teacher of immorality. William Parsons is associate professor of political science at Carroll College.Trade ReviewThis book is a well-written, well-organized effort to uncover the textual sources of Machiavelli's understanding of Christianity. It offers a close and nuanced reading of the relevant texts. Whether or not one agrees with its perspective or with its conclusions, it is an excellent piece of scholarship. * RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY *This is the work of a lifetime. Parsons gives exhaustive commentaries on all the important texts, but chiefly The Prince and the Discourses, to substantiate his deliberately shocking thesis. He has produced a work that every serious student of Machiavelli will henceforth have to engage. * HEYTHROPE JOURNAL *Machiavelli's Gospel provocatively delineates and deciphers biblical allegories in Machiavelli's political writings, especially The Prince. [. . .] Parsons provides exciting new interpretive twists on figures such as Savonarola and Cesare Borgia, whom Machiavelli clearly meant to serve as symbolic proxies for Christ. Parsons also sheds fresh light on the Christological (or anti-Christological) elements of Machiavelli's depictions of other figures such as Philip V of Macedon, Philopoemen of the Achaean league, and Piero Soderini, Machiavelli's patron and the gonfalonier of justice in the Florentine Republic. * REVIEW OF POLITICS *Parsons offers in great detail a Machiavelli to which careful readers have always had access. * PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICS *Machiavelli's Gospel makes a unique and substantial contribution to the scholarly literature on Machiavelli. William Parsons's mastery of both Machiavelli's texts and the New Testament is impressive, and he executes the confrontation between Machiavelli and Christianity with remarkable thoroughness and subtlety. -- -- Nathan Tarcov, University of ChicagoIn this provocative book, William Parsons makes a strong case for reading Machiavelli's Prince as a radical -- and often audacious -- critique of Christianity. No previous study has so thoroughly examined Machiavelli's complex engagements with the Bible, especially the New Testament. By comparing lessons from the Gospels with passages from the Prince and Discourses that seem to subvert the teaching of Christ, Machiavelli's Gospel introduces readers to a fascinating and underexplored terrain. -- -- Erica Benner, Yale UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Christianity, Christ, and Machiavelli's The Prince Christianity's Siren Song Christ's Defective Political Foundations Hope Is Not Enough The Prince of War Machiavelli's Unchristian Virtue Christ's Ruinous Political Legacy The Harrowing Redemption of Italy Conclusion: Machiavelli's Gospel Notes Works Cited Index
£87.30
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Philosopher's English King: Shakespeare's
Book SynopsisThe Philosopher's English King offers a close reading of the Henriad, presenting Shakespeare's teaching on political authority and contributing to the burgeoning scholarship on Shakespeare as a political thinker. This book on Shakespeare's Henriad studies the tetralogy as a work of political thought. Leon Harold Craig, author of two previous volumes on Shakespeare's political thought, argues that the four plays present Shakespeare'steaching on the problem of legitimacy, or who has the right to rule -- one of the perennial questions of political philosophy. Offering original interpretations of each of the plays, Craig discusses the demise of divine right inRichard II, political upheaval and disputed rule in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and the attempt to reestablish legitimacy on a new basis in Henry V. While focusing especially on the plays' various interpretive puzzles,Craig shows how the four plays constitute one narrative, culminating in the rule of England's most famous warrior king, Henry V, whose brilliant achievements were undone by ill fortune. Craig concludes with an epilogue on what might have been had Henry lived to consolidate his conquest of France and unify it with England under a single crown. Supported by a wealth of scholarship, both historical and critical, The Philosopher's English King makes a major contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on Shakespeare as a political thinker, providing further evidence for why the poet deserves to be recognized as a philosopher in his own right. Leon Harold Craig is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Alberta.Trade ReviewI consider this one of the best books ever written on Shakespeare's Henriad. The level of scholarship is second to none. Each chapter is as good as the next. The book is never uneven, and Craig's passion for his subject matter and his desire to share his knowledge with his readers is evident throughout. Not only does one gain many valuable insights into these plays, we are also encouraged to read Shakespeare philosophically, as I am certain Shakespeare wished to be read. * VOEGELINVIEW *Supported by the author's learned command of the relevant English history, this analysis not only serves as a comprehensive overview of the plays' events but also shows how paying attention to even the most minute details and minor characters can shed light on Shakespeare's central figures and plot lines. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Dissenting from Craig requires the disputant's exercising his utmost capacities for philosophical reflection. . . . Because Craig rightly conceives the philosophic poet. * REVIEW OF POLITICS *In The Philosopher's English King Leon Craig once again proves the value of taking Shakespeare seriously as a political thinker. Drawing parallels with important political philosophers, such as Plato, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, Craig illumines some of the darker corners of Shakespeare's history plays and offers a comprehensive interpretation of the tough-minded teaching on kingship they embody. -- Paul A. Cantor, University of VirginiaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Prologue Begins the Woefullest Division: The Tragic Reign of King Richard II A Punishing of Mistreadings: The Turbulent Reign of King Henry IV Proceeds The Noble Change Long Purposed: The Turbulent Reign of King Henry IV Concludes A Curious Mirror of Christian Kings: The Brief Glorious Reign of King Henry V An Alternative Epilogue: Imagining What Might Have Been Notes Bibliography Index of Names
£89.10
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Benjamin Franklin, Natural Right, and the Art of
Book SynopsisA thorough examination of Benjamin Franklin's works on philosophy and politics, arguing that Franklin was a philosopher of natural right Benjamin Franklin's writings on politics are voluminous, and his own politics are well known, yet scholars debate -- often fiercely -- whether he had a political philosophy and, if so, what it was. Benjamin Franklin, Natural Right, and the Art of Virtue is a study of Franklin's political and philosophical writings, tracing the development of his political thought and elucidating the political philosophy he came to embrace and put into practice. Kevin Slack argues that Franklin, despite his reputation as a wit and clever politician, examined the nature of politics, virtue, and morality more deeply than any scholar has given him credit for. Franklin, as Slack demonstrates, rejected metaphysics during a period of youthful skepticism, adopting radical skepticism, but later abandoned that view for a third alternative, Shaftesbury's common-sense philosophy. Engaging in a rigorous critique of religious and political authorities, Franklin rejected all authoritative claims but that of reason, which he used to investigate the nature of justice, or natural right. Slack shows here that Franklin was a thinker in the traditionof Socrates, and thus a political philosopher in the truest and highest sense. Kevin Slack is assistant professor of politics at Hillsdale College.Trade ReviewA valuable book for all scholars interested in Franklin, the Enlightenment, and republican culture in colonial British North America. * AMERIKASTUDIEN *Kevin Slack's Benjamin Franklin, Natural Right, and the Art of Virtue makes an impressive contribution to the quest for the real . -- Benjamin Franklin * REVIEW OF POLITICS *The author's thoroughly researched and cogently argued thesis adds a new dimension to our understanding of one of America's most influential founding fathers. * CERCLES *Kevin Slack offers here a learned commentary on the ethical dilemma faced in the eighteenth century by Mandeville's dictum 'private vice, public good.' Slack shows how Franklin's political philosophy arises naturally from his creative efforts to resolve Mandeville's apparent ethical revolution. --Maxwell Professor Emeritus of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University -- Ralph KetchamKevin Slack executes a tour de force through the oeuvre of Benjamin Franklin, uncovering some new attributions along the way. The Franklin he gives us is thoroughly modern, thoroughly Enlightenment, and thoroughly philosophical. At the same time, Slack shows how Franklin's life and thought were leavened with the common-sense humanism of Shaftesbury, creating a kinship with classical thought. Slack's is a stimulating and provocative take on Franklin. --professor of political science, University of North Texas. -- Steven FordeTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction Liberty and Necessity Truth and Usefulness Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion On the Providence of God in the Government of the World The Science of Virtue Self-Examination The Virtues of a Free People Political Principles Political Theory Statesmanship Conclusion Notes Index
£89.10
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Political Vocabularies: Word Change and the
Book SynopsisConsiders how political language has changed through time, looking at concrete examples from English and other languages. Conal Condren's fifth and final volume in a decades-long examination of political language, Political Vocabularies: Word Change and the Nature of Politics is a study of the mechanisms of change in political vocabularies over time. Though the main focus of the study is on English political vocabulary, Condren also compares political terms in other languages, such as French, German, Latin, Greek, Italian, and Japanese, and discusses how some of theseterms are imported into English. Considering concrete examples of extension and intension of meaning, neologism, euphemism, translation, loan words, and metaphor as used in political discourse, Condren constructs a theoretical model of the political that describes what precisely goes on when political words are used or when words are used politically. Thus Condren's analysis in this study is not merely linguistic but it bears on perennial questions about the nature of politics.The book will thus appeal not only to linguists and political scientists but to a broad readership of those interested in history, politics, and philosophy. Conal Condren is Emeritus Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales and honorary professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, Australia.Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments The Scope of the Political A Changing System of Words The Idea of a Conceptual Model Extension and Salience Neologism Euphemism: Symptom and Taboo Euphemism: Accusation and Redescription Loan Words and Translation Metaphorical Incursion and Migration Metaphorical Imposition and Entanglement Conclusion Bibliography Index
£103.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Socrates and Divine Revelation
Book SynopsisAn account of Socrates' encounter with divine revelation The philosopher Socrates was guided in his investigations by nothing other than his own reason. But did Socrates address adequately the possibility of guidance from a different and higher source -- the possibility of divine revelation? In this book, Lewis Fallis examines Socrates' study of divine revelation. Giving interpretations of two of Plato's dialogues, the Euthyphro and the Ion -- which each depict Socrates conversing witha believer in revelation -- Fallis argues that in each dialogue Socrates explores the connection between knowledge of justice or nobility on the one hand and divine wisdom on the other. By doing so, Socrates searches for common ground between reason and revelation. Shedding new light on Socratic dialectics, Fallis uncovers the justification for understanding political philosophy to be the necessary starting point for an adequate inquiry into divine revelation. Lewis Fallis is an independent scholar of political theory.Trade ReviewAs the provocative title of Lewis Fallis's book suggests, he seeks to uncover what Plato may have to teach us here and now about the conflict between reason and revelation or between philosophy and faith. To this end, the book offers careful interpretations of two Platonic dialogues not usually considered in tandem, and it ably demonstrates that the concerns of Plato's Socrates do relate to our own. Among the many virtues of this fine study are the clarity of prose, the gravity of the question that remains front and center, and the impeccable scholarship on display. -- -- Robert C. Bartlett, Boston CollegeSocrates and Divine Revelation will take its place among the finest scholarly analyses of Plato and the most illuminating theoretical investigations of the problem of religion and political philosophy. The study will be of great interest not only to students and scholars of Plato, classical philosophy, and religion but to anyone interested in the timely and timeless question of reason and faith. -- -- Peter Ahrensdorf, Davidson CollegeTable of ContentsAcknowledgments The Contemporary Dismissal of Piety and the Platonic Alternative Euthyphro's Character Defining the Pious Artfulness and Mindlessness in Plato's "Ion" Ion's Knowledge Dialectics and Divinity Notes Works Cited Index
£76.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Sense of Injustice and the Origin of Modern
Book SynopsisA careful study of the political thought of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke, revealing the roots of modern democracy In this study of early modern political thought, Bruce Smith traces the origin of modern democracy to Machiavelli. Offering careful readings of Machiavelli's most important political writings, Smith shows that Machiavelli's analysis of the human sentiment of injustice provides the theoretical basis for the participation of ordinary people in political life and rule. Also including chapters on Hobbes and Locke, the book shows how these two modern theoristsresponded to Machiavelli by contesting and modifying his republican politics to lay the groundwork for the emergence of the democracies of the modern era. Smith sheds new light on not only the influence of Machiavelli but also thecharacter of our democracy, our democratic institutions, and even contemporary populism. Bruce J. Smith is the Arthur E. Braun Professor of Political Science at Allegheny College.Table of ContentsAbbreviations Acknowledgments Introduction Niccolò Machiavelli and the Discovery of the People Thomas Hobbes and the Fear of the Seditious Mind John Locke and the Right of Resistance Conclusion: Self-Respect and Ordinary People
£89.25
St Augustine's Press Consciousness and Politics – From Analysis to
Book SynopsisConsciousness and Politics deals with some of the same texts discussed in two earlier books on Voegelin, Eric Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science (1999) and Beginning the Quest: Law and Politics in the Early Work of Eric Voegelin (2009). Given the appearance of so many useful discussions, especially by scholars who wrote the introductions to the several volumes of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin that have appeared over the past decade or so, certain revisions in detail should come as no surprise. That is how science, even political science, improves. Consciousness and Politics begins with an analysis of the problem of the historicity of truth as it was formulated shortly before Voegelin abandoned his eight-volume History of Political Ideas. The analysis then follows a more or less chronological path, discussing the arguments developed in The New Science of Politics, Voegelin’s most famous book, the differentiation of consciousness and the problems of myth and nature as presented in the early volumes of Order and History. Starting in the 1960s, Voegelin began a lengthy argument in several volumes that resumed his concern with the philosophy of consciousness, which he had outlined in his early writings, and its connection to what we conventionally call philosophy of history. Voegelin’s late and often difficult essays, lectures, and the final volume of Order and History, many scholars have noticed, emphasize the meditative origins of his political science and, more broadly, of philosophy. The concluding chapters analyze this subject-matter and a perennial question that so many of Voegelin’s readers have raised: what is the relation of his political science or philosophy to Christianity?Table of ContentsCHAPTER ONE Introduction ( CHAPTER TWO Method: From Political Ideas to the Historicity of Truth CHAPTER THREE Genealogy of the “Gnosticism Thesis” CHAPTER FOUR The Differentiation of Consciousness CHAPTER FIVE Myth and Nature CHAPTER SIX The Problem of Political Reality CHAPTER SEVEN History CHAPTER EIGHT Meditation Conclusion Index
£34.20
St Augustine's Press The The Declaration of America – Our Principles
Book SynopsisRichard Ferrier expounds on the basic truth learned from Alan Keyes during work on his political campaign in 1996. "He taught us to see what President Lincoln saw 160 years ago: an American should always take his principles and form his sentiments from those expressed in the Declaration of Independence." Whereas it might seem America is the product of political divorce, the Declaration instead endows our nation with the qualities of a marriage. We are a deliberate union, Ferrier says, and we must strive to live well politically by doing right by the pledge contained in the Declaration. Here Ferrier transforms decades of teaching American history and its founding into a reflection on its most important document. Our troubled times call for a return to America's fundamental principles. This book shows their sources, their truth, and their lasting power. It is a labor of love, and of hope. Anyone seeking opportunity in the United States should read this book and be reminded of the privilege and obligation of the American way of life, all contained in the Declaration of Independence.
£17.10
St Augustine's Press Give Me Liberty – Studies in Constitutionalism
Book SynopsisThe Liberty for which Patriot Patrick Henry was willing to die was more than a rhetorical flourish. The American Patriots and Founders based their ideas about Liberty upon almost 200 years of experience on their own as well as the heritage of English Common Law and even back to the natural order of Thomas Aquinas, not to mention the philosophy of Aristotle and the Biblical Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. In over 50-years of scholarship Ellis Sandoz has researched, documented and contemplated the governance of man throughout the ages. The erudition brought to bear in this compact tome reflects a depth and breadth of learning that illuminates the subject with dazzling insight. Yet, he always reminds us that principles of Liberty are readily comprehensible to the common man. Sandoz worries that the present day adherence to political correctness limits our response to obviously murderous terroristic movements. He attacks academia for ignoring the spiritual nature of existence and events. He even chastens “social dogoodism” when it is provided instead of, rather than as a reflection of, spiritual nourishment. The book revolves around the motivation and context of the American Founding and drives home its relevance to contemporary living. The Founders fought against tyranny that attempted to control their physical and spiritual lives. Unjust governance was deemed to be without authority. Aristocrats and commoners ultimately must answer to the Final Authority. These concepts are reflected in the Declaration of Independence: “all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights — that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Sandoz is not only a scholar, but a grandfather; his words will engender Liberty for future generations.
£14.87
St Augustine's Press A Guide to Eric Voegelin`s Political Reality
Book SynopsisEric Voegelin was a German-born political theorist who fled Nazi persecution and immigrated to the United States in 1938, where he had a long and productive academic career. He is widely considered one of the most insightful political scientists of the twentieth century, but is sadly not as well known as other contemporaries like Leo Strauss or Hannah Arendt. This is in large part due to the difficulty of the topics he chose to study and the complex nature of the material produced. While there are other books that discuss his biography and academic/philosophical ideas, none combine these ideas with a practical means of actually utilizing Voegelin’s philosophy to define and analyze political reality. This book uniquely applys Voegelin’s ideas to real-world political problems and in its utilization of common language, making Voegelin’s extraordinary achievements much more accessible to a broader audience than any other previous work. Voegelin’s highly original thinking was heavily influenced by the violent and tumultuous times in which he lived. Because the events of his life are so influential, a brief but thorough biography is presented in the first chapter. The “Western Crisis” he recognized in modern Western culture is revealed as the motivation of Voegelin’s quest for truth and the resistance he thought vital to the strains of Gnosticism he felt rejected reality and the symbols needed to articulate it. Because Gnosticism is such a central theme in understanding Voegelin’s work, an extensive exploration is conducted on Gnostic origins, history, some complications in the use of this term, and how Voegelin’s concept of it evolved over the course of his career. The first chapter concludes with and examination of Voegelin’s use of symbol and language indices. Chapter two begins with an introduction to Voegelin’s views of how science, theology, and philosophy were used in the ancient world to reveal truth, the basis of order, and how humanity can move away from order by disregarding what the ancients revealed. This is followed by an examination of one of Voegelin’s most important contributions, his theory of consciousness and use of anamnesis. Chapter two concludes with a description of noesis’ relationship to political reality and how Voegelin’s quest to know truth and reality led him to question the state of political science and modernity’s willingness to seek truth. Chapter three, on Voegelin’s mature political theory, is best described as Principia Noetic, so labeled by Ellis Sandoz. Voegelin asserts that political reality is revealed when the basis of order is found in the ground of being. When man separates himself from God, order is lost, and violence and tyranny are guaranteed as man makes himself the sole arbiter of moral and political order, unrestricted by notions of the divine. The reader of this book should come away with a deep understanding of Voegelin’s philosophical insights found in the Principia Noetica, how to apply them in understanding political reality, and how to recognize the symptoms of the “Western Crisis.”
£15.80
St Augustine's Press Hunting and Weaving – Empiricism and Political
Book SynopsisThe essays in this volume honor the work of political scientist and Eric Voegelin scholar, Barry Cooper, by considering how political philosophy (a form of hunting) and empiricism get “woven” together (to borrow a metaphor from Plato). In other words, they consider how science needs to be conducted if it is to remain true to our commonsense experience of the world and to facilitate political judgment. Several of the essays cover Eric Voegelin, including his understanding of consciousness, a comparison of him and Leo Strauss, and his self-understanding as a scholar. Other essays consider terrorism, technology, religion and the modern world, the divided line in Plato’s Republic, and the political significance of hope. The volume also includes a number of essays that consider different aspects of Canadian politics, including its strong regionalism, political culture, public law, and the infamous “Calgary School” of political science. These essays are united by the concern that political science must “weave” together political philosophy and empiricism. This task was what Aristotle meant when he characterized political science as a matter of practical wisdom. It is an insight that was also central for Voegelin’s restoration of political science in the twentieth century, and that these essays continue into the twenty-first century. Political analysis begins in whatever contemporary crisis the analyst has found himself. The analyst sifts through competing claims of political meaning asserted by the partisans in the crisis. From there he ascends to greater luminosity concerning the human condition by viewing those claims in light of the “major questions in the history of political thought.” They inform one another, as the search for order is necessarily the search for order that is conducted by a particular individual’s consciousness in the context of a particular community in space and time. This volume will be of special interest to scholars of political philosophy as well as citizens and statesmen interested in how an engagement in the history of political philosophy can facilitate political judgment in particular political circumstances.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Hunting and Weaving, Empiricism and Political Philosophy Thomas Heilke and John von Heyking I. Contemporary Politics1. Legends of the Calgary School: Their Guns, Their Dogs, and the Women Who Love Them Tom Flanagan2. Of Homesteaders and Orangemen: An Archeology of Western Canadian Political Identity Richard Avramenko3. Hunting for Cowboys Rainer Knopff4. Teaching Public Law Janet Ajzenstat5. Spiritual Disorder and Terrorism: On Barry Cooper’s New Political Religions Michael FranzII. Political Philosophy6. Thinking with Technology Leah Bradshaw7. Precarious Restorations: Religious Life in the Contemporary World Peter Emberley8. Tracking the Good in Plato’s Republic: The Literary and Dialogic Form of the Sun, Line, and Cave Imagery Zdravko Planinc9. The Timeliness of Political Philosophy – Reflecting on the Legacy of Voegelin and Strauss Jürgen Gebhardt10. A Probing of ConsciousnessJene M. Porter11. Eric Voegelin’s Workshop: A Study in Confirmation of Barry Cooper’s Genetic Paradigm Tilo Schabert12. Hope Does Not DisappointDavid WalshBibliography of Works by Barry CooperTabula GratuloraList of ContributorsIndex
£23.00
St Augustine's Press John Stuart Mill – Articles, Columns, Reviews and
Book SynopsisThis is the second volume, following the well-received edition of Mill’s writing essential to understanding the liberal tradition. His commentary on a full spectrum of issues gives further insight into the strengths and vulnerabilities of liberal democratic theory in practice. Rare and difficult to locate material is here brought to attention and made available. The contribution of Mill’s most authoritative biographer, Nicholas Capaldi, is a singular and unmatched highlight. The tenor of St. Augustine’s Press volumed on Mill is distinct in its intention to place his work in the framework of political philosophy and the conversation of the viability of liberalism as a tradition of thought.
£29.00
St Augustine's Press Modernity and What Has Been Lost – Considerations
Book SynopsisModernity and What Has Been Lost comes out of a conference held at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, on June 4–5, 2009 that sought to identify Leo Strauss’s intellectual background in re: the repudiation of a modern idea of homogenous, universal state (considered as an illegitimate synthesis of Jerusalem and Athens, i.e., the claims of Reason and Revelation). The world we live in, molded by science and historical relativism, may be described as hostile to human dignity or perfection, or abhorrent to those who love the search for wisdom. Straussian teaching consisted in the steady effort to reopen “the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns,” and refers to the esoteric way of writing practiced by the most profound thinkers of the past which has been apparently forgotten in the last three centuries. Strauss binds the concept of natural right with the question of maintenance of conditions for philosophizing, and it probably seems to him that such defense of philosophy is the highest task in our times. However, one must be well aware that philosophizing always means a perilous way of life. Indeed, it may be destructive of the city (polis) itself as far as the city exists due to some crucial beliefs the philosopher might put in doubt. Reflecting on those issues, Strauss engaged in several highly important debates with his contemporaries, in an open way with, e.g., Carl Schmitt, Karl Löwith and Alexandre Kojève, and more tacitly with Martin Heidegger. Table of ContentsHeinrich Meier, Why Leo Strauss? Four Answers and One Consideration concerning the Uses and Disadvantages of the School for the Philosophical Life Daniel Tanguay, Leo Strauss and the Contemporary Return to Political Philosophy Nathan Tarcov, Philosophy as the Right Way of Life in Natural Right and History David Janssens, The Philosopher’s Ancient Clothes: Leo Strauss on Philosophy and Poetry Pawel Armada, Leo Strauss as Erzieher: The Defense of the Philosophical Life or the Defense of Life against Philosophy Jürgen Gebhardt, Modern Challenges – Platonic Responses: Strauss, Arendt, Voegelin Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz, Karl Löwith and Leo Strauss on Modernity, Secularization, and Nihilism Emmanuel Patard, Remarks on the Strauss-Kojève Dialogue and Its Presuppositions Piotr Nowak, Carl Schmitt and His Critic Till Kinzel, Postmodernism and the Art of Writing: The Importance of Leo Strauss for the 21st Century Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss’s Gynaikologia
£22.00
Temple University Press,U.S. How Many Exceptionalisms?: Explorations in
Book SynopsisFrom one of the country's "most distinguished and most historically minded social scientists," a collection of essays on the importance of comparative cultural analysisTrade Review"Ever since the late 1960s…Aristide Zolberg has crafted wonderfully engaging essays that have profoundly altered our understanding of politics and society in Africa, Europe and the United States. His writing has been deeply…global, especially with its focus on the large-scale movement of populations and their reception in new locations….Zolberg has been one of our most creative and informed scholars in the social sciences, at work on issues that really matter." —Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University"Each of the chapters in How Many Exceptionalisms? is a major academic contribution on its own terms. They show us how Zolberg has extricated key conceptual tools from the complicated architectures of social and political life—the management of diversity, the interactions of culture and history, the role of state formation in creating refugees, the limits of ‘crisis’ perspectives, and more. Together this selection of articles is one of those rare cases where the whole is indeed more than the sum of its parts. As the foremost contributor to macrohistorical analysis of international migration, Zolberg knows how to choose his essays: their sequence is a narrative that shows us how he got there, and does so with a grand geopolitical sweep."—Saskia Sassen, author of Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages"[A] thoughtful reflection on macroanalysis.... Zolberg has presented us with a deeply global book. Its geographic sweep, historical depth, and theoretical eclecticism will surely nourish our curiosities about the past and present."—Contemporary SociologyTable of ContentsIntroduction: Explorations in Political Macroanalysis 1. Patterns of National Integration 2. Moments of Madness 3. The Making of Flemings and Walloons: Belgium, 1830-1914 4. International Migration Policies in a Changing World System 5. Origins of the Modern World System: A Missing Link 6. The Formation of New States as a Refugee-Generating Process 7. How Many Exceptionalisms? 8. The Great Wall Against China: Responses to the First Immigration Crisis, 1885-1925 9. Matters of State: Theorizing Immigration Policy 10. Why Islam Is Like Spanish: Cultural Incorporation in Eurpoe and the United States (co-authored by Long Litt Woon) 11. International Engagement and American Democracy: A Comparative Perspective Index
£25.19
Temple University Press,U.S. Earthly Plenitudes: A Study on Sovereignty and
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Gullì is arguing for bold and radical theses which illuminate developments in the contemporary world, go beyond existing literature in the field in a dramatic way (by critiquing the very idea of sovereignty) and draw out the political implications of so-called postmodern theory. In my opinion, this is a seminal work.”—Anatole Anton, San Francisco State UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments IntroductionPART I: Critique of Sovereignty 1. Singularity or the Dignity of Individuation 2. Exception and Critique 3. Bataille’s Special Use of the Concept of SovereigntyPART II: Sovereignty and Labor 4. Ax and Fire: Knowledge Production and the Superexploitation of Contingent Academic Labor 5. Sovereign, Productive, and Effi cient: Th e Place of Disability in the Ableist SocietyConclusion: Labor without Sovereignty Notes References Index
£24.29
Potomac Books Inc National Security Dilemmas
Book SynopsisA contemporary primer on the leading arguments about U.S. national security, National Security Dilemmas addresses the major challenges and opportunities that are live-issue areas for American policymakers and strategists today. Colin S. Gray provides an in-depth analysis of a policy and strategy for deterrence; the long-term U.S.
£45.00