This is a must-read book for anyone ready to transcend fear and imagine a new reality.--Tikkun
Disposable Futures makes the case that we have not just become desensitized to violence, but rather, that we are being taught to desire it.
From movies and other commercial entertainment to extreme weather and acts of terror, authors Brad Evans and Henry Giroux examine how a contemporary politics of spectacle--and disposability--curates what is seen and what is not, what is represented and what is ignored, and ultimately, whose lives matter and whose do not.
Disposable Futures explores the connections between a range of contemporary phenomena: mass surveillance, the militarization of police, the impact of violence in film and video games, increasing disparities in wealth, and representations of ISIS and the ongoing terror wars. Throughout, Evans and Giroux champion the significance of public education, social movements and ideas that rebel agains
Trade Review
"Brad Evans and Henry Giroux's Disposable Futures is an insightful meditation on the role of violence in modern American society. In eight well-conceived and thoughtfully argued chapters, Evans and Giroux present readers with a damning critique of neoliberalism."--Gregory D. Smithers, American Book Review "It is in this spirit of interrogation that Disposable Futures is situated. Evans is here joined by the American-Canadian Cultural critic Henry Giroux, who is well-known for his critical writings on education. It is no surprise, then, that the book, drawing on the writings of the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paolo Freire, should be so focussed on the transformative powers of critical pedagogy."--Jack D. Palmer, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal "Brad Evans and Henry Giroux offer a trenchant analysis of neoliberalism's ills: its violence, its dystopian vision, its intrusiveness, and its attempt to eradicate all critical consciousness and with it all hope. They diagnose our exposure to disposability in an era marked by the collapse of a vision of a viable future. In doing so, they have laid out the challenge before us. The only question left is, do we have the will, as the authors suggest, to fabricate a nonviolent response to it?"--Todd May, Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of the Humanities, Clemson University "Beginning with Primo Levi and ending with Deleuze, Evans and Giroux map the radical transformation that has affected the representation of cruelty between the 20th and the 21st century: from 'exceptional' status, associated with the ultimate figures of state sovereignty, it has passed to 'routinized' object of communication, consumption and manipulation. This is not to say that everything is visible, only that the protocols of visibility have been appropriated by a different form of economy, where humans are completely disposable. To counter this violence in the second degree, and preserve our capacity to face the intolerable, a new aesthetics and politics of imagination is required. This powerful, committed, exciting book does more than just evoke its urgency. It already practices it."--Etienne Balibar, author of Violence and Civility "This profound and timely paperback covers the tragic and disheartening phenomenon of the continuing increase of violence in the world today. It is evident in film and video games where the carnage is appalling; it is revealed in the militarization of the police; it is supported by the trampling on human rights to privacy through widespread surveillance; it is showcased in the great disparities of wealth and poverty; and it is present in the dehumanization policies of ISIS and of those who willing to do anything to win the terror wars."--Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice
Table of Contents
Contents 1 Cultures of Cruelty 2 The Politics of Disposability 3 The Destruction of Humanity 4 A Promise of Violence 5 Crime & Punishment 6 Fascinating Fascism Revisited 7 Beyond Orwell: Violence & the Surveillance State 8 The Dystopian Imaginary Notes Select Bibliography Index About the Authors
