Search results for ""Author Stephen Eric Bronner""

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) was Polish, Jewish, and a woman in an international socialist movement dominated by Germans, gentiles, and men. For Luxemburg, there was no real socialism without democracy and no real democracy without socialism. In this biography Stephen Eric Bronner establishes Luxemburg's legacy to contemporary socialist theory and practice.

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Stephen Eric Bronner revisits the modernist project's groundbreaking innovations, itsexperimental imagination, and its utopian politics. Reading the artistic and intellectual achievements of the movement's leading figures against larger social, political, and cultural trends, he follows the rise of a flawed yet salient effort at liberation and its confrontation with modernity. Modernism at the Barricades features chapters on expressionism, futurism, surrealism, and revolutionary art and includes fresh perspectives on the work of Arnold Schoenberg, Wassily Kandinsky, and Emil Nolde, among others. The volume illuminates an international avant garde intent on resisting bureaucracy, standardization, scientific rationality, and the increasing commodification of mass culture. Modernists sought new ways of feeling, new forms of expression, and new possibilities of experience while seeking to refashion society. Liberation was their aim, along with the invigoration of daily life-yet their process entangled political resistance with the cultural. Exploring both the political responsibility of the artist and the manipulation of authorial intention, Bronner reconfigures the modernist movement for contemporary progressive purposes and offers insight into the problems still complicating cultural politics. He ultimately reasserts the political dimension of developments often understood in purely aesthetic terms and confronts the self-indulgence and political irresponsibility of certain so-called modernists today. The result is a long overdue reinterpretation and rehabilitation of the modernist legacy for a new age.

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Stephen Eric Bronner is a prolific author, activist, and one of America’s leading political thinkers. His new book presents bigotry as a systematic, all-encompassing mindset that has a special affinity for right-wing movements. In what will surely prove a seminal study, Bronner explores its appeal, the self-image it justifies, the interests it serves, and its complex connection with modernity. He reveals how prejudice shapes the conspiratorial and paranoid worldview of the true believer, the elitist, and the chauvinist. In the process, it becomes apparent how the bigot hides behind mainstream conservative labels in order to support policies designed to disadvantage the targets of his contempt. Examining bigotry in its various dimensions—anthropological, historical, psychological, sociological, and political—Professor Bronner illustrates how the bigot’s intense hatred of “the other” is a direct reaction to social progress, liberal values, secularism, and an increasingly complex and diverse world. A sobering look at the bigot in the twenty-first century, this volume is essential for making sense of the dangers facing democracy now and in the future.

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Stephen Eric Bronner revisits the modernist project's groundbreaking innovations, itsexperimental imagination, and its utopian politics. Reading the artistic and intellectual achievements of the movement's leading figures against larger social, political, and cultural trends, he follows the rise of a flawed yet salient effort at liberation and its confrontation with modernity. Modernism at the Barricades features chapters on expressionism, futurism, surrealism, and revolutionary art and includes fresh perspectives on the work of Arnold Schoenberg, Wassily Kandinsky, and Emil Nolde, among others. The volume illuminates an international avant garde intent on resisting bureaucracy, standardization, scientific rationality, and the increasing commodification of mass culture. Modernists sought new ways of feeling, new forms of expression, and new possibilities of experience while seeking to refashion society. Liberation was their aim, along with the invigoration of daily life-yet their process entangled political resistance with the cultural. Exploring both the political responsibility of the artist and the manipulation of authorial intention, Bronner reconfigures the modernist movement for contemporary progressive purposes and offers insight into the problems still complicating cultural politics. He ultimately reasserts the political dimension of developments often understood in purely aesthetic terms and confronts the self-indulgence and political irresponsibility of certain so-called modernists today. The result is a long overdue reinterpretation and rehabilitation of the modernist legacy for a new age.

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Decades after his death, Albert Camus (1913-60) is still regarded as one of the most influential and fascinating intellectuals of the twentieth century. This biography by Stephen Eric Bronner explores the connections between his literary work, his philosophical writings, and his politics. Camus illuminates his impoverished childhood, his existential concerns, his activities in the antifascist resistance, and the controversies in which he was engaged. Beautifully written and incisively argued, this study offers new insights and highlights the contemporary relevance of an extraordinary man.

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Turmoil in the Middle East has escalated to unprecedented levels in the twenty-first century. Opposing cultural, religious, and political forces have resumed old conflicts and spawned new ones, fighting with words and images as well as bombs and bullets. The path toward peace and reconciliation seems further away and less clear than ever. Stephen Eric Bronner's Peace Out of Reach is both a deeply personal account and a careful analysis of the crises currently threatening the cradle of civilization. Bronner's insights into Middle Eastern tensions are significantly enhanced by his extensive travels in the region. Equally informed by scholarly research and conscientious engagement, Bronner critically evaluates the motivations and actions of the powerful players on the Middle Eastern stage. Peace Out of Reach challenges policymakers to build bridges, recognize common interests, foster genuine diplomacy, and seek realistically navigable roads to lasting peace, rather than resort to propaganda, threats, and military actions.

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Blood in the Sand is Stephen Eric Bronner's powerful critique of the current state of American foreign and domestic policy, ranging from the government's initial response to 9/11 and the assault on Afghanistan through the Iraqi War and the ramifications of the Israeli--Palestinian conflict. Bronner, who just months before the war began spent time in Iraq as part of a peace delegation, examines the state of twenty-first century America, a nation in which security against future terrorist attacks has become an obsession, "moral values" have turned into a slogan, and belief in the right to engage in a preemptive strike has come to define foreign policy. In Blood in the Sand, Bronner develops a bold new framework for a modern democratic foreign policy. In doing so, he passionately warns of the consequences of failure to alter the current course of events in America: extreme economic inequalities of power, political authoritarianism, imperialist ambitions, and an increasingly constrained cultural climate.

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Critical theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, the circle of German-Jewish academics who sought to diagnose -- and, if at all possible, cure -- the ills of society, particularly fascism and capitalism. In this book, Stephen Eric Bronner provides sketches of leading representatives of the critical tradition (such as George Lukács and Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas) as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations. This Very Short Introduction sheds light on the cluster of concepts and themes that set critical theory apart from its more traditional philosophical competitors. Bronner explains and discusses concepts such as method and agency, alienation and reification, the culture industry and repressive tolerance, non-identity and utopia. He argues for the introduction of new categories and perspectives for illuminating the obstacles to progressive change and focusing upon hidden transformative possibilities. In this newly updated second edition, Bronner targets new academic interests, broadens his argument, and adapts it to a global society amid the resurgence of right-wing politics and neo-fascist movements. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

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Published more than twenty years ago, Stephen Eric Bronner's bold defense of socialism remains a seminal text for our time. Treating socialism as an ethic, reinterpreting its core categories, and critically confronting its early foundations, Bronner's work offers a reinvigorated "class ideal" and a new perspective for progressive politics in the twentieth century. Socialism Unbound is an extraordinary work of political history that revisits the pivotal figures of the labor movement: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky, Vladimir Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg. Examining their contributions as well as their flaws, Bronner shows how critical innovation gave way to dogma. New practical problems have arisen, and this volume engages with the relationship between class and social movements, institutional accountability and democratic participation, economic justice and market imperatives, and internationalism and identity. With a foreword by Dick Howard and a new introduction by the author, Bronner's classic study remains indispensable for scholars and activists alike.

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Published more than twenty years ago, Stephen Eric Bronner's bold defense of socialism remains a seminal text for our time. Treating socialism as an ethic, reinterpreting its core categories, and critically confronting its early foundations, Bronner's work offers a reinvigorated "class ideal" and a new perspective for progressive politics in the twentieth century. Socialism Unbound is an extraordinary work of political history that revisits the pivotal figures of the labor movement: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky, Vladimir Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg. Examining their contributions as well as their flaws, Bronner shows how critical innovation gave way to dogma. New practical problems have arisen, and this volume engages with the relationship between class and social movements, institutional accountability and democratic participation, economic justice and market imperatives, and internationalism and identity. With a foreword by Dick Howard and a new introduction by the author, Bronner's classic study remains indispensable for scholars and activists alike.

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Founded in 2002, Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture was established in response to the increasing erosion of a left political culture and the new possibilities for international political engagement and cooperation produced by the Internet. Many of the best known intellectual representatives of what might be termed a "rational radicalism" soon served as the core group for this new online journal that has reached about four million readers. The Logos Reader brings together the most influential and controversial work to appear in the journal. In its pages, writers of exceptional stature such as Stanley Aronowitz, Ulrich Beck, Drucilla Cornell, Fred Dallmayr, Jürgen Habermas, Douglas Kellner, and Eric Rouleau articulate liberal and socialist values even as they retain theoretical viewpoints influenced by critical theory. The contributors deal with some of the most pressing political issues of our age, including transnational developments, U.S. foreign policy, the Iraqi War, the plight of the Palestinians, and the domestic concerns currently dominating American politics. With themes that speak to the most pertinent and enduring issues of a post-9/11 culture, the essays in The Logos Reader represent the best of modern liberal thought and will influence contemporary political discourse.

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Global society has been analyzed in any number of ways: books dealing with its economic and cultural implications flood the market. But Planetary Politics highlights something unique. It explores globalization with an eye on the transformation of politics into a planetary enterprise. Unifying this collection is a political purpose: the attempt to engage in progressive fashion the dominant trends, the terrible excesses, and the positive prospects in a decidedly new era marked by the transition from a corrosive interplay between nation-states to a burgeoning planetary politics. Bringing together the work of major scholars with national and international reputations, this exciting new work offers perspectives for dealing with the complexity of power in the planetary life of the new millennium.

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