Utopia Or Bust

Download or read book Utopia or Bust written by Benjamin Kunkel and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the financial crash and the great recession, the media rediscovered Karl Marx, socialist theory, and the very idea that capitalism can be questioned. But in spite of the publicity, the main paths of contemporary critical thought have gone unexplored outside of the academy. Benjamin Kunkel’s Utopia or Bust leads readers – whether politically committed or simply curious – through the most important critical theory today. Written with the wit and verve of Kunkel’s best-selling novel, Indecision, this introduction to contemporary Leftist thinkers engages with the revolutionary philosophy of Slavoj Žižek, the economic analyses of David Graeber and David Harvey, and the cultural diagnoses of Fredric Jameson. Discussing the ongoing crisis of capitalism in light of ideas of full employment, debt forgiveness, and “fictitious capital,” Utopia or Bust is a tour through the world of Marxist thought and an examination of the basis of Western society today.

Download or read book Útrásarvíkingar! written by Alaric Hall and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2020 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the global banking boom of the early twenty-first century expanded towards implosion, Icelandic media began calling the country's celebrity financiers útrásarvíkingar: “raiding vikings.” This new coinage encapsulated the macho, medievalist nationalism which underwrote Iceland's exponential financialisation. Yet within a few days in October 2008, Iceland saw all its main banks collapse beneath debts worth nearly ten times the country's GDP.Hall charts how Icelandic novelists and poets grappled with the Crash over the ensuing decade. As the first English-language monograph devoted to twenty-first-century Icelandic literature, it provides Anglophone readers with an introduction to one of the world's liveliest literary scenes. It also contributes a key case study for understanding global artistic responses to the early twenty-first century crisis of runaway, unregulated capitalism, exploring the struggles of writers to adapt realist forms of art to surreal times.As Iceland's biggest crisis since their independence from Denmark in 1944, the effect of the Crash on the national self-image was as seismic as its effects on the economy. This study analyses the centrality of whiteness and the abjection of the “developing world” in Iceland's post-colonial identity, and shows how Crash-writing explores the collisions of Iceland's traditional, nationalist medievalism with a dystopian, Orientalist medievalism associated with the Islamic world.The Crash in Iceland was instantly recognised as offering important economic insights. This book shows how Iceland also helps us to understand the cultural convulsions that have followed the Financial Crisis widely in the West.

Download or read book DIY Utopia written by Amber Day and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-12-22 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At first glance, contemporary popular culture, filled with bleak images of the future, seems to have given up on the possibility of positive collective change. Below the surface, however, alternative culture is rife with artist-led projects, activist movements, and subcultural communities of interest that seek to spark the collective imagination and to encourage hunger for alternatives. More playfully self-conscious than past utopian movements, today’s are often whimsical or ironic, but are still entirely earnest. Artists invite us to re-author city maps, or archive individual ideas for the future, while maker collectives urge us to rethink our relationship to consumer goods. All seem to have grown out of a similar do-it-yourself ethos and alternative culture. One of the central conflicts informing these case studies is that while it remains immensely difficult to envision anything outside of the current system of consumer capitalism, there is nevertheless a powerful desire to take it apart in piecemeal ways. We see the longing for new social and political narratives, new forms of communion and sociability, and new imaginings of the possible, longings that are currently unmet by mainstream culture, but that are taking expression in myriad ways at the local level. Taken as a whole, this collection examines what our grand ideals and playful daydreams tell us about ourselves.

Download or read book No Other Planet written by Mathias Thaler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-22 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigates the role of hope and fear in our climate-changed world by focusing on various expressions of the utopian imagination.

Download or read book The Bleeding Edge written by Bob Hughes and published by Between the Lines. This book was released on 2016-10-20 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Utopia's Garden written by E. C. Spary and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The royal Parisian botanical garden, the Jardin du Roi, was a jewel in the crown of the French Old Regime, praised by both rulers and scientific practitioners. Yet unlike many such institutions, the Jardin not only survived the French Revolution but by 1800 had become the world's leading public establishment of natural history: the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. E. C. Spary traces the scientific, administrative, and political strategies that enabled the foundation of the Muséum, arguing that agriculture and animal breeding rank alongside classification and collections in explaining why natural history was important for French rulers. But the Muséum's success was also a consequence of its employees' Revolutionary rhetoric: by displaying the natural order, they suggested, the institution could assist in fashioning a self-educating, self-policing Republican people. Natural history was presented as an indispensable source of national prosperity and individual virtue. Spary's fascinating account opens a new chapter in the history of France, science, and the Enlightenment.

Download or read book Future Esoteric written by Brad Olsen and published by CCC Publishing. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the flaws of mainstream society, this collection of conspiracy theory, esoteric knowledge, and fringe subjects seeks to present solutions to current social, economic, and environmental world issues. This book encourages the exploration and integration of modern science with ancient wisdom, which will lead modern society towards advancement and enlightenment. Topics discussed include religious mythos, government manipulation, technological advances, and utopia.