Author: Manav Ratti File Type: pdf The Postsecular Imagination presents a rich, interdisciplinary study of postsecularism as an affirmational political possibility emerging through the potentials and limits of both secular and religious thought. While secularism and religion can foster inspiration and creativity, they also can be linked with violence, civil war, partition, majoritarianism, and communalism, especially within the framework of the nation-state. Through close readings of novels that engage with animism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism, Manav Ratti examines how questions of ethics and the need for faith, awe, wonder, and enchantment can find expression and significance in the wake of such crises. While focusing on Michael Ondaatje and Salman Rushdie, Ratti addresses the work of several other writers as well, including Shauna Singh Baldwin, Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh, and Allan Sealy. Ratti shows the extent of courage and risk involved in the radical imagination of these postsecular works, examining how writers experiment with and gesture toward the compelling paradoxes of a non-secular secularism and a non-religious religion. Drawing on South Asian Anglophone literatures and postcolonial theory, and situating itself within the most provocative contemporary debates in secularism and religion, The Postsecular Imagination will be important for readers interested in the relations among culture, literature, theory, and politics.(Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures)

Author: Baerbel Mueller File Type: pdf [a]FA is a laboratory of the Institute of Architecture of the University for Applied Arts in Vienna, in which spatial, infrastructure, ecological and cultural phenomena of the Sub-Saharan region are investigated. The concept for each project is based on an interdisciplinary and trans-cultural approach.This publication documents three projects that were carried out between 2011 and 2015. GUABULIGA _ WELL BY THE THORN TREE ON OTHER PLANNING in northern Ghana, STAGING APAM ON OTHER ARCHITECTURE at Ghanas Atlantic coast, and LUBUNGAMODE ON OTHER ARTISTIC RESEARCH in Kisangani, DR of Congo. The book illustrates the projects creative processes and contexts, embedded in contemporary discourses well-known experts from architecture, art, theory, and urban sociology take a stand.

Author: Andrea Goulet File Type: pdf Orphan Black Performance, Gender, Biopolitics presents a groundbreaking exploration of the hit television series Orphan Black, and the questions it raises for performance and technology, gender and reproduction, and biopolitics and community. Contributors from a range of backgrounds explore the digital innovations and technical interactions between human and machine that allow the show to challenge conventional notions of performance and identity. The essays within address family themes and explore Orphan Blacks own textual genealogy extend their inquiry to the broader question of community in a posthuman world of biopolitical power by looking at the contexts of science, reproductive technology and the politics of gender and finally, mobilize philosophy, history of science and literary theory in order to analyse the ways in which Orphan Black depicts resistance to the many forms of power that attempt to capture, monitor and shape life today. **About the Author Andrea Gouletis professor and graduate chair of French and francophone studies at the University of Pennsylvania.Robert A. Rushingis professor of Italian and comparative literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Author: Beatriz Magaloni File Type: pdf This book provides a theory of the logic of survival of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), one of the most resilient autocratic regimes in the twentieth century. An autocratic regime hid behind the facade of elections that were held with clockwise precision. Although their outcome was totally predictable, elections were not hollow rituals. The PRI made millions of ordinary citizens vest their interests in the survival of the autocratic regime. Voters could not simply throw the rascals out of office because their choices were constrained by a series of strategic dilemmas that compelled them to support the autocrats. The book also explores the factors that led to the demise of the PRI. The theory sheds light on the logic of electoral autocracies, among the most common type of autocracy today, and the factors that lead to the transformation of autocratic elections into democratic ones. This book is the only systematic treatment in the literature today dealing with this form of autocracy.ReviewThe strengths of Voting for Autocracy are found in Magalonis careful development of theoretical concepts and their comparative relevance, her rigorous methodological employment of game theoretic and statistical approaches, and her impressive compilation of electoral, opinino, and policy indicators. -David A. Shirk, University of San DiegoThis book is the best analysis of the Mexican transition in the field that I have seen, and it is also the best-in-depth look at how an electoral authoritarian regime actually works. The book pulls together arguments about elite strategic behavior, voters perceptions, and key institutional changes to explain the Mexican transition with both depth and sophistication. -Barbara Geddes, University of California, Los AngelesIn this carefully argued study, Beatriz Magaloni sheds light on the dynamics and breakdown of the PRI regime in Mexico, and, more generally, on the logic of electoral authoritarian regimes. Combining an in-depth analysis of Mexican politics with a broad comparative perspective, Magaloni develops and tests a novel theory that helps explain why citizens support autocratic rulers. The book merits the attention of students of political regimes, political parties, democratization, and Latin American politics. -Richard Snyder, Brown UniversityMagalonis study of the dominance and collapse of a single-party dominant autocratic regime is a landmark in Mexican political economy and regime transitions. With incisive theorizing and rich empirical testing, she solves crucial puzzles, such as how an unpopular government can submit itself to elections and still retain power. -Susan Stokes, Yale UniversityBeatriz Magaloni make[s] important, original contributions to this debate and to the broader analysis of political parties, elections, and democratization. [...]Magaloni adopts a broad [...]persuasive perspective on the resource bases of the ruling partys dominance, stressing the multiple benefits that it derived both from overall federal government expenditures and from some specific social programs. -Kevin J. Middlebrook, University of London, Perspectives on Politics Book DescriptionThis book provides a theory of the logic of survival of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), one of the most resilient autocratic regimes in the twentieth century. An autocratic regime hid behind the facade of elections that were held with clockwise precision. Although their outcome was totally predictable, elections were not hollow rituals. The PRI made millions of ordinary citizens vest their interests in the survival of the autocratic regime. The theory sheds light on the logic of electoral autocracies, and is the only systematic treatment in the literature today dealing with this form of autocracy.