Author: Konstantinos Kapparis File Type: pdf Prostitution in the ancient Greek world was widespread, legal, and acceptable as a fact of life and an unavoidable necessity. The state regulated the industry and treated prostitution as any other trade. Almost every prominent man in the ancient world has been truly or falsely associated with some famous hetaira. These women, who sold their affections to the richest and most influential men of their time, have become legends in their own right. They pushed the boundaries of female empowerment in their quest for self-promotion and notoriety, and continue to fascinate us. Prostitution remains a complex phenomenon linked to issues of gender, culture, law, civic ideology, education, social control, and economic forces. This is why its study is of paramount importance for our understanding of the culture, outlook and institutions of the ancient world, and in turn it can shed new light and introduce new perspectives to the challenging debate of our times on prostitution and contemporary sexual morality. The main purpose of this book is to provide the primary historical study of the topic with emphasis upon the separation of facts from the mythology surrounding the countless references to prostitution in Greek literary sources. **About the Author Konstantinos Kapparis, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
Author: Bryan Charles
File Type: epub
There's a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From is the memoir of a young Midwestern man struggling to carve out a life as a writer, and to find meaning, or at least a job, in his new and alien landscape of New York City. In a voice at once coolly detached and utterly confident, we follow Bryan Charles's journey navigating love, work, and family, from the streets of Manhattan to the upper floors of corporate America. This is a gripping meditation on the self, ricocheting between the multitudes and solitude, and between the industrial-turned-residential spaces of Brooklyn and the towers of the World Trade Center, where his life takes an unexpected turn. Charles's story is a spare, honest, and often hilarious narrative of expectation and loss, and of the ordinary becoming the extraordinary.
Author: Joseph Conrad
File Type: epub
Axel Heyst, a dreamer and a restless drifter, believes he can avoid suffering by cutting himself off from others. Then he becomes involved in the operation of a coal company on a remote island in the Malay Archipelago, and when it fails he turns his back on humanity once more. But his life alters when he rescues a young English girl, Lena, from Zangiacomos Ladies Orchestra and the evil innkeeper Schomberg, taking her to his island retreat. The affair between Heyst and Lena begins with her release, but the relationship shifts as Lena struggles to save Heyst from the detachment and isolation that have inhibited and influenced his life.Marked by a violent and tragic conclusion, Victory is both a tale of rescue and adventure and a perceptive study of a complex relationship and of the power of love.
Author: Ernesto Laclau
File Type: pdf
Tour de force analysis of the forces that drive populism by the major political theorist.In this highly original work Ernesto Laclau continues the philosophical and political exploration initiated in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Here he focuses on the construction of popular identities and how the people emerge as a collective actor. Skillfully combining theoretical analysis with a myriad of empirical references from numerous historical and geographical contexts he offers a critical reading of the existing literature on populism, demonstrating its dependency on the theorists of mass psychology such as Taine and Freud. He demonstrates the relation of populism to democracy and to the logic of representation, and differentiates his approach from the work of Zizek, Hardt and Negri, and Ranciere. This book is essential reading for all those interested in the question of political identities in present-day societies.ReviewWhat needs to be politically articulated at the present time is the possibility of a leftist populism. This is what makes Laclaus long-awaited book so important. Arguably, populism has always been the governing concept in Laclaus work and in On Populist Reason, he lays out his position with great power and analytical clarity. (Simon Critchley ) About the AuthorErnesto Laclau is Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Government, University of Essex, and Distinguished Professor for Humanities and Rhetorical Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of, amongst other works, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (with Chantal Mouffe), New Reflections of the Revolution of Our Time, The Populist Reason, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (with Judith Butler and Slavoj Zizek), and Emancipation(s).
Author: William Kuskin
File Type: pdf
Symbolic Caxton is the first study to explore the introduction of printing in symbolic terms. It presents a powerful literary history in which the fifteenth century is crucial to the overall story of English literature. William Kuskin argues that the development of print production is part of a larger social network involving the political, economic, and literary systems that produce the intangible constellations of identity and authority. For Kuskin, William Caxton (14221491), the first English printer, becomes a unique lens through which to view these issues. Kuskin contends that recognizing the fundamental complexity inherent in the transformation from manuscript to printthe power of literature to formulate its audience, the intimacy of capital and communication, the closeness of commodities and identitymakes possible a clear understanding of the way cultural, bibliographical, financial, and technological instruments intersect in a process of symbolic production. While this book is the first to connect the contents of late medieval literature to its technological form, it also speaks to contemporary culture, wrestling with our own paradigm shift in the relationship between literature and technology. This is an important book about the origins of printing and print culture in England by North Americas leading younger scholar of William Caxton. It will contribute to debates about the English fifteenth century and the nature of Chaucerian reception. And it will offer a productive qualification and, at times, corrective to larger and more general accounts of print history. Seth Lerer, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University This elegant, closely-argued study is one of the most important books to have yet appeared on Caxton and fifteenth-century English literary culture. Kuskins fine-grained attention to book history, his allegiance to the conceptual methodology of history of the book, and his command of literary history all combine to reconfigure our view of early print production, patronage, commerce, and literary authority. This is a major contribution to the history of vernacular textual production and vernacular knowledge in the fifteenth centuryand to media history as a whole. Professor Ruth Evans, The University of Stirling There are certainly recent books on Caxton, but none that takes the literary approach used here, which is what makes the book such an important contribution to the field. It serves as a solid introduction to the subject of printing in England in the fifteenth century. William Kuskin shows how print, through a logic of reproduction, constructs and shapes its audience. Maura Nolan, University of California, Berkeley **
Author: Peter Scharff Smith
File Type: pdf
There are millions of children experiencing parental imprisonment worldwide, but up until recently very little attention has been given to this issue and the serious intergenerational effects of imprisonment. This book tells the story of prisoners children of their situation, problems and human rights - and how they are treated throughout the justice process from the arrest of a parent to imprisonment and release.Based on extensive research from across Europe, Scharff Smith argues that it is a paradox that we hail the family as a fundamental unit in our societies, and insist on regarding children as an especially valuable and vulnerable group of citizens, but at the same time break up families on a massive scale as a result of a conscious, planned and generally unquestioned policy of using imprisonment as a key sanction in the repertoire of punishments.Shedding light on various reform initiatives, this book assists in promoting good practice and improving the experience of children of imprisoned parents.
Author: David Sumpter
File Type: epub
Algorithms are running our society, and as the Cambridge Analytica story has revealed, we dont really know what they are up to.Our increasing reliance on technology and the internet has opened a window for mathematicians and data researchers to gaze through into our lives. Using the data they are constantly collecting about where we travel, where we shop, what we buy and what interests us, they can begin to predict our daily habits. But how reliable is this data? Without understanding what mathematics can and cant do, it is impossible to get a handle on how it is changing our lives. In this book, David Sumpter takes an algorithm-strewn journey to the dark side of mathematics. He investigates the equations that analyse us, influence us and will (maybe) become like us, answering questions such asWho are Cambridge Analytica? And what are they doing with our data?How does Facebook build a 100-dimensional picture of your personality?Are Google algorithms racist and sexist?Why do election predictions fail so drastically? Are algorithms that are designed to find criminals making terrible mistakes?What does the future hold as we relinquish our decision-making to machines?Featuring interviews with those working at the cutting edge of algorithm research, including Alex Kogan from the Cambridge Analytica story, along with a healthy dose of mathematical self-experiment, Outnumbered will explain how mathematics and statistics work in the real world, and what we should and shouldnt worry about. A lot of people feel outnumbered by algorithms dont be one of them.
Author: Jacques Derrida
File Type: pdf
The Animal That Therefore I Am is the long-awaited translation of the complete text of Jacques Derridas ten-hour address to the 1997 Crisy conference entitled The Autobiographical Animal, the third of four such colloquia on his work. The book was assembled posthumously on the basis of two published sections, one written and recorded session, and one informal recorded session. The book is at once an affectionate look back over the multiple roles played by animals in Derridas work and a profound philosophical investigation and critique of the relegation of animal life that takes place as a result of the distinction-dating from Descartes-between man as thinking animal and every other living species. That starts with the very fact of the line of separation drawn between the human and the millions of other species that are reduced to a single the animal.Derrida finds that distinction, or versions of it, surfacing in thinkers as far apart as Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, Lacan, and Levinas, and he dedicates extended analyses tothe question in the work of each of them.The books autobiographical theme intersects with its philosophical analysis through the figures of looking and nakedness, staged in terms of Derridas experience when his cat follows him into the bathroom in the morning. In a classic deconstructive reversal, Derrida asks what this animal sees and thinks when it sees this naked man. Yet the experiences of nakedness and shame also lead all the way back into the mythologies of mans dominion over the beastsand trace a history of how man has systematically displaced onto the animal his own failings or btises. The Animal That Therefore I Am is at times a militant plea and indictment regarding, especially, the modern industrialized treatment of animals. However, Derrida cannot subscribe to a simplistic version of animal rights that fails to follow through, in all its implications, the questions and definitions of lifeto which he returned in much of his later work. **About the Author The late JACQUES DERRIDA was the single most influential voice in European philosophy of the last quarter of the twentieth century. His The Animal That Therefore I Am, Sovereignties in Question, and Deconstruction in a Nutshell have been published by Fordham University Press. MARIE-LOUIS MALLET has been a Program Director at the Collge International de Philosophie and was the organizer of three of the four Derrida Cerisy conferences. She is author of La Musique en respect and is the editor of the special edition of Les Cahiers de lHerne on Derrida. DAVID WILLS is Professor of French and English at the University at Albany, SUNY. His most recent book is Dorsality Thinking Back Through Technology and Politics.