Performing Marx: Contemporary Negotiations of a Living Tradition
Author: Bradley J MacDonald File Type: pdf Performing Marx looks at what it means to be a Marxist dealing with contemporary political and theoretical developments in the twenty-first century. Drawing upon Marx s work, Western Marxism, and poststructuralist theory, Bradley J. Macdonald explores how a living tradition of Marx s ideas can constructively engage a politics of desire and pleasure, ecological sustainability, a politics of everyday life that takes seriously popular culture, and the nature of globalization and of the radical forces being arrayed against the logics of global capitalism. By engaging such crucial issues, Macdonald also provides important clarifications of the work of William Morris, Guy Debord and the situationists, Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri, Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe, as they relate to Marx. **
Author: Mazin B. Qumsiyeh
File Type: pdf
Reveals the role played by identity documents in Israelas apartheid policies towards the Palestinians, from the 1940s to today.**
Author: David A. Yetman
File Type: pdf
In 1600 they were the largest, most technologically advanced indigenous group in northwest Mexico, but today, though their descendants presumably live on in Sonora, almost no one claims descent from the Opatas. The Opatas seem to have disappeared as an ethnic group, their languages forgotten except for the names of the towns, plants, and geography of the Opateria, where they lived. Why did the Opatas disappear from the historical record while their neighbors survived? David Yetman, a leading ethnobotanist who has traveled extensively in Sonora, consulted more than two hundred archival sources to answer this question. The result is an accessible ethnohistory of the Opatas, one that embraces historical complexity with an eye toward Opatan strategies of resistance and assimilation. Yetmans account takes us through the Opatans initial encounters with the conquistadors, their resettlement in Jesuit missions, clashes with Apaches, their recruitment as miners, and several failed rebellions, and ultimately arrives at an explanation for their disappearance. Yetmans account is bolstered by conversations with present-day residents of the Opateria and includes a valuable appendix on the languages of the Opateria by linguistic anthropologist David Shaul. One of the few studies devoted exclusively to this indigenous group, The Opatas In Search of a Sonoran People marks a significant contribution to the literature on the history of the greater Southwest. **
Author: Slavoj Zizek
File Type: epub
Called the Elvis of cultural theory by The New York Times, popular philosopher and leftist rabble-rouser Slavoj Zizek, looks at one of the most desperate situations of our time the current refugee crisis overwhelming Europe. In this short yet stirring book, Zizek argues that accepting all comers or blocking all entry are both untenable solutions... but there is a third option. Today, hundreds of thousands of people, desperate to escape war, violence and poverty, are crossing the Mediterranean to seek refuge in Europe. Our response, from our protected Western European standpoint, argues Slavoj Zizek, offers two versions of ideological blackmail either we open our doors as widely as possible or we try to pull up the drawbridge. Both solutions are bad, states Zizek. They merely prolong the problem, rather than tackling it. The refugee crisis also presents an opportunity, a unique chance for Europe to redefine itself but, if we are to do so, we have to start raising unpleasant and difficult questions. We must also acknowledge that large migrations are our future only then can we commit to a carefully prepared process of change, one founded not on a community that see the excluded as a threat, but one that takes as its basis the shared substance of our social being. The only way, in other words, to get to the heart of one of the greatest issues confronting Europe today is to insist on the global solidarity of the exploited and oppressed. Maybe such solidarity is a utopia. But, warns Zizek, if we dont engage in it, then we are really lost. And we will deserve to be lost. **Review [A]n urgent and entertaining diagnosis of the ongoing refugee crisis and global terror threat, highlighting the glaring contradictions in our attitudes and actions.***Mother Jones Slavoj Zizeks compellingly persuasive insights into the current refugee explosion...could not arrive at a more urgent time.*CounterPunch Praise forSlavoj Zizek One of the most influential and indeed popular public intellectuals in the world. The Guardian The Elvis of cultural theory.The New York Times The most dangerous philosopher in the West. The New Republic The master of the counterintuitive observation. The New Yorker Few thinkers illustrate the contradictions of contemporary capitalism better than Slavoj Zizek ... One of the worlds best known public intellectuals. The New York Review of Books About the Author Slavoj Zizek is a Hegelian philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and political activist. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, and Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University. He is the author of numerous books on dialectical materialism, critique of ideology and art, including Event, and Trouble In Paradise, both published by Melville House.
Author: Loren Goldner
File Type: pdf
The historical studies presented here examine four ideologies Leninism, Trotskyism, anarchism, and anti-imperialism still with us, however different and diffuse in form. They are a contribution to the worldwide Marx renaissance of recent decades which has helped clear away the legacies of the Second, Third and Fourth Internationals, not to mention of the real existing socialism of the Soviet Union and its bastard progeny. These revolutionary predecessors did not fail because they had the wrong ideas in contrast to today, they were merely embedded in an earlier dynamic where capitalism, globally, was not yet fully dominant. The cases of Russia, Turkey, Spain and Bolivia allow us to measure the distance between their epoch and our own, and to clear away their problematic legacies. **
Author: Annette-Carina van Der Zaag
File Type: pdf
Contemporary feminist theory has moved into posthuman terrains as feminist theorists utilise humannonhuman relations and a motley crew of nonhuman entities to reinvigorate feminist critique of natureculture dichotomies. But what place is left for sexgender relations in this move beyond the human? Materialities of Sex in a Time of HIV is written on the cusp of feminist theory of materiality and the analysis of an object at the heart of various sexgender manifestations the vaginal microbicide. Vaginal microbicides are female-initiated HIV prevention methods (currently tested in clinical trials) designed as creams, rings, gels and sponges that women can insert vaginally before having sex to protect themselves against HIV infection. The microbicide is developed as a tool for womens empowerment in the HIV epidemic, but what happens to feminist ideals when they materialise through biomedical practice? This book provides an analysis of the field of microbicide development to articulate the complexity of its promise and material effects and utilises the microbicide as an analytical ally in a provocative debate with contemporary feminist theory.**ReviewWhat can vaginal microbicides tell us? This compelling book engages the political, empirical and theoretical stakes of HIV science and prevention in its lived material reality. Crafting an innovative feminist neomaterialist toolkit, van der Zaag proposes an exciting agenda for feminist theorisations of empirical materialising in the world. This ground-breaking book demonstrates the transformative potential of analysis to revise, rewrite and reimagine feminist problems, concepts and futures. (Nicole Vitellone, AF Warr Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool) This book is an important scholarly contribution to feminist materialism and the politics of health. (Claire Colebrook, Edwin Erle Sparkes Professor of English, Penn State University) About the Author Annette-Carina van der Zaag is a lecturer in sexuality and social theory in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London.
Author: Robert Henderson
File Type: pdf
Vladimir Burtsev and the Struggle for a Free Russia examines the life of the journalist, historian and revolutionary, Vladimir Burtsev. The book analyses his struggle to help liberate the Russian people from tsarist oppression in the latter half of the 19th century before going on to discuss his opposition to Bolshevism following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Robert Henderson traces Burtsevs political development during this time and explores his movements in Paris and London at different stages in an absorbing account of an extraordinary life. At all times Vladimir Burtsev and the Struggle for Free Russia sets Burtsevs life in the wider context of Russian and European history of the period. It uses Burtsev as a means to discuss topics such as European police collaboration, European prison systems, international diplomatic relations of the time and Russias relationship with Europe specifically. Extensive original archival research and previously untranslated Russian source material is also incorporated throughout the text. This is an important study for all historians of modern Russia and the Russian Revolution. *Review A truly impressive work of original and seminal scholarship, Vladimir Burtsev and the Struggle for a Free Russia is a critically important study that will be appreciated by all historians of modern Russia and the Russian Revolution upon which it is based [An] unreservedly recommended addition to college and university library Russian History and Russian Biography collections. Midwest Book Review About the Author Robert Henderson is Honorary Research Associate at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters in the field of Russian history.
Author: Jamie Zeppa
File Type: epub
In the tradition of Iron and Silk and Touch the Dragon, Jamie Zeppas memoir of her years in Bhutan is the story of a young womans self-discovery in a foreign land. It is also the exciting debut of a new voice in travel writing.When she left for the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan in 1988, Zeppa was committing herself to two years of teaching and a daunting new experience. A week on a Caribbean beach had been her only previous trip outside Canada Bhutan was on the other side of the world, one of the most isolated countries in the world known as the last Shangri-La, where little had changed in centuries and visits by foreigners were restricted. Clinging to her bags full of chocolate, hair conditioner and Immodium, she began the biggest challenge of her life, with no idea she would fall in love with the country and with a Bhutanese man, end up spending nine years in Bhutan, and begin a literary career with her account of this transformative journey.At her first posting in a remote village of eastern Bhutan, she is plunged into an overwhelmingly different culture with squalid Third World conditions and an impossible language. Her house has rats and fleas and she refuses to eat the local food, fearing the rampant deadly infections her overly protective grandfather warned her about. Gradually, however, her fear vanishes. She adjusts, begins to laugh, and is captivated by the pristine mountain scenery and the kind students in her grade 2 class. She also begins to discover for herself the spiritual serenity of Buddhism.A transfer to the government college of Sherubtse, where the housing conditions are comparatively luxurious and the students closer to her own age, gives her a deeper awareness of Bhutans challenges the lack of personal privacy, the pressure to conform, and the political tensions. However, her connection to Bhutan intensifies when she falls in love with a student, Tshewang, and finds herself pregnant. After a brief sojourn in Canada to give birth to her son, Pema Dorji, she marries Tshewang and makes Bhutan her home for another four years. Zeppas personal essay about her culture shock on arriving in Bhutan won the 1996 CBCSaturday Night literary competition and appeared in the magazine. She flew home to accept the prize, where people encouraged her to pursue her writing. Her letters from Bhutan also featured on CBCs Morningside. The book that grew out of this has been published in Canada and the United States to ecstatic reviews, followed by British, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish editions. Although cultural differences finally separated Jamie and Tshewang in 1997 while she was writing the book and she returned to Canada, she will always feel at home in Bhutan. Zeppa shares her compelling insights into this land and culture, but Beyond the Sky and the Earth is more than a travel book. With rich, spellbinding prose and bright humour, it describes a personal journey in which Zeppa acquires a deeper understanding of what it means to leave ones home behind, and undergoes a spiritual transformation.From the Trade Paperback edition.