Challenging Zygmunt Bauman's characterization of "liquid modernity," where everything has become unstable, precarious, and uncertain, Carlo Bordoni causes us to reconsider our present condition. Bordoni, Bauman's co-author on State of Crisis, proposes to look at contemporary society as an "interregnum," a temporary break with the past. In an era characterized by anomie, the questioning of democratic achievements, and the primacy of an unbridled economy, he offers a new perspective on our social condition. Understanding the interregnum, being aware of its instability and the social...

Authors do not only create artworks. In the process of creating, they simultaneously bring to life their authorial persona. Approaching this phenomenon from an interdisciplinary point of view, Sonja Longolius develops a concept of "performative authorship" by examining different strategies of becoming an author. She demonstrates this idea through a critical and comparative analysis of the works of Paul Auster, Candice Breitz, Sophie Calle, and Jonathan Safran Foer. Specifically, Auster/Calle and Breitz/Foer form a generational pair of opposites, enabling a discussion of postmodern and...

The first in-depth study of Miranda July's work provides fascinating insights into the lifestyle of the contemporary white Californian middle class. Through an analysis of July's award-winning intermedial work, the author lays open how July takes individualism and self-help as constitutive for the creative class. Although a member of the creative class herself, July's voice oscillates between irony and approval. July thus paints a fascinating portrait of neurotic hipsterism, which triggers self-reflection in the general reader and critical thinking in the cultural analyst.

We are witnessing new ways of assembling that have made the word "democracy" take on renewed importance. These events might not have led to the political changes many hoped for. Nevertheless, their importance cannot be denied. This book wants to acknowledge them as a starting point for a new art of being many: the "many" invoke new concepts of collectivity by renegotiating their modes of participation and (self-)presentation and by rewriting rhetorical, choreographical, and material scripts of assembling. This volume is inspired and informed by the square-squattings and neighborhood...

Stability is at the core of every discussion of order, organization or institutionalization. From an "inside" perspective, the stability of each order-constituting element is assumed. In contrast, in critical discourses instability (e.g. through ambiguity, or non-control) is located at the outside of the social order as its negative. By treating this argumentative symmetrical structure as "idioms of stability and de-stabilization," the articles try to rethink order: How can we describe structures from a perspective in which instability, non-control and irrationality are not contrary to...

This book explores the productive effects of bodily "failure" in the sphere of visuality. The aim is to reflect on the human body's constant exposure to visual constraints and distortions, which are incorporated so strongly in everyday images of our bodies that they become invisible, while yet representative of cultural norms. By analyzing artistic literary and visual representations of imperfect, disabled, aging, queer, and monstrous bodies, this project exposes the handicaps of normative vision and opens up new ways of recognizing a multitude of corporeal existences and practices outside...

This book explores the points of convergence between corporate capitalist and terrorist practice. Assessing an increase in the number of terrorist attacks directed at commercial entities in urban areas, with an emphasis on the shopping mall in general and Nairobi's Westgate Mall in particular, Suzi Mirgani offers a fascinating and disturbing perspective on the spaces where the most powerful forces of contemporary culture - the most mainstream and the most extreme - meet on common ground.

Occupy, Commons and other social experiments demonstrate that new collectivities are invented and tested. Gesa Ziemer argues that in this process, the reinterpretation of old forms of joint action can play an essential role. By looking at complicities in art, science, and economy, ongoing collectivization is exposed. Complicity means the committing of an act together, or so it is defined in criminal law. But for a long time now, the concept has also been targeted at legal collective actions - mainly in innovative environments. Individuals act jointly in an intensely affective way - albeit...

This book offers a study of the literary marketplace in the early 2000s. Focusing on the Man Booker Prize and its impact on a novel's media attention, Anna Auguscik analyzes the mechanisms by which the prize recognizes books triggering debates, in addition to how it itself becomes the object of such debates. Based on case studies of six novels and their attention profiles (Aravind Adiga, Margaret Atwood, Sebastian Barry, Mark Haddon, DBC Pierre, and Zadie Smith), the book describes the Booker as a "problem-driven attention-generating mechanism" whose influence can only be understood in...