Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> Essays

With wit and a remarkable grasp of the political marginalization of the 99%, Mike Davis crafts a striking defense of the Occupy Wall Street movement. This pamphlet brilliantly undertakes the most pressing question facing the struggle what is to be done next?

Mike Davis is the author of more than twenty books.

What is the relationship of radical theory to movements for social change? In a world where more and more global struggles are refusing vanguard parties and authoritarian practices, does the idea of the detached intellectual, observing events from on high, make sense anymore? In this powerful and unabashedly militant collection, over two dozen academic authors and engaged intellectuals including Antonio Negri and Colectivo Situaciones provide some challenging answers. In the process, they redefine the nature of intellectual practice itself.

The book opens with the editors...

In this unintended sequel to MORPHEUS POSSESSED, W. E. Gutman warns that being dependent on-or forced to submit to-someone else's dreams (dogmas, decrees, laws) is a form of slavery, whereas freedom (which is inseparable from justice) means having no master-earthly or heavenly. In MORPHEUS UNCHAINED, where he takes aim at moneyed elites, corporate interests, religious intolerance, rising fascism, and the apathy of the masses, the author further argues that freedom-loving people must aspire to a realm in which their dreams triumph so that they may at last embark on the...

This book undertakes a critical examination of contemporary political problems through discussions of three utopian and three dystopian texts.

Selected stories from Morris, Orwell, More, Bellamy, Neville, and Zamyatin are used to generate questions about fundamental economic, political, and social problems, human nature, and conceptions of the good life. This unique work is an exceptional resource for all students of political philosophy and utopian literature, as well as for general readers interested in political affairs.

Subversive thought is none other than the cunning of reason when confronted with a social reality in which the poor and miserable are required to sustain the illusion of fictitious wealth. Yet, this subsidy is absolutely necessary in existing society, to prevent its implosion. The critique of political economy is a thoroughly subversive business. It rejects the appearance of economic reality as a natural thing, argues that economy has not independent existence, expounds economy as political economy, and rejects as conformist rebellion those anti-capitalist perspectives that derive their...

This study uses new arguments to reinvestigate the relation between aesthetics and politics in the contemporary debates on democratic theory and radical democracy.

First, Carl Schmitt and Claude Lefort help delineate the contours of an aesthetico-political understanding of democracy, which is developed further by studying Merleau-Ponty, Ranciere, and Arendt.

The ideas of Merleau-Ponty serve to establish a general "ontological" framework that aims to contest the dominant currents in contemporary democratic theory. It is argued that Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, and Ranciere share a...

The book shares Zizek's central problem of how to revitalize the radical political left through theory. It initially follows the argument developed in The Ticklish Subject that contemporary leftist thought is divided by antagonism between a Marxist revolutionary politics founded on Enlightenment philosophy and a politics of identity founded on post-modern post-structuralism.

How Zizek used Lacan's theory of character structures is examined here to describe this theoretical deadlock and explain how the dominant contemporary ideologies of liberal tolerant multiculturalism and...

This unique work analyzes the crisis in modern society, building on the ideas of the Frankfurt School thinkers. Emphasizing social evolution and learning processes, it argues that crisis is mediated by social class conflicts and collective learning, the results of which are embodied in constitutional and public law.

First, the work outlines a new categorical framework of critical theory in which it is conceived as a theory of crisis. It shows that the Marxist focus on economy and on class struggle is too narrow to deal with the range of social conflicts within modern society, and...

This engaging work tells the story of democracy through the perspective of tragic drama. It shows how the ancient tales of greatness and its loss point to the potential dangers of democracy then and now.

Greek Tragedy dramatized a variety of stories, characters, and voices drawn from reality, especially from those marginalized by Athens's democracy. It brought up dissident figures through its multivocal form, disrupting the perception of an ordered reality. Today, this helps us grasp the reality of Athenian democracy, that is, a system steeped in patriarchy, slavery, warmongering,...