Anti Humanism In The Counterculture

Author : Guy Stevenson
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2020-10-21
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783030477608

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Anti-Humanism in the Counterculture by Guy Stevenson Pdf

This book offers a radical new reading of the 1950s and 60s American literary counterculture. Associated nostalgically with freedom of expression, romanticism, humanist ideals and progressive politics, the period was steeped too in opposite ideas – ideas that doubted human perfectibility, spurned the majority for a spiritually elect few, and had their roots in earlier politically reactionary avant-gardes. Through case studies of icons in the counterculture – the controversial sexual revolutionary Henry Miller, Beat Generation writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs and self-proclaimed ‘philosopher of hip’, Norman Mailer – Guy Stevenson explores a set of paradoxes at its centre: between romantic optimism and modernist pessimism; between brutal rhetoric and emancipatory desires; and between social egalitarianism and spiritual elitism. Such paradoxes, Stevenson argues, help explain the cultural and political worlds these writers shaped – in their time and beyond.

Author : Kate Soper
Publisher : Open Court Publishing Company
Page : 166 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 1986
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : UOM:39015013885150

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Humanism and Anti-humanism by Kate Soper Pdf

"Why, in present-day French writing, are we most likely to encounter the word "humanist" only as a term of glib dismissal? In this introduction to the controversy over "humanism", Kate Soper explains how the argument (developed by existentialists and Marxist humanists), that human experience and action play a fundamental role in "making history", has fallen into disrepute. 'Humanism and anti-humanism' shows how the "humanist" standpoint emerged in the post-war period, out of a convergence of arguments derived from Hegel, Marx, Husserl, and Heidegger, then traces its elaboration within existentialism and Marxism, and finally examines the "anti-humanist" reaction in the works of Lèvi-Strauss, Foucault, Althusser, Lacan, and Derrida. Soper clearly explains what is at stake in the debate between "humanists" and "anti-humanists", and contends that this can be understood only in the context of Cold War politics and the crisis for Marxism presented by Stalinism. 'Humanism and anti-humanism' is written from a position of critical sympathy with "humanism" and is aimed chiefly at readers with no previous knowledge of Continental philosophy." -- book cover.

Author : Zhang Na
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 365 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2022-09-02
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781527588516

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Posthuman Becoming Narratives in Contemporary Anglophone Science Fiction by Zhang Na Pdf

This book explores the integration of narratology with posthumanism by examining a large scope of narratives in science fiction over nearly half a century in a range of major Anglophone countries. Based on the rhizome of posthumanism, analysis of the posthuman narrative embodiments in selected contemporary Anglophone science fiction, it investigates Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Ian Watson’s The Jonah Kit (1975), Iain Banks’ The Bridge (1986) and Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2 (1995) as exemplifying various aspects of posthuman becoming-other. The book shows that, in the reactive logic of nihilism, the becoming-other posthuman, rather than posing a threat, proves to be the companion and savior of human beings, whose apocalyptic sacrifice brings back the all-too-human humanity to the chaotic world of presence.

Author : Karina Jakubowicz,Robert Dickins
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 215 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2021-03-10
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781000359169

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Heresy and Borders in the Twentieth Century by Karina Jakubowicz,Robert Dickins Pdf

This book explores the shifting and negotiated boundaries of religion, spirituality, and secular thinking in Britain and North America during the twentieth century. It contributes to a growing scholarship that problematises secularization theory, arguing that religion and spirituality increasingly took diverse new forms and identities, rather than simply being replaced by a monolithic secularity. The volume examines the way that thinkers, writers, and artists manipulated and reimagined orthodox belief systems in their work, using the notion of heresy to delineate the borders of what was considered socially and ethically acceptable. It includes topics such as psychospiritual approaches in medicine, countercultures and religious experience, and the function of blasphemy within supposedly secular politics. The book argues that heresy and heretical identities established fluid borderlands. These borderlands not only blur simple demarcations of the religious and secular in the twentieth century, but also infer new forms of heterodoxy through an exchange of ideas. This collection of essays offers a nuanced take on a topic that pervades the study of religion. It will be of great use to scholars of Heresy Studies, Religious Studies and Comparative Religion, Social Anthropology, History, Literature, Philosophy, and Cultural Studies.

Author : Ken Goffman,Dan Joy
Publisher : Villard
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2007-12-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9780307414830

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Counterculture Through the Ages by Ken Goffman,Dan Joy Pdf

As long as there has been culture, there has been counterculture. At times it moves deep below the surface of things, a stealth mode of being all but invisible to the dominant paradigm; at other times it’s in plain sight, challenging the status quo; and at still other times it erupts in a fiery burst of creative–or destructive–energy to change the world forever. But until now the countercultural phenomenon has been one of history’s great blind spots. Individual countercultures have been explored, but never before has a book set out to demonstrate the recurring nature of counterculturalism across all times and societies, and to illustrate its dynamic role in the continuous evolution of human values and cultures. Countercultural pundit and cyberguru R. U. Sirius brilliantly sets the record straight in this colorful, anecdotal, and wide-ranging study based on ideas developed by the late Timothy Leary with Dan Joy. With a distinctive mix of scholarly erudition and gonzo passion, Sirius and Joy identify the distinguishing characteristics of countercultures, delving into history and myth to establish beyond doubt that, for all their surface differences, countercultures share important underlying principles: individualism, anti-authoritarianism, and a belief in the possibility of personal and social transformation. Ranging from the Socratic counterculture of ancient Athens and the outsider movements of Judaism, which left indelible marks on Western culture, to the Taoist, Sufi, and Zen Buddhist countercultures, which were equally influential in the East, to the famous countercultural moments of the last century–Paris in the twenties, Haight-Ashbury in the sixties, Tropicalismo, women’s liberation, punk rock–to the cutting-edge countercultures of the twenty-first century, which combine science, art, music, technology, politics, and religion in astonishing (and sometimes disturbing) new ways, Counterculture Through the Ages is an indispensable guidebook to where we’ve been . . . and where we’re going.

Author : Jan Miernowski
Publisher : Springer
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2016-10-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783319322766

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Early Modern Humanism and Postmodern Antihumanism in Dialogue by Jan Miernowski Pdf

This book employs perspectives from continental philosophy, intellectual history, and literary and cultural studies to breach the divide between early modernist and modernist thinkers. It turns to early modern humanism in order to challenge late 20th-century thought and present-day posthumanism. This book addresses contemporary concerns such as the moral responsibility of the artist, the place of religious beliefs in our secular societies, legal rights extended to nonhuman species, the sense of ‘normality’ applied to the human body, the politics of migration, individual political freedom and international terrorism. It demonstrates how early modern humanism can bring new perspectives to postmodern antihumanism and even invite us to envision a humanism of the future.

Author : David Alderson,Robert Spencer
Publisher : Pluto Press (UK)
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Humanism
ISBN : 0745336140

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For Humanism by David Alderson,Robert Spencer Pdf

Today, anti-humanism is a dominant, even definitive, feature of contemporary theory. This book sets out to challenge this by establishing the historical context that resulted in humanism's eclipse, critiquing anti-humanism, and exploring alternative, neglected traditions and possible new directions. Humanism is a diverse and complex tradition that may facilitate the renewal of progressive theory through the championing of human subjectivity, agency and freedom. Across four extended essays, David Alderson, Kevin Anderson, Barbara Epstein and Robert Spencer engage critically with the Marxist tradition, recent developments in poststructuralism, postcolonialism and queer theory.

Author : D. Simmons
Publisher : Springer
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2008-05-26
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780230612525

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The Anti-Hero in the American Novel by D. Simmons Pdf

The Anti-Hero in the American Novel rereads major texts of the 1960s to offer an innovative re-evaluation of a set of canonical novels that moves beyond entrenched post-modern and post-structural interpretations towards an appraisal which emphasizes the specifically humanist and idealist elements of these works.

Author : Raj Chandarlapaty
Publisher : Peter Lang
Page : 194 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1433106035

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The Beat Generation and Counterculture by Raj Chandarlapaty Pdf

The Beat Generation and Counterculture examines three authors associated with the «Beat Generation» - Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac - and the relevance of their attempt to travel, learn, and write about exotic non-Western cultures and repressed minority cultures in the United States, projecting the influence of history, premodern religious practices, and postcolonial social and intellectual problems into the written development of countercultural ethos and praxis. The Beat Generation and Counterculture underscores T. S. Eliot's emphasis on «earning tradition - that is, in order for the corrupt, decultured, and unimaginative West that had been ruined by World War II to survive, it would have to internalize and project the value of distant cultures that had been misunderstood and racialized for centuries. This book also addresses the frequent criticism that these authors were «orientalist», white writers who freely translated non-Western culture without giving any credit to its creators.

Author : Theodore Roszak
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 1995-10-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520201224

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The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak Pdf

When it was published twenty-five years ago, this book captured a huge audience of Vietnam War protesters, dropouts, and rebels—and their baffled elders. Theodore Roszak found common ground between 1960s student radicals and hippie dropouts in their mutual rejection of what he calls the technocracy—the regime of corporate and technological expertise that dominates industrial society. He traces the intellectual underpinnings of the two groups in the writings of Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown, Allen Ginsberg and Paul Goodman. In a new introduction, Roszak reflects on the evolution of counter culture since he coined the term in the sixties. Alan Watts wrote of The Making of a Counter Culture in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1969, "If you want to know what is happening among your intelligent and mysteriously rebellious children, this is the book. The generation gap, the student uproar, the New Left, the beats and hippies, the psychedelic movement, rock music, the revival of occultism and mysticism, the protest against our involvement in Vietnam, and the seemingly odd reluctance of the young to buy the affluent technological society—all these matters are here discussed, with sympathy and constructive criticism, by a most articulate, wise, and humane historian."

Author : Nicholas J. Rengger
Publisher : Bowerdean Publishing Company
Page : 134 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Art
ISBN : UOM:39015038142801

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Retreat from the Modern by Nicholas J. Rengger Pdf

Discussion on the different perspectives and disciplines which constitute the 'Modernist debate'

Author : Kevin O'Brien
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 1985
Category : Humanism
ISBN : OCLC:70446132

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Michel Foucault's Anti-humanism by Kevin O'Brien Pdf

Author : Charles Taylor
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 889 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2018-09-17
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780674986916

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A Secular Age by Charles Taylor Pdf

The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

Author : David Kaiser,W. Patrick McCray
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2016-05-31
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226373072

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Groovy Science by David Kaiser,W. Patrick McCray Pdf

Did the Woodstock generation reject science—or re-create it? An “enthralling” study of a unique period in scientific history (New Scientist). Our general image of the youth of the late 1960s and early 1970s is one of hostility to things like missiles and mainframes and plastics—and an enthusiasm for alternative spirituality and getting “back to nature.” But this enlightening collection reveals that the stereotype is overly simplistic. In fact, there were diverse ways in which the era’s countercultures expressed enthusiasm for and involved themselves in science—of a certain type. Boomers and hippies sought a science that was both small-scale and big-picture, as exemplified by the annual workshops on quantum physics at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, or Timothy Leary’s championing of space exploration as the ultimate “high.” Groovy Science explores the experimentation and eclecticism that marked countercultural science and technology during one of the most colorful periods of American history. “Demonstrate[s] that people and groups strongly ensconced in the counterculture also embraced science, albeit in untraditional and creative ways.”—Science “Each essay is a case history on how the hippies repurposed science and made it cool. For the academic historian, Groovy Science establishes the ‘deep mark on American culture’ made by the countercultural innovators. For the non-historian, the book reads as if it were infected by the hippies’ democratic intent: no jargon, few convoluted sentences, clear arguments and a sense of delight.”—Nature “In the late 1960s and 1970s, the mind-expanding modus operandi of the counterculture spread into the realm of science, and sh-t got wonderfully weird. Neurophysiologist John Lilly tried to talk with dolphins. Physicist Peter Phillips launched a parapsychology lab at Washington University. Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill became an evangelist for space colonies. Groovy Science is a new book of essays about this heady time.”—Boing Boing

Author : William John Niven,James Jordan
Publisher : Camden House
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : History
ISBN : 1571132236

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Politics and Culture in Twentieth-century Germany by William John Niven,James Jordan Pdf

This is the first book to examine this crucial relationship between politics and culture in Germany, not only during the Nazi and Cold War eras but in periods when the effects are less obvious.