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Wars of Position : The Cultural Politics of Left and Right / Timothy Brennan.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2006]Copyright date: ©2006Description: 1 online resource (360 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780231137317
  • 9780231510455
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 306.2 0973 09047
LOC classification:
  • JA75.7 .B74 2006
  • JA75.7 .B74 2006
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- Introduction: Cultures of Belief -- Part 1. Belief and Its Discontents -- 1. The Barbaric Left -- 2. Nativism -- 3. Humanism, Philology, and Imperialism -- 4. Globalization's Unlikely Champions -- Part 2. The Anarchist Sublime -- 5. The Organizational Imaginary -- 6. The Empire's New Clothes -- 7. Cosmo-Theory -- 8. The Southern Intellectual -- Notes -- INDEX
Summary: Taking stock of contemporary social, cultural, and political currents, Timothy Brennan explores key turning points in the recent history of American intellectual life. He contends that a certain social-democratic vision of politics has been banished from public discussion, leading to an unlikely convergence of the political right and the academic left and a deadening of critical opposition. Brennan challenges the conventional view that affiliations based on political belief, claims upon the state, or the public interest have been rendered obsolete by the march of events in the years before and after Reagan. Instead, he lays out a new path for a future infused with a sense of intellectual and political possibility.In highlighting the shift in America's intellectual culture, Brennan makes the case for seeing belief as an identity. As much as race or ethnicity, political belief, Brennan argues, is itself an identity-one that remains unrecognized and without legal protections while possessing its own distinctive culture. Brennan also champions the idea of cosmopolitanism and critiques those theorists who relegate the left to the status of postcolonial "other."Wars of Position documents how alternative views were chased from the public stage by strategic acts of censorship, including within supposedly dissident wings of the humanities. He explores how the humanities entered the cultural and political mainstream and settled into an awkward secular religion of the "middle way." In a series of interrelated chapters, Brennan considers narratives of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Clinton impeachment; reexamines Salman Rushdie's pre-fatwa writing to illuminate its radical social leanings; presents a startling new interpretation of Edward Said; looks at the fatal reception of Antonio Gramsci within postcolonial history and criticism; and offers a stinging critique of Hardt and Negri's Empire and the influence of Italian radicalism on contemporary cultural theory. Throughout the work, Brennan also draws on and critiques the ideas and influence of Heidegger, Lyotard, Kristeva, and other influential theorists.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780231510455

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- Introduction: Cultures of Belief -- Part 1. Belief and Its Discontents -- 1. The Barbaric Left -- 2. Nativism -- 3. Humanism, Philology, and Imperialism -- 4. Globalization's Unlikely Champions -- Part 2. The Anarchist Sublime -- 5. The Organizational Imaginary -- 6. The Empire's New Clothes -- 7. Cosmo-Theory -- 8. The Southern Intellectual -- Notes -- INDEX

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Taking stock of contemporary social, cultural, and political currents, Timothy Brennan explores key turning points in the recent history of American intellectual life. He contends that a certain social-democratic vision of politics has been banished from public discussion, leading to an unlikely convergence of the political right and the academic left and a deadening of critical opposition. Brennan challenges the conventional view that affiliations based on political belief, claims upon the state, or the public interest have been rendered obsolete by the march of events in the years before and after Reagan. Instead, he lays out a new path for a future infused with a sense of intellectual and political possibility.In highlighting the shift in America's intellectual culture, Brennan makes the case for seeing belief as an identity. As much as race or ethnicity, political belief, Brennan argues, is itself an identity-one that remains unrecognized and without legal protections while possessing its own distinctive culture. Brennan also champions the idea of cosmopolitanism and critiques those theorists who relegate the left to the status of postcolonial "other."Wars of Position documents how alternative views were chased from the public stage by strategic acts of censorship, including within supposedly dissident wings of the humanities. He explores how the humanities entered the cultural and political mainstream and settled into an awkward secular religion of the "middle way." In a series of interrelated chapters, Brennan considers narratives of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Clinton impeachment; reexamines Salman Rushdie's pre-fatwa writing to illuminate its radical social leanings; presents a startling new interpretation of Edward Said; looks at the fatal reception of Antonio Gramsci within postcolonial history and criticism; and offers a stinging critique of Hardt and Negri's Empire and the influence of Italian radicalism on contemporary cultural theory. Throughout the work, Brennan also draws on and critiques the ideas and influence of Heidegger, Lyotard, Kristeva, and other influential theorists.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 02. Mrz 2022)