In 'On Lingering and Being Last', Jonathan Elmer argues that the logic of sovereignty that emerged in early modern Europe and that limits our thinking today must be understood as a fundamentally racialized logic, first visible in the New World.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of American culture's most iconic figures, inspiring countless derivations beyond the literary realm, from commercial illustration and kitch to art installations and video games. Why has Poe been so hugely influential in media other than his own? What do filmmakers, composers, and other artists find in Poe that suits their purposes so often and so variously? Poe's works are violent and brooding, memorable both for certain grisly images and for certain prevailing moods-dread, creepiness, mournfulness. They are, in other words, distinctly graphic and richly atmospheric. Jonathan Elmer locates the source of Poe's fascination for artists in these two vernacular aesthetic categories-the graphic and the atmospheric-and how well they describe our experience of the multi-media world. Elmer uses Poe to explore these two terms and track some deep patterns in their use, not through theoretical labor but through close encounters with a wide sampling of aesthetic objects that avail themselves of Poe's work. Poe, we learn, has come to exemplify a modern method of aesthetic production. It is as if he left his box of tools lying around for others to pick up and play with. The bundle of Poe traits-his thematic emphasis on extreme sensation, his flexible sense of form, his experimental and modular method, his iconic personal profile-amount to what could be called a Poe "brand," one as likely to be found in music videos or comics as in novels and stories. Ranging from René Magritte and Claude Debussy to Lou Reed, Roger Corman, and Spongebob Squarepants, Elmer shows how the Poe brand opens trunk lines to aesthetic experiences fundamental to a multi-media world"--
Michael Hart would do anything to bring her back. Fate took her away from him, then, years later, fate pushes him to the town of Malway, a town with a secret. Michael, a retired policeman, believes he has stumbled across a crime, but soon discovers it is something far more incredible, something that could make his one wish come true. But it might come with a terrible price. Death and Repair explores the power of love and the permanence of death. It is a re-imagination of the classic Djinn tales, part mystery, part science-fiction, part love story.
How the Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center informed the PLO’s relationship to Zionism and Israel In September 1982, the Israeli military invaded West Beirut and Israel-allied Lebanese militiamen massacred Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Meanwhile, Israeli forces also raided the Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center and trucked its complete library to Israel. Palestinian activists and supporters protested loudly to international organizations and the Western press, claiming that the assault on the Center proved that the Israelis sought to destroy not merely Palestinian militants but Palestinian culture as well. The protests succeeded: in November 1983, Israel returned the library as part of a prisoner exchange. What was in that library? Much of the expansive collection the PLO amassed consisted of books about Judaism, Zionism, and Israel. In Reading Herzl in Beirut, Jonathan Marc Gribetz tells the story of the PLO Research Center from its establishment in 1965 until its ultimate expulsion from Lebanon in 1983. Gribetz explores why the PLO invested in research about the Jews, what its researchers learned about Judaism and Zionism, and how the knowledge they acquired informed the PLO’s relationship to Israel.
Presenting a new take on what made the Homeric epics such successful examples of verbal artistry, this volume explores the construction of the Homeric simile and the performance of Homeric poetry from the neglected comparative perspectives offered by the study of modern-day oral traditions.
In the last quarter century, the U.S. economy has been transformed by a large inflow of direct investment from abroad. Foreign companies, mainly from Europe and Japan, have built factories and acquired U.S. firms at an ever-increasing rate. Jonathan Crystal finds inconsistencies in how American businesses have responded to this globalization of production.U.S. firms, especially multinationals, have conflicting interests regarding investment protection, Crystal shows. Many American firms, under siege from overseas competitors, have already expended considerable energy in obtaining trade protection, but they are competing not only with foreign imports but also with locally established foreign-owned firms. American businesses may favor stricter regulation of foreign companies that threaten their bottom line, but they also consider their own interests as global investors subject to retaliatory protection in other countries. Restrictions on "foreign" investment, it seems, are not so attractive when they are imposed by other countries.Unwanted Company examines the different ways in which important U.S. industries (including semiconductors, automobiles, steel, consumer electronics, telecommunications, and airlines) reacted to this new challenge. It focuses on the political responses of U.S.-owned firms to how Washington ought to regulate foreign direct investment and how it ought to treat foreign-owned firms in the United States. Some industries welcomed (or at least didn't oppose) foreign investment, whereas others sought restrictive and discriminatory policies. Crystal demonstrates how the nature of the domestic political environment shapes the translation of economic interests into policy preferences.
A scientist with a revolutionary cure for AIDS is incarcerated without explanation. Valuable artifacts are mysteriously misplaced by a prominent archaeological institution. Three celebrated astronauts perish in a suspicious fire after voicing their criticism of the US space program. Yet our world’s most powerful agencies hastily dispel these alarming reports as conspiracy theories, and bury them in padlocked archives. The fact is that a suppression syndrome exists in our society. Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries exposes the startling degree of truth behind the rumors. Jonathan Eisen has collected over forty intriguing stories of scientific cover-ups and programs of misinformation concocted to conceal some of the most phenomenal innovations in mankind’s history. These no-holds-barred accounts force us to confront the naiveté—and danger—of trusting our academic and political leaders to act always for the common good. Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries presents documented evidence that corporate self-interest, scientific arrogance, and political savvy have contrived to keep us in the dark about technological breakthroughs or interplanetary contact that may shift the current balance of power. Prepare yourself for a revealing look at the research and development to which we’ve been denied access. Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries begins by examining the ties that bind the medical establishment to powerful pharmaceutical corporations. Then it details the struggle of the independent research against Orthodox Science and its code of conduct, the Scientific Method. Next, the book investigates the cover-up of information concerning UFOs and extraterrestrial life that’s certain to make you reconsider what you thought was science fiction. The final section discusses just a few of the numerous alternate energy resources and fuel savers that, if put on the market today, would soon run the fossil fuel monopolies out of business.
In his farewell address, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation of the perils of the military-industrial complex. But as Jonathan Herzog shows in this insightful history, Eisenhower had spent his presidency contributing to another, lesser known, Cold War collaboration: the spiritual-industrial complex.This fascinating volume shows that American leaders in the early Cold War years considered the conflict to be profoundly religious; they saw Communism not only as godless but also as a sinister form of religion. Fighting faith with faith, they deliberately used religious beliefs and institutions as part of the plan to defeat the Soviet enemy. Herzog offers an illuminating account of the resultant spiritual-industrial complex, chronicling the rhetoric, the programs, and the policies that became its hallmarks. He shows that well-known actions like the addition of the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance were a small part of a much larger and relatively unexplored program that promoted religion nationwide. Herzog shows how these efforts played out in areas of American life both predictable and unexpected--from pulpits and presidential appeals to national faith drives, military training barracks, public school classrooms, and Hollywood epics. Millions of Americans were bombarded with the message that the religious could not be Communists, just a short step from the all-too-common conclusion that the irreligious could not be true Americans.Though the spiritual-industrial complex declined in the 1960s, its statutes, monuments, and sentiments live on as bulwarks against secularism and as reminders that the nation rests upon the groundwork of religious faith. They continue to serve as valuable allies for those defending the place of religion in American life.
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