This book examines the interrelationship between telecommunications and tourism in shaping the nature of space, place and the urban at the end of the twentieth century. They discuss how these agents are instrumental in the production of homogenous world-spaces, and how htese, in turn, presuppose new kinds of political and cultural identity.Virtual Geographies explores how new communication technologies are being used to produce new geographies and new types of space. Leading contributors from a wide range of disciplines including geography, sociology, philosophy and literatur.
Virtual Geographies is the first detailed study to offer a working definition of cyberpunk within the postmodern force field. Cyberpunk emerges as a new generic cluster within science fiction, one that has spawned many offspring in such domains as film, music, and feminism. Its central features are its adherence to a version of virtual space and a deconstructivist, punk attitude towards (high) culture, modernity, the human body and technology, from computers to prosthetics.The main proponents of cyberpunk are analyzed in depth along with the virtual landscapes they have created - William Gibson’s Cyberspace, Pat Cadigan’s Mindscapes and Neal Stephenson’s Metaverse. Virtual reality is examined closely in all its aspects, from the characteristic narrative constructions employed to the esthetic implications of the ‘virtual sublime’ and its postmodern potential as a discursive mode.With its interdisciplinary approach Virtual Geographies opens up fresh perspectives for scholars interested in the interaction between popular culture and mainstream literature. At the same time, the science fiction fan will be taken beyond the conventional boundaries of the genre into such revitalizing domains as postmodern architecture and literature, and into cutting-edge aspects of science and social thought.
This book is concerned with a central question in contemporary legal theory: how to describe global law? In addressing this question, the book brings together two features that are different and yet connected to one another: the conceptual description of contemporary law on the one hand, and methods of taking concrete perspectives on law on the other hand. The book provides a useful concept for describing global law: thinking of law spatially. It illustrates that space is a concept with the capacity to capture the relationality, dynamics, and hybridity of law. Moreover, this book investigates the role of topological thinking in finding concrete perspectives on law. Legal Spaces offers an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to law.
It is difficult to write brilliantly about humor, more difficult to write engagingly about humor and politics, and more difficult still to write with precision about humor, politics, and art. Revolutionary Beauty is indispensable for understanding the singular genius of John Heartfield, the Weimar era avant-garde virtuoso whose photomontages created a new visual language for destabilizing and ridiculing NazismÕs rise and triumph." ÑAnson Rabinbach, Professor of History at Princeton University and author of The Third Reich Sourcebook "Historically precise and theoretically astute, this is by far the most wide-ranging study of John HeartfieldÕs extraordinary project to date. Sabine Kriebel goes beyond a single oeuvre to unearth, patiently but provocatively, the complex visual imaginary of the Left in the darkest moments of its history." ÑFrederic J. Schwartz, author of Blind Spots: Critical Theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-Century Germany and The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture Before the First World War "This book by Sabine Kriebel fills a void in an exemplary mode of critical cultural scholarship, promising to take a major place in the fields of 20th century photography, mass media, European cultural studies and modern art. I laud the unprecedented depth of analysis in her probing of specific images and their particular relation to ever-changing events in this period. Attention to this book will radiate centripetally, engaging the interest of a new generation of avid and often extra-mural dissenters in this age of new crisis, potentially serving as historic handbook for the Occupy generation."ÑSally Stein, Emerita Professor, UC Irvine Ê
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