Nicholas Garnham
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198742258
- eISBN:
- 9780191695001
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198742258.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This book approaches the problems raised by the media via a set of arguments with post-modernism and Information Society theory. It argues that the media are important because they raise a set of ...
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This book approaches the problems raised by the media via a set of arguments with post-modernism and Information Society theory. It argues that the media are important because they raise a set of questions central to social and political theory. It focuses on the problem raised by what Kant called the unsocial sociability of human kind. Then, it examines the implications for emancipation of seeing the media as cultural industries within the capitalist market economy; of seeing the media as technologies; of the specialisation of intellectual production and of the separation and increasing social distance between the producers and consumers of symbols. The problem of how the symbolic forms that the media circulate can be assessed is provided. It is argued that evaluation is in practice unavoidable and without some standards that are more than just subjective any criticism of the media's performance is impossible. Via an examination of the debate between the sociology of art and aesthetics the book argues for the ethical foundations of aesthetic judgement and for the establishment of agreed standards of aesthetic judgement via the discourse ethic that underlies the argument of the entire book. Next the book gives a discussion of the media and politics. Hereafter the book returns to the roots of public sphere theory.Less
This book approaches the problems raised by the media via a set of arguments with post-modernism and Information Society theory. It argues that the media are important because they raise a set of questions central to social and political theory. It focuses on the problem raised by what Kant called the unsocial sociability of human kind. Then, it examines the implications for emancipation of seeing the media as cultural industries within the capitalist market economy; of seeing the media as technologies; of the specialisation of intellectual production and of the separation and increasing social distance between the producers and consumers of symbols. The problem of how the symbolic forms that the media circulate can be assessed is provided. It is argued that evaluation is in practice unavoidable and without some standards that are more than just subjective any criticism of the media's performance is impossible. Via an examination of the debate between the sociology of art and aesthetics the book argues for the ethical foundations of aesthetic judgement and for the establishment of agreed standards of aesthetic judgement via the discourse ethic that underlies the argument of the entire book. Next the book gives a discussion of the media and politics. Hereafter the book returns to the roots of public sphere theory.
Greg Walker
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199283330
- eISBN:
- 9780191712630
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199283330.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter looks at Sir Thomas Elyot’s best known work, the magisterial Boke Named the Governor, first published in 1531. It argues that the Boke, rather than being a work of merely general advice ...
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This chapter looks at Sir Thomas Elyot’s best known work, the magisterial Boke Named the Governor, first published in 1531. It argues that the Boke, rather than being a work of merely general advice to noblemen and public servants, was in part also aimed directly at Henry VIII and intended as an extended speculum principis designed to counsel moderation in religious and diplomatic policy, and warn against the dangerous divisions in English society. Many of the examples and ideas discussed thus have a direct contemporary context as well as a more general moral or philosophical one. It is vitally important to read the work in the light of the events of 1531 to understand its full implications.Less
This chapter looks at Sir Thomas Elyot’s best known work, the magisterial Boke Named the Governor, first published in 1531. It argues that the Boke, rather than being a work of merely general advice to noblemen and public servants, was in part also aimed directly at Henry VIII and intended as an extended speculum principis designed to counsel moderation in religious and diplomatic policy, and warn against the dangerous divisions in English society. Many of the examples and ideas discussed thus have a direct contemporary context as well as a more general moral or philosophical one. It is vitally important to read the work in the light of the events of 1531 to understand its full implications.
Martin Dzelzainis
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264706
- eISBN:
- 9780191734557
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264706.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Milton Studies
This chapter discusses Milton and his idea of regicide. It discusses his The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and the concepts of regicide, tyrranicide, and enemy found in his work. Milton's Tenure ...
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This chapter discusses Milton and his idea of regicide. It discusses his The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and the concepts of regicide, tyrranicide, and enemy found in his work. Milton's Tenure asserts that a tyrannical ruler should no longer be regarded as one of the powers ordained by God and may be therefore be resisted like a private person who employs unjust force. The chapter also discusses his political theory and his emerging notion of resistance, including the significance of his method of not naming Charles Stuart as a public enemy or hostis in his Tenure.Less
This chapter discusses Milton and his idea of regicide. It discusses his The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and the concepts of regicide, tyrranicide, and enemy found in his work. Milton's Tenure asserts that a tyrannical ruler should no longer be regarded as one of the powers ordained by God and may be therefore be resisted like a private person who employs unjust force. The chapter also discusses his political theory and his emerging notion of resistance, including the significance of his method of not naming Charles Stuart as a public enemy or hostis in his Tenure.
Melissa E. Sanchez
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199754755
- eISBN:
- 9780199896912
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199754755.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies, Milton Studies
This book demonstrates that if we treat sixteenth- and seventeenth-century erotic literature as part of English political history, both fields of study will look rather different. This important new ...
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This book demonstrates that if we treat sixteenth- and seventeenth-century erotic literature as part of English political history, both fields of study will look rather different. This important new book traces some surprising implications of two early modern commonplaces: first, that love is the basis of political consent and obedience, and second, that suffering is an intrinsic part of love. Rather than dismiss such commonplaces as mere convention, the book uncovers the political import of early modern literature’s fascination with erotic violence. Focusing on representations of masochism, sexual assault, and cross-gendered identification, the book re-examines the work of politically active writers from Philip Sidney to John Milton. It argues that political allegiance and consent appear far less conscious and deliberate than traditional historical narratives allow when Sidney depicts abjection as a source of both moral authority and sexual arousal; when Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare make it hard to distinguish between rape and seduction; when Mary Wroth and Margaret Cavendish depict women who adore treacherous or abusive lovers; when court masques stress the pleasures of enslavement; or when Milton insists that even Edenic marriage is hopelessly pervaded by aggression and self-loathing. The book shows that this literature constitutes an alternate tradition of political theory that acknowledges the irrational and perverse components of power and thereby disrupts more conventional accounts of politics as driven by self-interest, false consciousness, or brute force.Less
This book demonstrates that if we treat sixteenth- and seventeenth-century erotic literature as part of English political history, both fields of study will look rather different. This important new book traces some surprising implications of two early modern commonplaces: first, that love is the basis of political consent and obedience, and second, that suffering is an intrinsic part of love. Rather than dismiss such commonplaces as mere convention, the book uncovers the political import of early modern literature’s fascination with erotic violence. Focusing on representations of masochism, sexual assault, and cross-gendered identification, the book re-examines the work of politically active writers from Philip Sidney to John Milton. It argues that political allegiance and consent appear far less conscious and deliberate than traditional historical narratives allow when Sidney depicts abjection as a source of both moral authority and sexual arousal; when Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare make it hard to distinguish between rape and seduction; when Mary Wroth and Margaret Cavendish depict women who adore treacherous or abusive lovers; when court masques stress the pleasures of enslavement; or when Milton insists that even Edenic marriage is hopelessly pervaded by aggression and self-loathing. The book shows that this literature constitutes an alternate tradition of political theory that acknowledges the irrational and perverse components of power and thereby disrupts more conventional accounts of politics as driven by self-interest, false consciousness, or brute force.
Melissa E. Sanchez
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199754755
- eISBN:
- 9780199896912
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199754755.003.0000
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies, Milton Studies
This introduction outlines the general arguments of the book. First, the chapter outlines the book’s central argument, which is that if we look at love as an emotion that includes a good deal of ...
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This introduction outlines the general arguments of the book. First, the chapter outlines the book’s central argument, which is that if we look at love as an emotion that includes a good deal of suffering, ambivalence, and hostility, then the early modern claim that love is the source of political consent and obedience seems far less ideologically conservative. In particular, it argues that the violent and incoherent libidinal bonds depicted in so much early modern literature require us to reconsider our views of both gender identity and political allegiance in the period. Early modern writers dwelt on the perverse and masochistic side of love in order to explore tensions within English constitutional thought as well as tensions within cultural ideals of masculinity and femininity. This introduction also outlines major claims of the book’s individual chapters.Less
This introduction outlines the general arguments of the book. First, the chapter outlines the book’s central argument, which is that if we look at love as an emotion that includes a good deal of suffering, ambivalence, and hostility, then the early modern claim that love is the source of political consent and obedience seems far less ideologically conservative. In particular, it argues that the violent and incoherent libidinal bonds depicted in so much early modern literature require us to reconsider our views of both gender identity and political allegiance in the period. Early modern writers dwelt on the perverse and masochistic side of love in order to explore tensions within English constitutional thought as well as tensions within cultural ideals of masculinity and femininity. This introduction also outlines major claims of the book’s individual chapters.
Simon During
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823242542
- eISBN:
- 9780823242580
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823242542.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Today democracy has become fundamental. It extends increasingly deeply into everyday life; it grounds and limits our political thought and values. We can't think past or beyond it as a political or ...
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Today democracy has become fundamental. It extends increasingly deeply into everyday life; it grounds and limits our political thought and values. We can't think past or beyond it as a political or even as a social system. This is a sense in which we do indeed live at history's end. But this end is not a happy one, because the democratic system we now live in does not satisfy tests that we can legitimately put to it. In this situation, it is important to come to new terms with the fact that literature, at least until about 1945, was hostile to political democracy in particular. It continually attempted not just to resist democracy but to explore other ways of being democratic than those instituted politically. Today, Against Democracy argues, literature helps us not so much to imagine political and social possibilities beyond democracy as to understand how life might be lived simultaneously in and outside of democratic state capitalism. Drawing on political theory, intellectual history, and the techniques of close reading, Against Democracy offers new accounts of the ethos of refusing democracy, of literary criticism's contribution to that ethos, and of the history of conservative resistances to capitalism and democracy. It also proposes innovative interpretations of a range of writers, including Tocqueville, Disraeli, George Eliot, E. M. Forster, and Saul Bellow.Less
Today democracy has become fundamental. It extends increasingly deeply into everyday life; it grounds and limits our political thought and values. We can't think past or beyond it as a political or even as a social system. This is a sense in which we do indeed live at history's end. But this end is not a happy one, because the democratic system we now live in does not satisfy tests that we can legitimately put to it. In this situation, it is important to come to new terms with the fact that literature, at least until about 1945, was hostile to political democracy in particular. It continually attempted not just to resist democracy but to explore other ways of being democratic than those instituted politically. Today, Against Democracy argues, literature helps us not so much to imagine political and social possibilities beyond democracy as to understand how life might be lived simultaneously in and outside of democratic state capitalism. Drawing on political theory, intellectual history, and the techniques of close reading, Against Democracy offers new accounts of the ethos of refusing democracy, of literary criticism's contribution to that ethos, and of the history of conservative resistances to capitalism and democracy. It also proposes innovative interpretations of a range of writers, including Tocqueville, Disraeli, George Eliot, E. M. Forster, and Saul Bellow.
Victoria Kahn
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226083872
- eISBN:
- 9780226083902
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226083902.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This is a book about the neglected dialogue between several influential twentieth-century theorists of political theology and early modern texts. It focuses on Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Ernst ...
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This is a book about the neglected dialogue between several influential twentieth-century theorists of political theology and early modern texts. It focuses on Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Ernst Kantorowicz, Ernst Cassirer, Walter Benjamin, and Sigmund Freud, and their readings of Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Spinoza. The book argues that the modern critics find in the early modern period a break with an older form of political theology construed as the theological legitimation of the state, a new emphasis on a secular notion of human agency, and, most important, a new preoccupation with the ways art and fiction reoccupy the terrain of religion. In particular, the book argues that poiesis is the missing third term in both early modern and contemporary debates about politics and religion. Poiesis refers to the principle, first advocated by Hobbes and Vico, that we can only know what we make ourselves. This kind of making encompasses both the art of poetry and the secular sphere of human interaction, the human world of politics and history. Attention to poiesis reconfigures the usual terms of the debate and helps us see that the contemporary debate about political theology is a debate about what Hans Blumenberg called “the legitimacy of the modern age.” Against contemporary critics, who are asserting the “permanence of political theology,” the book proposes a critique of political theology and a defense of poetry broadly conceived.Less
This is a book about the neglected dialogue between several influential twentieth-century theorists of political theology and early modern texts. It focuses on Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Ernst Kantorowicz, Ernst Cassirer, Walter Benjamin, and Sigmund Freud, and their readings of Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Spinoza. The book argues that the modern critics find in the early modern period a break with an older form of political theology construed as the theological legitimation of the state, a new emphasis on a secular notion of human agency, and, most important, a new preoccupation with the ways art and fiction reoccupy the terrain of religion. In particular, the book argues that poiesis is the missing third term in both early modern and contemporary debates about politics and religion. Poiesis refers to the principle, first advocated by Hobbes and Vico, that we can only know what we make ourselves. This kind of making encompasses both the art of poetry and the secular sphere of human interaction, the human world of politics and history. Attention to poiesis reconfigures the usual terms of the debate and helps us see that the contemporary debate about political theology is a debate about what Hans Blumenberg called “the legitimacy of the modern age.” Against contemporary critics, who are asserting the “permanence of political theology,” the book proposes a critique of political theology and a defense of poetry broadly conceived.
Kir Kuiken
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823257676
- eISBN:
- 9780823261758
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823257676.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter explores how Samuel Coleridge, in the period between writing the Biographia Literaria and his political treatise The Friend, develops a conception of the imagination that involves an ...
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This chapter explores how Samuel Coleridge, in the period between writing the Biographia Literaria and his political treatise The Friend, develops a conception of the imagination that involves an unconditional act of positing that must be immediately exposed to its own finitude. Closely reading specific passages from both the Biographia and The Friend, the chapter focuses on Coleridge's understanding of the necessity of a political “expedient,” and its connection to his theory of the symbol. The chapter then goes on to argue that Coleridge develops a notion of political sovereignty that, because it is exposed to its own finitude, disarticulates his politics of the symbol, and breaks with traditional conceptions of political theology.Less
This chapter explores how Samuel Coleridge, in the period between writing the Biographia Literaria and his political treatise The Friend, develops a conception of the imagination that involves an unconditional act of positing that must be immediately exposed to its own finitude. Closely reading specific passages from both the Biographia and The Friend, the chapter focuses on Coleridge's understanding of the necessity of a political “expedient,” and its connection to his theory of the symbol. The chapter then goes on to argue that Coleridge develops a notion of political sovereignty that, because it is exposed to its own finitude, disarticulates his politics of the symbol, and breaks with traditional conceptions of political theology.
Andrew Bennett
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719074875
- eISBN:
- 9781781702420
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719074875.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter takes a look at ignorance in modern poetry. Ignorance and authorial nescience is well established as a principle of literary composition, especially in Romantic and post-Romantic ...
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This chapter takes a look at ignorance in modern poetry. Ignorance and authorial nescience is well established as a principle of literary composition, especially in Romantic and post-Romantic writing. The chapter reveals that declarations of authorial ignorance became some form of a rite of passage during the twentieth century, unlike during the last century, where ignorance became something of a mark of pride or a clannish badge of membership. It also examines the various ways in which the question of poetic ignorance appears in the poets' conceptions of their work and their working methods, suggests that poetic ignorance – as it is commonly presented by contemporary poets – has an incisive political charge, and discusses Infantino's political ignorance theory.Less
This chapter takes a look at ignorance in modern poetry. Ignorance and authorial nescience is well established as a principle of literary composition, especially in Romantic and post-Romantic writing. The chapter reveals that declarations of authorial ignorance became some form of a rite of passage during the twentieth century, unlike during the last century, where ignorance became something of a mark of pride or a clannish badge of membership. It also examines the various ways in which the question of poetic ignorance appears in the poets' conceptions of their work and their working methods, suggests that poetic ignorance – as it is commonly presented by contemporary poets – has an incisive political charge, and discusses Infantino's political ignorance theory.
Jane O. Newman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801476594
- eISBN:
- 9780801460883
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801476594.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book offers a reading of Walter Benjamin's notoriously opaque work, Origin of the German Tragic Drama that systematically attends to its place in discussions of the Baroque in Benjamin's day. ...
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This book offers a reading of Walter Benjamin's notoriously opaque work, Origin of the German Tragic Drama that systematically attends to its place in discussions of the Baroque in Benjamin's day. The book recovers Benjamin's relationship to the ideologically loaded readings of the literature and political theory of the seventeenth-century Baroque that abounded in Germany during the political and economic crises of the Weimar years. To date, the significance of the Baroque for Origin of the German Tragic Drama has been glossed over by students of Benjamin, most of whom have neither read it in this context nor engaged with the often incongruous debates about the period that filled both academic and popular texts in the years leading up to and following World War I. The book shows the extent to which Benjamin participated in these debates by reconstructing the literal and figurative history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books that Benjamin analyzes and the literary, art historical and art theoretical, and political theological discussions of the Baroque with which he was familiar. In so doing, it challenges the exceptionalist, even hagiographic, approaches that have become common in Benjamin studies.Less
This book offers a reading of Walter Benjamin's notoriously opaque work, Origin of the German Tragic Drama that systematically attends to its place in discussions of the Baroque in Benjamin's day. The book recovers Benjamin's relationship to the ideologically loaded readings of the literature and political theory of the seventeenth-century Baroque that abounded in Germany during the political and economic crises of the Weimar years. To date, the significance of the Baroque for Origin of the German Tragic Drama has been glossed over by students of Benjamin, most of whom have neither read it in this context nor engaged with the often incongruous debates about the period that filled both academic and popular texts in the years leading up to and following World War I. The book shows the extent to which Benjamin participated in these debates by reconstructing the literal and figurative history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books that Benjamin analyzes and the literary, art historical and art theoretical, and political theological discussions of the Baroque with which he was familiar. In so doing, it challenges the exceptionalist, even hagiographic, approaches that have become common in Benjamin studies.
