Liturgical Power: Between Economic and Political Theology
Author: Nicholas Heron File Type: pdf Is Christianity exclusively a religious phenomenon, which must separate itself from all things political, or do its concepts actually underpin secular politics? To this question, which animated the twentieth-century debate on political theology, Liturgical Power advances a third alternative. Christian anti-politics, Heron contends, entails its own distinct conception of politics. Yet this politics, he argues, assumes the form of what today we call administration, but which the ancients termed economics. The books principal aim is thus genealogical it seeks to understand our current conception of government in light of an important but rarely acknowledged transformation in the idea of politics brought about by Christianity. This transformation in the idea of politics precipitates in turn a concurrent shift in the organization of power an organization whose determining principle, Heron contends, is liturgy--understood in the broad sense as public service. Whereas until now only liturgys acclamatory dimension has made the concept available for political theory, Heron positions it more broadly as a technique of governance. What Christianity has bequeathed to political thought and forms, he argues, is thus a paradoxical technology of power that is grounded uniquely in service. **
Author: Seth Lerer
File Type: pdf
What does it mean to have an emotional response to poetry and music? And, just as important but considered less often, what does it mean not to have such a response? What happens when lyric utteranceswhich should invite consolation, revelation, and connectionsomehow fall short of the listeners expectations? As Seth Lerer shows in this pioneering book, Shakespeares late plays invite us to contemplate that very question, offering up lyric as a displaced and sometimes desperate antidote to situations of duress or powerlessness. Lerer argues that the theme of lyric misalignment running throughout The Tempest, The Winters Tale, Henry VIII, and Cymbeline serves a political purpose, a last-ditch effort at transformation for characters and audiences who had lived through witch-hunting, plague, regime change, political conspiracies, and public executions. A deep dive into the relationship between aesthetics and politics, this book also explores what Shakespearean lyric is able to recuperate for these victims of history by virtue of its disjointed utterances. To this end, Lerer establishes the concept of mythic lyricism an estranging use of songs and poetry that functions to recreate the past as present, to empower the mythic dead, and to restore a bit of magic to the commonplaces and commodities of Jacobean England. Reading against the devotion to form and prosody common in Shakespeare scholarship, Lerers account of lyric utterances vexed role in his late works offers new ways to understand generational distance and cultural change throughout the playwrights oeuvre. **
Author: Frederik Coene
File Type: pdf
The Caucasus is one of the most complicated regions in the world with many different peoples and political units, differing religious allegiances, and frequent conflicts, and where historically major world powers have clashed with each other. Until now there has been no single book for those wishing to learn about this complex region. This book fills the gap, providing a clear, comprehensive introduction to the Caucasus, which is suitable for all readers. It covers the geography the historical development of the region economics politics and government population religion and society culture and traditions alongside its conflicts and international relations. Written throughout in an accessible style, it requires no prior knowledge of the Caucasus. The book will be invaluable for those researching specific issues, as well as for readers needing a thorough introduction to the region.
Author: Irving B. Weiner
File Type: pdf
This second edition of Irving Weiners classic comprehensive, clinician-friendly guide to utilizing the Rorschach for personality description has been revised to reflect both recent modifications in the Rorschach Comprehensive System and new evidence concerning the soundness and utility of Rorschach assessment. It integrates the basic ingredients of structural, thematic, behavioral, and sequence analysis strategies into systematic guidelines for describing personality functioning. It is divided into three parts. Part I concerns basic considerations in Rorschach testing and deals with conceptual and empirical foundations of the inkblot method and with critical issues in formulating and justifying Rorschach inferences. Part II is concerned with elements of interpretation that contribute to thorough utilization of data in a Rorschach protocol the Comprehensive System search strategy the complementary roles of projection and card pull in determining response characteristics and the interpretive significance of structural variables, content themes, test behaviors, and the sequence in which various response characteristics occur. Each of the chapters presents and illustrates detailed guidelines for translating Rorschach findings into descriptions of structural and dynamic aspects of personality functioning. The discussion throughout emphasizes the implications of Rorschach data for personality assets and liabilities, with specific respect to adaptive and maladaptive features of the manner in which people attend to their experience, use ideation, modulate affect, manage stress, view themselves, and relate to others. Part III presents 10 case illustrations of how the interpretive principles delineated in Part II can be used to identify assets and liabilities in personality functioning and apply this information in clinical practice. These cases represent persons from diverse demographic backgrounds and demonstrate a broad range of personality styles and clinical issues. Discussion of these cases touches on numerous critical concerns in arriving at different diagnoses, formulating treatment plans, and elucidating structural and dynamic determinants of behavior.
Author: Sophie Fuller
File Type: pdf
The Idea of Music in Victorian Fiction seeks to address fundamental questions about the function, meaning and understanding of music in nineteenth-century culture and society, as mediated through works of fiction. The eleven essays here, written by musicologists and literary scholars, range over a wide selection of works by both canonical writers such as Austen, Benson, Carlyle, Collins, Gaskell, Gissing, Eliot, Hardy, du Maurier and Wilde, and less-well-known figures such as Gertrude Hudson and Sara Shepherd. Each essay explores different strategies for interpreting the idea of music in the Victorian novel. Some focus on the degree to which scenes involving music illuminate what music meant to the writer and contemporary performers and listeners, and signify musical tastes of the time and the reception of particular composers. Other essays in the volume examine aspects of gender, race, sexuality and class that are illuminated by the deployment of music by the novelist. The result of these wide-ranging approaches to the subject of music and literature is a new network of methodologies for the continuing investigation of the culture and society of nineteenth-century music as reflected in that periods literary output.
Author: Eric G. Wilson
File Type: pdf
In this innovative hybrid of biography, memoir, and criticism, Eric G. Wilson describes how John Keats gave him solace during a bout of mental illness in spring 2012. While on a tour of the principal sites in Keatss liferanging from his London medical school to the small room in Rome where he diedWilson discovered analogies between the poets troubles and his own. He was most struck by Keatss enlivening vision of the soul.For Keats, we dont possess but rather make a soul. We do this by imaginatively transforming our suffering into empathy toward humans and nature alike. Tracking this idea in Keatss tumultuous yet exhilarating life and work, Wilson struggles to envision his depression anew, desperate to overcome the apathy alienating him from his family.How to Make a Soul offers fresh perspectives on Keatss pragmatism, irony, comedy, ethics, and aesthetics, but is above all a lyrical celebration of those galvanizing instances when life springs into art.**ReviewDeeply felt, yet professionally delivered, every chapter breaks down the tumultuous career of the illustrious bard, shining a spotlight on an ode or a sonnet, emphasizing its significance to Keats and its posthumous meaning. Foreword Reviews About the Author ERIC G. WILSON is Thomas H. Pritchard Professor of English at Wake Forest University. His previous books include Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck Why Cant Look Away (2012), Against Happiness In Praise of Melancholy (2009), a Los Angeles Times best seller, and The Mercy of Eternity A Memoir of Depression and Grace (Northwestern, 2010), among others. He and his work have been featured on NBCs Today, UNC-TVs North Carolina Bookwatch, and NPRs All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation, as well as in Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times.
Author: Tom Cubbin
File Type: pdf
Soviet Critical Design is the first monograph to explore the socialist design practice of artistic projecteering, which was developed by the USSRs Senezh Experimental Studio in the 1960s. Tom Cubbin first examines the studio as a site for the development of the design discipline in the optimistic environment of the Soviet Thaw of the 1960s. He then explores how designers adapted to new realities of the Soviet Union of the 1970s and 80s. Over two decades, designers at the studio worked on critical projects that highlighted how the Soviet states treatment of citizens, urban heritage and the environment was manifest in daily life. Drawing on previously unpublished visual material from private archives and also extensive interviews, this book presents a new history of the late socialist period in the USSR, which gives insight into the creative strategies of designers who engaged their practice as a contribution to broader discussions on alternative models for socialist existence. Overall, it argues that artistic projecteering must be read as a utopian activity which privileged the political and ideological over the functional.