Sadomasochism of Everyday Life
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In one form or another, suffering pervades our culture. But why do we torture ourselves in so many areas of everyday life? Why do we work to the point of exhaustion and pain? Why do women put up with men who abuse them (and men put up with women who abuse them)? Why do workers endure terrible bosses? Why do we subject ourselves to terrible service at the bank and in restaurants? In The Sadomasochism of Everyday Life, John Munder Ross, Ph.D, explains why we tolerate these and other familiar situations that cause us pain and suffering and shows how people fall into destructive patterns of behavior that are mutually reinforcing. Surveying American culture from the boardroom to the bedroom, Ross finds that just about everyone is entangled in this cycle. In a fascinating review of sadomasochistic film and literature, Ross traces the history of this phenomenon in popular culture, which indicates our continuing captivation with the dynamics of power and powerlessness....
Read more about: Sadomasochism of Everyday Life »Resisting Representation
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Resisting Representation brings together some of the most provocative essays by leading scholar Elaine Scarry. Through her readings of texts by Hardy, Beckett, Boethius, Thackeray, and others, Scarry examines the ability of language to accommodate conceptions of truth and cognition and also analyses phenomena such as physical pain and physical labour whose materiality might exclude them form reflexes of language. Renowned scholar Elaine Scarry’s book, The Body in Pain, has been called by Susan Sontag “extraordinary…large-spirited, heroically truthful.” The Los Angeles Times called it “brilliant, ambitious, and controversial.” Now Oxford has collected some of Scarry’s most provocative writing. This collection of essays deals with the complicated problems of representation in diverse literary and cultural genres–from her beloved sixth-century philosopher Boethius, through the nineteenth-century novel, to twentieth-century advertising. We often assume that all areas of experience are equally available for representation. On the contrary, these essays present discussions of experiences and concepts that challenge, defeat, or block representation. Physical pain, physical labor,...
Read more about: Resisting Representation »Introducing Cultural Studies
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Ziauddin Sardar’s Introduction to Cultural Studies is nothing less than the title indicates. This lenghty essay merely presents basic concepts that are prevalent in a postmodern discourse between societal values, power relations, and the value placed on cultural “norms” given in various communities. Sardar presents the history of Cultural Studies as a discipline, which begins in a social context, but the analysis of which, takes place by various sociologists, philosophers (primarily Freud, Nietzche, and Hegel), and literary minds. Overall, the essay is enlightening as an introduction, a good preface to the discourse(s) one finds in most disciplines today.
... Read more about: Introducing Cultural Studies »Introducing Media Studies
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Introducing Media Studies explores the complex relationship between the media, ideology, knowledge and power. It provides a scintillating tour of media history and presents a coherent view of the media industry, media theory and methods in media research.
... Read more about: Introducing Media Studies »Why Read Marx Today?
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We could be forgiven for assuming that Marx has nothing left to say to us. Marxist regimes have failed miserably, and with them, it seemed, all reason to take Marx seriously. The fall of the Berlin Wall had enormous symbolic resonance: it was taken to be the fall of Marx as well as of Marxist politics and economics. This book argues that we can detach Marx the critic of current society from Marx the prophet of future society, and that he remains the most impressive critic we have of liberal, capitalist, bourgeois society. It also shows that the value of the “great thinkers” does not depend on their views being true, but on other features such as their originality, insight and systematic vision. On this account too Marx still richly deserves to be read. The fall of the Berlin Wall had enormous symbolic resonance, marking the collapse of Marxist politics and economics. Indeed, Marxist regimes have failed miserably, and with them,...
Read more about: Why Read Marx Today? »One Hundred Years of Socialism
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This book by acclaimed historian Donald Sassoon traces the fortunes of the political parties on the left in Western Europe through the twentieth century. Sassoon charts the course of socialism across fourteen countries, from the Second International to the birth of the welfare state to the student uprisings of the 1960s and beyond. Unique, comprehensive, and “appropriately ambitious” (Los Angeles Times), One Hundred Years of Socialism demonstrates that throughout their history, the fortunes of capitalism and socialism have been inextricably linked. Capitalism may now appear to be triumphant, but how much does it owe to the socialist legacy? Can socialism go global and continue to be a force for change in the twenty-first century?
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