Storming Heaven
Price: $29.95
Storming Heaven is the first comprehensive survey of Italian autonomist theory, from its origins in the anti-stalinist and workerist left of the 1950s to its heyday twenty years later. Autonomist marxism was a political tendency which privileged themes – self-organisation, construction of identity, grassroots politics, subjects in struggle – which in many ways can be seen as the precursor of today’s debates around social movements and popular direct action protest. Emphasizing the dynamic nature of class struggle as the distinguishing feature of autonomist thought, Wright explores the manner in which its understanding of class politics developed alongside emerging social movements.Offering a critical and historical exploration of the tendency’s emergence in postwar Italy, Storming Heaven moves beyond the crisis of traditional analytical frameworks on the left, and assesses the strengths and limitations of autonomist marxism as first developed by Antonio Negri, Mario Tronti, Sergio Bologna and others. Steve Wright has taught politics and European studies – on and off – at a number of Australian universities since 1980....
Read more about: Storming Heaven »Regime Unchanged
Price: $16.95
This is a magnificent expose of the lies that propelled the criminal attack on Iraq.’ John Pilger ‘As the controversy over the war and its aftermath deepens, this is an immediate, detailed and illuminating analysis that brings together a remarkable range of material. Milan Rai does us all a service by providing so much of the evidence that is fuelling that controversy.’ Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies, Bradford University ‘Milan Rai is one of the wisest war resisters of our time … Now more than ever, we rely on his reasoning and integrity.’ Kathy Kelly, Co-Founder, Voices in the Wilderness US Milan Rai’s previous book became an international bestseller in the run-up to war. Regime Unchanged picks up where War Plan Iraq left off: it is a shocking, brilliantly persuasive account of the conflict and its aftermath that is essential reading for anyone who cares about peace and democracy. Regime Unchanged shows how the US government has involved itself in a political quagmire in Iraq that threatens to evolve into a long and bloody conflict....
Read more about: Regime Unchanged »Marxism and Media Studies
Price: $19.95
Although media studies is a popular academic discipline, there are remarkably few books that analyse it from a specifically Marxist perspective. Mike Wayne’s book is ideal for all students of media studies who are interested in bringing a radical political methodology to bear on their work. He presents an accessible guide to key Marxist concepts and shows how to apply them to contemporary cultural analysis. Drawing on Marx, Lukacs, Gramsci, Habermas, Jameson and other writers, this book provides a comprehensive exposition of the key concepts required for a Marxist analysis of the media and current cultural trends. Retooling and redeeming such concepts as class, mode of production, culture industries, the state, base-superstructure, ideology, hegemony, knowledge and social interests, and commodity fetishism, this book ranges across film, television, the internet and print media.The analysis is carefully grounded in case studies ranging from digital file swapping to Disney, from reality TV show Big Brother to the spirits and spectres in such films as The Others,...
Read more about: Marxism and Media Studies »Queen's Conjurer
Price: $16.00
A fascinating portrait of one of the most brilliant, complex, and colorful figures of the Renaissance. Although his accomplishments were substantial – he became a trusted confidante to Queen Elizabeth I, inspired the formation of the British Empire, and plotted voyages to the New World – John Dee’s story has been largely lost to history. Beyond the political sphere his intellectual pursuits ranged from the scientific to the occult. His mathematics anticipated Isaac Newton by nearly a century, while his mapmaking and navigation were critical to exploration. He was also obsessed with alchemy, astrology, and mysticism. His library was one of the finest in Europe, a vast compendium of thousands of volumes. Yet, despite his powerful position and prodigious intellect, Dee died in poverty and obscurity, reviled and pitied as a madman. Benjamin Woolley tells the engrossing story of the rise and fall of this remarkable man, who wielded great influence during the pivotal era when the age of superstition collided with the new world of science and reason....
Read more about: Queen’s Conjurer »Media Unlimited
Price: $25.00
This provocative new exploration of our media-saturated lives is a worthy successor to Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media. Everyone knows that the media is all around us, but no one quite understands its effect on our lives. Critics and analysts focus on this show or that celebrity, but they miss the true import of our total immersion in a fast-moving sea of sounds and images. As he did with television in Inside Prime Time and with the culture wars in The Twilight of Common Dreams, Todd Gitlin once again recasts the world we think we know. In Media Unlimited, a remarkable and original look at our media-saturated, speed-addicted world, he makes us stare, as if for the first time, at the biggest picture of all. Ranging from video games to elevator music, action movies to reality shows, punditry to Internet exhibitionists, Gitlin evokes a world of relentless sensation and nonstop stimulus. Far from signaling a “new information age” or a rescue from passivity,...
Read more about: Media Unlimited »Freedom in Chains
Price: $19.95
Governments are bigger and more powerful than ever, while a citizen’s ability to control his or her own life has never been less effective. Bovard shows how the State threatens to destroy the individual in order to preserve the belief that any government is superior to the citizen. Bovard asks how we got to this point and answers with a thoughtful look at the history of governmental control from ancient times to the present, peppered throughout with observations on our present day, out of control governmental regulatory commissions and all-confiscating IRS.
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