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Even though much has been said and written about 9/11, the work developed on this subject has mostly explored it as an unparalleled event, a turning point in history. This book wishes to look instead at how disruptive events promote a network of associations and how people resort to comparison as a means to make sense of the unknown, i.e. to comprehend what seems incomprehensible. In order to effectively discuss the complexity of 9/11, this book articulates different fields of knowledge and perspectives such as visual culture, media studies, performance studies, critical theory, memory studies and literary studies to shed some light on 9/11 and analyze how the event has impacted on American social and cultural fabric and how the American society has come to terms with such a devastating event. A more in-depth study of Don DeLillo’s Falling Man and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close draws attention to the cultural construction of catastrophe and the plethora of cultural products 9/11 has inspired. It demonstrates how the event has been integrated into American culture and exemplifies what makes up the 9/11 imaginary.
Even though much has been said and written about 9/11, the work developed on this subject has mostly explored it as an unparalleled event, a turning point in history. This book wishes to look instead at how disruptive events promote a network of associations and how people resort to comparison as a means to make sense of the unknown, i.e. to comprehend what seems incomprehensible. In order to effectively discuss the complexity of 9/11, this book articulates different fields of knowledge and perspectives such as visual culture, media studies, performance studies, critical theory, memory studies and literary studies to shed some light on 9/11 and analyze how the event has impacted on American social and cultural fabric and how the American society has come to terms with such a devastating event. A more in-depth study of Don DeLillo’s Falling Man and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close draws attention to the cultural construction of catastrophe and the plethora of cultural products 9/11 has inspired. It demonstrates how the event has been integrated into American culture and exemplifies what makes up the 9/11 imaginary.
"We are living in Machiavellian times, argues Nathan Crick in The Way to Hell: Machiavelli for Catastrophic Times. Just as Machiavelli warned in the closing chapter of the Prince, a foreboding sense of catastrophe encroaches upon our daily lives from every corner - political, cultural, environmental, and viral, forces not unlike the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that were familiar characters in the daily lives of Machiavelli's Renaissance contemporaries, and which feature in the headlines that greet us every morning. Where catastrophe looms, Machiavelli inevitably follows. Drawing from the insights contained in Machiavelli's collected works, Crick interprets Machiavelli's political thought by first applying it to his own time and then our own, exploring the different paths we might choose when trying to avoid the hellish outcomes - environmental, economic, and political-that feel as if they are increasingly inevitable. Here Crick explores key questions in Machiavelli's writing with pragmatic sensibility and an open mind. When is force and fraud necessary to defend democracy? Is cruelty ever justified? When does social protest slip into violent revolution? What is the relationship between politics and propaganda? Can we have both good and effective leaders in times of crisis? And how does catastrophe bring out the comedy and tragedy of life? In our effort to avoid the way to Hell, we must confront difficult questions and make hard choices. The Way to Hell contributes not only to our understanding of Machiavelli but to our ability to meet the challenges ahead with forethought and courage"--
Earthquake and the Invention of America: The Making of Elsewhere Catastrophe explores the role of earthquakes in shaping the deep timeframes and multi-hemispheric geographies of American literary history. Spanning the ancient world to the futuristic continents of speculative fiction, the earthquake stories assembled here together reveal the emergence of a broadly Western cultural syndrome that became an acute national fantasy: elsewhere catastrophe, an unspoken but widely prevalent sense that catastrophe is somehow "un-American." Catastrophe must be elsewhere because it affirms the rightness of "here" where conquest, according to the syndrome's logic, did not happen and is not occurring. The psychic investment in elsewhere catastrophe coalesced slowly, across centuries; varieties of it can be found in various European traditions of the modern. Yet in its most striking modes and resonances, elsewhere catastrophe proves fundamental to the invention of US-America--which is why earthquake, as the exemplary elsewhere catastrophe, is the disaster that must always happen far away or be forgotten. The book's eight chapters and epilogue range from Plato to the Puritans, from El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Voltaire to Herman Melville and N.K. Jemisin, examining along the way the seismic imaginings of Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, and Jose Martí, among other writers. At the core of the book's inquiries are the earthquakes, historical and imagined, that act as both a recurrent eruptive force and a provocation for disparate modes of critical engagement with the long and catastrophic history of the Americas.
This book investigates the notion of silence as both an oppressing instrument and a powerful tool of resistance under the lenses and practices of cultural production. Taking a transdisciplinary and transcultural approach to the study of creative and cultural practices, the chapters ask how cultural production is dealing with surges of oppressive regimes, censorship, and fake news, and which cultural processes are implied in silencing as well in giving voice to, in erasing, and in producing small and grand narratives. The book reaches beyond dominant instrumental views of contemporary cultural practice to understand culture not only as an expedient to conduct social policy but also as a diagnostic tool and a vernacular space of giving voice to the many small narratives that make the world we live in. Offering an introduction to an underrepresented area of cultural studies, this truly interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to scholars of cultural studies, cultural history, media studies, politics, visual studies, communication studies, history, and literature.
A cultural history of gigantism in architecture and digital culture, from the Eiffel Tower to the World Trade Center. The gigantic is everywhere, and gigantism is manifest in everything from excessively tall skyscrapers to globe-spanning digital networks. In this book, Henriette Steiner and Kristin Veel map and critique the trajectory of gigantism in architecture and digital culture—the convergence of tall buildings and networked infrastructures—from the Eiffel Tower to One World Trade Center. They show how these two forms of gigantism intersect in the figure of the skyscraper with a transmitting antenna on its roof, a gigantic building that is also a nodal point in a gigantic digital infrastructure. Steiner and Veel focus on two paradigmatic tower sites: the Eiffel Tower and the Twin Towers of the destroyed World Trade Center (as well as their replacement, the One World Trade Center tower). They consider, among other things, philosophical interpretations of the Eiffel Tower; the design and destruction of the Twin Towers; the architectural debates surrounding the erection of One World Trade Center on the Ground Zero site; and such recent examples of gigantism across architecture and digital culture as Rem Koolhaas's headquarters for China Central TV and the phenomenon of the “tech giant.” Examining the cultural, architectural, and media history of these towers, they analyze the changing conceptions of the gigantism that they represent, not just as physical structures but as sites for the projection of cultural ideas and ideals.
Collective Securitisation and Security Governance in the European Union presents an integrated theory of collective securitisation – a theoretical foundation for explaining how the process of collective securitisation sustains and makes effective an identifiable system of regional security governance. The volume demonstrates the empirical utility of collective securitisation in the EU security space through a set of structured case studies focusing on the collective securitisation of terrorism, cyberspace, migration, energy, health and climate change. The contributions to this collection address three questions: Under what conditions does collective securitisation occur? How does collective securitisation affect the scope and domains of EU security governance? And how does collective securitisation explain the emergence of the EU system of security governance? This volume breaks new ground in the field of EU security studies and provides a theoretical orientation that contributes to our understanding of how and why the EU has developed as a security actor in the 21st century. Developing and testing the theory of collective securitisation with reference to some of the most pressing contemporary security issues, Collective Securitisation and Security Governance in the European Union will be of great interest to scholars of the European Union and Security Studies. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.
This book analyses the extent and the modalities of the securitization of asylum-seekers and refugees in the EU. It argues that the development of the EU asylum policy, far from 'securitizing' asylum-seekers and refugees, has led to the strengthening and codification of several rights for these two categories of persons. However, the securitization of terrorism and the links that have been constructed between asylum, irregular migration and terrorism in the wake of the various terrorist attacks that have taken place in Europe in the last few years have had a significant impact on the ability of asylum-seekers to gain access to asylum systems in the EU. From a theoretical point of view, the book develops an original analytical framework that draws upon and further develops security studies – more precisely securitization theory – by connecting it to the literature on policy venues and venue-shopping. It therefore makes a significant contribution to the debates on both securitization and migration. Empirically examining the entire development of the EU’s policy towards asylum-seekers and refugees, from its origins in 1993, this book will be of great interest to students of European and EU politics, refugees, migration, security, terrorism and counter-terrorism, security studies and International Relations.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. After the death of Osama Bin Laden and the demise of Al Qaeda, the EU is increasingly threatened by new jihadi terrorist groups such as ISIS, as exemplified by recent terror attacks on Paris, Brussels, Nice, Berlin and Manchester. This book investigates the role of the EU in dealing with such groups as part of its counter-terrorism efforts, by outlining the increasing role of the EU as an external counter-terrorism actor.
In Evacuation, Peter Adey examines the politics, aesthetics, and practice of moving people and animals from harm during emergencies. He outlines how the governance and design of evacuation are recursive, operating on myriad political, symbolic, and affective levels in ways that reflect and reinforce social hierarchies. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, from the retrieval of wounded soldiers from the battlefield during World War I and escaping the World Trade Center on 9/11 to the human and animal evacuations in response to the 2009 Australian bushfires and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Adey demonstrates that evacuation is not an equal process. Some people may choose not to move while others are forced; some may even be brought into harm through evacuation. Often the poorest, racialized, and most marginalized communities hold the least power in such moments. At the same time, these communities can generate compassionate, creative, and democratic forms of care that offer alternative responses to crises. Ultimately, Adey contends, understanding the practice of evacuation illuminates its importance to power relations and everyday governance.