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When confronting twentieth-century political oppression and violence, writers and artists in Portugal and South America have often emphasized the complex relationship between freedom and tyranny. In Seeing Politics Otherwise, Patricia Vieira uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore the interrelation of politics and representations of vision and blindness in Latin American and Iberian literature, film, and art. Vieira's discussion focuses on three literary works: Graciliano Ramos's Memoirs of Prison, Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden, and José Saramago's Blindness, with supplemental analyses of sculpture and film by Ana Maria Pacheco, Bruno Barreto, and Marco Bechis. These artists use metaphors of blindness to denounce the totalizing gaze of dictatorial regimes. Rather than equating blindness with deprivation, Vieira argues that shadows, blindfolds, and blindness are necessary elements for re-imagining the political world and re-acquiring a political voice. Seeing Politics Otherwise offers a compelling analysis of vision and its forcible deprivation in the context of art and political protest.
Visual politics and the aesthetic turn in international relations have emphasized the power of the image in world politics. Postcolonial and decolonial feminist theory shows the urgent need to rethink research and teaching methods. What happens when these concepts converge and such thinking is translated into practice? Engaging with a broad range of topics – the politics of everyday life, health, HIV/AIDS, Africa, post-colonialism, gender/feminist theory, visuality, film, and method – in Seeing Politics Sophie Harman looks at scholars who are pushing the boundaries of how they do research, how they communicate their research to a broader audience, and what counts as scholarship in world politics. Through a detailed exploration of the political process of film production, from inception and co-production to distribution and exhibition, she addresses the tricky transnational relationships, government gatekeeping, and global hierarchies of film governance that control and marginalize the stories and people we see. Fundamentally, Seeing Politics is about how narrative feature film challenges and advances the discipline of international relations, revealing aspects of politics that would otherwise remain unseen and unaddressed. Film is not just a way of communicating research. It is a method that produces research and visibility, advancing research practice and knowledge in international relations. Innovative and compelling, this book is about the politics of seeing, being seen, and what stops us from seeing.
This dissertation analyzes the triangular nexus binding literature, vision and politics in twentieth-century Iberian and Latin American fictional texts that thematize abuses of political power. The project focuses on three key works among these: Brazilian writer Graciliano Ramos's autobiography Memórias do Cárcere , Chilean author Ariel Dorfman's play Death and the Maiden and Portuguese novelist José Saramago's Ensaio sobre a Cegueira . Despite their multifarious aesthetic options, the theme of vision or, more precisely, of a concrete or figurative inability to see, is woven into both into the structure and the imagery of these texts. I interpret the portrayal of sight deprivation in these works as characterized by ambiguity. On the one hand, the main characters are disempowered by their lack of vision, which starkly contrasts with the panoptical view of the authorities. On the other hand, the limiting condition of blindness becomes a productive moment for re-imagining politics.
Prejudice is often not a conscious attitude: because of ingrained habits in relating to the world, one may act in prejudiced ways toward others without explicitly understanding the meaning of one’s actions. Similarly, one may know how to do certain things, like ride a bicycle, without being able to articulate in words what that knowledge is. These are examples of what Alexis Shotwell discusses in Knowing Otherwise as phenomena of “implicit understanding.” Presenting a systematic analysis of this concept, she highlights how this kind of understanding may be used to ground positive political and social change, such as combating racism in its less overt and more deep-rooted forms. Shotwell begins by distinguishing four basic types of implicit understanding: nonpropositional, skill-based, or practical knowledge; embodied knowledge; potentially propositional knowledge; and affective knowledge. She then develops the notion of a racialized and gendered “common sense,” drawing on Gramsci and critical race theorists, and clarifies the idea of embodied knowledge by showing how it operates in the realm of aesthetics. She also examines the role that both negative affects, like shame, and positive affects, like sympathy, can play in moving us away from racism and toward political solidarity and social justice. Finally, Shotwell looks at the politicized experience of one’s body in feminist and transgender theories of liberation in order to elucidate the role of situated sensuous knowledge in bringing about social change and political transformation.
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times
Through vivid portrayals of political activists, this book offers a fresh analysis of why people become involved in politics. Based on interviews with environmental, social justice and pro-life activists, the book argues, contrary to both popular opinion and the main approaches of political science, that active involvement in politics can be deeply fulfilling. The identity construction approach is the core of the book's argument and shows how activists value political involvement for themselves. The book argues against approaches that see politics as an inherently costly or unpleasant activity. In contrast, the identity construction approach sees political activism as enabling activists to become somebody whom they would otherwise have been unable to become. The construction of identity among activists is both moral and about what one wants for oneself, and hence illustrates shortcomings in approaches that divide motivations into either the 'self-interested'or the 'altruistic'.
Examining democracies from a comparative perspective helps us better understand why politics—or, as Harold Lasswell famously said, "who gets what, when, and how"—differ among democracies. American Difference: A Guide to American Politics in Comparative Perspective takes the reader through different aspects of democracy—political culture, institutions, interest groups, political parties, and elections—and, unlike other works, explores how the United States is both different from and similar to other democracies. The fully updated Second Edition has been expanded to include several new chapters and discussion on civil liberties and civil rights, constitutional arrangements, elections and electoral institutions, and electoral behavior. This edition also includes data around the 2016 general election and 2018 midterm election.
From the female soldiers of Abu Ghraib prison to Palestinian women suicide bombers, women and their bodies have been "powerful weapons" in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Kelly Oliver reveals how the media and the George W. Bush administration used metaphors of weaponry to describe women and female sexuality and forge a link between vulnerability and violence. Oliver analyzes the discourse surrounding women, sex, and gender and the use of women to justify America's decision to go to war. She also considers the cultural meaning, or lack of meaning, that lead female soldiers at Abu Ghraib to abuse prisoners "just for fun," and the commitment to death made by women suicide bombers. She examines the pleasure taken in violence and the passion for death and what kind of contexts creates them. Oliver concludes with a diagnosis of our fascination with sex, violence, and death and its relationship with live news coverage and embedded reporting, which naturalizes horrific events and stymies critical reflection.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone—not just for people of color. WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, BookRiot, Library Journal “This is the book I’ve been waiting for.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist Look for the author’s new podcast, The Sum of Us, based on this book! Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis of 2008 to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out? McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare. But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. The Sum of Us is not only a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here but also a heartfelt message, delivered with startling empathy, from a black woman to a multiracial America. It leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game. LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL