Download Free Pyropolitics In The World Ablaze Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Pyropolitics In The World Ablaze and write the review.

From books and heretics burnt on the pyres of the Inquisition to self-immolations at protest rallies, from the burning of fossil fuels to inflammatory speech, from the imagery of revolutionary sparks ready to ignite the spirits of the oppressed to car bombings and “scorched earth” policy, fire proves to be an indispensable element of the political. Pyropolitics in the World Ablaze builds upon the scintillating, by turns horrifying and hopeful, images and realities of flames, hearths, sparks, immolations, melting pots, incinerations, and burning in political thought and practices. Relying on classical political theory, theology, philosophy, literature and cinema, as well as an analysis of current events, Michael Marder argues that geo-politics, or the politics of the Earth, has always had an unstable, at once shadowy and blinding, underside—pyro-politics, or the politics of fire. If this obscure double of geopolitics is increasingly dictating the rules of the game today, then it is crucial to learn to speak its language, to discern its manifestations and to project where our world ablaze is heading. This new edition includes recent examples of the uses and accusations of ‘incendiary speech’ both by Donald Trump and by European populist right and exploration of threats of global warming that have now reached a turning point in our collective relation to the dangers and promises of fire .
From the books and heretics burnt on the pyres of the Inquisition to self-immolations at protest rallies, from the massive burning of oil on the global scale to inflammatory speech, from the imagery of revolutionary sparks ready to ignite the spirits of the oppressed to car bombings in the Middle East, fire proves to be an indispensable element of the political. To account for this elemental source of heat and light, Pyropolitics delineates a semantico-discursive field, replete with the literal and metaphorical mentions and uses of fires, flames, sparks, immolations, incinerations, and burning in political theory and practices. Relying on classical political theory, literature, theology, contemporary philosophy, and an analysis of current events, Michael Marder argues that geo-politics, or the politics of the Earth, has always had an unstable, at once shadowy and blinding, underside—pyropolitics, or the politics of fire. If this obscure double of geopolitics is, increasingly, dictating the rules of the game today, then it is crucial to learn to speak its language, to discern its manifestations, and to project where our world ablaze is heading.
An innovative, wide-ranging consideration of the global ecological crisis and its deep philosophical and theological roots. Global crises, from melting Arctic ice to ecosystem collapse and the sixth mass extinction, challenge our age-old belief in nature as a phoenix with an infinite ability to regenerate itself from the ashes of destruction. Moving from antiquity to the present and back, Michael Marder provides an integrated examination of philosophies of nature drawn from traditions around the world to illuminate the theological, mythical, and philosophical origins of the contemporary environmental emergency. From there, he probes the contradictions and deadlocks of our current predicament to propose a philosophy of nature for the twenty-first century. As Marder analyzes our reliance on the image and idea of the phoenix to organize our thoughts about the natural world, he outlines the obstacles in the path of formulating a revitalized philosophy of nature. His critical exposition of the phoenix complex draws on Chinese, Indian, Russian, European, and North African traditions. Throughout, Marder lets the figure of the phoenix guide readers through theories of immortality, intergenerational and interspecies relations, infinity compatible with finitude, resurrection, reincarnation, and a possibility of liberation from cycles of rebirth. His concluding remarks on a phoenix-suffused philosophy of nature and political thought extend from the Roman era to the writings of Hannah Arendt.
Spanning a decade of Michael Marder’s contributions as a public intellectual, Senses of Upheaval documents a period of exceptional global turmoil in intellectual, cultural, technological and political spheres.
Globalization is one of the most contested and (ab)used concepts of our time. Whether one interprets it as a ‘collective illusion’ or as the final stage of capitalism, as ‘uncontrollable multitude’ or as a radical opening of new spaces of freedom, the ‘global age’ represents the conceptual and existential background of our being-in-the-world. But what lies behind this process? What mode of human existence is brought about by the age of technology and ‘global mobilization’? And is it possible to attempt a unitary interpretation of this age that presents itself as both total and pluralistic? This volume rethinks these epochal questions in light of Martin Heidegger’s complex hermeneutics, proposing at the same time that such questions enable the interrogation of some of its most fundamental aspects: the metanarrative of Seinsgeschichte as withdrawal of Being; the structure of human existence within the frame of technology; the relation between humanism and nihilism, as well as politics and technology; the changing character of subjectivity in the ‘age of the world picture’; the mythopoeic force of art and the uprooting of human beings. As this volume shows, interrogating Heidegger’s thought has significant potential for both International Political Theory and also the analysis of specific concepts and dynamics in contemporary international studies, such as the changing character of spatiality, temporality, and subjectivity
The question of energy is among the most vital for the future of humanity and the flourishing of life on this planet. Yet, only very rarely (if at all) do we ask what energy is, what it means, what ends it serves, and how it is related to actuality, meaning-making, and instrumentality. Energy Dreams interrogates the ontology of energy from the first coinage of the word energeia by Aristotle to the current practice of fracking and the popularity of "energy drinks." Its sustained, multi-disciplinary investigation builds a theoretical infrastructure for an alternative energy paradigm. This study unhinges stubbornly held assumptions about energy, conceived in terms of a resource to be violently extracted from the depths of the earth and from certain living beings (such as plants, converted into biofuels), a thing that, teetering on the verge of depletion, sparks off movement and is incompatible with the inertia of rest. Consulting the insights of philosophers, theologians, psychologists and psychoanalysts, economic and political theorists, and physicists, Michael Marder argues that energy is not only a coveted object of appropriation but also the subject who dreams of amassing it; that it not only resides in the dimension of depth but also circulates on the surface; that it activates rest as much as movement, potentiality as much as actuality; and that it is both the means and the end of our pursuits. Ultimately, Marder shows that, instead of being grounded in utopian naïveté, the dreams of another energy—to be procured without devastating everything in existence—derive from the suppressed concept of energy itself.
Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit has been one of the most important works of philosophy since the nineteenth century, while the question of energy has been crucial to life in the twenty-first century. In this book, Michael Marder integrates the two, narrating a story about the trials and tribulations of energy embedded in Hegel’s dialectics. Through an original interpretation of actuality (Wirklichkeit) as energy in the Hegelian corpus, the book provides an exciting lens for understanding the dialectical project and the energy‐starved condition of our contemporaneity. To elaborate this theory, Marder undertakes a meticulous rereading of major parts of the Phenomenology, where the energy deficit of mere consciousness gives way to the energy surplus of self‐consciousness and its self‐delimitation in the domain of reason. In so doing, he denounces the current understanding of energy as pure potentiality, linking this mindset to pollution, profit-driven economies, and environmental crises. Surprising and deeply engaged with its contemporary implications, this book doesn’t simply illuminate aspects of The Phenomenology of Spirit—it provides an entirely new understanding of Hegel’s ideas.
The Anthropocene concept draws attention to the various forms of entanglement of social, political, ecological, biological and geological processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales. The ensuing complexity and ambiguity create manifold challenges to widely established theories, methodologies, epistemologies and ontologies. The contributions to this volume engage with conceptual issues of scale in the Anthropocene with a focus on mediated representation and narrative. They are centered around the themes of scale and time, scale and the nonhuman and scale and space. The volume presents an interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology, geography, political sciences, history and literary, cultural and media studies. Together, they contribute to current debates on the (re-)imagining of forms of human responsibility that meet the challenges created by humanity entering an age of scalar complexity. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003136989
In its early modern form, philosophy gave a decisive impetus to the science and technology that have transformed the planet and brought on the so-called Anthropocene. Can philosophy now help us understand this new age and act within it? The contributors to this volume take a broad historical view as they reflect on the responsibilities and possibilities for philosophy today. The term ‘Anthropocene’ signifies the era of the arrival of human beings as a force that affects global ecosystems in ways that are potentially disastrous for humanity itself, as well as for countless other species. This volume explores whether philosophy has meaningful tasks to fulfill in this unparalleled situation. Do philosophers need to reflect on new topics today? Do they need to think in new ways? Do they need new relationships to their own tradition? And are there concrete actions they should take, over and above philosophical reflection? The contributors to this volume thus take on the question of the relevance and responsibility of philosophy, drawing upon diverse legacies, in the current global situation.
The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology is a go-to resource for cutting-edge research in the field. This two-volume work covers the rich theoretic foundations of the sub-discipline, as well as novel approaches and emerging areas of research that add vitality and momentum to the discipline. Over the course of sixty chapters, the authors featured in this work reach new levels of theoretical depth, incorporating a global scope and diversity of cases. This book explores the broad scope of crucial disciplinary ideas and areas of research, extending its investigation to the trajectories of thought that led to their unfolding. This unique work serves as an invaluable tool for all those working in the nexus of environment and society.