This title was first published in 2000. A 'generous soul' with 'ideas of genius' but a 'puerile idolater - Marx and his legacy remains an important focus for philosophers, economists, political scientists and others, but is Marxism dead and best forgotten, or is its relevance undiminished? Echoes of Utopia sets out to explore the relevance of Marxism in the contemporary world, through economic, political and human dimensions. Combining philosophical analysis of central economic and political concepts with an historically based examination of the unfolding of the twentieth century global economy, the author explores the work of Marx as well as two of his most trenchant critics, Schumpeter and Weil. While critical of that central pillar of Marxism, the labour theory of value,the author concludes that some of Marx's ideas, especially those concerning over-production, under-consumption, crises, planning, and international democratic governance, are more relevant than ever in today's world of economic, political and environmental turbulence.

Singing Utopia is an original study of voice in musical theatre. Rather than focusing on how actors sing or analysing voices using established approaches found in opera studies, this book offers readers ways to understand musical theatre voices from a cultural perspective. It argues that musical theatre singing allows listeners and audiences to escape their everyday lives; and that voices can 'be' utopian. It then considers what this means and uncovers some paradoxes and difficulties in this idea. Introducing a new set of terms, it provides a way to listen to, think about, and even perform, voice in popular musical theatre.

A translation of a classic interpretation of Spain's national novel, first published in Spanish in 1976 (expanded from the 1948 version). Argues that Don Quixote was not nearly as quixotic to his original 16th century readers as he is today. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This interdisciplinary collection explores the diverse relationships between the frequently ignored and inherently ambiguous hinterlands and their manifestations in literature and culture. Moving away from perspectives that emphasize the marginality of hinterlands and present them as devoid of agency and “cultural currency”, this collection assembles a series of original essays using various modes of engagement to reconceptualize hinterlands and highlight their semiotic complexity. Apart from providing a reassessment of hinterlands in terms of their geocultural significance, this book also explores hinterlands through such concepts as nostalgia, heterotopia, identity formation, habitation, and cognitive mapping, with reference to a wide geographical field. Literary and filmic revisions of familiar hinterlands, such as the Australian outback, Alberta prairie, and Arizona desert, are juxtaposed in this volume with representations of such little-known European hinterlands as Lower Silesia and Ukraine, and the complicated political dimension of First World War internment camps is investigated with regard to Kapuskasing (Ontario). Rural China and the Sussex Downs are examined here as writers’ retreats. Inner-city hinterlands in Haiti, India, Morocco, and urban New Jersey take on new meaning when contrasted with the vast hinterlands of megacities like Johannesburg and Los Angeles. The spectrum of diverse approaches to hinterlands helps to reinforce their multilayered and multivocal nature as spaces that defy clear categorization.

The first in-depth study in English to analyze post-utopian historical novels written during and in the wake of brutal Latin American dictatorships and authoritarian regimes During neoliberal reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, murder, repression, and exile had reduced the number of intellectuals and Leftists, and many succumbed to or were coopted by market forces and ideologies. The opposition to the economic violence of neoliberal projects lacked a united front, and feasible alternatives to the contemporary order no longer seemed to exist. In this context, some Latin American literary intellectuals penned post-utopian historical novels as a means to reconstruct memory of significant moments in national history. Through the distortion and superimposition of distinct genres within the narratives, authors of post-utopian historical novels incorporated literary, cultural, and political traditions to expose contemporary challenges that were rooted in unresolved past conflicts. In Anything but Novel, Jennie Irene Daniels closely examines four post-utopian novels--César Aira's Ema, la cautiva, Rubem Fonseca's O Selvagem da Ópera, José Miguel Varas's El correo de Bagdad, and Santiago Páez's Crónicas del Breve Reino--to make their contributions more accessible and to synthesize and highlight the literary and social interventions they make. Although the countries the novels focus on (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador) differ widely in politics, regime changes, historical precedents, geography, and demographics, the development of a shared subgenre among the literary elite suggests a common experience and interpretation of contemporary events across Latin America. These novels complement one another, extending shared themes and critiques. Daniels argues the novels demonstrate that alternatives exist to neoliberalism even in times when it appears there are none. Another contribution of these novels is their repositioning of the Latin American literary intellectuals who have advocated for the marginalized in their societies. Their work has opened new avenues and developed previous lines of research in feminist, queer, and ethnic studies and for nonwhite, nonmale writers.

For many artists and intellectuals in East Germany, daily life had an undeniably surreal aspect, from the numbing repetition of Communist Party jargon to the fear and paranoia engendered by the Stasi. Echoes of Surrealism surveys the ways in which a sense of the surreal infused literature and art across the lifespan of the GDR, focusing on individual authors, visual artists, directors, musicians, and other figures who have employed surrealist techniques in their work. It provides a new framework for understanding East German culture, exploring aesthetic practices that offered an alternative to rigid government policies and questioned and confronted the status quo.