This book is about experiences of personal chaos and their relationship to creativity. It presents evidence that creativity emerges where it seems totally unlikely, in things and places which are not usually associated with it: catastrophe, utter hopelessness and desperation, grief and depression, social oppression and injustice, failure and boredom. All these are chaotically disruptive of what we usually call 'quality of life'. In fact, they are different kinds of chaos, which represents the effective reversal of human meanings, thus bringing home the limitations of simple theorising. In this book the author concentrates on ways in which chaos impels us to make new kinds of sense of life, and to start living in a world which we experience as authentically different from whatever went before. This is chaos as a sustaining presence which is essential for life as it alone permits real change to take place.

This excellent book remaps the limits and possibilities of change, clearly shifting the focus from outmoded debates on agency and structure to new practice-based discourses on agency and change. Offering readers a selective and critical review of key literature and empirical research, it will help students contextualize this complex subject area and independently evaluate future prospects for effective change agent roles in organizations Presenting an interdisciplinary exploration of competing discourses, the book uses two overarching conceptual continua: centred agency-decentred agency and systems-processes, thereby allowing a more intensive focus on agency and change. Well-written with challenging content, this book is essential reading for those interested in the origins, development and future prospects for change agency in an organizational world characterized by increasing complexity, risk and uncertainty.

Winner of the IAJS Book Award 2023 for 'Best Edited Book' Winner of the 2023 Gradiva Award for 'Best Edited Book' This volume explores Jung’s theories in relation to the concept of Other and in conjunction with the lived experience of it, while examining current events and cultural phenomena through the lens of Jungian and post-Jungian psychology, sociology, literature, film and philosophy. The contributors examine global expressions of these various viewpoints, disciplines and life experiences and how cultural, political and sociological complexes evoke challenges as well as invitations to the idea of the Other from intersecting and convergent perspectives. The Spectre of the Other in Jungian Psychoanalysis is timely and important reading for Jungian and post-Jungian analysts, therapists, academics, students and creatives.

This engaging work tells the story of democracy through the perspective of tragic drama. It shows how the ancient tales of greatness and its loss point to the potential dangers of democracy then and now. Greek Tragedy dramatized a variety of stories, characters, and voices drawn from reality, especially from those marginalized by Athens's democracy. It brought up dissident figures through its multivocal form, disrupting the perception of an ordered reality. Today, this helps us grasp the reality of Athenian democracy, that is, a system steeped in patriarchy, slavery, warmongering, and xenophobia. The book reads through two renditions of Aeschylus' Suppliants as democratic texts for the twenty-first century, to show how such multivocal dramas actually address not only the pitfalls of our contemporary democracy, but also a range of environmental, security, socio-economic, and political dilemmas that afflict democratic politics today. Written in a very accessible manner, Greek Tragedy and Contemporary Democracy is a lively book that will appeal to any political science and international relations student interested in issues of democracy, governance, democratic peace, and democratic theory.

In this illuminating new study of Mozart's operas, Nicholas Till shows that the composer was not a "divine idiot" but an artist whose work was informed by the ideas and discoveries of his time. Examining the dramatic emergence of a modern society in eighteenth-century Austria, Till reappraises the history and meaning of the Enlightenment and Mozart's role within it. Book jacket.

The requisite guide to Blake's ideas and symbols

A great philosopher will change the way you think about your life. For most of human history, religion provided a clear explanation of life and death. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries new ideas — from psychiatry to evolution to Communist — seemed to suggest that our fate was now in our own hands. We would ourselves become God. This is the theme of a remarkable new book by one of the world's greatest lving philosophers. It is a brilliant and frightening look at the problems and opportunities of a world coming to grips with humankind's now solitary, unaided place in the universe. Gray takes two major examples: the belief that the science-backed Communism of the new USSR could reshape the planet, and the belief among a group of Edwardian intellectuals — popularized through mediums and automatic writing — that there was a non-religious form of life after death. Gray presents an extraordinary cast of philosophers, journalists, politicians, charlatans and mass murderers, all of whom felt driven by a specifically scientific and modern world view. He raises a host of fascinating questions about what it means to be human. The implications of Gray's book will haunt its readers for the rest of their lives.