Bloody and fiery spectacles in American public life, from the 1960s to the present, have given us moments of catastrophe that easily answer to the question of where-were-you-when, events that shape our ways of seeing the Cold War and after. Three such iconic catastrophes are the John F. Kennedy assassination, the response by Ronald Reagan to the Challenger disaster, and 9/11. Why are these spectacles so packed with meaning? They are images of destruction, raising the questions for us of where their power comes from, what sort of history might they construct, what sort of world do they destroy. O Gorman approaches each one as an icon of iconoclasm, as an exemplar of fiery demise that gives us a distinct way to imagine social existence in American life. Here is his argument: in the 50 years since the Kennedy assassination, a period that witnessed the rise of neoliberalism, the most powerful way for publics to see America was in the destruction of its representative symbols, or icons, because in such catastrophes we grasp the impossibility of any image adequate to representing America. If neoliberalism the emergence of free market economics in social philosophy and public policy is linked with iconoclasm, that is, if neoliberalism promotes and benefits from the destruction of icons, we are led to reconsider events that seem to rupture a given world (catastrophes), or are beyond representation (the economy). Market ideology moves to a transcendent realm of invisible principles that can escape accountability and command sacrifice. The core arguments are challenging (indeed, iconoclastic), but this book will put a whole new kind of spotlight on neoliberalism and on the status of the image (and visual representation) in American political culture. The results are stunning: richly interwoven philosophical, theological, and rhetorical traditions turn out to be a basis for a complex and innovative approach to Cold War America, political theory, and visual culture studies."

Through vivid accounts of successful innovators ranging from glass artist Dale Chihuly to physicist Richard Feynman to the country/rock trio the Dixie Chicks, Berns reveals the inner workings of the iconoclast’s mind with remarkable clarity. Each engaging chapter goes on to describe practical actions we can each take to understand and unleash our own potential to think differently—such as seeking out new environments, novel experiences, and first-time acquaintances.

The first comparative, cross-cultural study of medieval illustrated histories that engages in a direct, confrontational dialogue with Byzantine historical memory.

Richard Kearney has produced a new and revised paperback edition of his classic book Poetics of Imagining. This volume offers an accessible account of the major theories of imagination in modern European thought. It analyses and assesses the decisive contributions made to our understanding of the imaginary life of phenomenology (Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard), hermeuneutics (Heidegger, Ricoeur) and post-modernism (Vattimo, Kristeva, Lyotard). Richard Kearney achieves this with a coherent and committed approach which displays his own passionate concern for the claims of imagination in our post-modern world of fragmentation and fracture.

This book presents a psychoanalysis of technoscience. Basic concepts and methods developed by Freud, Jung, Bachelard and Lacan are applied to case histories (palaeoanthropology, classical conditioning, virology). Rather than by disinterested curiosity, technoscience is driven by desire, resistance and the will to control. Moreover, psychoanalysis focusses on primal scenes (Dubois' quest for the missing link, Pavlov's discovery of the conditioned reflex) and opts for triangulation: comparing technoscience to "different scenes" provided by novels, so that Dubois's work is compared to missing link novels by Verne and London and Pavlov's experiments with Skinner's Walden Two, while virology is studied through the lens of viral fiction.

No organization can survive without iconoclasts -- innovators who single-handedly upturn conventional wisdom and manage to achieve what so many others deem impossible. Though indispensable, true iconoclasts are few and far between. In Iconoclast, neuroscientist Gregory Berns explains why. He explores the constraints the human brain places on innovative thinking, including fear of failure, the urge to conform, and the tendency to interpret sensory information in familiar ways. Through vivid accounts of successful innovators ranging from glass artist Dale Chihuly to physicist Richard Feynman to country/rock trio the Dixie Chicks, Berns reveals the inner workings of the iconoclast's mind with remarkable clarity. Each engaging chapter goes on to describe practical actions we can each take to understand and unleash our own potential to think differently -- such as seeking out new environments, novel experiences, and first-time acquaintances. Packed with engaging stories, science-based insights, potent practices, and examples from a startling array of disciplines, this engaging book will help you understand how iconoclasts think and equip you to begin thinking more like an iconoclast yourself.