The Political Forms of Modern Society
Title | The Political Forms of Modern Society PDF eBook |
Author | Claude Lefort |
Publisher | MIT Press |
Pages | 353 |
Release | 1986-08-26 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 0262620545 |
Claude Lefort is one of the leading social and political theorists in France today. This anthology of his most important work published over the last four decades makes his writing widely accessible to an English-speaking audience for the first time. With exceptional skill Lefort combines the analysis of contemporary political events with a sensitivity to the history of political thought. His critical account of the development of bureaucracy and totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is a timely contribution to current debates about the nature and shortcomings of these societies. His incisive analyses of Marx's theory of history and concept of ideology provide the backdrop for a highly original account of the role of symbolism in modern societies. While critical of many traditional assumptions and doctrines, Lefort develops a political position based on a reappraisal of the idea of human rights and a reconsideration of what "democracy" means today. The Political Forms of Modern Society is a major contribution to contemporary social and political theory. The volume includes a substantial introduction that describes the context of Lefort's writings and highlights the central themes of his work.
The Philosophy of Claude Lefort
Title | The Philosophy of Claude Lefort PDF eBook |
Author | Bernard Flynn |
Publisher | Northwestern University Press |
Pages | 328 |
Release | 2005 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 0810121069 |
This study of Claude Lefort offers an account of Lefort's accomplishment - its unique merits, its relation to political philosophy within the Continental tradition, and its great relevance today.
The Legitimacy of Modern Democracy
Title | The Legitimacy of Modern Democracy PDF eBook |
Author | Pedro T. Magalhães |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 203 |
Release | 2020-12-30 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1351654004 |
By re-examining the political thought of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen, this book offers a reflection on the nature of modern democracy and the question of its legitimacy. Pedro T. Magalhães shows that present-day elitist, populist and pluralist accounts of democracy owe, in diverse and often complicated ways, an intellectual debt to the interwar era, German-speaking, scholarly and political controversies on the problem(s) of modern democracy. A discussion of Weber’s ambivalent diagnosis of modernity and his elitist views on democracy, as they were elaborated especially in the 1910s, sets the groundwork for the study. Against that backdrop, Schmitt’s interwar political thought is interpreted as a form of neo-authoritarian populism, whereas Kelsen evinces robust, though not entirely unproblematic, pluralist consequences. In the conclusion, the author draws on Claude Lefort’s concept of indeterminacy to sketch a potentially more fruitful way than can be gleaned from the interwar German discussions of conceiving the nexus between the elitist, populist and pluralist faces of modern democracy. The Legitimacy of Modern Democracy will be of interest to political theorists, political philosophers, intellectual historians, theoretically oriented political scientists, and legal scholars working in the subfields of constitutional law and legal theory. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315157566, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license
Social Forms: A Short History of Political Art
Title | Social Forms: A Short History of Political Art PDF eBook |
Author | Christian Viveros-Faune |
Publisher | David Zwirner Books |
Pages | 117 |
Release | 2018-12-20 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 1941701906 |
In an increasingly polarized world, with shifting and extreme politics, Social Forms illustrates artists at the forefront of political and social resistance. Highlighting different moments of crisis and how these are reflected and preserved through crucial artworks, it also asks how to make art in the age of Brexit, Trump, and the refugee and climate crises. In Social Forms: A Short History of Political Art, renowned critic, curator, and writer Christian Viveros-Fauné has picked fifty representative artworks—from Francisco de Goya’s The Disasters of War (1810–1820) to David Hammons’s In the Hood (1993)—that give voice to some of modern art’s strongest calls to political action. In accessible and witty entries on each piece, Viveros-Fauné paints a picture of the context in which each work was created, the artist’s background, and the historical impact of each contribution. At times artists create projects that subvert existing power structures; at other moments they make artwork so powerful it challenges the very fabric of society. Whether it is Picasso’s Guernica and its place at the 1937 Worlds Fair, or Jenny Holzer’s Truisms (1977–1979), which still stop us in our tracks, this book tells the story behind some of the most important and unexpected encounters between artworks and the real worlds they engage with. Never professing to be a definitive history of political art, Social Forms delivers a unique and compelling portrait of how artists during the last 150 years have dealt with changing political systems, the violence of modern warfare, the rise of consumer culture worldwide, the prevalence of inequality and racism, and the challenges of technology.
Aesthetics and Political Culture in Modern Society
Title | Aesthetics and Political Culture in Modern Society PDF eBook |
Author | Henrik Kaare Nielsen |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 269 |
Release | 2018-03-09 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1351123165 |
Do aesthetic appeals to senses and emotions in political debate necessarily marginalise political reason and reduce citizens to consumers – thus dangerously undermining democracy? Or is sensuous-emotional engagement, on the contrary, a basic fact of the political process and a crucial precondition for revitalising democracy? Aesthetics and Political Culture in Modern Society investigates the current interrelationship between aesthetic practice and political practice in Western democracies, focusing on its impact on democratic political culture. Henrik Kaare Nielsen argues that aesthetic interventions in the political process do not by definition undermine politics’ content of reason. Instead, a differentiation must be made between a multiplicity of aesthetic forms of intervention – some of which tend to weaken the political judgement of citizens while other forms tend to stimulate competent judgement. This book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of political science, sociology, media studies, and cultural studies.
A Social Theory of the Nation-State
Title | A Social Theory of the Nation-State PDF eBook |
Author | Daniel Chernilo |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 206 |
Release | 2008-03-25 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1134150121 |
A Social Theory of the Nation-State construes a novel and original social theory of the nation-state. It rejects nationalistic ways of thinking that take the nation-state for granted as much as globalist orthodoxy that speaks of its current and definitive decline.
Institutions in Modern Society
Title | Institutions in Modern Society PDF eBook |
Author | Jeffrey E. Nash |
Publisher | Rowman & Littlefield |
Pages | 246 |
Release | 1993 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 9780930390068 |
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