The Abyss of Freedom

The Abyss of Freedom

Author: Slavoj Žižek

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9780472066520

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An essay by philosopher Slavoj Zizek, with an English translation of Schelling's beautiful and evocative Ages of the World, second draft


Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom

Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom

Author: Linda M. G. Zerilli

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-11-13

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 022681405X

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In contemporary feminist theory, the problem of feminine subjectivity persistently appears and reappears as the site that grounds all discussion of feminism. In Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom, Linda M. G. Zerilli argues that the persistence of this subject-centered frame severely limits feminists' capacity to think imaginatively about the central problem of feminist theory and practice: a politics concerned with freedom. Offering both a discussion of feminism in its postmodern context and a critique of contemporary theory, Zerilli here challenges feminists to move away from a theory-based approach, which focuses on securing or contesting "women" as an analytic category of feminism, to one rooted in political action and judgment. She revisits the democratic problem of exclusion from participation in common affairs and elaborates a freedom-centered feminism as the political practice of beginning anew, world-building, and judging. In a series of case studies, Zerilli draws on the political thought of Hannah Arendt to articulate a nonsovereign conception of political freedom and to explore a variety of feminist understandings of freedom in the twentieth century, including ones proposed by Judith Butler, Monique Wittig, and the Milan Women's Bookstore Collective. In so doing, Zerilli hopes to retrieve what Arendt called feminism's lost treasure: the original and radical claim to political freedom.


Courting the Abyss

Courting the Abyss

Author: John Durham Peters

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-02-15

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0226662756

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Courting the Abyss updates the philosophy of free expression for a world that is very different from the one in which it originated. The notion that a free society should allow Klansmen, neo-Nazis, sundry extremists, and pornographers to spread their doctrines as freely as everyone else has come increasingly under fire. At the same time, in the wake of 9/11, the Right and the Left continue to wage war over the utility of an absolute vision of free speech in a time of increased national security. Courting the Abyss revisits the tangled history of free speech, finding resolutions to these debates hidden at the very roots of the liberal tradition. A mesmerizing account of the role of public communication in the Anglo-American world, Courting the Abyss shows that liberty's earliest advocates recognized its fraternal relationship with wickedness and evil. While we understand freedom of expression to mean "anything goes," John Durham Peters asks why its advocates so often celebrate a sojourn in hell and the overcoming of suffering. He directs us to such well-known sources as the prose and poetry of John Milton and the political and philosophical theory of John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., as well as lesser-known sources such as the theology of Paul of Tarsus. In various ways they all, he shows, envisioned an attitude of self-mastery or self-transcendence as a response to the inevitable dangers of free speech, a troubled legacy that continues to inform ruling norms about knowledge, ethical responsibility, and democracy today. A world of gigabytes, undiminished religious passion, and relentless scientific discovery calls for a fresh account of liberty that recognizes its risk and its splendor. Instead of celebrating noxious doctrine as proof of society's robustness, Courting the Abyss invites us to rethink public communication today by looking more deeply into the unfathomable mystery of liberty and evil.


Moment of Freedom

Moment of Freedom

Author: Jens Bjørneboe

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781909408371

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The first novel in the acclaimed "History of Bestiality" trilogy. Living high in the Alps in a German principality, our narrator tells us he's dutifully fulfilling his obligations as a Servant of Justice and acting as a daily witness to injustice masquerading as a court of law. One day he notices that the judge is much too engrossed in looking at pornographic photographs showing various other pillars of the town engaged in a variety of sexual activities with minors. The incident propels him on a mental journey back through his life: black-humor fantasies and suicidal drinking binges; the Roman catacombs, warm summer nights in Brooklyn; brothels in Stockholm, his childhood in Norway, and wanderings in Germany. But aside from court records he has been keeping his own long and detailed account of man's cruelty to man in a massive twelve-volume study he calls his History of Bestiality. --


Azadi

Azadi

Author: Arundhati Roy

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 164259380X

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The chant of "Azadi!"—Urdu for "Freedom!"—is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism. Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom—a chasm or a bridge?—the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could. In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times. The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.


Black Metal, Trauma, Subjectivity and Sound

Black Metal, Trauma, Subjectivity and Sound

Author: Jasmine Hazel Shadrack

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2020-12-18

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 178756925X

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This important book weaves together trauma, black metal theory and disability into a story of both pain and freedom. Drawing on her many years as a black metal guitarist, Jasmine Hazel Shadrack uses autoethnography to explore her own experiences of gender-based violence, misogyny and the healing power of performance.


Total Freedom

Total Freedom

Author: Chris Matthew Sciabarra

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2000-11-01

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0271083719

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Building upon his previous books about Marx, Hayek, and Rand, Total Freedom completes what Lingua Franca has called Sciabarra’s "epic scholarly quest" to reclaim dialectics, usually associated with the Marxian left, as a methodology that can revivify libertarian thought. Part One surveys the history of dialectics from the ancient Greeks through the Austrian school of economics. Part Two investigates in detail the work of Murray Rothbard as a leading modern libertarian, in whose thought Sciabarra finds both dialectical and nondialectical elements. Ultimately, Sciabarra aims for a dialectical-libertarian synthesis, highlighting the need (not sufficiently recognized in liberalism) to think of the "totality" of interconnections in a dynamic system as the way to ensure human freedom while avoiding "totalitarianism" (such as resulted from Marxism).


Journey to the Heart of the Abyss

Journey to the Heart of the Abyss

Author: London Shah

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2021-11-16

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0759555060

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The sequel to London Shah's thrilling futuristic mystery The Light at the Bottom of the World, perfect for fans of Illuminae and These Broken Stars Leyla McQueen has finally reunited with her father after breaking him out of Broadmoor, the illegal government prison—but his freedom comes at a terrible cost. As Leyla celebrates his return, she must grapple with the pain of losing Ari. Now separated from the boy who has her heart and labeled the nation’s number one enemy, Leyla must risk illegal travel through unchartered waters in her quest for the truth behind her father's arrest. Across Britain, the fallout from Leyla's actions has escalated tensions between Anthropoid and non-Anthropoid communities, bringing them to an all-time high. And, as Leyla and her friends fight to uncover the startling truths about their world, she discovers her own shocking past—and the horrifying secrets behind her father’s abduction and arrest. But as these long-buried truths finally begin to surface, so, too, do the authorities’ terrible future plans. And if the ever-pervasive fear prevents the people from taking a stand now, the abyss could stay in the dark forever.


Spinoza's Book of Life

Spinoza's Book of Life

Author: Steven B. Smith

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0300128495

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Offering a new reading of Spinoza's masterpiece, Smith asserts that the 'Ethics' is a celebration of human freedom and its attendant joys and responsibilities and should be placed among the great founding documents of the Enlightenment.


Grand Hotel Abyss

Grand Hotel Abyss

Author: Vladimir Safatle

Publisher: Leuven University Press

Published: 2016-02-01

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 9462700621

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Originally published in Portuguese as Grande Hotel AbismoIn the last two decades recognition - arguably one of the most central notions of the dialectical tradition since Hegel - has once again become a crucial philosophical theme. Nevertheless, the new theories of recognition fail to provide room for reflection on transformation processes in politics and morality. This book aims to recover the disruptive nature of the dialectical tradition by means of a severe critique of the dominance of an anthropology of the individual identity in contemporary theories of recognition. This critique implies a thorough rethinking of basic concepts such as desire, negativity, will and drive, with Hegel, Lacan and Adorno being our main guides. The Marxist philosopher György Lukács said that the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, etc.) left us with nothing but negativity towards the state of the world. Their work failed to open up a concrete possibility of practical engagement in this world. All too eager to describe the impasses of reason, the Frankfurt philosphers remained trapped in a metaphorical Grand Hotel Abyss(Grand Hotel Abgrund). It was as living and being guardian of lettered civilization in a beautiful and melancholy grand hotel, of which the balconies face a gaping abyss. But perhaps in this way Lukács gave – and no doubt without realizing it himself – a perfect definition of contemporary philosophy, namely to confront chaos, to peer into what appears to a certain rationality as an abyss and to feel good about it. Touching Hegelian dialectics, critical theory and psychoanalysis,Grand Hotel Abyss gives a new meaning to the notion of negativity as the first essential step for rethinking political and moral engagement.