A New Awareness is an endeavor of affection and generosity toward Sebastian Moore. The book examines his key theological insights and themes over seventy years and proposes that they are still relevant today for the Christian Community. He was a theologian and poet. He wrote about many theological topics: the significance of Jesus, the experiences of the disciples and their meaning for us, redemption, the Trinity, sexuality and ecclesiology, and original sin. But he is mainly known for being the theologian of desire: self-love to self-gift, desire is love trying to happen, to be myself for another, and the insight that there is no more wonderful reality than to be desired by the one you desire.
William L. Newell presents a comprehensive analysis of René Girard’s work on the origins of culture and the depths of human desire. Girard makes no claim toward a theory of religion, but he lays the groundwork for a postmodern theory of it. Girard’s desire concerns fallen humanity, those insanely imitating what they lacked, and his use of the Bible brings back into play the idea of the holy in secular academia. Newell challenges Girard’s interpretation of Jesus’s Passion as non-sacrificial and he offers a close reading of Girard’s works on mimetic desire, scape-goating, and sacrifice, and Newell creates breakthrough theology on Jesus in the Excursus. Girard makes no claim to having a theory of religion, but he lays the groundwork for a postmodern theory of it, and in this book, Newell seeks to begin a theory of “the end of the sacred” and what will be in its place: the holy.
The aim of Religion and Violence is to engage dialectically key symbols of religiously motivated violence through the insights of Bernard Lonergan. Sociologists and psychologists argue the link between religion and violence, but religion is viewed more as part of the problem and not part of the solution to violence. Bernard Lonergan's insights have helped the author arrive at a number of conclusions regarding the link between religion and violence. He argues that there is a difference between distorted religion and genuine religion, between authenticity and inauthenticity of the subject. Distorted religion has the capacity to shape traditions in ways that justify violence, while genuine religion heals persons, helps them make different moral decisions when confronted with situations of conflict, and aims to explore new ways of understanding themselves as shaping history toward progress.
The turn of the Millennium demonstrated a fully-fledged revival and fusion of various left-wing social movements with differing agendas. Movements for women's, black, indigenous, LGTB and animal liberation as well as ecological, anti-nuclear and anti-war groups unified against the global capital. Considering the diverse emphases of these movements, is there a philosophical framework that could help us understand their nature and their modes of operation in the 21st century? This book provides a set of conceptual tools offering a theoretical model of 'slow' social transformation, a modality of social change that explicitly differs from the irruptive model of a revolution or a paradigm-changing event. Instead, it proposes the two concepts of mimetic contagion and solidarity with singularity which allow us to understand what is currently happening in the activist milieu. By bringing together some of today's most important thinkers, including Butler, Girard, Badiou, and Sloterdijk this book suggests a philosophical lens to look at the alternative living projects that contemporary left-wing activists undertake in practice. At the heart of their projects lie the pressing concerns that these contemporary philosophers currently debate. Breaking from the conceptual apparatus of the Marxian tradition, Theorizing Contemporary Anarchism instead takes Hegelian concepts and feeds them through the thought of contemporary theorists in order to form an original, productive, and inclusive scaffold with which to understand today's world of social and political movements.
The new edition of the essential textbook on masculinity and representations of masculinity in the context of gender and cultural studies Popular dialogues on gender and sexuality have evolved rapidly in recent decades, and students are finding new and exciting opportunities to examine gender and sexuality from critical perspectives. Masculinities in Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition synthesizes existing approaches to the study of masculinity and presents new theoretical models that enable a deeper and more nuanced investigation of the diverse forms of masculine identity. In this text, students are invited to investigate the constructs of masculinity they encounter in their own lives, offering a way for students to parse the varied and conflicting views on masculinity they may encounter in their communities, in the media, and in history. Now in its second edition, Masculinities in Theory has been fully updated to bring this overview of masculinity studies up to date with modern views and contemporary contexts. The text shines a light on new cases for examination drawn from popular culture and current events, including the masculinities of Trump and Putin, Indigenous masculinities, and the influence of the Black Lives Matter movement on concepts of masculinity. An entirely new chapter on trans masculinities is complemented by a thoroughly revised chapter on the experience of affective masculinities. This valuable work: Covers key theories applicable to gender studies in interdisciplinary humanities and social science programs Demonstrates the complex nature of masculinity from cultural and theoretical perspectives Examines how the work of Butler, Derrida, Foucault, and other theorists can be used to interpret and analyze masculinity Discusses feminist, queer, transgender, post-colonial, and ethnic studies in relation to masculinity Offering a clear, concise, and comprehensive introduction to the field, Masculinities in Theory, Second Edition is the ideal textbook for courses on masculinity, as well as general courses in gender studies, sexuality studies, and cultural studies. It is also an excellent resource for interdisciplinary courses in literature, art history, film, communications, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and philosophy programs.
The issue of the ethical implications of monotheism is a very relevant topic from the point of view of contemporary humanities and social science, and from the perspective of the cultural and political condition in Europe and at the global scale. Therefore a scientific book devoted to this subject makes a lot of sense. Throughout the history and in present times, monotheism has been subjected to several sharp criticisms. On the other hand, we find also very different evaluations of it. They stress its positive and even crucial contribution to peace, forming of rational, non-violent, tolerant culture and society, to the scientific, political and cultural development, to democracy etc. The book offers fresh interdisciplinary perspectives - mainly from the point of view of humanities - on the ethical aspects of monotheism, broadens the scientific understanding of it, and establishes a basis for resolving conflicts to which the understanding of monotheism is relevant or even decisive.
Romance's Rival argues that the central plot of the most important genre of the nineteenth century, the marriage plot novel, means something quite different from what we thought. In Victorian novels, women may marry for erotic desire--but they might, instead, insist on "familiar marriage," marrying trustworthy companions who can offer them socially rich lives and futures of meaningful work. Romance's Rival shows how familiar marriage expresses ideas of female subjectivity dating back through the seventeenth century, while romantic marriage felt like a new, risky idea. Undertaking a major rereading of the rise-of-the-novel tradition, from Richardson through the twentieth century, Talia Schaffer rethinks what the novel meant if one tracks familiar-marriage virtues. This alternative perspective offers new readings of major texts (Austen, the Bront s, Eliot, Trollope) but it also foregrounds women's popular fiction (Yonge, Oliphant, Craik, Broughton). Offering a feminist perspective that reads the marriage plot from the woman's point of view, Schaffer inquires why a female character might legitimately wish to marry for something other than passion. For the past half-century, scholars have valorized desire, individuality, and autonomy in the way we read novels; Romance's Rival asks us to look at the other side, to validate the yearning for work, family, company, or social power as legitimate reasons for women's marital choices in Victorian fiction. Comprehensive in its knowledge of several generations of scholarship on the novel, Romance's Rival convinces us to re-examine assumptions about the nature and function of marriage and the role of the novel in helping us not simply imagine marriage but also process changing ideas about what it might look like and how it might serve people.
Studies of genocide and mass atrocity most often focus on their causes and consequences, their aims and effects, and the number of people killed. But if the main goal is death, why is torture necessary? By understanding how and why mass violence occurs and the reasons for its variations, The Macabresque aims to explain why so many seemingly normal or "ordinary" people participate in mass atrocity across cultures and why such egregious violence occurs repeatedly through history.
One of the predominant trends of modern society is the pervasive presence of competition. No longer just a function of economic markets or democratic systems, competition has become a favoured tool for governing people and organizations, from the provision of schooling and elder care to the way we consume popular culture. Yet social scientists have played a surprisingly modest role in analysing its implications, as the discussion of competition has largely been confined to its narrow economic meaning. This book opens up competition for the study of social scientists. Its central message is that while competition seems ubiquitous, it should not be taken for granted or be naturalized as an inevitable aspect of human existence. Its emergence, maintenance, and change are based on institutions and organizational efforts, and a central challenge for social science is to learn more about these processes and their outcomes. With the use of a novel definition of competition, more fundamental questions can be addressed than merely whether or not competition works. How is competition constructed - and by whom? Which behaviours result from competition? What are its consequences? Can competition be removed? And, how do these factors vary with the object of competition - be it money, attention, status, or other scarce and desired objects? This book investigates these and more questions in studies of competition among and within schools, universities, multinational corporations, auditors, waste-disposal firms, fashion designers, and more.
