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Titre:
Dreamworld and catastrophe : the passing of mass utopia in East and West

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$67.95
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Résumé:
The dream of the twentieth century was the construction of mass utopia. As the century closes, this dream is being left behind; the belief that industrial modernization can bring about the good society by overcoming material scarcity for all has been challenged by the disintegration of European socialism, capitalist restructuring, and ecological constraints. The larger social vision has given way to private dreams of material happiness and to political cynicism. Developing the notion of dreamworld as both a poetic description of a collective mental state and an analytical concept, Susan Buck-Morss attempts to come to terms with mass dreamworlds at the moment of their passing. She shows how dreamworlds became dangerous when their energy was used by the structures of power as an instrument of force against the masses. Stressing the similarities between the East and West and using the end of the Cold War as her point of departure, she examines both extremes of mass utopia, dreamworld and catastrophe. The book is in four parts. "Dreamworlds of Democracy" asks whether collective sovereignty can ever be democratic. "Dreamworlds of History" calls for a rethinking of revolution by political and artistic avant-gardes. "Dreamworlds of Mass Culture" explores the affinities between mass culture's socialist and capitalist forms. An "Afterward" places the book in the historical context of the author's collaboration with a group of Moscow philosophers and artists over the past two tumultuous decades. The book is an experiment in visual culture, using images as philosophy, presenting, literally, a way of seeing the past. Its pictorial narratives rescue historical data that with the end of the Cold War are threatened with oblivion and challenge common conceptions of what this century was all about.

Titre:
Seeing <—> Making: Room for thought

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$41.95
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Résumé:
Renowned philosopher Susan Buck-Morss collaborates with Kevin McCaughey of Boot Boyz Biz and Adam Michaels of Inventory Press on this experimental image-text renewal of McLuhan, Berger and Benjamin. "Seeing <—> Making: Room for thought" both studies and presents the creative process of constructing ideas with images. By activating the techniques of montage and analogy, the book reveals a wide field of view and a space to engage new critical connections between a multiplicity of objects from the past and present. Realized through an intergenerational collaboration of three cultural producers committed to making theory visible, a transformative anthology of critical essays by Susan Buck-Morss anchors this kaleidoscopic project. Images and ideas sync with Buck-Morss’ perceptive texts on visual culture, history, politics and aesthetics, fusing criticism with visual play and linking collective imagination and social action. In both design and content, "Seeing <—> Making: Room for thought" builds upon the dynamic sensorium of Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore's book "The medium is the massage", Walter Benjamin's "Arcades" Project and John Berger's "Ways of seeing". This innovative volume brings Buck-Morss’ more experimental, visually engaged work to the fore in a way that has not been available in the usual contexts within which her writing has appeared.

Titre:
Revolution today

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$29.50
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Résumé:
Susan Buck-Morss asks: What does revolution look like today? How will the idea of revolution survive the inadequacy of the formula, “progress = modernization through industrialization,” to which it has owed its political life? Socialism plus computer technology, citizen resistance plus a global agenda of concerns, revolutionary commitment to practices that are socially experimental and inclusive of difference—these are new forces being mobilized to make another future possible.