Narrative Machines: Modern Myth, Revolution, & Propaganda

Narrative Machines: Modern Myth, Revolution, & Propaganda
Author: James Curcio
Publisher: Mythos Media
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2017-07-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780692916452

Will the future be like a Reality TV show where we compete to have human rights? Will you be popular and relatable enough to successfully crowdfund your healthcare? Tune in 20 years hence and find out. Many will mark 2015 to 2017 as the transitional moment the nihilistic id came into plain view in American culture and politics. But it is hardly the product of any single movement or idea, and it is hardly unprecedented. Narrative Machines uses a cut-up, pastiche approach to analyze how sub-cultural and fringe ideas permeate the mainstream, especially through the Internet-from Aleksandr Dugin's faux-postmodern Traditionalism to the cult of personality Reality TV show that has taken over every media outlet, from the gnostic horror of Nick Land's Dark Enlightenment to the Calvinism of identity politics, from the millenarian fervor of Transhumanism to the utopian nightmare of Fascism. A retrofuturist aesthetic unites them all, an "occulted theology", allegedly secular recreations of the religious impulse, accidental rewrites of the metaphysics of the past. Compiling ten years of writing and research with a series of palimpsest artworks, this assemblage was created for the outsider artists and insider theorists, and everyone else that lives at the fringes. For those opposed to a world formed by a single, monolithic myth, and yet still seek a collective dream in the fractured panopticon of the present. As Antonin Artaud said in The Theater and Its Double, "All writing is filth." Help us give birth to an abomination. Philosophical Project This book will help decode the political repercussions of art and media, using the work of theorists such as Delanda, Bataille, Baudrillard, Gray, Zizek, and Benjamin as a springboard. Art Project A series of illustrations accompany the text, using a mix of collage, bricolage and palimpsest repainting, a style inspired by Adbusters, artists of artifice like Bowie and Warhol, satirists of fascist and pop culture like Laibach and NSK. This cut up, derivative method is explored theoretically within the text. We recognize that in a world where nothing is original, everything is source material for appropriation to new purposes. This aesthetic clearly involve a certain wink in the general direction of 90s Utopian-Dystopian Industrial and alt culture, updated as a dark LSD vision of 2015-17 Internet, a series of love (and hate) notes pieced together of other sources and painstakingly re-created and subsumed. These pieces will appear in a variety of art shows, and a forthcoming full-color collectors edition.

Chinese Revolution in Practice

Chinese Revolution in Practice
Author: Guo Wu
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2023-10-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000970663

This book employs multiple case studies to explore how the Chinese communist revolution began as an ideology-oriented intellectual movement aimed at improving society before China’s transformation into a state that suppresses dissenting voices by outsourcing its power of coercion and incarceration. The author examines the movement’s methods of early self-organization, grass-roots level engagement, creation of new modes of expression and popular art forms, manipulation of collective memory, and invention of innovative ways of mass incarceration. Covering developments from 1920 to 1970, the book considers a wide range of Chinese individuals and groups, from early Marxists to political prisoners in the PRC, to illustrate a dynamic, interactive process in which the state and individuals contend with each other. It argues that revolutionary practices in modern China have created a regime that can be conceptualized as an “ideology-military-propaganda” state that prompts further reflection on the relationships between revolution and the state, the state and collective articulation and memory, and the state and reflective individuals in a global context. Illustrating the continuity of the Chinese revolution and past decades’ socialist practices and mechanisms, this study is an ideal resource for scholars of Chinese history, politics, and twentieth-century revolutions.

Redefining Propaganda in Modern China

Redefining Propaganda in Modern China
Author: James Farley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 455
Release: 2020-11-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000225763

Usage of the political keyword 'propaganda' by the Chinese Communist Party has changed and expanded over time. These changes have been masked by strong continuities spanning periods in the history of the People's Republic of China from the Mao Zedong era (1949–76) to the new era of Xi Jinping (2012–present). Redefining Propaganda in Modern China builds on the work of earlier scholars to revisit the central issue of how propaganda has been understood within the Communist Party system. What did propaganda mean across successive eras? What were its institutions and functions? What were its main techniques and themes? What can we learn about popular consciousness as a result? In answering these questions, the contributors to this volume draw on a range of historical, cultural studies, propa­ganda studies and comparative politics approaches. Their work captures the sweep of propaganda – its appearance in everyday life, as well as during extraordinary moments of mobilization (and demobilization), and its systematic continuities and discontinuities from the perspective of policy-makers, bureaucratic function­aries and artists. More localized and granular case studies are balanced against deep readings and cross-cutting interpretive essays, which place the history of the People's Republic of China within broader temporal and comparative frames. Addressing a vital aspect of Chinese Communist Party authority, this book is meant to provide a timely and comprehensive update on what propaganda has meant ideologically, operationally, aesthetically and in terms of social experience.

Seven Myths of the Russian Revolution

Seven Myths of the Russian Revolution
Author: Jonathan Daly
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2023-02-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1647921066

"This fascinating volume is a major contribution to our understanding of the Russian Revolution, from World War I to consolidation of the Bolshevik regime. The seven myths include the exaggeration of Rasputin's influence; a purported conspiracy behind the February Revolution; the treasonous Bolshevik dependence on German support; the multiple Anastasia pretenders to the royal inheritance; the antisemitic claims about 'Judeo-Bolsheviks'; distortions about America’s intervention in the civil war; and the 'inevitability' of Bolshevism. In each case the authors analyze the facts, uncover the origins of the myth, and trace its later perseverance (even in contemporary Russia). To assist readers, the volume includes three reference guides (people, terms, dates), nine maps, and twenty-nine illustrations. The result is immensely valuable for undergraduate courses in Russian history." —Gregory L. Freeze, Raymond Ginger Professor of History, Brandeis University

Revolution and War in Contemporary Ukraine

Revolution and War in Contemporary Ukraine
Author: Olga Bertelsen
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2016-10-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3838210166

What are the reasons behind, and trajectories of, the rapid cultural changes in Ukraine since 2013? This volume highlights: the role of the Revolution of Dignity and the Russian-Ukrainian war in the formation of Ukrainian civil society; the forms of warfare waged by Moscow against Kyiv, including information and religious wars; Ukrainian and Russian identities and cultural realignment; sources of destabilization in Ukraine and beyond; memory politics and Russian foreign policies; the Kremlin’s geopolitical goals in its 'near abroad'; and factors determining Ukraine’s future and survival in a state of war. The studies included in this collection illuminate the growing gap between the political and social systems of Ukraine and Russia. The anthology illustrates how the Ukrainian revolution of 2013–2014, Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and its invasion of eastern Ukraine have altered the post-Cold War political landscape and, with it, the regional and global power and security dynamics.

Enchanted Revolution

Enchanted Revolution
Author: Xiaofei Kang
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2023
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0197654479

Enchanted Revolution moves religion and gender to center stage in the Chinese Communist revolution, examining the mobilizational dynamics of anti-superstition propaganda in support of the Communist Party's rise from rural backwaters to national dominance. Xiaofei Kang argues that religion was not merely adversary for the revolutionaries-it also served as a model for the ways in which the Party mobilized support and constructed legitimacy. In this parallel and often paradoxical process, the Party attacked "superstitions" that had long supported the foundations of Chinese religious life. At the same time, Party propaganda co-opted these same religious resources for its own political ends. Kang demonstrates that the persuasive power of Party propaganda relied heavily on recasting the cosmic forces of yin and yang that sustained the traditional gender hierarchy and ritual order. Moreover, revolutionary art and literature revamped old narratives of female ghosts and ritual exorcism to inject the people with a new masculinist vision of the Party-state endowed with both scientific potency and the heavenly mandate. Gendered language and symbolism in Chinese religion thus remained central to inspiring pathos, ethos, and logos for the revolution. Enchanted Revolution sheds light on the contemporary significance of the Maoist legacy in China through a deft exploration of the complex interplay of religion, gender, and revolution.

Citizenship and Wars

Citizenship and Wars
Author: Dr Bertrand Taithe
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134554028

Putting the latest theoretical thinking into empirical use, the author assesses how the function of the state and its citizens changed during the Paris Commune and Franco-Prussian War.

A Revolutionary for Our Time

A Revolutionary for Our Time
Author: Leo Zeilig
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2022-03-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1642596787

Walter Rodney was a scholar, working class militant, and revolutionary from Guyana. Strongly influenced by Marxist ideas, he remains central to radical Pan-Africanist thought for large numbers of activists’ today. Rodney lived through the failed –though immensely hopeful -socialist experiments in the 1960s and 1970s, in Tanzania and elsewhere. The book critically considers Rodney's contribution to Marxist theory and history, his relationship to dependency theory and the contemporary significance of his work in the context of movements and politics today. The first full-length study of Rodney’s life, this book is an essential introduction to Rodney's work.

Writing the Modern History of Iraq

Writing the Modern History of Iraq
Author: Jordi Tejel
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 578
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 9814390577

The modern history of Iraq is punctuated by a series of successive and radical ruptures (coups d''etat, changes of regime, military adventures and foreign invasions) whose chronological markers are relatively easy to identify. Although researchers cannot ignore these ruptures, they should also be encouraged to establish links between the moments when the breaks occur and the longue dur(r)e, in order to gain a better understanding of the period.Combining a variety of different disciplinary and methodological perspectives, this collection of essays seeks to establish some new markers which will open fresh perspectives on the history of Iraq in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and suggest a narrative that fits into new paradigms. The book covers the various different periods of the modern state (the British occupation and mandate, the monarchy, the first revolutions and the decades of Ba''thist rule) through the lens of significant groups in Iraq society, including artists, film-makers, political and opposition groups, members of ethnic and religious groups, and tribes."

How Propaganda Works

How Propaganda Works
Author: Jason Stanley
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2015-05-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400865808

How propaganda undermines democracy and why we need to pay attention Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us—not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy—particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality—and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere.