Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925

Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925
Author: Leah Dickerman
Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2012
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0870708287

This book explores the development of abstraction from the moment of its declaration around 1912 to its establishment as the foundation of avant-garde practice in the mid-1920s. The book brings together many of the most influential works in abstractions early history to draw a cross-media portrait of this watershed moment in which traditional art was reinvented in a wholesale way. Works are presented in groups that serve as case studies, each engaging a key topic in abstractions first years: an artist, a movement, an exhibition or thematic concern. Key focal points include Vasily Kandinskys ambitious Compositions V, VI and VII; a selection of Piet Mondrians work that offers a distilled narrative of his trajectory to Neo-plasticism; and all the extant Suprematist pictures that Kazimir Malevich showed in the landmark 0.10 exhibition in 1915.0Exhibition: MoMA, New York, USA (23.12.2012-15.4.2013).

The Radical Imagination

The Radical Imagination
Author: Doctor Alex Khasnabish
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2014-06-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1780329032

The idea of the imagination is as evocative as it is elusive. Not only does the imagination allow us to project ourselves beyond our own immediate space and time, it also allows us to envision the future, as individuals and as collectives. The radical imagination, then, is that spark of difference, desire and discontent that can be fanned into the flames of social change. Yet what precisely is the imagination and what might make it 'radical'? How can it be fostered and cultivated? How can it be studied and what are the possibilities and risks of doing so? This book seeks to answer these questions at a crucial time. As we enter into a new cycle of struggles marked by a worldwide crisis of social reproduction, scholar-activists Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish explore the processes and possibilities for cultivating the radical imagination in dark times. A lively and crucial intervention in radical politics, social research and social change, and the collective visions and cultures that inspire them.

American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in U.S. History

American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in U.S. History
Author: Gina Misiroglu
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 980
Release: 2015-03-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317477294

Counterculture, while commonly used to describe youth-oriented movements during the 1960s, refers to any attempt to challenge or change conventional values and practices or the dominant lifestyles of the day. This fascinating three-volume set explores these movements in America from colonial times to the present in colorful detail. "American Countercultures" is the first reference work to examine the impact of countercultural movements on American social history. It highlights the writings, recordings, and visual works produced by these movements to educate, inspire, and incite action in all eras of the nation's history. A-Z entries provide a wealth of information on personalities, places, events, concepts, beliefs, groups, and practices. The set includes numerous illustrations, a topic finder, primary source documents, a bibliography and a filmography, and an index.

Creating a Democratic Public

Creating a Democratic Public
Author: Kevin Mattson
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2010-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0271041528

During America's Progressive Era at the beginning of the twentieth century, democracy was more alive than it is today. Social activists and intellectuals of that era formed institutions where citizens educated themselves about pressing issues and public matters. While these efforts at democratic participation have largely been forgotten, their rediscovery may represent our best hope for resolving the current crisis of democracy in the United States. Mattson explores the work of early activists like Charles Zueblin, who tried to advance adult education at the University of Chicago, and Frederic Howe, whose People's Institute sparked the nationwide forum movement. He then turns to the social centers movement, which began in Rochester, New York, in 1907 with the opening of public schools to adults in the evening as centers for debate over current issues. Mattson tells how this simple program grew into a national phenomenon and cites its achievements and political ideals, and he analyzes the political thought of activists within the movement&—notably Mary Parker Follett and Edward Ward&—to show that these intellectuals had a profound understanding of what was needed to create vigorous democratic practices. Creating a Democratic Public challenges us to reconsider how we think about democracy by bringing us into critical dialogue with the past and exploring the work of yesterday's activists. Combining historical analysis, political theory, and social criticism, Mattson analyzes experiments in grassroots democracy from the Progressive Era and explores how we might foster more public involvement in political deliberation today.

Anti-Book

Anti-Book
Author: Nicholas Thoburn
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2016-12-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1452951993

No, Anti-Book is not a book about books. Not exactly. And yet it is a must for anyone interested in the future of the book. Presenting what he terms “a communism of textual matter,” Nicholas Thoburn explores the encounter between political thought and experimental writing and publishing, shifting the politics of text from an exclusive concern with content and meaning to the media forms and social relations by which text is produced and consumed. Taking a “post-digital” approach in considering a wide array of textual media forms, Thoburn invites us to challenge the commodity form of books—to stop imagining books as transcendent intellectual, moral, and aesthetic goods unsullied by commerce. His critique is, instead, one immersed in the many materialities of text. Anti-Book engages with an array of writing and publishing projects, including Antonin Artaud’s paper gris-gris, Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto, Guy Debord’s sandpaper-bound Mémoires, the collective novelist Wu Ming, and the digital/print hybrid of Mute magazine. Empirically grounded, it is also a major achievement in expressing a political philosophy of writing and publishing, where the materiality of text is interlaced with conceptual production. Each chapter investigates a different form of textual media in concert with a particular concept: the small-press pamphlet as “communist object,” the magazine as “diagrammatic publishing,” political books in the modes of “root” and “rhizome,” the “multiple single” of anonymous authorship, and myth as “unidentified narrative object.” An absorbingly written contribution to contemporary media theory in all its manifestations, Anti-Book will enrich current debates about radical publishing, artists’ books and other new genre and media forms in alternative media, art publishing, media studies, cultural studies, critical theory, and social and political theory.

Dead Centre

Dead Centre
Author: Jamey Heath
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2008-02-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 047015666X

A provocative and inspired call to unite progressives in Canada and shift the political landscape. The Liberal Party is down, and might not be able to get back up. It is no longer a natural governing entity after losing Quebec for seven straight elections. Stephen Harper’s policies have been controversial and polarizing, especially for left leaning Conservatives. There are people on both sides who want Canada to get past this mollified partisanship. The alternative is to take back the centre and charge forward with a progressive agenda. What about the environment? What about our foreign policy? Canada can once again stand tall in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of its own citizens. Our nation was once a beacon for centrist, sensible, and level-headed policy. Do the Liberals speak for true Canadian values anymore? They don't. Will the Conservatives stand firm for Canada in a globalized economy. They won't. Is the status quo good enough for you? How do we get back to a place where Canada leads in those areas that Canadians feel passionate about? Author of Dead Centre, Jamey Heath, watched the left fracture before his eyes when he was the NDP’s lead strategist from 2003 to 2006. In his book Jamey calls to account the leading lights of the left. He challenges assumptions and revisits the defeats and the squabbles. He then sounds a clarion call to regroup and tackle our nations' challenges. With refreshing, contrarian insight Heath will find a significant audience among Liberals, Greens, New Democrats and the growing number of politically minded -- but party neutral -- progressives that want sensible leadership and a renaissance of Canadian nationhood. Dead Centre is printed on biodegradeable paper with environmentally friendly inks.

Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power

Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power
Author: Max Haiven
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2014-03-13
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1780329555

Today, when it seems like everything has been privatized, when austerity is too often seen as an economic or political problem that can be solved through better policy, and when the idea of moral values has been commandeered by the right, how can we re-imagine the forces used as weapons against community, solidarity, ecology and life itself? In this stirring call to arms, Max Haiven argues that capitalism has colonized how we all imagine and express what is valuable. Looking at the decline of the public sphere, the corporatization of education, the privatization of creativity, and the power of finance capital in opposition to the power of the imagination and the growth of contemporary social movements, Haiven provides a powerful argument for creating an anti-capitalist commons. Capitalism is not in crisis, it is the crisis, and moving beyond it is the only key to survival. Crucial reading for all those questioning the imposition of austerity and hoping for a fairer future beyond it.

Anti-system Politics

Anti-system Politics
Author: Jonathan Hopkin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2020
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0190699760

This book examines the electoral successes of anti-system forces in the rich democracies. It explains the rise of anti-system politicians and parties in terms of two separate but closely related developments: the rise of economic inequality and insecurity over the last four decades, and the failure of political elites to address them.

Mortality and Faith

Mortality and Faith
Author: David Horowitz
Publisher: Regnery
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2019-05-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1621578135

Mortality and Faith is the second half of an autobiography of David Horowitz whose first installment, Radical Son, was published more than twenty years ago. It completes the account of his life from where the first book left off to his seventy-eighth year. In contrast to Radical Son whose focus was his political odyssey, Mortality and Faith was conceived as a meditation on age, and on our common progress towards an end which is both final and opaque. These primal facts affect all we see and do, and force us to answer the questions as to why we are here and where we are going with conjectures that can only be taken on faith. Consequently, an equally important theme of this work is its exploration of the beliefs we embrace to answer these questions, and how the answers impact our lives.