Theatres of Democracy: Between the Epic and the Everyday - Selected Essays

Theatres of Democracy: Between the Epic and the Everyday - Selected Essays
Author: Shiv Visvanathan
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-05-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9789351775621

Unburdened by partisanship or political correctness, these essays by Shiv Visvanathan, one of India's foremost public intellectuals, chronicle the democratic ferment and political upheavals in contemporary India. Written over the last twenty years, they engage with issues as diverse as the new dimensions of violence, the value of dissent, the creativity in popular culture and the pathologies of nationalism and religious fundamentalism. Always alert to nuance, Visvanathan offers novel portraits of politicians, intellectuals, and sport and film personalities. Combining wit, irony and analytical brilliance, the writings collected in Theatres of Democracy show a commitment to thinking creatively about India.

The Culture of People's Democracy

The Culture of People's Democracy
Author: György Lukács
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2013-06-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004234519

When the Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic György Lukács returned to Hungary from Moscow after World War II, he engaged in a highly active phase of writing and speaking about the democratic culture needed to exorcise the remnants of fascism and to create the conditions for the advance of socialism in Central Europe. His essays of the period, including the influential volume Literature and Democracy, appear here for the first time in English translation. Engaged with questions of realist and modernist world-views in art, the relations of literary history to politics and social history, and the role of cultural intellectuals in public life, these essays offer a new look at one of the most influential Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century.

The Politics of the Governed

The Politics of the Governed
Author: Partha Chatterjee
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2004-03-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 023150389X

Often dismissed as the rumblings of "the street," popular politics is where political modernity is being formed today, according to Partha Chatterjee. The rise of mass politics all over the world in the twentieth century led to the development of new techniques of governing population groups. On the one hand, the idea of popular sovereignty has gained wide acceptance. On the other hand, the proliferation of security and welfare technologies has created modern governmental bodies that administer populations, but do not provide citizens with an arena for democratic deliberation. Under these conditions, democracy is no longer government of, by, and for the people. Rather, it has become a world of power whose startling dimensions and unwritten rules of engagement Chatterjee provocatively lays bare. This book argues that the rise of ethnic or identity politics—particularly in the postcolonial world—is a consequence of new techniques of governmental administration. Using contemporary examples from India, the book examines the different forms taken by the politics of the governed. Many of these operate outside of the traditionally defined arena of civil society and the formal legal institutions of the state. This book considers the global conditions within which such local forms of popular politics have appeared and shows us how both community and global society have been transformed. Chatterjee's analysis explores the strategic as well as the ethical dimensions of the new democratic politics of rights, claims, and entitlements of population groups and permits a new understanding of the dynamics of world politics both before and after the events of September 11, 2001. The Politics of the Governed consists of three essays, originally given as the Leonard Hastings Schoff Lectures at Columbia University in November 2001, and four additional essays that complement and extend the analyses presented there. By combining these essays between the covers of a single volume, Chatterjee has given us a major and urgent work that provides a full perspective on the possibilities and limits of democracy in the postcolonial world.

National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life

National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life
Author: Tim Edensor
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2020-06-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 100018367X

The Millennium Dome, Braveheart and Rolls Royce cars. How do cultural icons reproduce and transform a sense of national identity? How does national identity vary across time and space, how is it contested, and what has been the impact of globalization upon national identity and culture?This book examines how national identity is represented, performed, spatialized and materialized through popular culture and in everyday life. National identity is revealed to be inherent in the things we often take for granted - from landscapes and eating habits, to tourism, cinema and music. Our specific experience of car ownership and motoring can enhance a sense of belonging, whilst Hollywood blockbusters and national exhibitions provide contexts for the ongoing, and often contested, process of national identity formation. These and a wealth of other cultural forms and practices are explored, with examples drawn from Scotland, the UK as a whole, India and Mauritius. This book addresses the considerable neglect of popular cultures in recent studies of nationalism and contributes to debates on the relationship between ‘high' and ‘low' culture.

These Truths: A History of the United States

These Truths: A History of the United States
Author: Jill Lepore
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 733
Release: 2018-09-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393635252

“Nothing short of a masterpiece.” —NPR Books A New York Times Bestseller and a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—“these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. “A nation born in contradiction… will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,” Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With These Truths, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.

Nehru's India Essays on the Maker of a Nation

Nehru's India Essays on the Maker of a Nation
Author: Nayantara Sahgal
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-10-31
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9789354473067

Nehru s influence stretched beyond the Freedom Movement and the political and bureaucratic boundaries of prime ministerhood. A man of letters, it was Nehru who initiated the setting up of the Sahitya Akademi devoted to literature, the National School of Drama and the National Institute of Design; just as, in the field of technology and business management, he established the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management across the country. He was equally the force behind the setting up of dams and factories, which he regarded as the temples of modern India. Today, the four key dimensions of Indian nationhood, as conceived and implemented by Nehru democracy, secularism, socialism and non-alignment have altered to a point where they have changed almost beyond recognition or even abandoned altogether. As the debate continues between Nehru s supporters who believe in his enduring contribution, and his detractors who attempt to deny it, the definitive word, perhaps, comes from Nayantara Sahgal, who says in her Introduction, No Nehru, no modern India. The ground we stand on was laid in Nehru s time. This volume brings together an examination of the different aspects of Nehru s personality and his legacy by some of our foremost thinkers, writers and activists: Mani Shankar Aiyar, Kumar Ketkar, Aditya and Mridula Mukherjee, Shiv Visvanathan, Rakesh Batabyal, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Hartosh Bal, Aakar Patel, Kiran Nagarkar, Purushottam Agrawal, Syeda Hameed, Ramachandra Guha, Neera Chandhoke and Shabnam Hashmi

Independent Theatre in Contemporary Europe

Independent Theatre in Contemporary Europe
Author: Manfred Brauneck
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 603
Release: 2017-03-31
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 383943243X

Over the past 20 years European theatre underwent fundamental changes in terms of aesthetic focus, institutional structure and in its position in society. The impetus for these changes was provided by a new generation in the independent theatre scene. This book brings together studies on the state of independent theatre in different European countries, focusing on the fields of dance and performance, children and youth theatre, theatre and migration and post-migrant theatre. Additionally, it includes essays on experimental musical theatre and different cultural policies for independent theatre scenes in a range of European countries.

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart
Author: David Greig
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2011-08-18
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0571282148

One wintry morning academic Prudencia Hart sets off to a conference in the Scottish Borders. Stranded there by snow, she is swept off on a dream-like journey of self discovery, complete with magical moments, devilish encounters and wittily wild music. 'You shouldn't miss this for the world . . . Rambunctiously life-affirming and touchingly beautiful.' Herald 'More vibrantly alive than any piece of theatre I've seen in Scotland for years.' Scotsman Inspired by the Border ballads, The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart toured throughout Scotland in 2011 in a production by the National Theatre of Scotland.

Caxton's Book

Caxton's Book
Author: William Henry Rhodes
Publisher:
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1876
Genre: California
ISBN:

The Viewpoints Book

The Viewpoints Book
Author: Anne Bogart
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2004-08-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 155936677X

The Viewpoints is a technique of improvisation that grew out of the postmodern dance world. It was first articulated by choreographer Mary Overlie, who broke down the two dominant issues performers deal with—space and time—into six categories. Since that time, directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau have expanded her notions and adapted them for actors to function together spontaneously and intuitively and to generate bold, theatrical work. The Viewpoints are a set of names given to certain principles of movement through time and space—they constitute a language for talking about what happens on stage. Coupling this with Composition, which is the practice of selecting and arranging the separate components of theatrical language into a cohesive work of art, provides theatre artists with an important new tool for creating and understanding their art form. Primarily intended for the many theatre artists who, in the last several years, have become intrigued with Viewpoints yet have had no single source to refer to in their investigations. It can also be used by anyone with a general interest in collaboration and the creative process, whether in art, business or daily life. Anne Bogart is Artistic Director of the SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is the recipient of two OBIE Awards and a Bessie Award, and is an associate professor at Columbia University. Her recent works include Alice’s Adventures; Bobrauschenbergamerica; Small Lives, Big Dreams; Marathon Dancing; and The Baltimore Waltz. Tina Landau, noted director and playwright, whose original work includes Space (Time magazine 10 Best), Dream True (with composer Ricky Ian Gordon) and Floyd Collins (with composer Adam Guettel), which received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, an OBIE Award and seven Drama Desk nominations. She has been an ensemble member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company since 1997.