Radical Otherness

Radical Otherness
Author: Lisa Isherwood
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2014-10-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317546172

The problem of otherness is central to debates in both the social sciences and theology. To define the other – by colour, gender, politics, nationality, or religion – is to define the self. Othering has been used through history as a justification for boundary-setting, for conflict and for oppression. Radical Otherness presents a broad overview of otherness in both sociology and theology. The book reveals how social theory can illuminate many contemporary issues in theology, whilst the examination of theological methods can shed light on problematic issues in sociology. The discussion of issues in Radical Otherness moves from the personal to the political, to the hermeneutic, to the ultimate otherness of metaphysics. At each stage, discussion of theory is grounded in concrete examples. The book offers students of ethics, theology, and sociology of religion a clear and engaged assessment of otherness, and opens up new ways for investigating a concept central to the study of both religion and society.

The radical otherness that heals

The radical otherness that heals
Author: Alhena Caicedo Fernández
Publisher: Universidad de los Andes
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2021-04-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9587980875

The Radical Otherness That Heals proposes an interesting theoretical advance in various schools of local and regional, and national and transnational analysis. It is based on a multilocal ethnography and a detailed sociological and political reading of the interactions between institutions and social and cultural representations of otherness. The original theoretical proposal consists of reading the reconfiguration of shamanisms stemming from processes of ethnicization and patrimonialization, and skillfully reconstructing the national ideological space and the most recent effects of multiculturalism through representations of otherness Anne-Marie Losonczy, Director of Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris "The concept of the yagecero field serves as the axis of this innovative research that intertwines a multi-sited ethnography with a biographical approach to the actors. An extensive review of the literature on indigenous shamanisms, their networks, national politics, inter-ethnic relations and representations of the radical alterity that heals makes it possible for the reader to draw near, based on the close proximity of neo-shamanic practices, to perceive the national and transnational influences that are an integral part of the ongoing dynamics of this phenomenon. The analysis of neo-shamanism and the practices of the taita yageceros in Colombia contributes to deepening current debates on contemporary shamanisms and the broader issue of new religiosities, the transformations of indigenous groups and their politics of identify. This book provides a valuable input to the characterization of New Age spirituality from its understanding as a localized practice. It opens a space to compare the aforementioned manifestations in Colombia with similar ones in different countries." Esther Jean Langdon, Professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil

Radical Otherness

Radical Otherness
Author: Lisa Isherwood
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2014-10-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317546180

The problem of otherness is central to debates in both the social sciences and theology. To define the other – by colour, gender, politics, nationality, or religion – is to define the self. Othering has been used through history as a justification for boundary-setting, for conflict and for oppression. Radical Otherness presents a broad overview of otherness in both sociology and theology. The book reveals how social theory can illuminate many contemporary issues in theology, whilst the examination of theological methods can shed light on problematic issues in sociology. The discussion of issues in Radical Otherness moves from the personal to the political, to the hermeneutic, to the ultimate otherness of metaphysics. At each stage, discussion of theory is grounded in concrete examples. The book offers students of ethics, theology, and sociology of religion a clear and engaged assessment of otherness, and opens up new ways for investigating a concept central to the study of both religion and society.

Violence, Society and Radical Theory

Violence, Society and Radical Theory
Author: William Pawlett
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2016-02-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317001680

Shedding light on the relationship between violence and contemporary society, this volume explores the distinctive but little-known theories of violence in the work of Georges Bataille and Jean Baudrillard, applying these to a range of violent events - events often labelled ’inexplicable’ - in order to show how even the most extreme of acts can be seen as socially meaningful. The book offers an understanding of violence as fundamental to social relations and social organisation, departing from studies that focus on individual offenders and their psychological states to concentrate instead on the symbolic relations or exchanges between agents and between agents and the structures they find themselves inhabiting. Developing the notion of symbolic economies of violence to emphasise the volatility and ambivalence of social exchanges, Violence, Society and Radical Theory reveals the importance to our understanding of violence, of the relationship between the structural or systemic violence of consumer capitalist society and forms of ’counter-violence’ which attack this system. A theoretically rich yet grounded expansion of that which can be considered meaningful or thinkable within sociological theory, this ground-breaking book will appeal to scholars and students of social and political theory and contemporary philosophy.

Tragedy and Otherness

Tragedy and Otherness
Author: Nicholas Ray
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2009
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9783039105014

This book presents a new account of the complex relationship between psychoanalytic theory and the key tragic dramas by Sophocles and Shakespeare in which it has often sought exemplars and prototypes. Examining the close historical and theoretical connections between Freud's interpretative appeal to tragic drama and his professed abandonment of the 'seduction' hypothesis in 1897, the author explores the ways in which otherness has subsequently been simplified out of both psychoanalytic theory and the dramatic texts it endeavours to comprehend. Drawing on Jean Laplanche's critical reformulation of the seduction theory, the book offers close rereadings of Oedipus Tyrannus, Julius Caesar and Hamlet in order to outline an approach to tragedy which takes account of the constitutive priority of the other in the itinerary of the tragic subject. By reopening the theme of seduction in relation to these key literary dramas, the book aims to generate a better understanding both of the function which psychoanalysis has called upon tragedy to perform, and the radical modes of otherness within tragedy for which psychoanalysis has hitherto remained unable to account.

A Fundamental Theological Study of Radical Secularization and its Aftermath

A Fundamental Theological Study of Radical Secularization and its Aftermath
Author: Alpo Penttinen
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2024-01-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1527572331

In the wake of various secularization processes, a growing number of people in Western societies are now describing themselves as “non-religious.” But what does this sociological fact really mean, for the Church and for society at large? Has human religiosity a future after secularization? It does, this book argues, but in a radically altered form. Taking its cue from Pope Francis’s suggestion that globalizing humanity is presently living through a genuine “epochal shift,” this book presents an original analysis of the transformative effect of secularization on our spiritual predicament in the Western, now definitively post-Christian, world. Instead of succumbing to the all-too-common polarizations in contemporary religious discourse, this book aspires to overcome the “religious” vs. “secular” dichotomy through developing the logic of “Radical Secularization,” arguably the genuine novelty of the particularly Western process of secularization. The past homogeneously religious culture is certainly dusking, but this only paves the way for the dawn of the future and radically open horizon for our human search for meaning. This challenging book will offer intellectual impulses and spiritual incentives to everybody who ponders the future of human religious evolution after secularization.

Selected Papers

Selected Papers
Author: Vasily Sesemann
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 125
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 9042028254

Does it make sense to refer to the social and political existence of the Baltic countries as to being between civilizations of East and West, or as being on the boundary of two worlds? What are the most characteristic features of modern moral imagination? How does it manifest itself in the politics and cultures of the Baltic countries? These will be the main foci of the book series intended and launched as a critical examination of identity, politics, and culture in the Baltic countries. We are not going to confine this series to Soviet and post-Communist studies. By offering a wide scope of the social science and humanities disciplines, we would like to encourage intercultural dialogue and also to pursue interdisciplinary research in the field of Baltic studies. --Book Jacket.

Edward Said

Edward Said
Author: Abdirahman A. Hussein
Publisher: Verso
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2004-09-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781859843901

The only intellectual biography of the groundbreaking author of Orientalism, published on the first anniversary of Said's death.

In Levinas’ Trace

In Levinas’ Trace
Author: Maria Dimitrova
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2011-09-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1443834068

Maria Dimitrova (Sofia University, Bulgaria) in response to Jerard Bensussan (University of Strasbourg, France), Jeffrey Andrew Barash (University of Amiens, France), Jacob Rogozinski (University of Strasbourg, France) and Ernst Wolff (University of Pretoria, South Africa) commenting on Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy. This book is essential reading for those interested in the current debates in ethics, metaphysics, and social and political philosophy. The discussed issues are presented from the perspective of phenomenology. This publication is not simply a pure and abstract academic work but has a much broader scope, touching upon the most important dimensions of human relationships. The book tries to find a new way to articulate these. It will be of significant help to scholars and graduate students in all fields of the humanities, as well as to policy makers and social workers who feel themselves challenged by the question of humanism and justice.

Power and Resistance

Power and Resistance
Author: Yoshiyuki Sato
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2022-10-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1839763574

The "structuralist" theories of power show that the subject is produced and reproduced by the investment of power: but how then can we think of the subject's resistance to power? Based on this fundamental question, Power and Resistance interprets critically the (post-)structuralist theory of power and resistance, i.e., the theories of Foucault, Deleuze/Guattari, Derrida and Althusser. It analyses also the mechanism of power and the strategies of resistance in the era of neoliberalism. This meticulous analysis that completely renewed the theory of power is already published in French, Japanese, and Korean with success.