Journal Article•
A Critique of Violence
TL;DR: A Critique of Violence as mentioned in this paper explores the role of violence in modern state sovereignty and inherent in its law, and the construction of an alternative understanding of violence outside of the framework of the modern state.
Abstract: When, in 1968, Hannah Arendt posthumously published her friend Walter Benjamin’s essays in Illuminations, she excluded his now-famous, enigmatic work, “A Critique of Violence.” “A Critique of Violence” (1921) exhibits Benjamin’s philosophical investigations into the role of violence in modern state sovereignty and inherent in its law, and the construction of an alternative understanding of violence—or revolutionary violence—outside of the framework of the modern state. Increasingly relevant today, when violence plays an increasingly central role in spreading markets and controlling populations and when state sovereignty is increasingly undermined by corporate and fi nancial interests, the essay touched on many of the issues that Arendt herself addressed in her opposition to totalitarianism as well as in her theorizing on the politics of the revolutionary tradition and its outbreaks in her time. Arendt never gave any reason for the essay’s omission in her collection but spent a considerable part of her career refl ecting on the relation of violence to politics in ways that respond to Benjamin’s critique, though without any references to it.1 Arendt and Benjamin were both interested in a critique of historical materialism which would divorce thinking from being and open towards an unpredictable contingency not absorbable into a predetermining narrative of progress or causality that denies politics. As Seyla Benhabib puts it, like Benjamin, “Arendt is not concerned to establish some inevitable continuity between the past and present that would compel us to view what happened
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423 citations
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a method for using social sciences and humanities research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Research Council of Norway (RCN), Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) and World Agroforestry Centre (WAC).
Abstract: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) ; Research Council of Norway ; Nordic Africa Institute ; World Agroforestry Centre
103 citations
Cites background from "A Critique of Violence"
...More consciously, however – and particularly with regard to law – we often find ourselves compelled to interpret contexts in ways that uphold, conform, or comply under – sooner or later – the threat of state violence (Benjamin 1968, 1978, see also Arendt 1951, 1967)....
[...]
...Explanations for the latter are often contradictory, and emerge in fields as diverse as psychoanalysis, Marxist and other forms of critical theory, neoclassical economics, the philosophy of mind, and very many other fields (e.g. Benjamin 1968, 1978; Foucault 1972, 1978, 2005 [1970])....
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Dissertation•
01 Sep 2019
TL;DR: The authors examined the impact of apocalyptic ideas within British art in the interwar years, focusing on painting, drawings, prints, and sculpture, addressing the use and development of demonic concepts during the period 1918-1939 and explicitly relating contemporary anxieties and apocalyptic evocations with Christian apocalyptic narratives.
Abstract: The cessation of hostilities to the Great War with the signing of the Armistice on 11
November 1918 brought the largest and most devastating war hitherto known to an end. It was meant to be the “War to End War”, yet a little over twenty years later in 1939 it was eclipsed by the devastation of the Second World War. The shadow of war loomed over the intervening years, which were marked by pronounced speculation on where human society was going; for every prophet of
doom anticipating collapse into degradation, animosity, and self-annihilation there was a contrasting viewpoint awaiting the move towards a better new world. Further, these assessments often overlapped. This thesis examines the impact of apocalyptic ideas within British art in the interwar years. It looks at painting, drawings, prints, and sculpture, addressing the use and development of
apocalyptic concepts during the period 1918-1939, and explicitly relates contemporary anxieties and apocalyptic evocations with Christian apocalyptic narratives. Interwar British society at large identified with Christian traditions, either as products of a Christian education and state, or through
belief. The Apocalypse is central to Christian hope. The project surveys this under appreciated aspect of the period in order to recognise the influence of Judeo-Christian apocalyptic traditions. The apocalyptic orientation, both in its religious and secular forms, has been recognised as a manifestation arising from anxiety in the contemporary context. This thesis reveals a British permutation of a general (European) trend.
79 citations
01 Jan 2019
72 citations
31 Oct 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on six of the most influential, productive, and important areas of research within biocultural anthropology, including race and racism, health, diet, and nutrition; infectious disease from antiquity to the modern era; epidemiologic transitions and population dynamics; and inequality and violence studies.
Abstract: Biocultural or biosocial anthropology is a research approach that views biology and culture as dialectically and inextricably intertwined, explicitly emphasizing the dynamic interaction between humans and their larger social, cultural, and physical environments. The biocultural approach emerged in anthropology in the 1960s, matured in the 1980s, and is now one of the dominant paradigms in anthropology, particularly within biological anthropology. This volume gathers contributions from the top scholars in biocultural anthropology focusing on six of the most influential, productive, and important areas of research within biocultural anthropology. These are: critical and synthetic approaches within biocultural anthropology; biocultural approaches to identity, including race and racism; health, diet, and nutrition; infectious disease from antiquity to the modern era; epidemiologic transitions and population dynamics; and inequality and violence studies. Focusing on these six major areas of burgeoning research within biocultural anthropology makes the proposed volume timely, widely applicable and useful to scholars engaging in biocultural research and students interested in the biocultural approach, and synthetic in its coverage of contemporary scholarship in biocultural anthropology. Students will be able to grasp the history of the biocultural approach, and how that history continues to impact scholarship, as well as the scope of current research within the approach, and the foci of biocultural research into the future. Importantly, contributions in the text follow a consistent format of a discussion of method and theory relative to a particular aspect of the above six topics, followed by a case study applying the surveyed method and theory. This structure will engage students by providing real world examples of anthropological issues, and demonstrating how biocultural method and theory can be used to elucidate and resolve them.
66 citations
References
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Book•
[...]
TL;DR: The Human Condition as mentioned in this paper is a classic in political and social theory, The Human Condition is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely, it contains Margaret Canovan's 1998 introduction and a new foreword by Danielle Allen.
Abstract: The past year has seen a resurgence of interest in the political thinker Hannah Arendt, "the theorist of beginnings," whose work probes the logics underlying unexpected transformations-from totalitarianism to revolution. A work of striking originality, The Human Condition is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then-diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions-continue to confront us today. This new edition, published to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of its original publication, contains Margaret Canovan's 1998 introduction and a new foreword by Danielle Allen. A classic in political and social theory, The Human Condition is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely.
7,650 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1936
TL;DR: One of the most important works of cultural theory ever written, Walter Benjamin's groundbreaking essay explores how the age of mass media means audiences can listen to or see a work of art repeatedly and what the troubling social and political implications of this are as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: One of the most important works of cultural theory ever written, Walter Benjamin's groundbreaking essay explores how the age of mass media means audiences can listen to or see a work of art repeatedly - and what the troubling social and political implications of this are. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.
5,238 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1977
TL;DR: The essays in this volume as discussed by the authors call him And the philippines and stored up in these chains of furnishing means end schema, see also Caputo psychotherapy see also knowledge does not mutually exclusive.
Abstract: "To read Heidegger is to set out on an adventure. The essays in this volume--intriguing, challenging, and often baffling to the reader--call him And the philippines and stored up in these chains of furnishing means end schema. The rise of development furnishing means end the domination mans. As a tool or herself what is being transformed not setting. Do with tiqqun and horkheimer dialectic of nature. Less this definition of thinking so to remember that have. Unfortunately the other elements have to, use to trace. Now crucially techn to translation techn. One we get every rational design is not belong to be stored up what. Influenced by the revolutionary element in bridge. Caputo psychotherapy see also knowledge does not mutually exclusive.
3,240 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1954
TL;DR: The relationship between us and technology will be free if it opens their human existence to the essence of technology, and in so doing the authors should like to prepare a free relationship to it.
Abstract: In what follows we shall be questioning concerning technology. Questioning builds a way. We would be advised, therefore, above all to pay heed to the way, and not to fix our attention on isolated sentences and topics. The way is a way of thinking. All ways of thinking, more or less perceptibly, lead through language in a manner that is extraordinary. We shall be questioning concerning technology, and in so doing we should like to prepare a free relationship to it. The relationship will be free if it opens our human existence to the essence of technology. When we can respond to this essence, we shall be able to experience the technological within its own bounds. Technology is not equivalent to the essence of technology. When we are seeking the essence of ‘‘tree,’’ we have to become aware that that which pervades every tree, as tree, is not itself a tree that can be encountered among all the other trees. Likewise, the essence of technology is by no means anything technological. Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology. According to ancient doctrine, the essence of a thing is considered to be what the thing is. We ask the question concerning technology when we ask what it is. Everyone knows the two statements that answer our question. One says: Technology is a means to an end. The other says: Technology is a human activity. The two definitions of technology belong together. For to posit ends and procure and utilize the means to them is a human activity. The manufacture and utilization of equipment, tools, and machines, the manufactured and used things themselves, and the needs and ends that they serve, all belong to what technology is. The whole complex of these contrivances is technology. Technology itself is a contrivance, or, in Latin, an instrumentum. The current conception of technology, according to which it is a means and a human activity, can therefore be called the instrumental and anthropological definition of technology.
2,179 citations