In 2008 an Iraqi artist was waterboarded as performance art. In 2010 artists upturned police cars in Russia. But what exactly do we mean by militant art and aesthetics? Bringing together the philosophy of art and politics, Martin Lang provides a comprehensive examination of militant art activism: its history, its advocates and the aesthetic theory behind it. Protest art is not a new concept and yet this book argues that after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 distinctly 21st-century forms of art activism emerged. On the one hand these became militant as artists retained belief in the possibility of radical political change through art. On the other hand, this belief developed in a hostile environment, when anti-terror legislations reclassified activists and artists as terrorists. Through first-hand interviews and experiences, Militant Aesthetics sheds light on numerous international case studies of modern art activism and the different ways they can be classified as militant. Many artists and collectives, including Grupo Etcétera in Buenos Aries, are prepared to break the law and risk arrest for their art. Others like Thomas Bresolin's Militant Training Camp utilise military uniforms in violent performances that connect with public anger, and artists such as Zthoven in the Czech Republic occupy, hack, antagonise and disrupt in increasingly militant ways. Combining these examples with the pioneering thought of Badiou, Zizek, Rancière and Mouffe, as well as up-to-date scholarship from Bishop, Léger and others, Lang investigates the instances, attributes and rules of militant art in order to introduce a new overall theory of 21st-century militant aesthetics.
Engaging with the many debates about the meaning and character of Bonhoeffer's late resistance theology and action, particularly as it relates to his participation in the attempted coup d'etat against Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a Theology of the Exception attends to Bonhoeffer's understanding of the exception. Resisting the common reduction of the exception to a political or ethical concept, O'Farrell argues that the exception for Bonhoeffer is an extraordinary moment in history that disarms persons, impinging on one's understanding of politics and ethics. Through a wide engagement with the Bonhoeffer corpus, this book states that this leads to distinctive narrations of key concepts in Bonhoeffer's corpus: responsibility, the free venture, simple obedience, and action beyond the law. It also offers a different portrait of Bonhoeffer to contemporary narrations. The Bonhoeffer that emerges is neither a Niebuhrian realist, a pacifist, or a religious fanatic, but one who is impelled to act apart from the law without this action becoming arbitrary. This Bonhoeffer provides a hopeful political witness that seeks a world beyond the conflicts and divisions of this age.
Two new novels from Amanda Prowse, that tell the story of one couple from both sides... This is Anna's story.
Two new novels from Amanda Prowse, that tell the story of one couple from both sides... This is Theo's story.
She thought she was a wife and mother. Then her husband and children left home. Who is she now?
An unputdownable family drama that confronts the controversial issue of middle class alcoholism.
From the million-copy bestseller Amanda Prowse, the queen of heartbreak fiction. Amanda Prowse is the author of The Coordinates Of Loss and the no.1 bestsellers Perfect Daughter, My Husband's Wife and What Have I Done? Grace and Tom Penderford are the luckiest people alive. They have a wonderful marriage, a comfortable life and a beautiful baby girl, Chloe. Then, in a heartbeat, happiness becomes despair, and their lives change forever. When three-year-old Chloe falls ill and dies, Tom and Grace's world is ripped apart. As their family of three becomes two, they must find a way to mend each other's broken hearts... and save their marriage, if they can. Reviews for Amanda Prowse: 'Prowse handles her explosive subject with delicate skill ... Deeply moving and inspiring' DAILY MAIL. 'Powerful and emotional family drama that packs a real punch' HEAT. 'A gut wrenching and absolutely brilliant read' IRISH SUN. 'Captivating, heartbreaking, superbly written' CLOSER. 'Very uplifting and positive, but you may still need a box (or two) of tissues' HELLO. 'An emotional, unputdownable read' RED. 'Prowse writes gritty, contemporary stories but always with an uplifting message of hope' SUNDAY INDEPENDENT.
Jessica is expecting her first child. But why isn't she transformed by maternal feelings? Where is the all-consuming love she's supposed to feel for her child? No-one told her you don't always love your baby. Perhaps its best if Jessica keeps that dark secret to herself for now...
This book offers a timely and detailed examination of the reality of criminal legal practice today. Drawing upon extensive anonymous interviews with criminal lawyers in England and Wales, it illuminates how financial pressures arise within the criminal justice system and how lawyers seek to navigate them. It explores the way the work of criminal lawyers is frequently depicted in the news and media as exciting, well-paid and worthwhile, with prosecutors aiming to convict the guilty and defence lawyers fighting against miscarriages of justice. In contrast, the picture reported by many is of an already creaking and under-resourced system, now exacerbated by fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Against this backdrop, the book considers whether the criminal legal aid system really can continue to provide those unable to afford a lawyer with access to justice and whether the Crown Prosecution Service can provide justice to victims of crime. The book presents detailed findings about the work and experiences of both prosecutors and defence lawyers, how financial pressures influence this and to what extent this has changed with the new ways of working brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why do people represent themselves? What works and what doesn't for self-represented parties? And how can we improve Litigant in Person (LiP) experiences to make the civil justice system fairer?Based on in-depth interviews with individuals who have acted as Litigants in Person in the civil courts, the book provides the first full-length account of LiP experiences. The author shines a light on how much we don't know about LiPs, the civil justice system, and LiPs' place within it, as well as the kinds of things we ought to be doing to improve access to justice for unrepresented parties.Perfect for scholars of administrative justice, access to justice, court reform and legal aid, as well as government bodies and non-profit organisations, this book generates insight into meaningful methods of what works and what doesn't work for self-represented parties, based on the real-life experiences of LiPs.
This book considers the governance of autistic defendants and offenders in the UK courts.Utilising the social model of disability, it considers the dominant strategies of governance, including 'vulnerability', which the author argues obscure the rights of disabled people in the criminal justice system. In doing so it sheds light on how this group should be governed. Drawing on rigorously-researched case studies of autistic adult defendants through the court process, the book brings together relevant legal and policy literature, criminological and criminal justice theory and disability studies to provide insight into the 'dividing practices' that affect the governance of disabled defendants' conduct. Using interviews with elites and practitioners, textual analysis, and court observation of 8 adult defendants with autism through their court process, the book investigates why the status of autistic defendants as disabled under the Equality Act 2010 has been overlooked in criminal justice policy and criminal court decision-making. It explores the impact of the 'collateral' effects and 'symbiotic harm' of the criminal justice process on family members who support these defendants through the criminal justice process.
This book provides an intellectual history of the modernist "minimum dwelling", exploring how early modernism saw mass housing as a primary vehicle for achieving the utopian transformation of society. It reappraises the often-overlooked 2nd and 3rd CIAM conferences (1929-31), addressing their engagement with the "minimum dwelling" and revealing them both as milestones in the organisation's annals and as seminal moments in the history of interwar modernism.In 1929, an eclectic international group of avant-garde modernist architects, including Ernst May, Mart Stam, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, met in Frankfurt for the second instalment of the CIAM conferences. They discussed a design programme for cost-effective, good-quality housing, seeking new approaches and processes to maximize quality and functionality while ensuring affordability for the wider population. In exploring the meaning and form of the 'minimum dwelling', they also re-defined dwelling as the hub of a new way of living, proposing a revolutionary multi-scalar approach to urban design based on the concept of the Existenzminimum ('optimally minimal housing').Despite the two conferences falling short of the organizer's expectations, and being overshadowed by later instalments, the participating architects sanctioned a semantic shift from minimum as bare necessity to a very different, aspirational, kind of minimalism - transforming the entire conversation on mass low-cost dwelling in design, social and ethical terms.Split into two parts, The Minimum Dwelling Revisited first takes a genealogical approach to explore the provenance of the concept of "minimum dwelling" prior to the 2nd and 3rd CIAM conferences, it then traces the proceedings of the two conferences themselves. Addressing the origins of the "minimum dwelling" concept but also its legacies, and serving as a corrective to the overemphasis on 4th CIAM conference and the Athens Charter, the book is essential reading for scholars researching urban design during the Interwar period.
Written by a lawyer who works at the intersection between legal education and practice in access to justice and human rights, this book locates, describes and defines a collective identity for social justice lawyering in the UK. Underpinned by theories of cause lawyering and legal mobilisation, the book argues that it is vital to understand the positions that progressive lawyers collectively take in order to frame the connections they make between their personal and professional lives, the tools they use to achieve social change, as well as ethical tensions presented by their work.The book takes a reflexive ethnographic approach to capture the stories of 35 lawyers working to positively transform law and policy in the UK over the last 50 years. It also draws on a wealth of primary sources including case reports, historic campaign materials and media analysis alongside wider ethnographic interviews with academics, students and lawyers and participant observation at social justice conferences, workshops and events.The book explains the way in which lawyers' networks facilitate their collective positioning and influence their strategic decision making, which in turn shapes their interactions with social activists, with other lawyers and with the state itself.
Zhao Lu analyses the eclectic, fictitious representations of Confucius that have been widely celebrated by communities of people throughout history, from antiquity until the present. While mainstream scholarship mostly considers Confucius in terms of his role as a celebrated man of wisdom and as a teacher with a humanistic worldview, in this book Lu addresses his weirder representations. He considers depictions Confucius as a prophet, a fortune-teller, a powerful demon hunter, a shrewd villain of 19th century American newspapers, and as an embodiment of feudal evils in the Cultural Revolution. In doing so, he asks why different communities of people would risk contradicting the well-accepted image of Confucius with such representations. To answer this question, Lu shows that these representations reflect the specific anxieties of these communities. He reveals not only how people across history perceived Confucius in diverse ways, but more importantly how they used Confucius in daily life, ranging from calming their anxiety about the future, to legitimizing a dynasty, to stereotyping Chinese people, and even to forging a new sense of history.
Sara G. Brinegar's book is the first to show how the politics of oil intersected with the establishment of Soviet power in the Caucasus; it reveals how the Soviets cooperated and negotiated with the local elite, rather than merely subsuming them. More broadly, Power and the Politics of Oil in the Soviet South Caucasus demonstrates not only how the Bolsheviks understood and exploited oil, but how the needs of the industry shaped Bolshevik policy.Brinegar reflects on the huge geopolitical importance of oil at the end of World War I and the Russian Civil War. She discusses how the reserves sitting idle in the oil fields of Baku, the capital of the newly independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, and the center of the fallen empire's oil reserves were no exception to this. With the Soviet leadership in Moscow intent on capturing the fields in the first few months of 1920, this book examines the Soviet project to rebuild Baku's oil industry in the aftermath of these wars and the political significance of oil in the formation of the Soviet Union.
An in-depth digital investigation of the 18th-century British corpus, this book identifies shared communities of meaning in the printed British 18th century by highlighting and analysing patterns in the distribution of lexis in historical corpora. There are forces of attraction between words: some are more likely to keep company than others, and how words attract and repel one another is worthy of note. Charting these forces, this book presents how distant reading 18th-century corpora can tell us something new, methodologically defensible and, crucially, interesting, about the most common constructions of word meanings and epistemes in the printed British 18th century. Through the case studies in this book, computation brings to light some remarkable facts about collectively-produced forms of meaning, without which the most common meanings of words, and the ways of knowing that they constituted, would remain matters of conjecture rather than evidence. Providing the first investigation of collective meaning and knowledge in the British 18th century, this interdisciplinary study builds on the existing stores of close reading, praxis, and history of ideas, presenting a view constructed at scale, rather than at the level of individual texts.
A New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia, 600-1700 proposes a new language for studying and conceptualizing the spaces, societies, and institutions that existed on the territory of today's Northern Eurasia, until recently part of the USSR. Traditional concepts and genealogies that frame human experience have to be avoided or reframed: this is not the story of a certain present-day state or people evolving through consecutive historical stages. Rather, the book's point of departure is a modern analytical approach to the problem of human diversity as a fundamental social condition. In the form of cooperation and confrontation, various attempts to manage diversity fostered processes of societal self-organization, as new ideas, practices, and institutions were developed virtually from scratch or radically altered when borrowed. Essentially, this is the story of individuals and societies who creatively responded to their natural and social environments and sought answers to universal problems in unique historical circumstances.This volume, which brings together leading scholars from both the United States and Russia, covers a millennium-long period in the history of the region characterized by the coexistence of several local sociopolitical arrangements. The book shows that their mutual interactions and attempts to integrate with one of the universal cultures of the time caused a string of unintended consequences. As a result, the enormous landmass from the Carpathian Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, from the Polar Circle in the north to the steppe belt in the south was divided among several regional powers. Ultimately unable to overtake each other by military force, they were locked in a zero-sum game until the uneven development of modern state institutions tilted the balance in favor of one of them - Russia.
Surveying print and digital graphic life narratives about migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, this book investigates how comics and graphic novels witness human rights transgressions in contemporary Anglophone culture and how they can promote social justice. With thought given to how the graphic form can offer a powerful counterpoint to the legal, humanitarian and media discourses that dehumanise the most violated and dispossessed, but also how these works by western creatives may unconsciously reproduce Western neo-colonial presentations of the 'other,' Olga Michael focuses on gender, childhood and space within works from the United States, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Palestine, the United Kingdom, Syria, Italy, France, Niger, South Africa, Libya and Sri Lanka. Combining the familiar with the lesser-known, this book covers the work of Thi Bui's Best We Could Do, Mia Kirshner's I Live Here, Francesca Sanna's The Journey, Safda Ahmed's Villawood: Notes from an Immigration Detention Centre and the works of Joe Sacco.Interdisciplinary in its consideration of life writing, comics and human rights studies, and comparative in approach, this book explores such topics as including the aesthetics of visualised suffering; spatial articulations of human rights violations; the occurrence of violations whilst crossing borders; the gendered dimensions of visually-captured violence; and how human rights discourses intersect with graphic depictions of the dead. In so doing, Michael establishes how to read human rights and social justice comics in relation to an escalating global crisis and deftly complicates negotiations of 'otherness' in discussions surrounding refugees and migration. A vitally important work to the humanities sector, this book underscores the significance of emphatic and ethical readings as forms of secondary witnessing.
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