|
Showing 1 - 10 of
10 matches in All Departments
Edgar Morin, one of France's greatest living intellectuals, tells
the story of his father, Vidal Nahoum, but also the story of
Sephardic Jews, and of Europe. In this 'holographic history'
Vidal's story, and that of his family, carries within it the
flowering, decline, and death of Jewish culture in Spain, the
passage from Empires to Nation States, the complex relations
between Jews and Gentiles, between East and West, and, ultimately,
the history of the twentieth century itself. Morin's work ranges
from the great sweep of global historical events to the everyday
details of individual lives, letters, feelings, reflections, and
experiences. Vidal was born in 1894 in the Ottoman Empire's great
Macedonian port. His great-grandfather came from Tuscany and spoke
Italian. His mother tongue was fifteenth-century Spanish. He
learned French and German as a child. When he was an adolescent, he
dreamed of living in France; he was deported there as a prisoner,
and then liberated by the French Prime Minister. He lived through
the Balkan wars, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and two World
Wars. Vidal cannot be isolated from his family. And as Edgar Morin
explains, "this book also tells the stories of the men and women in
his immediate family When, as his son, I inevitably come into his
story... I describe him as objectively as possible. The reverence
that inspired me did not call for a work of edification; it implied
that I should attempt to write a truthful book. For this reason,
the book is not in the least respectful, or at least not in the
usual sense of the word. Vidal felt that loving someone meant being
able to tease him. The author of these lines, who has inherited
something of this trait, does not think it disrespectful to tease
or make fun of the people he loves."
In 1969, California is not just the new Eldorado: it is the
crucible where civilisation is accelerating, self-destructs, and is
reborn. It's the probe of Spaceship Earth. The hippy phenomenon,
communes, the ecological movement, great collective ceremonies like
park-ins and rock concerts, the flourishing of sects ranging from
mystics to Marxists, the experience of 'weed' and 'acid', are
temporary images and elements of a search for a new truth, a new
religion, a new society. Long before it became fashionable for
European intellectuals to write about their voyages to the United
States, Edgar Morin, one of France's leading intellectual figures
and at that time known as a path-breaking and innovative
sociologist and researcher of popular culture, recounts the story
of his experiences in the cauldron of change that was California,
including his encounters with some of the leading minds of that
time. The book combines Morin's accounts of his experiences with
his own search for answers to fundamental questions about the human
condition. For a few months, the author had a profound feeling of
being drawn into the heart of the 'great questions', played out
personally and societally. The result is an engaging and prophetic
work that has as much if not more to offer today than it did when
it was first published in French.
When The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man first appeared in 1956, the
movies and the moviegoing experience were generally not regarded as
worthy of serious scholarly consideration. Yet, French critic and
social theorist Edgar Morin perceived in the cinema a complex
phenomenon capable of illuminating fundamental truths about
thought, imagination, and human nature - which allowed him to
connect the mythic universe of gods and spirits present within the
most primitive societies to the hyperreality emanating from the
images projected on the screen. Now making its English-language
debut, this audacious, provocative work draws on insights from
poets, filmmakers, anthropologists, and philosophers to restore to
the cinema the sense of magic first enjoyed at the dawn of the
medium. Morin's inquiry follows two veins of investigation. The
first focuses on the cinematic image as the nexus between the real
and the imaginary; the second examines the cinema's re-creation of
the archaic universe of doubles and ghosts and its power to
possess, to bewitch, to nourish dreams, desires, and aspirations.
"We experience the cinema in a state of double consciousness,"
Morin writes, "an astonishing phenomenon where the illusion of
reality is inseparable from the awareness that it is really an
illusion."
Worshipped as heroes, treated as gods, movie stars are more than
objects of admiration. A star's influence touches on every aspect
of ordinary life, dictating taste in fashion, lifestyle, and
desire. Edgar Morin's remarkable investigation into the cultural
and social significance of the star system traces its evolution
from the earliest days of the cinema - when stars like Chaplin,
Garbo, and Valentino lived at a distance from their fans, far
beyond all mortals, to the postwar era in which stars like Humphrey
Bogart and Marilyn Monroe became familiar and familial, less
unapproachable but more moving, and concludes with an analysis of
the furious religious adulation surrounding the life and death of
James Dean. Ultimately, Morin finds, stars are more than just
creations of the movie studios; they serve as intermediaries
between the real and the imaginary. Today, with the cult of fame
more pervasive and influential than ever, The Stars remains a
vibrant, vital, and surprising work.
|
|