At a juncture in which art and culture are saturated with the forces of commodification, this book argues that problems, forms, and positions that defined modernism are crucially relevant to the condition of contemporary art and culture. The volume is attuned to the central concerns of recent scholarship on modernism and contemporary culture: the problems of aesthetic autonomy and the specific role of art in preserving a critical standpoint for cultural production; the relationship between politics and the category of the aesthetic; the problems of temporality and contemporaneity; literary transnationalism; and the questions of medium and medium specificity. Ranging across art forms, mediums, disciplines, and geographical locations, essays address the foundational questions that fuse modernism and the contemporary moment: What is art? What is the relation between art and the economy? How do art and technology interpenetrate and transform each other? What is modernism's logic of time and contemporaneity, and how might it speak to the problem of thinking genuine novelty, or the possibility of an alternative to the current stage of neo-liberal capitalism? What is modernism, and what is its history? The book is thus committed to revising our understanding of what modernism was in its earlier instantiations, and in accounting for the current moment, addressing the problems raised by modernism's afterlives and reverberations in the 20th and 21st centuries. The volume includes essays that consider literature, sociology, philosophy, visual art, music, architecture, digital culture, television, and other artistic media. It synthesizes the most recent thinking on modernism and contemporary culture and presents a compelling case for what happens to literature, art, and culture in the wake of the exhaustion of postmodernism. This book will be of interest to those studying literature, visual art, media studies, architecture, literary theory, modernism, and twentieth-century and contemporary culture more generally.

At a juncture in which art and culture are saturated with the forces of commodification, this book argues that problems, forms, and positions that defined modernism are crucially relevant to the condition of contemporary art and culture. The volume is attuned to the central concerns of recent scholarship on modernism and contemporary culture: the problems of aesthetic autonomy and the specific role of art in preserving a critical standpoint for cultural production; the relationship between politics and the category of the aesthetic; the problems of temporality and contemporaneity; literary transnationalism; and the questions of medium and medium specificity. Ranging across art forms, mediums, disciplines, and geographical locations, essays address the foundational questions that fuse modernism and the contemporary moment: What is art? What is the relation between art and the economy? How do art and technology interpenetrate and transform each other? What is modernism's logic of time and contemporaneity, and how might it speak to the problem of thinking genuine novelty, or the possibility of an alternative to the current stage of neo-liberal capitalism? What is modernism, and what is its history? The book is thus committed to revising our understanding of what modernism was in its earlier instantiations, and in accounting for the current moment, addressing the problems raised by modernism's afterlives and reverberations in the 20th and 21st centuries. The volume includes essays that consider literature, sociology, philosophy, visual art, music, architecture, digital culture, television, and other artistic media. It synthesizes the most recent thinking on modernism and contemporary culture and presents a compelling case for what happens to literature, art, and culture in the wake of the exhaustion of postmodernism. This book will be of interest to those studying literature, visual art, media studies, architecture, literary theory, modernism, and twentieth-century and contemporary culture more generally.

Major conduction blocks utilizing local anesthetics or opiates are find ing ever increasing applications in daily routine. However, two serious drawbacks are associated with their use: hypotension during surgery and the development of tolerance in long-term epidural analgesia. When opiates are injected epidurally or intrathecally, numerous side effects such as itching, nausea and vomiting, or respiratory depression have been reported. The pathophysiology of complications arising during a major conduction block and measures to prevent them were discussed by 19 experts at the 4th International Symposium at DUsseldorf. This volume contains 21 papers presented on three topics: 1. tachyphylaxis in long-term epidural anesthesia, 2. hypotension due to epidural and spinal anesthesia, and 3. effects and dangers of epidural and intrathecal opiates. With regard to the safety of our patients during anesthesia, current practices of preventing complications were evaluated, and preliminary guidelines for a more rational approach toward prevention and treat ment based on a knowledge of pathophysiologic mechanisms were developed. It is our hope that the anesthesiologist will profit from the discussion of regional anesthesia contained in this volume, many aspects of which have never before been presented in such detail."

This book is an important addition to the growing literature which addresses the issue of Australia's policies towards people seeking asylum. In the early stages of the Tampa crisis, the government dominated discussions around Australian refugee policy. Australians would decide who would live amongst us. Such decisions were was when asylum seekers were depicted as non-law abiding, unruly and inhumane 'others' who were very different from us. Slowly other voices have been added to this discussion and in different forums we have begun to hear from some of those people who sough asylum and who describe horrors, fears and terrors which made remaining where they were, unthinkable. These stories began to challenge the idea that these refugees were different from us. Still, the Australian hardline policies have continued. This volume broadens the debate by adding to the voices of some of those seeking asylum, the voices of people who have been working directly with refugees, as well as those of experts able to comment on the impact of the laws created around the refugees.

"Immediately after September 11, the Brookings Institution began a comprehensive, multidisciplinary project focused on the key policy challenge of these dangerous times-assessing and improving homeland defense. That intense effort produced Protecting the American Homeland, and it continues in this important new book. In Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007, Brookings foreign policy experts analyze current homeland security concerns and the adequacy (or inadequacy) of current policies designed to address them. The authors present both the big picture and the smaller components of homeland security policy that make up the whole. They make specific recommendations on intelligence reform, science and technology policy and the protection of critical infrastructure within the United States. They also look ahead to consider what dangers we should anticipate and plan for, recommending policies that will work to that end. One of the strands running through Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007 is the need to ""stitch the seams"" in our homeland security blanket through greater integration and coordination. The authors emphasize that the U.S. federal government must work together with key partners who have been insufficiently integrated into American homeland security activities to date. These actors include foreign governments, state and local government, and the private sector, and the coordination must occur in several different areas (e.g. border protection, finance, technology, intelligence). The U.S. government should not-indeed, it cannot-do it alone. By its very nature, homeland security is a problem that defies the usual bureaucratic boundaries. Effective homeland security policy demands intense collaboration on new issues and between organizations that have not traditionally needed each other. This book is of interest and importance to journalists, analysts, policymakers, scholars, and citizens concerned with protecting their homeland against terrorism and related dangers. "