To understand the historical complexity of the Pakistan–Afghanistan borderland, this book brings together some of the foremost thinkers of this borderland and seeks to approach its various problematic dimensions. This book presents an overview of the geopolitics of the Pakistan–Afghanistan borderland and approaches the topic from different methods and perspectives. It focuses on some of the least debated dimensions of this borderland, for instance, the status of women in the tribal-border culture, the legal status of aliens in the making of the border, material and immaterial manifestations of the border, political aesthetics of the border, and the identity crisis on the border. Given the fact that its authors come from diverse backgrounds, academic and geographic, they make an enriching contribution. Employing their expertise in different theories and methods, they focus on local memories, literature, and wisdom to understand the border. This book seeks to give voice to the plight of local tribal people, their culture, and land on an advanced academic level and makes it legible for the international audience. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Geopolitics.

In The Phenomenology of Religious Belief, the renowned philosopher Michael J. Shapiro investigates how art - and in particular literature and film - can impact upon both traditional interpretations and critical studies of religious beliefs and experiences. In doing so, he examines the work of prolific and award-winning writers such as Toni Morrison, Philip K. Dick and Robert Coover. By placing their work in conjunction with critical analyses of media by the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Pier Paolo Pasolini and combining it with the work of groundbreaking thinkers such as George Canguilhem, Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek, Shapiro takes a truly interdisciplinary approach to the question of how life should be lived. His assessment of phenomenological subjectivity also leads him to question the nature of political theology and extend the criticism of Pauline theology.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

Writing Politics is a methods book designed to instruct on politically focused literary inquiry. Exploring the political sensibilities that arise from the way literary fiction re-textualizes historical periods and events, the book features a series of violence-themed inquiries that emphasize forms of writing as the vehicles for politically attuned historiography. Each investigation treats the way the literary genre, within historiographic metafiction, enables political inquiry. It's a form of writing that inter-articulates history and fiction to rework a textual past and unsettle dominant understandings of events and situations. Central to the diverse chapters are fictional treatments of authoritarian, fascist, or zealous mentalities. Featured, for example, are Radovan Karadzic (the architect of the Bosnian genocide), Reinhard Heydrich (the architect of the Holocaust's "final solution"), and the Trotsky assassin Ramon Mercader. Michael J. Shapiro has produced another original and sophisticated bookshelf staple; the only contemporary investigation in Political Studies that instructs on method in this way.

Writing Politics is a methods book designed to instruct on politically focused literary inquiry. Exploring the political sensibilities that arise from the way literary fiction re-textualizes historical periods and events, the book features a series of violence-themed inquiries that emphasize forms of writing as the vehicles for politically attuned historiography. Each investigation treats the way the literary genre, within historiographic metafiction, enables political inquiry. It's a form of writing that inter-articulates history and fiction to rework a textual past and unsettle dominant understandings of events and situations. Central to the diverse chapters are fictional treatments of authoritarian, fascist, or zealous mentalities. Featured, for example, are Radovan Karadzic (the architect of the Bosnian genocide), Reinhard Heydrich (the architect of the Holocaust's "final solution"), and the Trotsky assassin Ramon Mercader. Michael J. Shapiro has produced another original and sophisticated bookshelf staple; the only contemporary investigation in Political Studies that instructs on method in this way.

To understand the historical complexity of the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland, this book brings together some of the foremost thinkers of this borderland and seeks to approach its various problematic dimensions. This book presents an overview of the geopolitics of the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland and approaches the topic from different methods and perspectives. It focuses on some of the least debated dimensions of this borderland, for instance, the status of women in the tribal-border culture, the legal status of aliens in the making of the border, material and immaterial manifestations of the border, political aesthetics of the border, and the identity crisis on the border. Given the fact that its authors come from diverse backgrounds, academic and geographic, they make an enriching contribution. Employing their expertise in different theories and methods, they focus on local memories, literature, and wisdom to understand the border. This book seeks to give voice to the plight of local tribal people, their culture, and land on an advanced academic level and makes it legible for the international audience. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Geopolitics.

Deforming American Political Thought offers an alternative to the dominant American historical imagination, treating issues that range from the nature of Thomas Jefferson's vision of an egalitarian nation to the persistence of racial inequality. Presenting multifaceted arguments that transcend the myopic scope of traditional political discourses, Michael J. Shapiro summons disparate disciplines and genres - architecture, crime stories, novels, films, and jazz/blues music (among others) to provide approaches to the comprehension of diverse facets of American political thought from the founding to the present. The book's various investigations disclose that there have always been dissenting voices, articulated in diverse genres of expression that cast doubt on the moral purpose and exceptionalism of the American mind. This highly anticipated updated second edition features a preface focusing on aesthetic theory and the contributions of artistic genres for political analysis, and a completely new chapter on critical thinking about the US western and urban encounters afforded by the two HBO series, Deadwood and The Wire respectively.

In this fascinating book, Jorge Luis Andrade Fernandes critically examines the impact of colonialism and postcolonial migration on the politics and identity of Euro-American imperial powers. It considers how 'outsiders' are part of the construction of the 'native' identity of the nation-state, and also how they challenge its essential coherence when they 'return' to the centre in our increasingly globalized world. Engaging in a theoretically-motivated discussion of a range of sources (film, fiction, political theory and state policy); the volume traces the nomadic movement of bodies across national frontiers, helping us to question any natural link between nation-states and identities, and between places and peoples. This is not merely a theoretical problem, as Fernandes relates it to the very current crisis of nativistic / multicultural identity in the West. He examines how politics takes shape in transnational social and cultural encounters, and how this new politics is not just about containing aliens, but also contains fruitful possibilities for different modes of being. Challenging Euro-America's Politics of Identity will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in politics, geography, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, African and African-American studies, comparative literature, American studies, and Ethnic studies.

In recent years, film has been one of the major genres within which the imaginaries involved in mapping the geopolitical world have been represented and reflected upon.

In this book, one of America's foremost theorists of culture and politics treats those aspects of the "geopolitical aesthetic" that must be addressed in light of both the post cold war and post 9/11 world and contemporary film theory and philosophy. Beginning with an account of his experience as a juror at film festival s, Michael J. Shapiro s Cinematic Geopolitics analyzes the ways in which film festival space and both feature and documentary films function as counter-spaces to the contemporary "violent cartography" occasioned by governmental policy, especially the current "war on terror."

Influenced by the cinema-philosophy relationship developed by Gilles Deleuze and the politics of aesthetics thinking of Jacques Ranciere, the book s chapters examines a range of films from established classics like the Deer Hunter and the Battle of Algiers to contemporary films such as Dirty Pretty Things and the Fog of War. Shapiro s use of philosophical and theoretical works makes this cutting edge examination of film and politics essential reading for all students and scholars with an interest in film and politics.

In this fascinating book, Jorge Luis Andrade Fernandes critically examines the impact of colonialism and postcolonial migration on the politics and identity of Euro-American imperial powers.

It considers how 'outsiders' are part of the construction of the 'native' identity of the nation-state, and also how they challenge its essential coherence when they 'return' to the centre in our increasingly globalized world. Engaging in a theoretically-motivated discussion of a range of sources (film, fiction, political theory and state policy); the volume traces the nomadic movement of bodies across national frontiers, helping us to question any natural link between nation-states and identities, and between places and peoples. This is not merely a theoretical problem, as Fernandes relates it to the very current crisis of nativistic / multicultural identity in the West. He examines how politics takes shape in transnational social and cultural encounters, and how this new politics is not just about containing aliens, but also contains fruitful possibilities for different modes of being.

Challenging Euro-America's Politics of Identity will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in politics, geography, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, African and African-American studies, comparative literature, American studies, and Ethnic studies.

In Cinematic Political Thought, Michael J. Shapiro investigates aspects of contemporary politics and articulates a critical philosophical perspective with politically disposed treatments of contemporary cinema. Reading such films as "Hoop Dreams, Lone Star, Father of the Bride II "and "To Live and Die in LA "through the lens of Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard, Shapiro demonstrates what it can mean to think the political both in terms of cinema studies and in wider aesthetic and social contexts.

Cinematic Political Thought is a polemical work, aimed at encouraging critical, ethical and political thinking. Its breadth of theoretical scope and empirical reference, and the innovative style of presentation will make it vital reading for anyone with an interest in the conjunction of culture and politics.

Methods and Nations critiques one of the primary deployments of twentieth-century social science: comparative politics whose major focus has been "nation-building" in the "Third World," often attempting to universalize and render self-evident its own practices. International relations theorists, unable to resist the "cognitive imperialism" of a state-centric social science, have allowed themselves to become colonized. Michael Shapiro seeks to bring recognition to forms of political expression - alternative modes of intelligibility for things, people, and spaces - that have existed on the margins of the nationhood practices of states and the complicit nation-sustaining conceits of social science.

Contents:
Preface: Politics, Methods, and Loci of Enunciation 1. Introduction: Biopolitical Conceits and the Colonization of Hawaii 2. Nation-States: Drama and Narration 3. The "Musico-Literary" Aesthetics of Attachment and Resistance 4. Landscape and Nationhood 5. Film and Nation Building 6. "The Nation-State and Violence": Wim Wenders Contra Imperial Sovereignty Notes

Issues a stern warning about the risks of speaking, writing, and thinking in a manner too confident about one's own judgments and asks, "Can a clear line be drawn between dogmatism and simple certainty and indignation?" Bennett and Shapiro enter the debate by questioning what has become a popular, even pervasive, cultural narrative told by both the left and the right: the story of the West's moral decline, degeneration, or confusion. Contributors explore the dynamics and dilemmas of moralizing by advocates of patriotism, environmental protection, and women's rights while arguing that the current discourse gives free license to self-aggrandizement, cruelty, vengeance and punitiveness and a generalized resistance to or abjection of diversity.

Deforming American Political Thought offers an alternative to the dominant American historical imagination, treating issues that range from the nature of Thomas Jefferson's vision of an egalitarian nation to the persistence of racial inequality. Presenting multifaceted arguments that transcend the myopic scope of traditional political discourses, Michael J. Shapiro summons disparate disciplines and genres - architecture, crime stories, novels, films, and jazz/blues music (among others) to provide approaches to the comprehension of diverse facets of American political thought from the founding to the present. The book's various investigations disclose that there have always been dissenting voices, articulated in diverse genres of expression that cast doubt on the moral purpose and exceptionalism of the American mind. This highly anticipated updated second edition features a preface focusing on aesthetic theory and the contributions of artistic genres for political analysis, and a completely new chapter on critical thinking about the US western and urban encounters afforded by the two HBO series, Deadwood and The Wire respectively.

In this book, Michael J. Shapiro stages a series of pedagogical encounters between political theory, represented as a compositional challenge, and cinematic texts, emphasizing how to achieve an effective research paper/essay by heeding the compositional strategies of films. The text's distinctiveness is its focus on the intermediation between two textual genres. It is aimed at providing both a conceptual introduction to the politics of aesthetics and a guide to writing strategies. In its illustrations of encounters between political theory and cinema, the book's critical edge is its emphasis on how to intervene in cinematic texts with innovative conceptual frames in ways that challenge dominant understandings of life worlds. The Cinematic Political is designed as a teaching resource that introduces students to the relationship between film form and political thinking. With diverse illustrative investigations, the book instructs students on how to watch films with an eye toward writing a research paper in which a film (or set of films) constitutes the textual vehicle for political theorizing.

In this book, Michael J. Shapiro stages a series of pedagogical encounters between political theory, represented as a compositional challenge, and cinematic texts, emphasizing how to achieve an effective research paper/essay by heeding the compositional strategies of films. The text's distinctiveness is its focus on the intermediation between two textual genres. It is aimed at providing both a conceptual introduction to the politics of aesthetics and a guide to writing strategies. In its illustrations of encounters between political theory and cinema, the book's critical edge is its emphasis on how to intervene in cinematic texts with innovative conceptual frames in ways that challenge dominant understandings of life worlds. The Cinematic Political is designed as a teaching resource that introduces students to the relationship between film form and political thinking. With diverse illustrative investigations, the book instructs students on how to watch films with an eye toward writing a research paper in which a film (or set of films) constitutes the textual vehicle for political theorizing.

Presuming that the problem of political equality, as it bears on both persons and assemblages, is about being accorded access to the material and symbolic resources needed to manage an effective civic presence, Michael J. Shapiro's critical interventions engage the way aesthetic genres illustrate this problem. Addressing literary, cinematic, photographic, musical, art historical, and architectural compositions, Shapiro's inquiries encounter the way a wide variety of texts elevate voices, bodies, and life dramas that have existed below thresholds of recognition. In Aesthetics of Equality, Shapiro offers a guide to aesthetic methods that emphasize the way writing strategies engage diverse artistic genres to articulate political problems. Emphasizing relationships between compositional form and ideational commitment, while focusing on the texts' protagonists (aesthetic subjects), the analyses cover a wide variety of spaces and historical moments in scenes ranging from ancient Israel and Egypt in the Old Testament's Genesis to the ethno-histories of California and Texas, with attention on the right to urban space in such megacities as Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and Istanbul.

Presuming that the problem of political equality, as it bears on both persons and assemblages, is about being accorded access to the material and symbolic resources needed to manage an effective civic presence, Michael J. Shapiro's critical interventions engage the way aesthetic genres illustrate this problem. Addressing literary, cinematic, photographic, musical, art historical, and architectural compositions, Shapiro's inquiries encounter the way a wide variety of texts elevate voices, bodies, and life dramas that have existed below thresholds of recognition. In Aesthetics of Equality, Shapiro offers a guide to aesthetic methods that emphasize the way writing strategies engage diverse artistic genres to articulate political problems. Emphasizing relationships between compositional form and ideational commitment, while focusing on the texts' protagonists (aesthetic subjects), the analyses cover a wide variety of spaces and historical moments in scenes ranging from ancient Israel and Egypt in the Old Testament's Genesis to the ethno-histories of California and Texas, with attention on the right to urban space in such megacities as Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and Istanbul.

In recent years, film has been one of the major genres within which the imaginaries involved in mapping the geopolitical world have been represented and reflected upon. In this book, one of America's foremost theorists of culture and politics treats those aspects of the "geopolitical aesthetic" that must be addressed in light of both the post cold war and post 9/11 world and contemporary film theory and philosophy. Beginning with an account of his experience as a juror at film festival's, Michael J. Shapiro's Cinematic Geopolitics analyzes the ways in which film festival space and both feature and documentary films function as counter-spaces to the contemporary "violent cartography" occasioned by governmental policy, especially the current "war on terror." Influenced by the cinema-philosophy relationship developed by Gilles Deleuze and the politics of aesthetics thinking of Jacques Ranciere, the book's chapters examines a range of films from established classics like the Deer Hunter and the Battle of Algiers to contemporary films such as Dirty Pretty Things and the Fog of War. Shapiro's use of philosophical and theoretical works makes this cutting edge examination of film and politics essential reading for all students and scholars with an interest in film and politics.

For International Relations scholars, discussions of globalization inevitably turn to questions of sovereignty. How much control does a country have over its borders, people and economy? Where does that authority come from? Sovereign Lives explores these changes through readings of humanitarian intervention, human rights discourses, securitization, refugees, the fragmentation of identities and the practices of development.

In Punctuations Michael J. Shapiro examines how punctuation-conceived not as a series of marks but as a metaphor for the ways in which artists engage with intelligibility-opens pathways for thinking through the possibilities for oppositional politics. Drawing on Theodor Adorno, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Roland Barthes, Shapiro demonstrates how punctuation's capacity to create unexpected rhythmic pacing makes it an ideal tool for writers, musicians, filmmakers, and artists to challenge structures of power. In works ranging from film scores and jazz compositions to literature, architecture, and photography, Shapiro shows how the use of punctuation reveals the contestability of dominant narratives in ways that prompt readers, viewers, and listeners to reflect on their acceptance of those narratives. Such uses of punctuation, he theorizes, offer models for disrupting structures of authority, thereby fostering the creation of alternative communities of sense from which to base political mobilization.

In Cinematic Political Thought, Michael J. Shapiro investigates aspects of contemporary politics and articulates a critical philosophical perspective with politically disposed treatments of contemporary cinema. Reading such films as "Hoop Dreams, Lone Star, Father of the Bride II "and "To Live and Die in LA "through the lens of Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard, Shapiro demonstrates what it can mean to think the political both in terms of cinema studies and in wider aesthetic and social contexts.

Cinematic Political Thought is a polemical work, aimed at encouraging critical, ethical and political thinking. Its breadth of theoretical scope and empirical reference, and the innovative style of presentation will make it vital reading for anyone with an interest in the conjunction of culture and politics.

In The Political Sublime Michael J. Shapiro formulates an original politics of aesthetics through an analysis of the experience of the sublime. Turning away from Kant's analysis of the sublime experience as a validation of the existence of a universal common sense, Shapiro draws on Deleuze, Lyotard, and Ranciere to show how incomprehensible events and dilemmas provide openings for new political formations. He approaches the sublime through a range of artistic and cultural texts that address social crises and natural disasters, from the writing of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates to the films of Ingmar Bergman and Spike Lee; these works suggest ways to channel the disruptive effects of the sublime into resistance to authority and innovative political initiative. Whether stemming from the threat of nuclear annihilation or the aftermath of an earthquake, the violence of racism and terrorism or the devastation of industrialism, sublime experience, Shapiro contends, allows for a rethinking of events in ways that reveal, redistribute, and create conditions of possibility for alternative communities of sense.

In Punctuations Michael J. Shapiro examines how punctuation-conceived not as a series of marks but as a metaphor for the ways in which artists engage with intelligibility-opens pathways for thinking through the possibilities for oppositional politics. Drawing on Theodor Adorno, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Roland Barthes, Shapiro demonstrates how punctuation's capacity to create unexpected rhythmic pacing makes it an ideal tool for writers, musicians, filmmakers, and artists to challenge structures of power. In works ranging from film scores and jazz compositions to literature, architecture, and photography, Shapiro shows how the use of punctuation reveals the contestability of dominant narratives in ways that prompt readers, viewers, and listeners to reflect on their acceptance of those narratives. Such uses of punctuation, he theorizes, offer models for disrupting structures of authority, thereby fostering the creation of alternative communities of sense from which to base political mobilization.