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Using Nietzsche's categories of monumentalist, antiquarian and
critical history, the author examines the historical and
theoretical contexts of the collapse of the GDR in 1989 and looks
at the positive and negative legacies of the GDR for the PDS (the
successor party to the East German Communists). He contends that
the Stalinization of the GDR itself was the product not just of the
Cold War but of a longer inter-systemic struggle between the
competing primacies of politics and economics and that the end of
the GDR has to be seen as a consequence of the global collapse of
the social imperative under the pressure of the re-emergence of the
market-state since the mid-1970s. The PDS is therefore stuck in
dilemma in which any attempt to "arrive in the Federal Republic"
(Brie) is criticized as a readiness to accept the dominance of the
market over society whereas any attempt to prioritize social
imperatives over the market is attacked as a form of
unreconstructed Stalinism. The book offers some suggestions as to
how to escape from this dilemma by returning to the critical rather
than monumentalist and antiquarian traditions of the workers'
movement.
Using Nietzsche's categories of monumentalist, antiquarian and
critical history, the author examines the historical and
theoretical contexts of the collapse of the GDR in 1989 and looks
at the positive and negative legacies of the GDR for the PDS (the
successor party to the East German Communists). He contends that
the Stalinization of the GDR itself was the product not just of the
Cold War but of a longer inter-systemic struggle between the
competing primacies of politics and economics and that the end of
the GDR has to be seen as a consequence of the global collapse of
the social imperative under the pressure of the re-emergence of the
market-state since the mid-1970s. The PDS is therefore stuck in
dilemma in which any attempt to "arrive in the Federal Republic"
(Brie) is criticized as a readiness to accept the dominance of the
market over society whereas any attempt to prioritize social
imperatives over the market is attacked as a form of
unreconstructed Stalinism. The book offers some suggestions as to
how to escape from this dilemma by returning to the critical rather
than monumentalist and antiquarian traditions of the workers'
movement.
The relationship between Thomas Jefferson and William Short, the
eldest son of an established Virginia family and relative of Martha
Jefferson, began as a patron-protégé arrangement conventional for
the era. Jefferson encouraged Short's legal career and gave him his
first legal work. Thus began a bond of forty years that that both
men characterized in paternal and filial terms and that sheds
considerable light on the enigmatic Founding Father. In the
aftermath of Jefferson's precipitous "flight from Monticello,"
Short underwrote substantial short-term loans to him. Jefferson
took the younger man to France as his private secretary in 1784
but, quickly concluding that his moral well-being and political
judgment were at risk, he urged Short to return to America and
settle down. Short, however, wished to pursue a foreign service
career and a long affair with a French aristocrat. Jefferson wanted
Short to embrace a Virginia way of looking at the world, even
buying him a farm near Monticello. Short resisted—and rejected
Jefferson's ideas about slavery, economics, marriage, the practice
of democratic government, and republican morality, but without
rejecting his "friend and father." He showed little respect for
Jefferson's political achievements, viewing him as a well-meaning
"visionary," yet he was conscious of living in the statesman's
shadow. William Short was not Thomas Jefferson's intellectual
equal, was not a political collaborator, and never became a
neighbor, yet the elder man invested considerable emotional energy
and time in his "adoptive son," even during his vice-presidency and
presidency. By efficiently managing the younger man's financial
affairs Jefferson enabled his extended stay in France, but also
diverted Short's money for his own use. Although he believed
Short's political judgment had been clouded by his enjoyment of
French society and savagely criticized his reaction to the French
Revolution, he never gave up on Short the private individual. Heir
through Hope reveals a figure who served as a unique sounding board
to a Founder, while underscoring the distinct ways Jefferson
envisioned the United States' destiny vis à vis Europe.
Fascinating in its own right, their complex relationship highlights
the tensions between the founding generation and its successors
while illuminating the operation of political power in early
national America and Revolutionary Europe.
Rum Punch and Revolution Taverngoing and Public Life in
Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia Peter Thompson "A gold mine. . . .
The author creates a fascinating story, rich in tidbits and
anecdotes."--"Choice" "A marvelous book about an important,
interesting, and diverting subject."--"American Historical Review"
"Thompson is surely right about the long term change: the class
stratification of tavern culture did cause some people to stop
hearing voices with contrary opinions."--"William and Mary
Quarterly" "An important, provocative book."--"Labour/Le Travail"
'Twas Honest old Noah first planted the Vine And mended his morals
by drinking its Wine. --from a drinking song by Benjamin Franklin
There were, Peter Thompson notes, some one hundred and fifty
synonyms for inebriation in common use in colonial Philadelphia
and, on the eve of the Revolution, just as many licensed drinking
establishments. Clearly, eighteenth-century Philadelphians were
drawn to the tavern. In addition to the obvious lure of the liquor,
taverns offered overnight accommodations, meals, and stabling for
visitors. They also served as places to gossip, gamble, find work,
make trades, and gather news. In "Rum Punch and Revolution,"
Thompson shows how the public houses provided a setting in which
Philadelphians from all walks of life revealed their characters and
ideas as nowhere else. He takes the reader into the cramped
confines of the colonial bar room, describing the friendships,
misunderstandings and conflicts which were generated among the
city's drinkers and investigates the profitability of running a
tavern in a city which, until independence, set maximum prices on
the cost of drinks and services in its public houses. Taverngoing,
Thompson writes, fostered a sense of citizenship that influenced
political debate in colonial Philadelphia and became an issue in
the city's revolution. Opinionated and profoundly undeferential,
taverngoers did more than drink; they forced their political
leaders to consider whether and how public opinion could be
represented in the counsels of a newly independent nation. Peter
Thompson is Sydney Mayer Lecturer in Early American History at the
University of Oxford and a Fellow of St. Cross College. Early
American Studies 1998 296 pages 6 x 9 21 illus. ISBN
978-0-8122-1664-6 Paper $26.50s 17.50 World Rights American History
Short copy: Opinionated and profoundly undeferential, taverngoers
did more than drink; they forced their political leaders to
consider whether and how public opinion could be represented in the
counsels of a newly independent nation.
In the twenty-first century, religion has come under determined
attack from secular progressives in documentaries, opinion pieces
and international bestsellers. Combative atheists have denounced
faiths of every stripe, resulting in a crude intellectual
polarization in which religious convictions and heritage must be
rejected or accepted wholesale.
In the long unavailable "Atheism in Christianity," Ernst Bloch
provides a way out from this either/or debate. He examines the
origins of Christianity in an attempt to find its social roots,
pursuing a detailed study of the Bible and its fascination for
'ordinary and unimportant' people. In the biblical promise of
utopia and the scriptures' antagonism to authority, Bloch locates
Christianity's appeal to the oppressed. Through a lyrical yet close
and nuanced analysis, he explores the tensions within the Bible
that promote atheism as a counter to the authoritarian metaphysical
theism imposed by clerical exegesis. At the Bible's heart he finds
a heretical core and the concealed message that, paradoxically, a
good Christian must necessarily be a good atheist.This new edition
includes an introduction by Peter Thompson, the Director of the
Centre for Enrst Bloch Studies at the University of Sheffield.
Ernst Bloch was one of the most significant twentieth-century
German thinkers, yet he remains overshadowed by his Frankfurt
School contemporaries. Known for his engagement with utopianism and
religious thought, Bloch also wrote incisively about ontological
questions. In his short masterpiece Avicenna and the Aristotelian
Left, Bloch gives a striking account of materialism that traces
emancipatory elements of modern thought to medieval Islamic
philosophers' encounter with Aristotle. Bloch argues that the great
medieval Islamic philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina) planted the seeds
of a radical materialism still relevant for critical theory today.
He contrasts Avicenna's and Aquinas's interpretations of Aristotle
on form and matter to argue that Avicenna's reading democratizes
power and undermines clerical and political authority. Bloch
explores Avicenna's world and metaphysics in detail, showing how
even his most recondite theoretical concerns prove capable of
pointing toward radical social transformation. He blazes an
original path through the history of ideas, including Averroes (Ibn
Rushd), Spinoza, and Marx as well as lesser-known figures. Here
translated into English for the first time, Avicenna and the
Aristotelian Left is at once a succinct summation of Bloch's own
idiosyncratic materialism, a provocative reconstruction of the
Western philosophical tradition in light of its exchanges with
Islamic thought, and a vital resource for contemporary debates
about materialism in critical theory.
A collection of essays offering a nuanced understanding of the
complex question of identity in today's Germany. This collection of
fifteen essays by scholars from the UK, the US, Germany, and
Scandinavia revisits the question of German identity. Unlike
previous books on this topic, however, the focus is not exclusively
on national identityin the aftermath of Hitler. Instead, the
concentration is upon the plurality of ethnic, sexual, political,
geographical, and cultural identities in modern Germany, and on
their often fragmentary nature as the country struggles with the
challenges of unification and international developments such as
globalization, multiculturalism, and postmodernism. The
multifaceted nature of German identity demands a variety of
approaches: thus the essays are interdisciplinary, drawing upon
historical, sociological, and literary sources. They are organized
with reference to three distinct sections: Berlin, Political
Formations, and Difference; yet at the same time they illuminate
one another across the volume, offering a nuanced understanding of
the complex question of identity in today's Germany. Topics include
the new self-understanding of the Berlin Republic, Berlin as a
public showcase, the Berlin architecture debate,the Walser-Bubis
debate, fictions of German history and the end of the GDR, the
impact of the German student movement on the FRG, Prime Minister
Biedenkopf and the myth of Saxon identity, women in post-1989
Germany, trains as symbols and the function of the foreign in
post-1989 fiction, identity construction among Turks in Germany and
Turkish self-representation in post-1989 fiction, the state of
German literature today. Contributors: Frank Brunssen, Ulrike
Zitzlsperger, Janet Stewart, Kathrin Schoedel, Karen Leeder, Ingo
Cornils, Peter Thompson, Chris Szejnmann, Sabine Lang, Simon Ward,
Roswitha Skare, Eva Kolinsky, Margaret Littler, Katharina
Gerstenberger, and Stuart Parkes. Stuart Taberner is Lecturer in
German, and Frank Finlay is Professor of German and Head of the
Department of German, both at the University of Leeds, UK.
Exploring the history of the gas mask in Germany from 1915 to the
eve of the Second World War, Peter Thompson traces how chemical
weapons and protective technologies like the gas mask produced new
relationships to danger, risk, management and mastery in the modern
age of mass destruction. Recounting the apocalyptic visions of
chemical death that circulated in interwar Germany, he argues that
while everyday encounters with the gas mask tended to exacerbate
fears, the gas mask also came to symbolize debates about the
development of military and chemical technologies in the Weimar
Republic and the Third Reich. He underscores how the gas mask was
tied into the creation of an exclusionary national community under
the Nazis and the altered perception of environmental danger in the
second half of the twentieth century. As this innovative new
history shows, chemical warfare and protection technologies came to
represent poignant visions of the German future.
A takeover of our world? Two elderly people suffering with PTSD
become suicide bombers, but why? Neither has any history of wanting
to kill anyone, let alone thousands with massive bombs. Tom
Ranswick is targeted by a secret Russian drone that is still in
development, but which kills his son and father-in-law; it was
meant for him. He is once again drawn into the seedy world of
underground politics and people with money and power. A group
called SMEAR appears to be behind all this, but what is this
organisation after? Who is pulling the strings and supplying the
money? North Koreans seem to be involved, but is this
state-sponsored? Will Shadow of England or Octopus of Russia find
out before the world is driven back into the dark ages? Boris
Gorsky and Elena Tairov of Octopus help their English friend Tom
Ranswick to find the answers. But will they find out in time?
Lord Brutus, the new King of Caderia, was soon to learn that being
king like his father before him carried a greater burden than he
ever thought possible. With the invasion of his own realm by the
Master of Chaos (Krossos) almost nigh, he is forced to seek out and
free the white wizard Megalin from a trap set by the black wizard
Krossos. Only with Megalin's help can the invasion be stopped and
defeated. Megalin sends Lord Brutus help from an unlikely source,
the Channi, warriors created by magic that started life as six-inch
lizards from the swamps around the fabled City of Magicians. The
leader of these creatures is Grogan, who brings a charm that had
been worn by Brutus's late father; this would protect him from dark
spells and creatures from the Underworld. So begins his quest to
free Megalin and take on the role of protector of Earth and
humanity; and the start of his fabled chronicles. A new hero is
born?
This is a troubled world controlled by a parasite called the Lowi.
It is also war weary after many years of conflict with neither side
winning or losing. Marcus Cobb arrives on this planet intent on
destroying the Lowi, little realising that this could cost him his
life.
In a race to the planet of Tharn to help Princess Jeeva's home
world, Marcus Cobb's life almost ends. There, he finds his old
enemy the Lowi and their creches, but now there is a far more
dangerous offshoot, developed by them. A being with a mind of its
own and an agenda that the creches know nothing about.
The fight against a parasitic invader on Earth would take Marcus
Cobb into space only to find that other worlds were also fighting a
war of attrition against this invader of worlds. Worlds that were
further advanced than his own. Marcus Cobb was found to have a mind
that could fight the Lowi menace, his mind being so strong that he
wouldn't succumb to their mind control. He was to join a task force
for the united nations of sentient beings, a force dedicated to
fighting this Lowi invader, and so his life would change beyond
recognition, so much so that he could never return to earth.
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