Amazon.com
"The men as they rode turned black in the sun from the blood on their clothes and their faces and then paled slowly in the rising dust until they assumed once more the color of the land through which they passed." If what we call "horror" can be seen as including any literature that has dark, horrific subject matter, then Blood Meridian is, in this reviewer's estimation, the best horror novel ever written. It's a perverse, picaresque Western about bounty hunters for Indian scalps near the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s--a ragged caravan of indiscriminate killers led by an unforgettable human monster called "The Judge." Imagine the imagery of Sam Peckinpah and Heironymus Bosch as written by William Faulkner, and you'll have just an inkling of this novel's power. From the opening scenes about a 14-year-old Tennessee boy who joins the band of hunters to the extraordinary, mythic ending, this is an American classic about extreme violence.
Book Description
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion,
Blood Meridianbrilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.
Customer Reviews:
What's Lies Beneath Man's Thin Veneer of Humanity.......2007-09-19
Mr. McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' examines the nature of man when the fragile constraints of civilization have been broken. To accentuate that all the horrors in 'Blood Meridian' area contained within each of us, Mr. McCarthy sets his novel in the land of our national myth, the 'Wild West.' Not Hollywood's 'Wild West' mind you, but one recognizable as something closer to what reality must have been. That's the truely frightening part.
As everyone notes, the violence starts early in the book and never lets up. Mr. McCarthy forces the reader to look, forces us to not look away. This horrific violence is the vehicle McCarthy uses to move the novel from on his pages to within our own minds. Once we follow the characters across the societally self-imposed border and left 'civilization' and 'humanity' behind, Glanton and 'The Judge' become OUR king and OUR high priest. As 'The Kid's' humanity slowly withers, we recognize the degradable nature of our own humanity. 'The Kid' is the reader. 'The Kid' is the individual. If we are honest with ourselves, McCarthy tells us that when faced with humanity's ever-present interior horrors (represented perfectly by 'The Judge') we are just as helpless.
That is the true horror of 'Blood Meridian.' Not the blood. Not the guts. Not even the dead babies. The horror of 'Blood Meridian' is that at any time we are a one choice, one action away from 'The Judge' and the constraining force of 'civilization' is tenuous at best. And once that thread of humanity has broken...
Mr. McCarthy's language paints a vivid picture but can be difficult to wade through. His word choice can be archaic and obscure, but no word (or sentence) in 'Blood Meridian' ever seems out of place. 'Blood Meridian' makes you work to understand what's going on. The 300 page book seemed much longer to me. Perhaps its because I reread passages. More likely it was because Mr. McCarthy can construct two or three paragraphs that give you the impression that you've seen every detail of a hundred mile journey, all within half of a page.
'Blood Meridian' is not a pretty book or one that fits within today's 'entertainment' consumer's expectations. 'Blood Meridian' is Hieronymus Bosch, not Claude Monet. Mr. McCarthy has created a novel sublime in its ability to frighten and disgust you. Don't let that dissuade you. It's well worth the effort.
Wordiness galore!.......2007-09-12
I think Cormac McCarthy is one of those authors who write for editors and english teachers more than the reader. How pretentious. There is unnecessary wordiness to this novel. It distracts from the story, which is pretty good. His sentence structure is such that I keep thinking that there are much easier ways to say something, kiddo! One reviewer compared him to Hemmingway, but I must disagree. Yes, they both fancy the compound sentence, but Hemmingway wrote in a simpler elegant style. And you can be a good writer and not have to constantly use obscure nouns and reversed adjectives and odd pronoun usage and...oops, caught myself in a compound sentence.
He's heard this criticism before. And maybe it registered because The Road is much better read. Short sentences aren't bad, mi amigos.
Obsessive.......2007-08-26
This is only the second Mccarthy novel I have read,I might try one more before I give up.
There's no doubt that McCarhty is a gifted writer, but I don't share his obsession with violence and inhumanity, maybe that's his point, and in truth, looking at the world today I wonder if we've made any progress at all. Nevertheless I can't abide the literary vision here. I think its a waste of my time to read something that tells me what I already know and pounds in the pointlessness of life, as the authour sees it, till I am sick to death of it, I know there's more to life than this, and I quit the book. I couldn't read anymore after less than a hundred pages. I knew the whole thing would be just more of the same so why bother?
I don't think McCarthys a great writer, he dwells too much on the irredeemably demonic in man. He's an interesting writer, his style, his antique knowledge, his ornate vocabulary, but it takes more than this to make a writer with a response to life that is worthy rather than an indulgence in the depths of horror humanity is capable of. If you want the classic depiction of this, but also with reflection and thoughtfulness about man's plight than all you have to do is read, "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad.
1 doesn't begin to describe this waste of time.......2007-08-20
I listened to about half of the audio book and negative adjectives fail. I tried to tolerate it, I tried to give it much more effort than I felt it deserved or would ever reward me with just a experience that was better than listening to my own internal dialogue. The only thing I could even begin to care about was the animals. There wasn't a character that I was even remotely interested in, I certainly wasn't even the least bit curious as to what happened to them, let alone care about even enough to wish their demise. The evil, amorality of the characters hold no interest, no fascination and is very soon boring instead of evocative of anything. There is nothing inventive, interesting or otherwise at all compelling. You don't care about the Kid or the characters that surround him, you don't care about the people they kill, you don't care that the killings are brutal, and often indiscriminate. You don't care if they kill 10, 100 or 1000 Indians, Mexicans, by-standers or who or whatever ever. The violence is not fascinating, not shocking, not even numbing. In the end it's just repetitive and boring.
Read the phone book, read the want ads, don't bother with this, ever, for any reason.
Bloody Hell.......2007-08-13
Ultimately a lot of my problems with this are the same as when I read "Cities of the Plain" recently so I'll just cut and paste from there to save time.
I suppose McCarthy's writing is fine if you enjoy the Hemingway style, which I don't. I'm not sure what's so beautiful about sentences that go "He shaved and showered and toweled off and got dressed." Seems kind of ugly actually. Reminds me of the stories I wrote in junior high. But he has a Pulitzer and a National Book Award and I don't. Take that!
A few of the author's style choices left me more than a little confused. Let's go down the list:
1. McCarthy doesn't use quotation marks so sometimes it's hard to know when someone is talking and when McCarthy is narrating.
2. McCarthy is adverse to using proper names so you end up with confusing pronoun use. In one case he made it sound like wolves had built a fire. This is especially a problem when the author starts out a new section or chapter with "He" and then we have to wait a few sentences to figure out the "He" in question.
3. Most aggravating of all is that a lot of characters speak only Spanish and McCarthy puts their lines IN Spanish. So tough luck if you don't know any Spanish. I wasn't too bad off since I took a few Spanish classes in high school, but some terms still threw me--and I didn't have a Spanish-English dictionary handy. If this were a movie we'd have the benefit of subtitles but in a novel we have to try and interpret the gist of it from the character's actions, sort of like playing charades.
Here's a new one though:
4. The central character (supposedly) is "the kid" but after joining up with "the judge" and Glanton "the kid" steadily disappears until he's just an anonymous part of the gang as they terrorize Mexico and the southwestern United States. A good quarter or more of the book hardly mentions "the kid" at all until he resurfaces at the end for the final confrontation with "the judge."
As the reader I think I really missed out by another of McCarthy's habits of never getting into the character's minds. Since the characters are so opaque and the central character disappears, the final confrontation between "the kid" and "the judge" doesn't make a lot of sense. I never did understand why "the kid" didn't just off "the judge" when he had the chance, a direct result of "the kid" vanishing and never having any idea what he was thinking.
But suffice it to say if you enjoyed "The Road" then this is pretty much the same thing. A group of people going through a bleak wasteland full of blood, gore, and death. Only in this case it's "the kid" and the gang inflicting most of that blood, gore, and death in order to collect Indian scalps--or Mexican scalps will do in a pinch. Pretty much the whole book is them going from place to place killing people or getting chased off by people trying to kill them. If you're looking for anything happy or hopeful or any of that, you better keep on walking.
That is all.
Book Description
An accessible and comprehensive approach to the anatomy and function of the fascial system in the body combined with a holistic overview of myofascial therapy. Many different therapists now use myofascial techniques to influence postural change and pain relief. This book demonstrates exactly how the muscles connect within the connect tissue to affect posture, compensatory strain, and pain patterns. The aim is to present scientifically sound and often complicated material in a way which can be easily learned, understood, and applied by those who do not necessarily have a scientific background. ANATOMY TRAINS is written and presented in a style that allows this new information on the myofascial system to be easily absorbed by a wide range of readers: from the student, athlete, or client to the most experienced therapist.
Customer Reviews:
Anatomy Trains.......2007-09-24
A must for any soft tissue therapist. This completes an understanding of how the body is affected by a series muscles.
Easy Reading.......2007-05-07
A huge topic with tons of minutia that is broken down in an easy reading format. I really liked the way the book is set up. Great way to look at the body as a whole and to start thinking about alternative and complimentary modes of treatment up the kinetic chain that you may not think about before reading this book.
Vital importance for movement therapists.......2007-03-19
Anatomy Trains is an accesible and comprehensive overview of the myofascial system of the body. This key to understanding the role of fascia in healthy movement should be required reading of anyone who works in the bodywork field.
It may be a bit ponderous to someone who is more physically inclined but do not be put off. You will find you absorb much through just forging through as I did.
Anatomy Trains.......2007-03-12
An excellent read that discusses the functional relationships of muscles within the body. A must have for any student or practitioner of bodywork of any kind.
Has taken my deep tissue treatments to the next level........2007-01-10
Reading Tom Myers book Anatomy Trains has taken my deep tissue treatments to the next level. This book combined with a hands-on class (Structural Integration continuing education) and deep tissue videos (Art Riggs) are making my clients very happy!
Myer's explanations are clear and concise.
Customer Reviews:
If it looks like a Duck ... and walks like a Duck ..........2006-05-30
If it looks like a Duck ... and walks like a Duck ... it probably has a lot of quack in it. Worsley and his entire legacy have given us a distorted view on TCM. A white man's view to be totally honest, right down to hugely over analysing a construct which he clearly did not understand, he couldn't have understood. If you want to waste your time with guesses and questionable lineage, go to J.R. If you want to get the truth, get the 15$ Chinese books with something valid to say.
Good Reference.......2000-03-28
J.R. Worsley presents an excellent reference for acupuncture students, clinicians, and enthusiasts everywhere. Very clearly presented and well illustrated.
Book Description
This is the classic book on war as we know it. During his long life, Basil H. Liddell Hart was considered one of the world's foremost military thinkers--a man generally regarded as the "Clausewitz of the 20th century."
Liddell Hart stressed movement, flexibilty, surprise. He saw that in most military campaigns dislocation of the enemy's psychological and physical balance is prelude to victory. This dislocation results from a strategic indirect approach. Reflect for a moment on the results of direct confrontation (trench war in WW I) versus indirect dislocation (Blitzkreig in WW II). Liddell Hart is also tonic for business and political planning: just change the vocabulary and his concepts fit.
"The most important book by one of the outstanding military authorities of our time." (Library Journal)
Customer Reviews:
Not historically objective.......2007-09-07
Liddell-Hart's magnum-opus, "Strategy", purports to demonstrate that "throughout the ages, effective results in war have rarely been attained unless the approach has had such indirectness as to ensure the opponent's unreadiness to meet it." In short, his book is predicated on the notions that an indirect strategy is the only strategy which succeeds, and that history shows this to be the truth.
"Strategy" is impressive in its scope, and it contains much of value for the student of military history; however its content is not objective. Liddell-Hart interprets events to support his thesis regarding the superiority of the indirect approach. One instance of such interpretation is his discussion of the Allied landings at Normandy in June 1944. Liddell Hart correctly describes the theater strategic decision to land in the Normandy region vice landing in the vicinity of Pas de Calais as a variation of the indirect approach, in which allied planners demonstrated "an inclination to avoid the most strongly defended approach" (p 296), but he fails to address the fact that an invasion of Northwest Europe to defeat Nazi German was in itself a strategic direct approach. The Allies' Mediterranean strategy had succeeded against Axis forces and protected British access to the Suez Canal; however it did not strike a decisive blow. Rather, it contracted German forces into a denser defensive posture on the mainland of Europe, requiring a direct assault on the defenses of the Atlantic Wall in preparation for the drive into Germany.
Clausewitz wrote, "if...some historical event is being presented in order to demonstrate a general truth, care must be taken that every aspect bearing on the truth at issue is fully and circumstantially developed." Liddell Hart sought to raise the efficacy of the indirect approach to the status of a general truth, but in the process of doing so failed to consider all aspects of his argument. This failure leaves his work ultimately unconvincing and thereby demonstrates the utility of Clausewitz's admonition to be thorough when using history to illustrate theory.
The Optimistic Jew.......2007-08-31
Liddell Hart was considered one of the world's foremost military thinkers of the 20th century. I consider him to be the fundamental thinker for policy making. His clear definitions of the differences between ideology, policy, grand-strategy, strategy, tactics and operations must be the methodological framework for national policy. His military thinking had great influence on the Israeli army. He was a champion of indirect dislocation and condemned direct confrontation. This along with his concepts of the "strategy of the indirect approach" and a "policy of limited aims" served Israel well in its early years. Rejection of this philosophy following the Six Day War has caused untold mischief to the Zionist Enterprise -- a point I make over and over again in my own book "The Optimistic Jew: a Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century". I would make Liddell Hart's book required reading for anyone who presumes to make Jewish policy of any sort.
Purely Brilliant.......2007-06-23
A great book that will allow you to apply the classic military strategies to the current day biz warfare.
An Early Examination of the Operative Sphere of War.......2006-11-20
B.H. Liddell-Hart was an excellent historian and able strategist, but his greatest strength here is in illuminating the operative sphere of war (labeled "strategic" sphere here, as opposed to the strategic and tactical spheres, which Hart labels grand strategy and tactics, respectively) and its role in modern maneuver warfare (which seeks "a better peace" rather than destructive war.) In this, Liddell-Hart out paces Clausewitz by several hundred meters, and, indeed, revises Clausewitz's much-quoted axion, "In times of peace, prepare for war." Liddell-Hart understood that, in an age of nuclear arms and shifting alliances that lead to global conflicts, the better axiom is "In times of peace, KNOW war." Preparation is liable to be seen as preemption.
Strangely, the historic examples used in this text do not represent Hart's best work. An able narrator, Hart usually weaves various operations into thoroughly readable histories. Not so here, where his work is a tad dry. For a better look at Hart's skills, read "Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon" or "Great Captains Unveiled." The book is strongest in he beginning and in the appendices, where Hart develops his theories.
That said, the work itself is definitive. If modern strategists successfully applied half of the thoughts outlined here, then the western world would find itself prosecuting much more successful wars as well as winning a much more prudent peace.
The best Strategy book (but a tough read).......2006-10-21
This book is as relevant today as it was when it was first published 50 years ago.If your business function revolves around strategy (sales, marketing, leadership), then you should read this book from cover to cover. Be forewarned, it's a little dry in places....
Book Description
Rogues, published in France under the title Voyous, comprises two major lectures that Derrida delivered in 2002 investigating the foundations of the sovereignty of the nation-state. The term “État voyou” is the French equivalent of “rogue state,” and it is this outlaw designation of certain countries by the leading global powers that Derrida rigorously and exhaustively examines.
Derrida examines the history of the concept of sovereignty, engaging with the work of Bodin, Hobbes, Rousseau, Schmitt, and others. Against this background, he delineates his understanding of “democracy to come,” which he distinguishes clearly from any kind of regulating ideal or teleological horizon. The idea that democracy will always remain in the future is not a temporal notion. Rather, the phrase would name the coming of the unforeseeable other, the structure of an event beyond calculation and program. Derrida thus aligns this understanding of democracy with the logic he has worked out elsewhere. But it is not just political philosophy that is brought under deconstructive scrutiny here: Derrida provides unflinching and hard-hitting assessments of current political realities, and these essays are highly engaged with events of the post-9/11 world.
Customer Reviews:
Derrida Deconstructs the notion of "Rouge States".......2006-11-05
If you are in to Derrida, political science, contemporary political philosophy, understanding the contemporary political landscape, and notions of a new Democracy to come - this is a must read.
Book Description
In Crossing the Next Meridian, Charles F. Wilkinson, an expert on federal public lands, Native American issues, and the West's arcane water laws explains some of the core problems facing the American West now and in the years to come. He examines the outmoded ideas that pervade land use and resource allocation and argues that significant reform of Western law is needed to combat desertification and environmental decline, and to heal splintered communities.
Interweaving legal history with examples of preset-day consequences of the laws, both intended and unintended, Wilkinson traces the origins and development of the laws and regulations that govern mining, ranching, forestry, and water use. He relates stories of Westerners who face these issues on a day-to-day basis, and discusses what can and should be done to bring government policies in line with the reality of twentieth-century American life.
Customer Reviews:
Should be required reading in high school.......2003-08-12
Great and informative book. Puts a lot of the problems now faced in the west into their context. Covers a lot of land history in the west not generally covered in school, but definately not a dry read!
Excellent and thought provoking.......1999-12-01
An excellent rendition of how western law had transformend the American West into a land for humans, filled with dam after dam. Wild salmon have no where to go. Laws seem to be more powerful than Nature!
Excellent, thought-provoking.......1999-05-03
A very scholarly, but accessible, history of the development of the West and the social/political/economic structures that shaped land, water and resource rights there. In particular, Wilkinson is addressing the notorious Hardrock Mining Act of 1872 (still in effect), the distribution of land and grazing rights, the fisheries of the Pacific Northwest, and the timber industry. His analysis of the Lords of Yesterday - his term for the antiquated statutes that govern those industries - is very convincing. The book's only weakness is that this is a 1992 text (presumably researched in the decade previous) that doesn't reflect changes in the laws and political pressures over the past decade. It would benefit from a new edition.
Links the past, present, and future of the American West.......1999-03-05
Wilkinson offers a balanced account of the forces that created the law and policy of the American West, and also of the forces that keep those outdated policies active in a very different West. As a native of Colorado, it was apparent that Wilkenson has spent a great deal of time in the American West and truly understands the complex issues that the region faces today. Very well researched, very easy to read.
A great summury of Western Issues.......1997-12-17
A very though look at the major issues dividing westerners today. Looks at ranching, water, and logging in a very readable style. Do not loan this one out because it NEVER get returned. The only downfall is that this book is already dated because of the rise of the Wise Use movement.
Book Description
The work of Giorgio Agamben, one of Italy’s most important and original philosophers, has been based on an uncommon erudition in classical traditions of philosophy and rhetoric, the grammarians of late antiquity, Christian theology, and modern philosophy. Recently, Agamben has begun to direct his thinking to the constitution of the social and to some concrete, ethico-political conclusions concerning the state of society today, and the place of the individual within it.
In Homo Sacer, Agamben aims to connect the problem of pure possibility, potentiality, and power with the problem of political and social ethics in a context where the latter has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding. Taking his cue from Foucault’s fragmentary analysis of biopolitics, Agamben probes with great breadth, intensity, and acuteness the covert or implicit presence of an idea of biopolitics in the history of traditional political theory. He argues that from the earliest treatises of political theory, notably in Aristotle’s notion of man as a political animal, and throughout the history of Western thinking about sovereignty (whether of the king or the state), a notion of sovereignty as power over “life” is implicit.
The reason it remains merely implicit has to do, according to Agamben, with the way the sacred, or the idea of sacrality, becomes indissociable from the idea of sovereignty. Drawing upon Carl Schmitt’s idea of the sovereign’s status as the exception to the rules he safeguards, and on anthropological research that reveals the close interlinking of the sacred and the taboo, Agamben defines the sacred person as one who can be killed and yet not sacrificed—a paradox he sees as operative in the status of the modern individual living in a system that exerts control over the collective “naked life” of all individuals.
Customer Reviews:
The Body = The Nation.......2006-12-13
I was first introduced to this text in one of my college courses. I'm not quite familiar with all of Agamben's theory on power, but I have read portions of, "The Camp as Biopolitical Paradigm of the Modern." This text I found to be weighty and at times difficult to read, but it sparked an interest in me to read more. I would like to contribute to the reviews with a simple interpretation of a few things that I read.
I'm intrigued with Agamben's idea of how society creates the category of the devalued through the category of the valued. An example of this categorical sorting is how the Nazis created this category of the devalued with the Jewish people, thus raising their own status of the valued. The Nazis were able to gain control/domination through the use of their concentration camps. By labeling others in society as lower than oneself, one can easily determine whether one's life is worth keeping around.
Another interesting point is how one's body/identity doesn't belong to that person, but rather the government and society owns that body. An example is of the creation of our American society, which came about through the killing of the Native Americans and bringing in of Slaves to further gain land and power. By controlling and taking over the body, the new America was created. It's fascinating to think of one's identity and body as one with the nation/government through citizenship, yet there are many examples within our own American society. America has taken citizenship away and than contradicted itself to ask the non-citizen to contribute to our causes (i.e. "war" or "economy"). An example of this control over citizenship is related to the Japanese-American internment camps during WWII. Once in these camps, Japanese-Americans' rights as a citizen were taken, than the government asked if they would fight for America. Thus the Japanese-Americans would have to prove themselves worthy of being a citizen/body of the United States of America.
Homo Sacer is a must read........2006-06-06
Agamben's best known work lives up to the hype. One of the most powerful aspects of this book is its shocking predictions about the world to come. Published many years before the initiation of the war on terror, Agamben signals the beginning the of a style of governance built on permanent exception. He insists that the extermination of the Jewx by the Nazis was not simply a horrible enigma that should never return, rather biopolitical atrocities have continued to intensify. This book is a must read for any person interested in understanding how the deep seated structure of sovereignty and its spatio-temporal course through power relations have brought us to the seeming limit poit of exception become rule. A handbook for contemporary politics. This is a great book.
Political Ontology and Bio-Politics.......2005-11-29
Agamben begins his inquiry into sovereignty in the light of the problematic left to contemporary political ontology via Hobbes, Schmitt, and up to Heidegger (Dasein being that being who's very being is always at stake for that being, and ontological difference), post Heideggerian political thought (Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Derrida) and finally Foucault's bio-politics. While Agamben's criticisms of these thinkers is brief (and somewhat reductive) it does serve the importance of situating his own conception of bio-politics, sovereignty and life as a radicalized "state of exception".
The Logic of Sovereignty is not one of a mere inclusion of beings into a political sphere or form of life specific to it (bios) which emerges or is transformed from an originary bare life (zoe). Rather Sovereignty establishes itself as "sacred" or "set apart" from the polis. There is nothing legal about law, in that the very founding moment of political ontology is apolitical and extra-juridical (because there is no normative law that has been set up yet). Benjamin distinguishes between two forms of violence (constituting and constituted). However, while the Sovereign constituting power of law must claim to be wholly outside the law in order to have created it, it must also regulate and constitute its power through law itself, thus including itself within the law. The Paradox of Sovereignty then is that its life is an "inclusion through exclusion". The signifier of law is absent (or non-signifying form) but is signified through this very non-signification of absence.
Homo Sacer then is the non-criminal criminal , the "extra-juridical" exception that is designated by the sovereign. The homo sacer can be legally killed by any person but is not a juridical killing. That is to say, killing the sacred human is not homicide nor is it sacrifice. The norm of political subjects are set against the exception of the homo sacer, but also included in the norm in its very opposition and ability to exile homo sacer. Agamben sees homo sacer and the sovereign to have this very inclusion by exception in common. Both the Sovereign and homo sacer can be killed but not sacrificed. (It is not a legal issue to kill a King but rather a heretical or anti-juridical one in this account). The Werewolf (half man and wolf inside the city and outside of it, man and animal, political and non-political) and the Sovereign, the inside and outside become an "indistinction" which no longer holds up for modern politics.
The Camp is the modern political space or "coming to light" of this "indistinction" between nature and law in the form of bio-politics. Modern politics as bio-politics takes life as what is at stake for its own life. Bare life as the state of exception, or the sacred, now becomes the rule. As for homo sacer everyone was sovereign, for the sovereign everyone is homo sacer. "The Enemy" as constitutive outside to the norm of civil society now becomes the inside in a society as war carried out by other means (politics). Society as life itself is the `enemy outside which is inside'. In fact, it was the rule from the inception of western politics. The camp then refers to the Nazi bio-political movement where law and fact are indistigusihable. The "suspension of law" and "states of emergency" are not purely juridical, and the holocaust cannot be understood in terms of law alone, but can only be understood as the indefinite suspension necessary for sovereign power to kill without crime, and without sacrifice.
One of the strengths of Homo Sacer is that it is able to weave the problems of political ontology together with the historico-political configurations and aporias of Nazism/mythology/capitalism/ and statism. In a subtle way Agamben is challenging the whole of contemporary political ontology to begin to rethink politics in terms of (actual)potentiality: (Life). Bio-politics as the state of exception (as rule) is no longer oriented toward the impossibility of the law (as form of the law without signification) but is rather concerned with the form-of-life (as indistinction/exception). A political ontology that is not concerned with the impossibility of laying claim to bare life as such, or the fascist mobilization of its totality and implementation, but rather with the practical creation and proliferation of non-statist, non-hierarchical experimentations in political practices that would create new ways of living and maximize the diversity of lives that would decide these ways. Life as potentiality (never reducible to any given definition or determination (totalitarianism) always calls for the emergence of a new politics of the actual, pointing always to the inexustablity/infinity of Life itself.
Critique of Agamben's somewhat reductive (although appropriate) critique of Heidigger, Battaille, Nancy, Derrida etc. aside for a moment, what remains a gapping hole in this work is the complete lack of eco-critical perspective on life. Almost every time Agamben speaks of life it is always in terms of a human life (a human political refugee, a proletariat, the life of a human political body, or a human sovereign king or people). It is his call for the creation of a people (resonances with Deleuze here) that he seems to close up his work on life. His very inquiry into the `open' of Bare Life (potentiality) as always political (indistinction) is closed up through the work in his neglect of animal, plant, and non-organic life, and hierarchical (statist?) (almost humanist) privileging of the bios politicos of the human.
Interesting but Problematic.......2005-05-23
Agamben's sets up his work in the left-open space of Foucault's work, the void in which "subjectivization" (the internalization of the order into the individual psyche)and police/political strategies might intersect. It is this void that Agamben desires to write, a (non)place in which "life" is incorporated into the political order. Agamben goes about this by beginning with a reading of Greek and Roman philosophical and poetic texts and weaving a continuity from these early works through the works of Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt, and Jacques Derrida. The continuity he describes is that of sovereignty founded upon the "suspension" of "bare life." "Life," here, is "natural life," natural being that element (like the referent in language) that is the always already included absence (or as Agamben calls it the "exclusive inclusion"). This relation of suspension also creates the possibility of the "state of exception," a space in which the force of law is exerted outside of law.
This state in which the law is outside of itself allows for a renewal of the force of law, it transforms the law through its absence. Such a process involves the creation of sacred life, the life that can be killed without sacrifice and without guilt. It is from here that Agamben takes a look at the concentration camp and comes to the conclusion that this exceptional state of political life is in fact the norm of our contemporary reality: the exception has become the rule. "Life" in modern times is the life in the camp, whether it be in a totalitarian regime or one of mass democracy.
The strengths and faults of Agamben's lie in this continuity of sovereingty. On the one hand, it provides a discourse (indeed, a kind of meta-discourse) for placing philosophy and politics in relation to each other. It makes a poignant argument for the politicization of life as not merely a modern affair (as Foucault largely situates it) but, in fact, the founding moment of Western civilization, of the civis and the polis. However, this poignancy is also the achilles heel of Agamben's argument. Agamben's argument accounts for modernity as a "coming into light" of life's incorporation in politics. This subordination of modernity to a realization of what was already there is reductive to the point of excluding some of Foucault's most interesting insights into the diagramming (or beuraucratization) of life. In other words, much of Agamben's argument seems to derive its powers from excluding particularities. (This exclusion of particularities extends to a reductive reading of Derrida's "The Force of Law.")
Don't get me wrong, Agamben's work is important, especially his considerations of Walter Benjamin and Aristotle. Like Benjamin, he raises the stakes. Revolution becomes not merely the transition of one state to another but an eradication of the state that must also involve a revolution of language. Like, Benjamin in his "Critique of Violence," this transformation is ambiguous. Agamben locates it in the sphere of ontology's limits: the revolution will deconstruct the difference of world and person and of pure being and being. It will heal the fissure of life and politics that captures life in politics. Though this is a noble cause, it could certainly use elaboration, an elaboration that may not be possible within the reductive limits of Agamben's historicizing.
Well, there are some problems..........2005-05-23
WOW! Agamben's work continues to become more accepted and it continues to get shorter and shorter; his texts these days seem more like pamphlets than anything else. While Homo Sacer is the exception to this, it is perhaps the one text where Agamben's brevity lends him to making some theoretical blunders.
First, many people believe Agamben is the new Foucault. This simply is not true. There are no new "X's"; each thinker is who her or she is and not another. Yet, Agamben does make the move early in Homo Sacer to read Foucault and Arendt together on the question of totalitarianism. Well, this could be a problem since Foucault believes that the Holocaust has no ideological underpinning, while for Arendt it is the ideology of national socialism that constitutes the Holocaust. Seems like an irreconcilable difference that he not only does not mention but does not overcome.
Second, his notion of biopolitics, well, is hardly Foucauldian. So, are we operating with a new conception of the biopolitical? I think Agamben needs to be more clear about this. Agamben thinks the origins of biopolitics is contained within the difference between zoe and bios and does not understand, as Foucault articulates, the transformation of the sovereign right to kill to to sovereign's necessity for creating and enhancing the social body, which understands the human being as a species and not as an individual or citizen in Foucault's reading of the emergence of the state. Now, with the specialization of the human it becomes necessary that the biological existence of the human being become what is at stake for the state; however, it is this move to the biological existence of the human that it can become specialized.
All of this work by Foucault, which is more nuanced than what I have put forward in this review...but its a review so I chose to leave it brief, is missing in Agamben's work and as I stand on the Foucauldian side of the fence and find his work more compelling and thorough, I really find Agamben's notion of the biopolitical theoretically problematic
Book Description
As one of the foremost public intellectuals of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt is well known for her writings on political philosophy. Less familiar are her significant contributions to cultural and literary criticism. This edition brings together for the first time Arendt’s reflections on literature and culture. The essays include previously unpublished and untranslated material drawn from half a century of engagement with the works of European and American authors, poets, journalists, and literary critics, including such diverse figures as Proust, Melville, Auden, and Brecht.
Intended for a wide readership, this volume has the potential to change our view of Arendt by introducing her not only as one of the leading political theorists of her generation, but also as a serious, committed, and highly original literary and cultural critic. Gottlieb’s introduction ties the work together, showing how Arendt developed a form of literary and cultural analysis that is entirely her own.
Customer Reviews:
The Best Introduction to Existentialism.......2007-05-09
This anthology of Existentialist texts is the best introduction to Existentialism currently available in English. Walter Kaufmann (best known to philosophy readers as the twentieth century's most important translator of Nietzsche) presents a selection of key texts from Kierkegaard, Dostoyevski, Nietzsche of course, Heidegger, Sartre and others, and Kaufmann prefaces the anthology with a magisterial intro. The most important piece included is the complete text of Sartre's early lecture "Existentialism is a Humanism," the most accessible and clearest exposition of the most influential phase of his thought. If you want to know what Existentialism is all about (or if you already know but want to own a great reference book of essential texts), this is the book to buy.
i disagree with the previous review........2006-12-09
I believe this book is fantastic, especially as a beginning point for understanding what existentialism is. The book has a well written preface that explains that existentialism is not really well defined, but encompasses certain themes. This book does a good job of taking a selection of those who share those themes, and introducing them here. I think it gives one a good representation and idea of existentialism, that can be studied more in depth later, by reading the full text of what is represented here. Very well translated by WK.
Watch your Step.......2005-05-21
This book is most useful if one wishes to study Walter Kaufmann. This book is a waste of time if you wish to study the writers Kaufmann presents to us. Kaufmann warps the texts to suit his own agenda. If you share his agenda you will likely not even notice that he has an agenda.
"If you make people think they are thinking they will love you, but if you really make them think they will kill you. " - Albert Einstein
the Realm of Existentialism.......2005-04-13
"The stone is given its existence; it need not fight for being what it is---a stone in the field. Man has to be himself in spite of unfavorable circumstances; that means he has to make his own existence at every single moment. He is given the abstract possibility of existing, but not the reality. This he has to conquer hour after hour. Man must earn his life, not only economically but metaphysically." --Ortega
Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, by Walter Kaufmann is a must have for anyone seriously undertaking a jaunt into the Realm of Existentialism and Phenomenology.
Although a small book, the paperback edition weighing in at a mere 384 pages, one will find that Kaufmann has packed it to the gills with usable, and reliable, information. Whole chapters are devoted to Existentialist giants like: Dostoevsky: Notes from Underground, Kierkegaard: The First Existentialist, Nietzsche: "Live Dangerously", Rilke: The Notes of Malte Laurids Brigge, Kafka: Three Parables, Ortega: "Man Has No Nature", Jaspers: Existenzphilosophie, Heidegger: The Quest for Being, Sartre: Existentialism, and Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus.
One should be aware that there are a lot of different writing styles, because of all the different authors, being introduced in one book. So, in some ways, to the casual reader Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre may seem a bit choppy and academic, intimidating and complex. --Katharena Eiermann, 2005, the Realm of Existentialism -- Presidential Hopeful
A thought- provoking anthology .......2004-11-10
Literature, Philosophy and Religion all have their parts in this anthology compiled by Walter Kaufmann. Kaufman was of course more expert on certain matters ( Neitzsche ) than on others(Kierkegaard) but he here provides a variety of texts that enable the reader to know and think for himself about the major ' existensial writers and thinkers'.
Customer Reviews:
Once Upon a Time in the West.......2006-06-30
Once upon a time in the West, a man named William Gilpin was blown westward along with an expedition of John Fremont that took him as far as Walla Walla, Wash. In 1846 he fought in the Mexican War. In 1861 he went to Washington, DC, after Abraham Lincoln was elected. Later he became the first territorial governor of Colorado. Once upon a time, Gilpin saw the land beyond the 100th meridian (which runs through the center of Nebraska and Kansas) through a mystical fervor. The semiarid lands were no desert, but a pastoral Canaan. Agriculture would be effortless. All that was needed was the plow break the soil so that rain would naturally follow.
At the same time that Gilpin was convincing the country that the West was a Biblical Paradise, an exploration party headed by John Wesley Powell was camped a few miles from Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was 1868. At this time Powell was not the pioneer that Gilpin was, and he was 34 compared to Gilpin's 55. Powell's interests were always varied. In 1860 his *mollusk* collection won awards at the Illinois State Agricultural Society fair. In 1861, he volunteered to join the army in the Civil War. Within six months he rose through the ranks to become a captain, an expert on *fortifications*. In April of 1862, Powell lost an arm due to a Minie ball at Shiloh. Powell continued through the war. In 1865, Powell began a professorship in *geology* at Wesleyan.
Powell began his exploration of the Green and Colorado rivers on July 6,1869. On August 30, 1869, only six of nine men and two of four boats managed to go all the way through the Grand Canyon to come out near Yuma, Az. The rest of the Colorado had already been explored. In a few short months, John Wesley Powell had gathered enough data to challenge Gilpin's portrayal of the West. For the rest of his life, he would try to convince Congress of what he had learned about the proper way to treat the land beyond the 100th meridian.
Powell's geological and *ethnological* work and his study of Native American *languages* continue today to form the basis for our understanding of these subjects for southern Utah and northern Arizona.
Powell's Vision - Ageless and Far-reaching .......2006-01-20
I re-read this book and Powell's own "Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons" over the Holidays and have decided that these 2 books are absolutely inseparable. You must read both and I'm glad to see that Amazon offers a special deal for the purchase of these 2 books together. In my opinion, you should read Powell's "Exploration..." first and then read Stegner's book. Stegner's book is very readable but I hesitate to call it an easy read. While you are reading this book, you have to stop now and then to absorb and reflect on the opinions, actions, and counteractions of that particular moment. Everything must be placed in some historical, political, and personal context (3 dimensions which necessitate contemplation by the reader). Stegner does a wonderful job in maintaining the general flow of the text and he supplies an extensive listing of notes for those who want more information and detail. In my opinion, this is a wonderful book about a brilliant man with incredible foresight. Now, it seems that we need a beacon like Powell warning the Easterners about their relentless development of land with no thought or planning on the impact to their water resources and water quality. Most folks in the Eastern U.S. take their water resources for granted. We need a modern day Powell to warn us about the consequences of increased impervious area before its too late.
Powell cries out to today's West through Stegner's voice.......2006-01-04
Almost everything that could be done wrong in the development of the modern American West (and not just the Rockies westward, but the High Plains as well) was warned against by Maj. John Wesley Powell, but done anyway by the federal government and various states.
The result? Water crises, fights over water rights, lying, chicanery and stealing in the name of water rights, corporate farms squeezing out small farmers, urban sprawl and smog in the middle of deserts, dust bowls and more, were either forseen or hinted at by Powell.
The 100th meridian of latitude is the U.S.'s "dry line." Areas to the west, generally, before you get to the Pacific Coast, average less than 20 inches of rain a year. Hence the title, and the basis of Powell's warnings.
And, AND, all of that came after this one-armed Civil War veteran led the first navigation of the entire whitewater section of the Colorado, actually starting on the Green River in Wyoming and running all the way down past the Grand Canyon. (Despite some claims otherwise, it seems pretty clear James White did NOT do this.)
It was this trip, in the name of scientific research, that gave Powell his standing to eventually found the Bureau of Ethnography, do further Western research and make some top-notch recommendations for the development of the west.
The reason I didn't five-star this is that I would like to have seen a little more depth to Powell's post-exploration career. Also, a little more personality profile of Powell's struggle with disappointment over the Newlands Act and other repudiation of his ideas would have been nice.
True, Stegner may not be a professional historian, but it would have been nice to see him incorporate this.
To get an idea of what I mean by the end of this critique, please read Donald Worster's "River Running West." Also, Worster provides a bit of corrective to Stegner's occasional near-hagiographical approach to Powell.
A good book by a cranky old guy.......2005-10-07
This is an excellent biography of John Wesley Powell--exlorer, geologist, scientist, writer, and politician.
Anyone who reads this is sure to increase the amount they know about this historic figure, and about the West in general as the stories of each are inextricably tangled. The book excels at its account of John Wesley Powell's life AFTER his famous trips down the Colorado River, and does a great job of describing Powell's role in the battle against over-populating the West.
If the book has faults though, they lie in that many of Stegner's sources have since been expounded upon or dismissed entirely, and so the facts in this book aren't entirely current. Also, Stegner dismisses too quickly the merits of the story of James White, a man who very possibly went down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon two years before Powell did.
And, it's kind of ridiculous how Stegner criticizes Powell's second expedition's photos as if they were famous works and art: This photo "is marred by too much nondescipt low-water beach in the foreground," and that sort of thing.
This is a great book for anyone interested in John Wesley Powell or the Colorado River. It's possibly Stegner's best nonfiction work, though "Mormon Country" is good as well.
For another great account of John Wesley Powell, read "Down the Great Unknown" by Edward Dolnick.
Or, for a half-decent book about Wallace Stegner's peculiarly white view of the American West, read, "'Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner' and Other Essays" by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. That one's kind of interesting.
Educational but not boring.......2003-03-15
I kept waiting for this book to get boring. It has all the potential to be boring. But it's not. It's an excellent introduction to the history of the West. I learned little tidbits about all sorts of varied subjects - Native American tribes, government, the history of the USGS. Stegner does get a little too wrapped up in the details at a couple points, especially when he gets into all the wrangling in Congress over Powell's various ventures, but in general it's an excellent book.
Books:
- Body of Lies: A Novel
- Cabinet of Natural Curiosities: The Complete Plates in Colour, 1734-1765
- Chicago Apartments: A Century of Lakefront Luxury (Urban Domestic Architecture Series)
- Chinese (Mandarin) I
- Choke
- Church of The Holy Sepulchre
- Chyna Black
- Complete Vampire Chronicles (Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the body Thief)
- Complete Vampire Chronicles (Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the body Thief)
- Construction Site Work, Site Utilities and Substructures Databook
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Microcontroller Based Applied Digital Control
- Heartbeat
- Century 21 Accounting: General Journal Working Chapters 18-26
- Compendium of Tourism Statistics
- Financial Accounting, with Annual Report
- Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady's Gentle Guide to Helping Your Child Go to Sleep , Stay Asle
- History: Fiction or Science
- Lotus 1-2-3 for Accounting: A Beginner's Supplement
- Eco-Efficiency, Regulation and Sustainable Business: Towards a Governance Structure for Sustainable
- The Kagonesti
Literary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
No Country for Old Men
The Road
Underworld: A Novel
Suttree
The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, the Crossing, Cities of the Plain (Everyman's Library)
