To the Last Drop - Affective Economies of Extraction and Sentimentality

To the Last Drop - Affective Economies of Extraction and Sentimentality
Author: Axelle Germanaz
Publisher: Transcript Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-05-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9783837664102

The romance of extraction underlies and partly defines Western modernity and our cultural imaginaries. Combining affect studies and environmental humanities, this volume analyzes societies' devotion to extraction and fossil resources. This devotion is shaped by a nostalgic view on settler colonialism as well as by contemporary »affective economies«. The contributors examine the links between forms of extractivism and gendered discourses of sentimentality and the ways in which cultural narratives and practices deploy the sentimental mode (in plots of attachment, sacrifice, and suffering) to promote or challenge extractivism.

To the Last Drop - Affective Economies of Extraction and Sentimentality

To the Last Drop - Affective Economies of Extraction and Sentimentality
Author: Axelle Germanaz
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2023-07-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839464102

The romance of extraction underlies and partly defines Western modernity and our cultural imaginaries. Combining affect studies and environmental humanities, this volume analyzes societies' devotion to extraction and fossil resources. This devotion is shaped by a nostalgic view on settler colonialism as well as by contemporary »affective economies« (Sara Ahmed). The contributors examine the links between forms of extractivism and gendered discourses of sentimentality and the ways in which cultural narratives and practices deploy the sentimental mode (in plots of attachment, sacrifice, and suffering) to promote or challenge extractivism.

Ecocritical Explorations of the Climate Crisis

Ecocritical Explorations of the Climate Crisis
Author: Janet M. Wilson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2024-11-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1040230237

Ecocritical Explorations of the Climate Crisis expands postcolonial precarity studies by addressing the current climate crisis and threats to the habitability of the planet from a range of ecocritical and environmental perspectives. The collection uses planetary thought-action praxis that acknowledges the interconnectedness of all forms of life in addressing the socioecological issues facing humanity: accelerating climate change, over-exploitation of natural resources, and the Global North–South divide. With reference to contemporary cultural productions, such praxis seeks to examine the ideas, images, and narratives that either represent or impede potential disasters like the so-called sixth extinction of the planet, that inspire the dismantling of carbon democracies arising in the wake of neoliberalism, and that address rising inequality with precarious conditions in the transition to renewable energy. The different chapters explore literary and visual representations of planetary precarity, identifying crisis-responsive genres and cultural formats, and assessing approaches to environment-re/making that call for repair, recovery and sustainability. In imagining future habitability, they deploy diverse critical frameworks such as queer utopias, zero-waste lifestyles, alternative ecologies, and adaptations to the uninhabitable. The collection tackles problems of global vulnerability and examines precarity as a condition of resilience and resistance through collective actions and solidarities and innovative constructions of the planet’s survival as a shared home. It engages with current postcolonial debates, uses intersectional methodologies, and introduces contemporary literary, visual concepts, and narrative types.

Biohacking, Bodies and Do-It-Yourself

Biohacking, Bodies and Do-It-Yourself
Author: Mirjam Grewe-Salfeld
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2021-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839460042

From self-help books and nootropics, to self-tracking and home health tests, to the tinkering with technology and biological particles - biohacking brings biology, medicine, and the material foundation of life into the sphere of »do-it-yourself«. This trend has the potential to fundamentally change people's relationship with their bodies and biology but it also creates new cultural narratives of responsibility, authority, and differentiation. Covering a broad range of examples, this book explores practices and representations of biohacking in popular culture, discussing their ambiguous position between empowerment and requirement, promise and prescription.

Waiting - A Project in Conversation

Waiting - A Project in Conversation
Author: Shahram Khosravi
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2021-01-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839454581

Waiting is an inescapable part of life in modern societies. We all wait, albeit differently and for different reasons. What does it mean to wait for a long period of time? How do people narrate their waiting? Waiting is about the senses. If you do not sense it, there is no waiting. We sense waiting in the form of boredom, despair, anxiety and restlessness, but also anticipation and hope. Prolonged waiting is like insomnia - a state of wakefulness, a kind of mood, an emotional state. But it is also about politics; affecting and affected by gender, citizenship, class, and race. Blending ethnography, philosophy, poetry, art, and fiction, this book is a collection of works by scholars, visual artists, writers, architects and curators, exploring different forms of waiting in diverse geographical contexts, and the enduring effects of history, power, class, and coloniality.

Maritime Poetics

Maritime Poetics
Author: Gabriel N. Gee
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2021-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3732850234

In the past fifty years, port cities around the world have experienced considerable changes to their morphologies and their identities. The increasing intensification of global networks and logistics, and the resulting pressure on human societies and earthly environments have been characteristic of the rise of a »planetary age«. This volume engages with contemporary artistic practices and critical poetics that trace an alternate construction of the imaginaries and aspirations of our present societies at the crossroads of sea and land - taking into account complex pasts and interconnected histories, transnational flux, as well as material and immaterial borders.

Lexicon of Global Melodrama

Lexicon of Global Melodrama
Author: Heike Paul
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2022-05-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839459737

This new go-to reference book for global melodrama assembles contributions by experts from a wide range of disciplines, including cultural studies, film and media studies, gender and queer studies, political science, and postcolonial studies. The melodramas covered in this volume range from early 20th century silent movies to contemporary films, from independent ›arthouse‹ productions to Hollywood blockbusters. The comprehensive overview of global melodramatic film in the Lexicon constitutes a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners of film, teachers, film critics, and anyone who is interested in the past and present of melodramatic film on a global scale. The Lexicon of Global Melodrama includes essays on All That Heaven Allows, Bombay, Casablanca, Die Büchse der Pandora, In the Mood for Love, Nosotros los Pobres, Terra Sonâmbula, and Tokyo Story.

Comfort in Contemporary Culture

Comfort in Contemporary Culture
Author: Dorothee Birke
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2020-10-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839449022

Comfort is a prominent and highly loaded concept, as popular discourses on cosy environments, safe spaces, but also the importance of ›getting out of your comfort zone‹ attest. This volume is the first to investigate ›comfort‹ as a cultural narrative and emotional touchstone in contemporary culture. Taken together, the contributions to the volume offer an overview of different approaches to and conceptualisations of comfort in linguistics, in literary, media, and cultural studies, and art history. They showcase how ›comfort‹ serves as a valuable lens to analyse contemporary artworks and developments, e.g. live theatre broadcasting or political interventions in the US-American media sphere.

The Myths That Made America

The Myths That Made America
Author: Heike Paul
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2014-08-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839414857

This essential introduction to American studies examines the core foundational myths upon which the nation is based and which still determine discussions of US-American identities today. These myths include the myth of »discovery,« the Pocahontas myth, the myth of the Promised Land, the myth of the Founding Fathers, the melting pot myth, the myth of the West, and the myth of the self-made man. The chapters provide extended analyses of each of these myths, using examples from popular culture, literature, memorial culture, school books, and every-day life. Including visual material as well as study questions, this book will be of interest to any student of American studies and will foster an understanding of the United States of America as an imagined community by analyzing the foundational role of myths in the process of nation building.