Released in 1999, _Fight Club_ is David Fincher’s popular adaption of Chuck Palahniuk’s cult novel, and one of the most philosophically rich films of recent years. This is the first book to explore the varied philosophical aspects of the film. Beginning with an introduction by the editor that places the film and essays in context, each chapter explores a central theme of _Fight Club_ from a philosophical perspective. Topics discussed include: _Fight Club_, Plato’s cave and Descartes’ cogito moral disintegration identity, (...) gender and masculinity visuals and narration. Including annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, _Fight Club_ is essential reading for anyone interested in the film, as well as those studying philosophy and film studies. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the movie Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, written by Jim Uhls, and first released in the fall of 1999. The movie is based on the homonym novel by Chuck Palahniuk, published in 1996. I will argue that Fight Club is to be understood in primarily existentialist, nonethical, and nonevidential terms, showing the struggle felt by each and every one of us to find a convincing answer to the (...) question of what (if anything) counts as an authentic life that is worth living. Moreover, I will argue that the movie does not merely illustrate the struggle and the existential angst it engenders; it also advances, if not strictly speaking a theoretical answer grounded in an indisputable philosophical reasoning, then at least a practical way to face it. It is only after positively endorsing the claim that absolutely nothing (whatever it may be) externally imposed on a person can give their life ultimate meaning that a person is free to engage in a conscious, laborious, and exhausting attempt at self-affirmation, a full and positive endorsement of one’s own authenticity. (shrink)

Resumo Visto por uma lente existencial, o filme Fight Club impele-nos a criar um autêntico self. Porém, também nos adverte que a criação de um autêntico self é algo que só podemos fazer por nós mesmos. A definitiva ironia no filme Fight Club é que, num esforço por rejeitar a sociedade e cultivar a individualidade, as pessoas acabam por se conformar a um culto e aos seus ditames. A lição é que a autenticidade é frágil, facilmente (...) esmagada e facilmente rendida. No final do filme, o protagonista, oferece-nos esperança, ainda que seja para nos tornarmos auto-conscientes e lutar contra as forças que nos procuram subjugar. Palavras-chave : autenticidade, consumismo, existencialismo, Fight Club, Nietzsche, vícioViewed through an existential lens, Fight Club urges us to create an authentic self, but it also cautions us that the creation of an authentic self is something we can only do for ourselves. The ultimate irony in Fight Club is that in an effort to reject society and cultivate individuality, people end up conforming to a cult and its dictates. The clear lesson is that authenticity is fragile, easily crushed and easily surrendered. By the end of the movie, the protagonist at least offers us hope, though, that we can become self-aware and fight back against the forces that seek to subjugate us. Keywords : addiction, authenticity, consumerism, existentialism, Fight Club, Nietzsche. (shrink)

Analyzes cinematic conventions of transparency, and offers an interpretation of Fight Club.

Focusing on the film Fight Club, the article deals with how microfascism persists in the network society in spite of its public denial. Considering microfascism as a line of flight with respect to the social bond, it asks what happens to the project of subversion when power itself goes nomadic and when the idea of transgression is solicited by the new “spirit of capitalism”. It is argued that every social order has an obscene supplement that serves as the (...) positive condition of its possibility, and that increasing reflexivity today is accompanied by emerging nonsymbolic forms of authority. In this context, the article deals with the question of violence and relates this to the problematics of critique, flight and act in contemporary societies. (shrink)

Anna Kornbluh provides an overview of Marxist approaches to film, with particular attention to three central concepts in Marxist theory in general that have special bearing on film: “the mode of production,” “ideology,” and “mediation.” In explaining how these concepts operate and how they have been used and misused in film studies, the volume employs a case study to exemplify the practice of Marxist film theory. Fight Club is an exceptionally useful text with which to explore these three (...) concepts because it so vividly and pedagogically engages with economic relations, ideological distortion, and opportunities for transformation. At the same time, it is a very typical film in terms of the conditions of its production, its marketing, and its popularity. Adapted from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the film is a contemporary classic that has lent itself to significant re-interpretation with every shift in the political economic landscape since its debut. Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club models a detailed cinematic interpretation that students can practice with other films, and furnishes a set of ideas about cinema and society that can be carried into other kinds of study, giving students tools for analyzing culture broadly defined. (shrink)

Taking a schizoanalytic approach to audio-visual images, this article explores some of the radical potentia for deterritorialisation found within David Fincher's Fight Club (1999). The film's potential for deterritorialisation is initially located in an exploration of the film's form and content, which appear designed to interrogate and transcend a series of false binaries between mind and body, inside and outside, male and female. Paying attention to the construction of photorealistic digital spaces and composited images, we examine the actual (...) (and possible) ways viewers relate to the film, both during and after screenings. Recognising the film as an affective force performing within our world, we also investigate some of the real-world effects the film catalysed. Finally, we propose that schizoanalysis, when applied to a Hollywood film, suggests that Deleuze underestimated the deterritorialising potential of contemporary, special effects-driven cinema. If schizoanalysis has thus been reterritorialised by mainstream products, we argue that new, ‘post-Deleuzian’ lines of flight are required to disrupt this ‘de-re-territorialisation’. (shrink)

My article discusses the character of Marla, the narrator’s lover, in the film Fight Club. Her only option, within the terms of the film’s logic, I argue, is to define her worth derivatively, by association with the narrator. Fight Club, then, despite its somewhat self-effacing attitude about the rejuvenation of masculinity that it portrays, reinforces a familiar patriarchal story: men’s sense of worth lies in their joint world-making activities. Women’s sense of worth lies in their attachment (...) to individual men who undertake these activities. My main argument builds upon three preliminary discussions. The first is a brief outline of the contours of the concept of self-respect. The second is an analysis of the links between gender, personhood and the grounds of self-respect. The third is an account of my approach to interpreting Fight Club given its many layers of irony. Drawing on these preliminary discussions, I examine two interpretations of the film’s social commentary— what I call the “gender-neutral” and the “gender-specific” interpretations. I show that on both of these readings the film implies that Marla, as a woman, must regain her self-respect through an intimate relationship with the narrator. (shrink)

My contribution to this series of articles in Telos is not that of an historian or a social theorist, and it does not deal with totalitarianism in anything other than a rather spectral sense. To this extent, it might seem a little out of place. This essay concerns itself not with the analysis of a specific historical society that might (or might not) be characterized as totalitarian, but with the way in which a certain sense of the totalitarian has shaped (...) the self-understanding of liberal Western popular culture. It starts from two very different points. At the level of theory,…. (shrink)

What is potent and compelling about utopia has shifted, quite decisively, away from the social blueprint model and toward a more open-ended exploration of desire and change. Fight Club is a significant marker in the development of a utopianism that is dynamic and adaptive, existing in the present of history rather than in a vacuum of idealism. Building on theories of revolution proffered by Slavoj Žižek and Frederic Jameson, I argue that within the novel the body becomes a (...) potential site for exploring difference and creates both an alternative to and a critique of the distorted narrative of dominant society. Bodies that are marked, wounded, scarred, and beaten are bodies in the process of exploring alternatives to an oppressive social world where “completeness” trumps difference. Fight club allows men to fiercely embody revolution and desire and rejuvenate utopia with every punch. I distinguish between the dynamic and subversive nature of fight club and the militaristic and fascist system of Project Mayhem, which displays the values of traditional utopian thinking and as such fails to maintain the liberating and transgressive qualities of fight club. (shrink)

What is potent and compelling about utopia has shifted, quite decisively, away from the social blueprint model and toward a more open-ended exploration of desire and change. Fight Club is a significant marker in the development of a utopianism that is dynamic and adaptive, existing in the present of history rather than in a vacuum of idealism. Building on theories of revolution proffered by Slavoj Žižek and Frederic Jameson, I argue that within the novel the body becomes a (...) potential site for exploring difference and creates both an alternative to and a critique of the distorted narrative of dominant society. Bodies that are marked, wounded, scarred, and beaten are bodies in the process of exploring alternatives to an oppressive social world where “completeness” trumps difference. Fight club allows men to fiercely embody revolution and desire and rejuvenate utopia with every punch. I distinguish between the dynamic and subversive nature of fight club and the militaristic and fascist system of Project Mayhem, which displays the values of traditional utopian thinking and as such fails to maintain the liberating and transgressive qualities of fight club. (shrink)

There is a popular idea that archaic humans commonly used wooden clubs as their weapons. This is not based on archaeological finds, which are minimal from the Pleistocene, but rather on a few ethnographic analogies and the association of these weapons with simple technology. This article presents the first quantitative cross-cultural analysis of the use of wooden clubs and throwing sticks for hunting and violence among foragers. Using a sample of 57 recent hunting-gathering societies from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, it (...) is shown that the majority used clubs for violence (86%) and/or hunting (74%). Whereas in hunting and fishing the club usually served only as a secondary tool, 33% of societies used the club as one of their main fighting weapons. The use of throwing sticks was less frequent among the societies surveyed (12% for violence, 14% for hunting). Based on these results and other evidence, it is argued that the use of clubs by early humans was highly probable, at least in the simplest form of a crude stick. The great variation in the forms and use of clubs and throwing sticks among recent hunter-gatherers, however, indicates that they are not standardized weapons and that similar variation may have existed in the past. Many such prehistoric weapons may therefore have been quite sophisticated, multifunctional, and carried strong symbolic meaning. (shrink)

We can think of the club not as a small business, but as a would‐be “anarchist‐syndicalist commune.” Anarcho‐syndicalism is a kind of anarchism based in labor unions, where workers take control of the economy not through a top‐down government bureaucracy but through revolutionary labor associations called “syndicates. The club resembles just such a syndicate: it's hierarchical, but, unlike capitalist enterprises, it is a democratically governed hierarchy. The state is essentially an instrument of class struggle and will gradually “wither (...) away,” as both the “anarchy” of capitalist markets and the centralized command economy are replaced with socialist anarchism. This chapter portrays the difference between Marxists and classical anarchists such as the French Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon and the Russian Peter Kropotkin, for whom the state should immediately be abolished. SAMCRO seems anarchistic in its principal economic relations, too, with decisions about production, distribution, and labor made by members of the MC collectively. (shrink)

Novels like Fight Club or American Psycho are said to be instances of unreliable narration: the first person narrator presents an evidently distorted picture of the fictional world. The film adaptations of these novels are likewise said to involve unreliable narration. I resist this extension of the term ‘unreliable narration’ to film. My argument for this rests on the observation that unreliable narration requires a personal narrator while film typically involves an impersonal narrator. The kind of ambiguous story-telling (...) that we find in literary fiction with unreliable narrators, where for certain descriptions it is unclear whether what we’re told is an accurate account of what’s happening in the story world or not, can instead be achieved by conventionalized filmmaking techniques for reporting the contents of mental states, like the point of view shot, but especially the more ambiguous blended perspective shot. (shrink)

The latest book by the Slovenian critic Slavoj Zizek takes the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze as the beginning of a dazzling inquiry into the realms of radical politics, philosophy, film (Hitchcock, Fight Club ), and psychoanalysis. Of Organs without Bodies Joan Copjec ( Imagine There's No Woman ) has written: "With all his ususal humor and invention, Zizek -- the acknowledged master of the 180 degree turn -- here takes a trip into "enemy" territory to deliver (...) Deleuze of a marvelously rebellious child, one that seriously challenges Deleuze's other progeny with a surprising but convincing bid for succession. Those who thought Deleuze's forward march into the future would follow a straight path are forced to rethink their stance. From now on all readings of Deleuze will have to take a detour through this important -- even necessary -- book." Eric Santner ( On the Psychopathology of Everyday Life ) describes Organs without Bodies as offering "an entirely new degree of conceptual clarity and political urgency. Through his deep engagement with the logic of Deleuze's project, Zizek opens up new possibilities of thought beyond the terms of the current political debates on globalization, democratization, war on terror. Once again, Zizek has produced an utterly timely and radically untimely meditation." Recently profiled in The New Yorker , and hailed by the Village Voice as "the giant of Ljubljana," Zizek is one of the most provocative and entertaining thinkers at work today. (shrink)

In works of literary fiction, it is a part of the fiction that the words of the text are being recounted by some work-internal 'voice': the literary narrator. One can ask similarly whether the story in movies is told in sights and sounds by a work-internal subjectivity that orchestrates them: a cinematic narrator. George M. Wilson argues that movies do involve a fictional recounting (an audio-visual narration ) in terms of the movie's sound and image track. Viewers are usually prompted (...) to imagine seeing the items and events in the movie's fictional world and to imagine hearing the associated fictional sounds. However, it is much less clear that the cinematic narration must be imagined as the product of some kind of 'narrator' - of a work-internal agent of the narration. Wilson goes on to examine the further question whether viewers imagine seeing the fictional world face-to-face or whether they imagine seeing it through some kind of work-internal mediation . It is a key contention of this book that only the second of these alternatives allows one to give a coherent account of what we do and do not imagine about what we are seeing on the screen. Having provided a partial account of the foundations of film narration, the final chapters explore the ways in which certain complex strategies of cinematic narration are executed in three exemplary films: David Fincher's Fight Club , von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress , and the Coen brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There. (shrink)

This book explores Gilles Deleuze's contribution to film theory. According to Deleuze, we have come to live in a universe that could be described as metacinematic. His conception of images implies a new kind of camera consciousness, one that determines our perceptions and sense of selves: aspects of our subjectivities are formed in, for instance, action-images, affection-images and time-images. We live in a matrix of visual culture that is always moving and changing. Each image is always connected to an assemblage (...) of affects and forces. This book presents a model, as well as many concrete examples, of how to work with Deleuze in film theory. It asks questions about the universe as metacinema, subjectivity, violence, feminism, monstrosity, and music. Among the contemporary films it discusses within a Deleuzian framework are Strange Days, Fight Club, and Dancer in the Dark. (shrink)

As witnessed by recent films such as _Fight Club_ and _Identity_, our culture is obsessed with multiple personality—a phenomenon raising intriguing questions about personal identity. This study offers both a full-fledged philosophical theory of personal identity and a systematic account of multiple personality. Gunnarsson combines the methods of analytic philosophy with close hermeneutic and phenomenological readings of cases from different fields, focusing on psychiatric and psychological treatises, self-help books, biographies, and fiction. He develops an original account of personal identity and (...) offers a provocative interpretation of multiple personality: in brief, "multiples" are right about the metaphysics but wrong about the facts. (shrink)

Europe's leading existential thinkers -- Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus -- all felt that Americans were too self-confident and shallow to accept their philosophy of responsibility, choice, and the absurd. "There is no pessimism in America regarding human nature and social organization," Sartre remarked in 1950, while Beauvoir wrote that Americans had no "feeling for sin and for remorse" and Camus derided American materialism and optimism. Existentialism, however, enjoyed rapid, widespread, and enduring popularity among Americans. No less (...) than their European counterparts, American intellectuals participated in the conversation of existentialism. In Existential America , historian George Cotkin argues that the existential approach to life, marked by vexing despair and dauntless commitment in the face of uncertainty, has deep American roots and helps to define the United States in the twentieth-century in ways that have never been fully realized or appreciated. As Cotkin shows, not only did Americans readily take to existentialism, but they were already heirs to a rich tradition of thinkers -- from Jonathan Edwards and Herman Melville to Emily Dickinson and William James -- who had wrestled with the problems of existence and the contingency of the world long before Sartre and his colleagues. After introducing this concept of an American existential tradition, Cotkin examines how formal existentialism first arrived in America in the 1930s through discussion of Kierkegaard and the early vogue among New York intellectuals for the works of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus. Cotkin then traces the evolution of existentialism in America: its adoption by Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison to help articulate the African-American experience its expression in the works of Norman Mailer and photographer Robert Frank its incorporation into the tenets of the feminist and radical student movements of the 1960s and its lingering presence in contemporary American thought and popular culture, particularly in such films as Crimes and Misdemeanors , Fight Club and American Beauty . The only full-length study of existentialism in America, this highly engaging and original work provides an invaluable guide to the history of American culture since the end of the Second World War. (shrink)

As witnessed by recent films such as _Fight Club_ and _Identity_, our culture is obsessed with multiple personality—a phenomenon raising intriguing questions about personal identity. This study offers both a full-fledged philosophical theory of personal identity and a systematic account of multiple personality. Gunnarsson combines the methods of analytic philosophy with close hermeneutic and phenomenological readings of cases from different fields, focusing on psychiatric and psychological treatises, self-help books, biographies, and fiction. He develops an original account of personal identity and (...) offers a provocative interpretation of multiple personality: in brief, "multiples" are right about the metaphysics but wrong about the facts. (shrink)

Now emulated in several competing publications, but still unsurpassed in clarity and insight, _Philosophy Goes to the Movies: An Introduction to Philosophy, Third Edition_ builds on the approach that made the two earlier editions so successful. Drawing on many popular and some lesser known films from around the world, Christopher Falzon introduces students to key areas in philosophy, like: • Ethics • Social and Political Philosophy • The Theory of Knowledge • The Self and Personal Identity • Critical Thinking Perfect (...) for beginners, this book guides the reader through philosophy using illuminating cinematic works, like Avatar, Inception, Fight Club, Wings of Desire, Run Lola Run, A Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner, Dirty Harry and many other films. The fully revised and updated Third Edition features: an expanded introduction that provides a new discussion of the relationship between film and philosophy; new material on notable philosophers such as Aristotle, Merleau-Ponty and Rawls; and coverage of new topics like virtue ethics and what Socrates offers for critical thinking. An updated glossary, references and bibliography, and a filmography, are also included in the Third Edition. (shrink)

Perhaps the topic of acceptable risk never had a sexier and more succinct introduction than the one Edward Norton, playing an automobile company executive, gave it in Fight Club: “Take the number of vehicles in the field (A), multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), and multiply the result by the average out of court settlement (C). A*B*C=X. If X is less than the cost of the recall, we don’t do one.” Of course, this dystopic scene (...) also gets to the heart of the issue in another way: acceptable risk deals with mathematical calculations about the value of life, injury, and emotional wreckage, making calculation a difficult matter ethically, politically, and economically. This entry will explore the history of this idea, focusing on its development alongside statistics into its wide importance today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Surviving American Culture:On Chuck PalahniukEduardo MendietaIn an age in which American culture has become the United States' number one export, along with its weapons, low intensity conflict, carcinogenic cigarettes, its "freedom," and pornography, it is delightful and even a sign of hope that there are writers who have taken on the delicate and perilous task of offering a prognosis of what ails this culture. In the following essay I (...) argue that Chuck Palahniuk's works ought to be read as a mortician's report on American culture. Chuck Palahniuk broke into the literary world by way of the movie version of his first novel: Fight Club (1995). He has gone on to write six other novels: Survivor (1999), Invisible Monsters (2000), Choke (2001), Lullaby (2002), and Diary (2003). He also has published an interesting travel book, Fugitives and Refugees; A Walk in Portland, Oregon (2003), but since this is not properly fiction, I will not discuss it in this essay.1Clearly, Palahniuk has already produced a corpus worthy of careful consideration and analysis. Yet, as a west coast writer, far from the literary circles and brokers of the east coast, indeed far away from the clubs of self-promotion and self-monitoring that censure and hold in tight grip the monopoly of criticism that highlights "worthy literature," Palahniuk has not attracted a lot of critical attention. It is only with his most recent work Choke that he has began to be widely reviewed and commented on. In the following I provide a thematic reconstruction of each one of the six published novels, in chronological sequence. I will argue that Palahniuk is not trying to write the "great American novel," although he is profiling himself as a quintessential "American" writer in the midst of post–Cold War megalomania and celebrated Pax Americana. He has taken on a culture that has become so gargantuan, [End Page 394] fragmented, and differentiated but at the same time so rich, so self-reflexive, so historicized and also so mimicked that one novel cannot tell its story in one narrative with one dramatic thread. Many novels, many short cuts, many vignettes, are necessary: one polyphonic, asynchronous, temporally bi-directional, hyper-textual, and cyber-encyclopedic novel made up of individual novels, where each novel is the Bildungsroman of an American hero but told in reverse. These heroes, I will argue, are testimonies to the resilient power of individuals to resist even the most invasive and persistent onslaughts by culture on the physic life of freedom and individuality. I will also argue that he is neither a commercial nor academic writer; that is, he is not the kind of writer who writes either in order to maintain a living or secure tenure. He is a writer with a mission, a vision, and a very distinctive style. The stories that Palahniuk tells are stories that begin at the end, and end at the beginning: they are turned around Bildungsromans. They are, in other words, about unmaking, uncoupling, and disentangling our selves from the normal self into which we have been socialized. These stories are, thus, about the discovery of moral resources that lay dormant in the very simplicity of human solidarity and trust in our will to survive morally untainted, or at least redeemable. I will conclude by arguing that Palahniuk's novels are about surviving American Culture, and about how deviance is the health of the individual in a sick society.One could characterize Fight Club as the intelligent man's response to Robert Bly's Iron John (1990),2 or the fictionalized version of the Michael Kimmel's Manhood in America: A Cultural History (1996).3 Alternatively, one could argue that Fight Club is the fin-de-sieclé response to Barbara Ehrenreich's prognosis in her The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (1983) of 1970s and 1980s narcissistic and hedonistic masculinity.4 Chuck Palahniuk's first novel is a biting and poignant look at men in American culture after the end of affluence and the simultaneous "feminization" of masculinity. It is at the same time about the struggle for a viable sense of masculinity in an age in... (shrink)

What accounts for the apocalyptic angst that is now so clearly present among Americans who do not subscribe to any religious orthodoxy? Why do so many popular television shows, films, and music nourish themselves on this very angst? And why do so many artists—from Coldplay to Tori Amos to Tom Wolfe—feel compelled to give it expression? It is tempting to say that America’s fears and anxieties are understandable in the light of 9/11, the ongoing War on Terror, nuclear proliferation, and (...) the seemingly limitless capacity of science to continually challenge our conceptions of the universe and ourselves. Perhaps, too, American culture remains so permeated by Protestant Christianity that even avowed skeptics cannot pry themselves from its grip. In _A Consumer’s Guide to the Apocalypse,_ Eduardo Velásquez argues that these answers are too pat. Velásquez’s astonishing thesis is that when we peer into contemporary artists’ creative depiction of our sensibilities we discover that the antagonisms that fuel the current cultural wars stem from the same source. Enthusiastic religions and dogmatic science, the flourishing of scientific reason and the fascination with mystical darkness, cultural triumphalists and multicultural ideologues are all sustained by the same thing: a willful commitment to the basic tenets of the Enlightenment. Velásquez makes his point with insightful readings of the music of Coldplay, Tori Amos, and Dave Matthews and the fiction of Michael Frayn’s _Copenhagen,_ Chuck Palahniuk’s _Fight Club,_ and Tom Wolfe’s _I Am Charlotte Simmons._ Written with grace and humor, and directed toward the lay reader, _A Consumer’s Guide to the Apocalypse_ is a tour de force of cultural analysis. (shrink)

Standing at the intersection of criminology and philosophy, this book demonstrates the ways in which mythic movies and television series can provide understanding of actual crimes and social harms. Taking three social problems as its subjects - capitalist political economy, structural injustice, and racism - the book explores the ways in which David Fincher's Fight Club (1999), HBO's Game of Thrones (2011-2019), and Jordan Peele's Us (2019) offer solutions by reconceiving justice in terms of personal and collective transformation, (...) utopian thinking, and the relationship between racism and elitism respectively. In so doing, the authors set out a theory of understanding the world based on cinematic and televisual works of art and conclude with a template that establishes a methodology for future use. An Epistemology of Criminological Cinema is authoritative and accessible, ideal reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students, criminologists, philosophers, and film, television, and literary critics with an interest in social justice and social harm. (shrink)

Standing at the intersection of criminology and philosophy, this book demonstrates the ways in which mythic movies and television series can provide an understanding of actual crimes and social harms. Taking three social problems as its subjects – capitalist political economy, structural injustice, and racism – the book explores the ways in which David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011–2019), and Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) offer solutions by reconceiving justice in terms of personal and collective (...) transformation, utopian thinking, and the relationship between racism and elitism, respectively. In doing so, the authors set out a theory of understanding the world based on cinematic and televisual works of art and conclude with a template that establishes a methodology for future use. An Epistemology of Criminological Cinema is authoritative and accessible, ideal reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students, criminologists, philosophers, and film, television, and literary critics with an interest in social justice and social harm. (shrink)

This book presents essays and scientific contributions examining the link between popular media and politics. The essays focus on the question of how political and social change, concepts of power, and utopian elements are reflected in selected films and television series. The book applies a political science perspective, covering theories from political philosophy, political sociology and international relations, and examines a wide range of movies and TV series, such as The Godfather, Fight Club, The Walking Dead and Game (...) of Thrones. It will appeal to anyone interested in studying how political ideas, concepts and messages can be illustrated and visualized using the complex media of movies and TV series. (shrink)

Henry Charlton Bastian's support for spontaneous generation is shown to have developed from his commitment to the new evolutionary science of Darwin, Spencer, Huxley and Tyndall. Tracing Bastian's early career development shows that he was one of the most talented rising young stars among the Darwinians in the 1860s. His argument for a logically necessary link between evolution and spontaneous generation was widely believed among those sympathetic to Darwin's ideas. Spontaneous generation implied materialism to many, however, and it had associations (...) in Britain with radical politics and amateur science. Huxley and the X Club were trying to create a public posture of Darwinism that kept it at arm's length from those negative associations. Thus, the conflict that developed when Huxley and the X Club opposed Bastian was at least as much about factional in-fighting among the Darwinians as it was about the experiments under dispute. Huxley's strategy to defeat Bastian and define his position as "non-Darwinian" contributed significantly to the shaping of Huxley's famous address "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis." Rhetorically separating Darwinism from Bastian was thus responsible for Huxley's first clear public statement that a naturalistic origin of life was compatible with Darwin's ideas, but only in the earth's distant past. The final separation of the discourse on the meaning of Brownian movement and "active molecules" from any possible link with spontaneous generation also grew out of Huxley's strategy to defeat Bastian. Clashes between Bastian and the X Club are described at the BAAS, the Royal Society, and in the pages of "Nature" and other journals. (shrink)

Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2016 by the New York Times, a spirited account of a major intellectual movement of the twentieth century and the revolutionary thinkers who came to shape it, by the best-selling author of How to Live Sarah Bakewell. Paris, 1933: three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to (...) them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called Phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!" It was this simple phrase that would ignite a movement, inspiring Sartre to integrate Phenomenology into his own French, humanistic sensibility, thereby creating an entirely new philosophical approach inspired by themes of radical freedom, authentic being, and political activism. This movement would sweep through the jazz clubs and cafés of the Left Bank before making its way across the world as Existentialism. Featuring not only philosophers, but also playwrights, anthropologists, convicts, and revolutionaries, At the Existentialist Café follows the existentialists' story, from the first rebellious spark through the Second World War, to its role in postwar liberation movements such as anti-colonialism, feminism, and gay rights. Interweaving biography and philosophy, it is the epic account of passionate encounters--fights, love affairs, mentorships, rebellions, and long partnerships--and a vital investigation into what the existentialists have to offer us today, at a moment when we are once again confronting the major questions of freedom, global responsibility, and human authenticity in a fractious and technology-driven world. (shrink)

The following is a critical reconstruction of the collaboration between Bauer and Marx between 1839 and 1842. The turbulences in the period in question reveal themselves in Marx’s thought as well as in his relationship with Bruno Bauer. Correspondingly, Marx’s detours, false paths, dead ends and abandoned work are therefore made the focus of this study. The ambivalent initial relations between the two of them, which both made their collaboration possible and hindered it, clearly go back further than 1841, when (...) Bauer was not yet an atheist and was still a proponent of church doctrine. This was the Bruno Bauer that Marx had come to know in the Doctor’s Club. We then meet Bauer the atheist at the end of 1839 or perhaps the beginning of 1840, as he was planning a comprehensive attack on orthodox theology and wanted Marx to fight on his side. This attack continued in Bauer’s Trumpet and in Hegel’s Doctrine. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Juggling ActSamantha René MerriwetherDepressed. Anxious. Insomniac. Learning Disabled. Physically impaired. Sufferer of Post–Traumatic Stress Disorder. Would you choose any of these labels? How about taking two or three? Sound manageable? Probably not. But why? All across our society are plastered expectations of perfection, normalcy and “acceptable” images.I am 27–years–old and, despite the years of education I have received, the communication skills I have gained in English and American (...) Sign Language (ASL), the countless hours spent with doctors consulting about how to “get better,” I have lost my sense of identity. And, the more I think about it, the more I realize that my “authentic voice” has not yet been born. This is the reality for me and, I suspect, for anyone else who has been labeled disabled.When I sat down to write this, I did not struggle coming up with a story to share nor the words to intrigue readers. Instead, I grappled over using my real name and not using a “pen name.” Despite my long and varied history with disability, it took me a long time to advocate my issues enough to receive services. Because labels are embarrassing. Because disability is embarrassing. And, so, now I have labels... many labels. However, it is still accepting them that I am left with. Unfortunately, I am just one of millions who are also fighting to find some sense of balance between honesty with myself and the societal labels that are at the forefront of our communities.It has been a year since I took Disability Studies, a cultural pluralism course requirement for my Liberal Studies Degree at California State University. On the surface choosing this sub topic could have been perceived as an easy A, given that I am disabled. Yes, having a disability enabled the language used to be less of a shock in my overall comprehension. In reality, however, the struggle to achieve success academically is continuously challenged by my own disabilities. However, despite succeeding in the course, “easy” is not an adjective that appropriately represents my experience. The knowledge I grasped in the classroom helps me to understand what happens when I walk outside on any given day; but therein lies the glitch... the class is over, but my disabilities never will be.Did I enjoy the topic of Disability Studies? Yes, immensely. Because it was something I could relate to. Did enjoying the subject matter take the struggle for comprehension away? No. Did my dyslexia absolve into thin air? No. Being disabled does not admit me, nor anyone else for that matter, into the disabled world with a “free pass from suffering” as if we are all in a club. Having a diagnosis helps to identify why I may not be able to do things in the way others may perceive as “normal.” But, it is the label of being “normal” that is detrimental to achieving success. It represents why our society has a stilted perspective towards those who wear glasses, use walking aides, or need assistance to get [End Page 205] something from a grocery store shelf. Additionally, implying that any one way of completing a task is “normal” is wrong and further accents those differences, which are just that... differences.One component of this course was a Panel Discussion with those living in the TAB (temporarily–able bodied) community. Approaching this event, I was possibly more nervous to ask questions than for the four members having to answer questions. The paradox of wanting to gain more understanding from those most qualified individuals who live with these struggles everyday and intellectually knowing that respect needed to come first was immense. Oddly, once the panel opened up, asking questions was not hard. Within the first ten minutes my fears subsided; the entire experience was like speaking to old friends, only I had just met them. These individuals were, yes, dealing with impairments, but were just as relatable to me as I was to them. And, to my surprise, they were inquisitive and curious towards each other as well. This reinforced that fact that when information is lacking our society we still rely on stereotypes about topics we are... (shrink)

Jerzy Braun formulated the principles of unionism in forty five points constituting a concise, twenty-four-page manifesto entitled “Unionism. Basic Principles”. The text was published anonymously by a conspiratorial publishing in 1943. After over fifty years, on the initiative of All-Poland Club of Lithuania’s Lovers, it was reprinted—this time with the author’s name and lengthy explanations.My main objective is the analysis and interpretation of Braun’s text.Unionism, according to Braun, does not mean separatism, it is a principle and attitude based on (...) integrating values that deserves definite ethics according to which activity directly derives from “voluntary accepted commitments”. Braun neither questions nor overestimates fight. Unionism means dialogue, agreement, but also this type of rivalry that remains in contradiction to a well-known saying “homo homini lupus est”. Unionism perceived as universalism, allows, according to the words of a romantic poet, “to differ beautifully”.The first part of the unionist principles comprises philosophical considerations inspired with the thought of Józef M. Hoene-Wroński. They constitute an introduction to more specific problems concerning the social and political life in the future Poland. Braun paid a lot of attention to “ideocratic” system in which emphasis moves from “persons, dynasties, reason of state to ideas”. He stressed the importance of economic and cultural dynamism, though economic achievement, in his opinion, should only serve the development of culture. The final parts of the unionist program present the necessity to unify the world in which Poland will find her proper position. (shrink)

How should black people, indeed any other group of people in general, respond when they are grouped together and oppressed on the basis of the contingency of their physical characteristics? Questions of liberation from oppression involve questions about the means to overcome that oppression. Throughout the ages of struggle against racial oppression, for example, collective black identity and solidarity has been one of the favourite responses and rallying call for racial justice and liberation. In South Africa this response has recently (...) emerged through the formation of a number of highly controversial groups such as: The Native Club, The African Forum, and The Forum for Black Journalists. Critics of these formations think that such black solidarity, divisive, irrational, morally objectionable and, above all, racist. This paper defends the emancipatory racial solidarity tradition, examplified by The Native Club and similar constituted organisations, against such serious charges and critiques mounted by contemporary leading thinkers on identity. The tools for such a defense are primarily derived from Jean-Paul Sartre's conception of group formation in his Critique Of Dialectical Reason. I argue that since anti-black racist consciousness always operates at the level of collectives, it is therefore impossible to fight such racism as an individual; that collective black solidarity is a necessary condition for racial emancipation. (shrink)

Philosopher, poet, literary and cultural critic, George Santayana is a principal figure in Classical American Philosophy. His naturalism and emphasis on creative imagination were harbingers of important intellectual turns on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a naturalist before naturalism grew popular; he appreciated multiple perfections before multiculturalism became an issue; he thought of philosophy as literature before it became a theme in American and European scholarly circles; and he managed to naturalize Platonism, update Aristotle, fight off idealisms, (...) and provide a striking and sensitive account of the spiritual life without being a religious believer. His Hispanic heritage, shaded by his sense of being an outsider in America, captures many qualities of American life missed by insiders, and presents views equal to Tocqueville in quality and importance. Beyond philosophy, only Emerson may match his literary production. As a public figure, he appeared on the front cover of Time (3 February 1936), and his autobiography (Persons and Places, 1944) and only novel (The Last Puritan, 1936) were the best-selling books in the United States as Book-of-the-Month Club selections. The novel was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Edmund Wilson ranked Persons and Places among the few first-rate autobiographies, comparing it favorably to Yeats's memoirs, The Education of Henry Adams, and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Remarkably, Santayana achieved this stature in American thought without being an American citizen. He proudly retained his Spanish citizenship throughout his life. Yet, as he readily admitted, it is as an American that his philosophical and literary corpuses are to be judged. Using contemporary classifications, Santayana is the first and foremost Hispanic-American philosopher. (shrink)

In gloomy and despairing times, we who work for liberation generate light and joy. We experience this every time we work together to defend our communities, when we fight to win collective victories, when we build something new. Much of the time these experiences are in marches and meetings – really important spaces for movement work. But here we want to amplify the usefulness of collective study, and share some thoughts about why Harsha Walia’s new book Border and Rule (...) would be a great place to start if you might like to try a political kind of book club. (shrink)

The lack of public support for climate change policies and refusals to vaccinate children are just two alarming illustrations of the impacts of dissent about scientific claims. Dissent can lead to confusion, false beliefs, and widespread public doubt about highly justified scientific evidence. Even more dangerously, it has begun to corrode the very authority of scientific consensus and knowledge. Deployed aggressively and to political ends, some dissent can intimidate scientists, stymie research, and lead both the public and policymakers to oppose (...) important public policies firmly rooted in science. -/- To criticize dissent is, however, a fraught exercise. Skepticism and fearless debate are key to the scientific process, making it both vital and incredibly difficult to characterize and identify dissent that is problematic in its approach and consequences. Indeed, as de Melo-Martín and Intemann show, the criteria commonly proposed as means of identifying inappropriate dissent are flawed and the strategies generally recommended to tackle such dissent are not only ineffective but could even make the situation worse. -/- The Fight Against Doubt proposes that progress on this front can best be achieved by enhancing the trustworthiness of the scientific community and by being more realistic about the limits of science when it comes to policymaking. It shows that a richer understanding of the context in which science operates is needed to disarm problematic dissent and those who deploy it. This, the authors argue, is the best way forward, rather than diagnosing the many instances of wrong-headed dissent. (shrink)

We survey the use of club guessing and other PCF constructs in the context of showing that a given partially ordered class of objects does not have a largest, or a universal, element.

We show that, under PFA, a coherent Suslin tree forces that every two Aronszajn trees are club-isomorphic.

It is shown in this paper that it is consistent (relative to almost huge cardinals) for various club guessing ideals to be saturated.