Tag: Modernity

Free Download Irony and the Logic of Modernity By Armen Avanessian
2015 | 229 Pages | ISBN: 3110302209 | PDF | 3 MB
The logic of modernity is an ironical logic. Modern irony, a flash of genius produced by Romantic theorists, is first discussed, e.g. in Hegel and Kierkegaard, as an ethical problem personified in figures such as the aesthete, the seducer, the flaneur, or the dandy. It fully develops in the novel, the modern genre par excellence: in novels of the early 19th century no less than in those of postmodernity or in those of the masters of citation, parody, and pastiche of classical modernism (Musil, Joyce, and Proust). This book, however, goes one step further. Looking at how such different authors as Schmitt, Kafka, and Rorty identify the political conflicts, contradictions, and paradoxes of the 20th century as ironical and offers a comprehensive account of the constitutive irony of modernity’s ethical, poetical, and political logic.

Free Download Africa’s Quest for Modernity: Lessons from Japan and China
English | 2023 | ISBN: 303123653X | 482 Pages | PDF EPUB (True) | 5 MB
This monograph addresses the complexity of China-Africa and Japan-Africa relations from a comparative perspective. The volume is divided into five sections. Section I focuses on the divergent perspectives that are reflected in the discourse on China-Africa relations. Section II discusses Japan’s economic modernization and its potential lessons for Africa. Section III compares the foreign policies of Japan and China in Africa and analyzes their supposed rivalries on the continent. Section IV explores the relationship between Southeast Asia and China and its relevance to Africa-China relations. Section V provides an in-depth case study of Ethiopia-China relations over the last century.

Free Download The Making of Persianate Modernity: Language and Literary History between Iran and India
English | 2023 | ISBN: 1009320866 | 265 Pages | PDF | 3 MB
From the ninth to the nineteenth centuries, Persian was the pre-eminent language of learning far beyond Iran, stretching from the Balkans to China. In this book, Alexander Jabbari explores what became of this vast Persian literary heritage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Iran and South Asia, as nationalism took hold and the Persianate world fractured into nation-states. He shows how Iranians and South Asians drew from their shared past to produce a ‘Persianate modernity’, and create a modern genre, literary history. Drawing from both Persian and Urdu sources, Jabbari reveals the important role that South Asian Muslims played in developing Iranian intellectual and literary trends. Highlighting cultural exchange in the region, and the agency of Asian modernizers, Jabbari charts a new way forward for area studies and opens exciting possibilities for thinking about language and literature.

Free Download Crossing between Tradition and Modernity: Essays in Commemoriation of Milena Doležalová-Velingerová (1932-2012) By Kirk A. Denton
2017 | 318 Pages | ISBN: 8024635135 | PDF | 6 MB
Crossing Between Tradition and Modernity presents thirteen essays written in honor of Milena Doleželová-Velingerová (1932-2012), a member of the Prague School of Sinology and an important scholar of Chinese literature who was at the forefront in introducing literary theory into sinology. Doleželová-Velingerová was that rare scholar who wrote with equal knowledge and skill about both modern and premodern Chinese literature. The essays emulate Doleželová-Velingerová’s scholarship in terms of treating a broad range of historical periods, literary genres, and topics-from Tang travel essays to cultural identity in postcolonial Hong Kong. Organized into two parts, "Language, Structure, and Genre," and "Identities and Self-Representations," the essays are motivated by an abiding concern with issues of language, narrative structure, and the complex nature of literary meaning that were at the heart of Doleželová-Velingerová’s work.

Free Download The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia By Laura Engelstein
2013 | 480 Pages | ISBN: 0801499585 | PDF | 60 MB
The revolution of 1905 challenged not only the social and political structures of imperial Russia but the sexual order as well. Throughout the decade that followed-in the salons of the artistic and intellectual avant-garde, on the pages of popular romances, in the staid assemblies of physicians, psychiatrists, and legal men–the talk everywhere was of sex. This eagerly awaited book, echoing the title of a pre-World War I bestseller, The Keys to Happiness, marks the first serious attempt to understand the intense public interest in sexuality as a vital dimension of late tsarist political culture. Drawing on a strong foundation of historical sources–from medical treatises and legal codes to anti-Semitic pamphlets, commercial fiction, newspaper advertisements, and serious literature–Laura Engelstein shows how Western ideas and attitudes toward sex and gender were transformed in the Russian context as imported views on prostitution, venereal disease, homosexuality, masturbation, abortion, and other themes took on distinctively Russian hues. Engelstein divides her study into two parts, the first focusing on the period from the Great Reforms to 1905 and on the two professional disciplines most central to the shaping of a modern sexual discourse in Russia: law and medicine. The second part describes the complicated sexual preoccupations that accompanied the mobilization leading up to 1905, the revolution itself, and the aftermath of continued social agitation and intensified intellectual doubt. In chapters of astonishing richness, the author follows the sexual theme through the twists of professional and civic debate and in the surprising links between high and low culture up to the eve of the First World War. Throughout, Engelstein uses her findings to rethink the conventional wisdom about the political and cultural history of modern Russia. She maps out new approaches to the history of sexuality, and shows, brilliantly, how the study of attitudes toward sex and gender can help us to grasp the most fundamental political issues in any society.