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Bezig met laden... Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernitydoor Phillip E. Wegner
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Drawing from literary history, social theory, and political critique, this far-reaching study explores the utopian narrative as a medium for understanding the social space of the modern nation-state. Considering the narrative utopia from its earliest manifestation in Thomas More's sixteenth-century work Utopia to some of the most influential utopias of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this book is an astute study of a literary genre as well as a nuanced dialectical meditation on the history of utopian thinking as a quintessential history of modernity. As he unravels the dialectics at work in the utopian narrative, Wegner gives an ambitious synthetic discussion of theories of modernity, considering and evaluating the ideas of writers such as Ernst Bloch, Louis Marin, Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Henri Lefebvre, Paul de Man, Karl Mannheim, Mikhail Bakhtin, J©ơrgen Habermas, Slavoj Zizek, and Homi Bhabha. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)809.93372Literature By Topic History, description and criticism of more than two literatures By topic Other aspects Specific themes and subjects Supernatural, mythological, legendary themesLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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With books like Lost Horizon by James Hilton, and on the kids' side of things, L. Frank Baum's Oz books, Utopian societies became perfect renditions of the city state. If Utopia is now the best of the best (and perhaps the unobtainable perfection), then there must be a polar opposite, a worst of the worst. Therein lies dystopia (or "bad place").
Imaginary Communities attempts to outline the evolution of the utopian / dystopian dichotomy through a lengthy historical outline from More's book onward through some modern classics. Unfortunately it gets laid up on three things: a never ending rehash of other philosopher's ideas on the subject, a similarly long promise of analysis that never materializes, and pages and pages of plot summary where the original analysis should be.
After slogging through the book I was left with no good sense of what Wagner's views on utopia or dystopia are. I know which books he read and I know which theorists he's a student of. But his thoughts? His contribution to the understanding of the genres? I'm still left wondering. ( )