Beyond Civilization And Barbarism

Beyond Civilization and Barbarism examines how various cultural forms promoted competing political projects in Argentina during the decades following independence from Spain. This turbulent period has long been characterized as a struggle between two irreconcilable forces: the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1829-1852) versus a dissident intellectual elite. Most famously, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento described the conflict in his canonical Facundo (1845) as a clash between civilization and barbarism, which has become a catchphrase for the experience of modernity throughout Latin America. Against the grain of this durable script, Beyond Civilization and Barbarism examines an extensive corpus to demonstrate how adversaries of the period used similar rhetorical strategies, appealed to the same basic political ideals of republican government, and were preoccupied with defining and interpellating the pueblo, or people. In other words, their collective struggle was fundamentally modern and waged on a mutually intelligible discursive terrain.

The figure of the barbarian has captivated the Western imagination from Greek antiquity to the present. Since the 1990s, the rhetoric of civilization versus barbarism has taken center stage in Western political rhetoric and the media. But how can the longevity and popularity of this opposition be accounted for? Why has it become such a deeply ingrained habit of thought that is still being so effectively mobilized in Western discourses? The twenty essays in this volume revisit well-known and obscure chapters in barbarism's genealogy from new perspectives and through contemporary theoretical idioms. With studies spanning from Greek antiquity to the present, they show how barbarism has functioned as the negative outside separating a civilized interior from a barbarian exterior; as the middle term in-between savagery and civilization in evolutionary models; as a repressed aspect of the civilized psyche; as concomitant with civilization; as a term that confuses fixed notions of space and time; or as an affirmative notion in philosophy and art, signifying radical change and regeneration. Proposing an original interdisciplinary approach to barbarism, this volume includes both overviews of the concept's travels as well as specific case studies of its workings in art, literature, philosophy, film, ethnography, design, and popular culture in various periods, geopolitical contexts, and intellectual traditions. Through this kaleidoscopic view of the concept, it recasts the history of ideas not only as a task for historians, but also literary scholars, art historians, and cultural analysts.

The relationship between Western democracies and Islam, rarely entirely comfortable, has in recent years become increasingly tense. A growing immigrant population and worries about cultural and political assimilation—exacerbated by terrorist attacks in the United States, Europe, and around the world—have provoked reams of commentary from all parts of the political spectrum, a frustrating majority of it hyperbolic or even hysterical. In The Fear of Barbarians, the celebrated intellectual Tzvetan Todorov offers a corrective: a reasoned and often highly personal analysis of the problem, rooted in Enlightenment values yet open to the claims of cultural difference. Drawing on history, anthropology, and politics, and bringing to bear examples ranging from the murder of Theo van Gogh to the French ban on headscarves, Todorov argues that the West must overcome its fear of Islam if it is to avoid betraying the values it claims to protect. True freedom, Todorov explains, requires us to strike a delicate balance between protecting and imposing cultural values, acknowledging the primacy of the law, and yet strenuously protecting minority views that do not interfere with its aims. Adding force to Todorov's arguments is his own experience as a native of communist Bulgaria: his admiration of French civic identity—and Western freedom—is vigorous but non-nativist, an inclusive vision whose very flexibility is its core strength. The record of a penetrating mind grappling with a complicated, multifaceted problem, The Fear of Barbarians is a powerful, important book—a call, not to arms, but to thought.

In Beyond Civilization, Daniel Quinn thinks the unthinkable. We all know there's no one right way to build a bicycle, no one right way to design an automobile, no one right way to make a pair of shoes, but we're convinced that there must be only one right way to live -- and the one we have is it, no matter what. Beyond Civilization makes practical sense of the vision of Daniel Quinn's best-selling novel Ishmael. Examining ancient civilizations such as the Maya and the Olmec, as well as modern-day microcosms of alternative living like circus societies, Quinn guides us on a quest for a new model for society, one that is forward-thinking and encourages diversity instead of suppressing it. Beyond Civilization is not about a "New World Order" but a "New Personal World Order" that would allow people to assert control over their own destiny and grant them the freedom to create their own way of life right now -- not in some distant utopian future.

Notions of civilization and barbarism were intrinsic to Eugène Delacroix’s artistic practice: he wrote regularly about these concepts in his journal, and the tensions between the two were the subject of numerous paintings, including his most ambitious mural project, the ceiling of the Library of the Chamber of Deputies in the Palais Bourbon. Exiled in Modernity delves deeply into these themes, revealing why Delacroix’s disillusionment with modernity increasingly led him to seek spiritual release or epiphany in the sensual qualities of painting. While civilization implied a degree of control and the constraint of natural impulses for Delacroix, barbarism evoked something uncontrolled and impulsive. Seeing himself as part of a grand tradition extending back to ancient Greece, Delacroix was profoundly aware of the wealth and power that set nineteenth-century Europe apart from the rest of the world. Yet he was fascinated by civilization’s chaotic underbelly. In analyzing Delacroix’s art and prose, David O’Brien illuminates the artist’s effort to reconcile the erudite, tradition-bound aspects of painting with a desire to reach viewers in a more direct, unrestrained manner. Focusing chiefly on Delacroix’s musings about civilization in his famous journal, his major mural projects on the theme of civilization, and the place of civilization in his paintings of North Africa and of animals, O’Brien links Delacroix’s increasingly pessimistic view of modernity to his desire to use his art to provide access to a more fulfilling experience. With more than one hundred illustrations, this original, astute analysis of Delacroix and his work explains why he became an inspiration for modernist painters over the half-century following his death. Art historians and scholars of modernism especially will find great value in O’Brien’s work.

Excerpt from Civilization and Barbarism: Illustrated by Especial Reference to Metacomet and the Extinction of His Race In the pages which shall follow care will be taken to exhibit with impartiality naked facts. That they may be presented as they really exist, reference will necessarily be made almost entirely to the records of the doings of the white man and of the provocations of the dispossessed. The chronicles of such as had the ability to transmit to other generations the doings of the one, or of the provocations and sufferings of the other, must be our guide. It has been pertinently remarked by another, that Meta comet and his race, the kindly reception accorded to their in vaders notwithstanding, lived like fugitives in their native land, and went down like a bark foundering amid darkness and tempest, without a pitying eye to weep their fate or a friendly hand to make record of their struggle. Still it is not so much the intent of our narrative to perform an act of humanity for the natives, or to qualify the impressions made by the spirit of their Oppressors, as to set forth a plain and unvarnished tale of facts in their due connection and with im portant bearings, leaving the reader to his own conclusions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

PARADOX AND CONTRADICTION "WAR IS THE HEALTH OF THE STATE" RANDOLPH BOURNE WAR AND THE THREAT OF WAR HAVE CARRIED US TO UNDREAMED OF HEIGHTS OF ACHIEVEMENT IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE. THEY HAVE ALSO LED TO THE WORST EXCESSES OF DEPRAVITY. THE LANDSCAPE OF HISTORY IS LITTERED WITH THE RUINS OF ONCE GREAT CIVILIZATIONS CONSIGNED TO THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY, EIR MONUMENTS TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT, THEIR SUBJECTS ENSLAVED, DISPERSED OR PUT TO THE SWORD. ONE CAN HARDLY THRUST A SHOVEL INTO THE EARTH WITHOUT STRIKING THE REMAINS OF SOME HAPLESS VICTIM OF WAR THIS PARADOX AND THIS CONTRADICTION LIE AT THE HEART OF THE HUMAN CONDITION. CAN WE AVOID THE FATE OF COUNTLESS CIVILIZATIONS BEFORE US OR ARE WE DOOMED TO REPEAT THE PAST? CAN WE BREAK THE HOLD OF JUNGLE LAW? CAN WE SOLVE THE RIDDLE OF POPULATION AND ECONOMICS? CAN WE MANAGE OUR DEVELOPMENT WITHOUT RECOURSE TO WAR? ARE PERIODIC OUTS O BLOODLETTING AND GENOCIDE PART OF A LARGER ECO EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS? CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM explores questions in several disciplines in a number of chapters with provocative titles such as: Rube Goldberg, Barney Google and Charles Darwin; Malthus The Undead; Darwin's Mice And Steinbeck's Men; Positive Science And "Irrational" Man; Homo Sapiens Rex: Sexual Evolution And The Maturational Threshold; Biological Boom And Bust – When Credit Falls Like Rain On Credit Default Swaps; The First Commandment Is: "Thou Shalt Kill!" and Opiate Or Placebo. Dr. Feied earned his doctorate at Columbia University. He and has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Michigan State University and California State University at San Jose as well as other colleges and universities. He currently resides in Berkeley where he divides his time between writing and racing his thirty–eight foot sloop on San Francisco Bay.

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