The Chicago Blog

Is it possible to travel without leaving home? Is there a way to be a pilgrim without leaving your life behind? James Attlee answers that question in this thoughtful, savvy, and personal account of his pilgrimage to a place he thought he already knew—the Cowley Road in Oxford, right outside his door. Isolarion takes its title from a type of fifteenth-century map that isolates an area in order to present it in detail, and that's what Attlee, sharp-eyed and armed with tape recorder and notebook, provides for Cowley Road. From a sojourn in a sensory-deprivation tank to a furtive visit to an unmarked pornography emporium, Attlee investigates every aspect of the Cowley Road's appealingly eclectic culture, where halal shops abut craft jewelers and reggae clubs pulsate alongside quiet churchyards. Drawing inspiration from sources ranging from Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy to contemporary art, Attlee is a charming and companionable guide who revels in the extraordinary embedded in the everyday.

Read the press release.

Archived in Literature | Press Releases
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The March 30th edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education is running an article about F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents—The Definitive Edition recently published by the Press. The piece details "the story behind the publishing of Hayek's seminal volume" and how close the book's critics came to shutting down publication of one of the Press's most influential and best-selling titles. The article begins:

If the University of Chicago Press had listened to one of its reader's reports, it might not have published one of its best-selling books of all time. The story of how Chicago came to issue The Road to Serfdom, by the Austrian scholar F.A. Hayek, in 1944 is provided in a new definitive edition coming out this month.

As The Road to Serfdom, a seminal volume in modern libertarian thought, was wending its way to publication in Britain, three American university presses turned it down. Chicago decided to go ahead despite a review from a prominent economist at the university who said it wouldn't sell. The original print run was gone in a month, and Chicago went on to sell more than 350,000 copies over the years. Some 600,000 more were distributed in condensed form via Reader's Digest, and the book has been translated into more than 20 languages.

The Chronicle article reprints two of the original readers' reports from Frank H. Knight and Jacob Marschak. You can read the full article including the reports at the Chronicle.

We also have an excerpt from the book entitled "The Publication History of The Road to Serfdom" on our website.

Archived in Commentary | Economics | Politics and Current Events
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In March 2007, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the combined land and ocean temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere for December 2006 through February 2007 were 1.3°F higher than average, based on records dating back to 1880. Climate change has the potential to wreak havoc on oceanic ecosystems, as the contributors to Oceans report. An accessible collection of thirty articles published in Scientific American in the last decade, the collection considers, in addition to global warming and its devastating effects, the origins of the world's oceans, the diversity of life in the water, the state of global fisheries, the dangers of natural disasters, and the future of marine conservation. With a breadth of topics as wide as the ocean is deep, this timely guide offers the nonscientist an opportunity to appreciate the importance of this expansive—and fragile—frontier.

Read the press release.

Archived in Biology | Press Releases
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In the March 23rd issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, author Caitlin Zaloom has penned an interesting piece about the late Clifford Geertz, one of the world's leading cultural anthropologists, and a man she calls her intellectual "grandfather." In her article, Zaloom cites Geertz's groundbreaking studies in books such as Peddlers and Princes and Agricultural Involution as the foundation for her own new book, Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London.

Out of the Pits is a fascinating exploration of how the recent trend of online trading is effecting the culture of the marketplace. Zaloom's article states, "even though their publication preceded today's global economy by decades, Clifford Geertz's works on culture and economy can still help us understand the cultural import of the online evolution in the world's marketplace."

Here's a few links to the UCP website where you can find out more about the works of both of these groundbreaking figures in the field of anthropology:

Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues
Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia
The Religion of Java
Kinship in Bali
Peddlers and Princes

We also have an excerpt from Out of the Pits.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago | Sociology
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The March 21st issue of Publishers Weekly contains an intriguing article by Donna Freitas on Jeffery J. Kripal and his latest work Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion. The article leads off with Kripal claiming, "All of my books are about sexuality and sprituality." Freitas goes on to unpack Kripal's alluring statement:

This chair of religious studies at Rice University is explaining why he chose Esalen—the eclectic spiritual retreat in California's Big Sur region—as the subject of six years of research and his most recent book, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion.

Freitas continues:

Kripal said what he discovered there was "an American mysticism that allowed the body and spirit to form a unity of erotic and spiritual energies. At Esalen, the Western religious traditions' rules about a male divine didn't apply anymore. The divine is anything at Esalen. There is no creed. There is no orthodoxy. If anything, it's a pantheistic worldview which opens up hundreds of possibilities for images of divinity… Esalen was born during the civil rights, feminist, and gay rights movements, so it integrated these into its history and intellectual life. All of the battles you see going on today in Western traditions are passé there," he said. "Every tradition has a skeleton in its closet, but at Esalen the skeletons are hanging in the living room and everybody is laughing at them."

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Books for the News | History | Philosophy | Religion
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Susan Basalla May, co-author of So What Are You Going to Do with That?: Finding Careers Outside Academia has posted an interesting FAQ for students preparing for a nonacademic career to the website of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Culled from the question and answer sessions that follow her frequent lectures, Basalla comments on a variety of topics including how to get started as a freelancer and how to explain to potential employers about unfinished dissertations. You can find the full article in the career section of the Chronicle.

A witty, accessible guide full of concrete advice for anyone contemplating the jump from scholarship to the outside world, So What Are You Going to Do with That? covers topics ranging from career counseling to interview etiquette to translating skills learned in the academy into terms an employer can understand and appreciate. Packed with examples and stories from real people who have successfully made this daunting—but potentially rewarding— transition, and written with a deep understanding of both the joys and difficulties of the academic life, this fully revised and up-to-date edition will be indispensable for any graduate student or professor who has ever glanced at her CV, flipped through the want ads, and wondered, "What if?"

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Education | Reference and Writing
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Susan Bielstein, author of Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property will appear on Library Café, a program on WVKR Independent Radio FM 91.3 in Poughkeepsie, NY, on March 27th at 11 am CST. Bielstein will join host Thomas Hill to discuss her book. You can tune in to a live broadcast online at the Library Café where they should also post archived audio after the show.

Organized as a series of "takes" that range from short sidebars to extended discussions, Permissions, A Survival Guide explores intellectual property law as it pertains to visual imagery. How can you determine whether an artwork is copyrighted? How do you procure a high-quality reproduction of an image? What does "fair use" really mean? Is it ever legitimate to use the work of an artist without permission? Bielstein discusses the many uncertainties that plague writers who work with images in this highly visual age, and she does so based on her years navigating precisely these issues. As an editor who has hired a photographer to shoot an incredibly obscure work in the Italian mountains (a plan that backfired hilariously), who has tried to reason with artists' estates in languages she doesn't speak, and who has spent her time in the archival trenches, she offers a snappy and humane guide to this difficult terrain.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Events | Reference and Writing
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Author James Attlee was interviewed by Danny Cox of BBC Radio Oxford on the occasion of the 2007 Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. Attlee discussed his book Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey. You can listen to archived audio (RealMedia format) of the interview.

In Isolarion Attlee delivers a thoughtful, streetwise, and personal account of his pilgrimage to a place he thought he already knew—the Cowley Road in Oxford, right outside his door. Though a lesser known local on Oxford's lower east side, Attlee reveals Cowley to be a thoroughly modern, impressively cosmopolitan, and utterly organic collection of shops, restaurants, pubs, and religious establishments teeming with life and reflecting the multicultural makeup of the surrounding neighborhood. In his interview Attlee expands on that notion by focusing on his account of the Cowley Road as a story not only about this quaint Oxford neighborhood, but a more universal tale of modern cities generally.

We have an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Author Events | Literature
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Combining the latest scientific discoveries with astonishing color imagery, The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss by Claire Nouvian takes readers on a voyage into the darkest realms of the ocean. Revealing nature's oddest and most mesmerizing creatures in crystalline detail, The Deep features more than two hundred color photographs of terrifying sea monsters, living fossils, and ethereal bioluminescent creatures, many of which are photographed here for the first time. Accompanying these breathtaking photographs are contributions from some of the world's most respected researchers that examine the biology of these deep-sea organisms, the ecology of their habitats, and the history of deep-sea exploration. An unforgettable tour of the teeming abyss, The Deep celebrates the incredible diversity of life on Earth and will captivate anyone intrigued by the unseen—and unimaginable—creatures of the deep sea.

Read the press release. A special site for the book—www.thedeepbook.org— has images from the book and much more information.

Archived in Biology | Press Releases
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Seventy years ago, in a small office at the University of Chicago, dissertation secretary Kate L. Turabian changed forever the way research is reported. Asked to provide students with a style guide, she wrote a small pamphlet describing the correct format for writing college dissertations. That pamphlet eventually became A Manual for Writers and has gone on to sell more than eight million copies in six editions. This spring the University of Chicago Press will publish the seventh edition of her widely used and respected Manual—now fully revised to meet the needs of a new generation of students and researchers. The stellar team of Joseph Williams, Gregory Colomb, and Wayne C. Booth, master teachers and authors of the bestselling Craft of Research, have thoroughly updated the Manual while respecting the Turabian tradition. With this careful revision, they have ensured that A Manual for Writers will remain the most valuable handbook for writers at every level—from first-year undergraduates, to dissertation writers, to senior scholars.

Read the press release. Much more information will soon be available at www.turabian.org.

Archived in Press Releases | Reference and Writing
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Author Caitlin Zaloom was recently featured on BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed discussing her new book Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London. Host Laurie Taylor talks with Zaloom about the stock market's gradual transition from face-to-face exchanges made on the trading room floor to internet based trading and how this move into the digital realm effects the culture and business of global trade markets. You can listen to archived audio of the discussion on the BBC's Thinking Allowed website.

We also have an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Chicago | Economics | Sociology
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James Attlee's Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey has been getting some great press lately. The latest review of this unconventional travelogue of the author's sojourn on Oxford's Cowley Road appears in the April/May issue of Bookforum. Rebecca Mead, staff writer at the New Yorker—and a former Oxford resident—writes:

The Cowley Road…is also home to Attlee, and it is the governing conceit of Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey that an intellectually curious and personally inquisitive voyager might travel through his own neighborhood in a manner as revelatory as that of any pilgrim to foreign lands. The fish-out-of-water travelogue is a staple of the bookstore, but Attlee, a father of young children, with a job in London to which he commutes daily, has set himself a different task: to be the fish and to give a detailed description of the properties of the water. …

I was surprised, on reading this book … how much I missed while whistling down the street on my bike on my way to the library. But Attlee's reading, unlike that of a student cramming to prepare this week's essay, is deep and wide and engagingly circuitous.

Isolarion, Mead concludes, "reveals how a book about a road can end up being a book about everything else as well."

Grab a copy of the print version of Bookforum to check out the rest of the review. In the meantime you can read an excerpt from the book on our website.

Archived in Literature | Reviews
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Every day the website Poetry Daily presents at least one new work from a contemporary poet excerpted from a book, magazine, or journal currently in print, with the goal of exposing the general reader to the wonderful, but often esoteric realm of modern poetics. Last Friday two of Charles Bernstein's poems were featured on the site, including the poem "Thank You for Saying Thank You" from his most recent book Girly Man. Befitting, or perhaps belying Poetry Daily's theme of "poetry for the people" Bernstein's poem begins:

This is a totally
accessible poem.
There is nothing
in this poem
that is in any
way difficult
to understand.
All the words
are simple &
to the point.
There are no new
concepts, no
theories, no
ideas to confuse
you. This poem
has no intellectual
pretensions. It is
purely emotional.

You can check out the rest of this poem as well as Bernstein's "Didn't We" on the Poetry Daily website.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Poetry
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John Dewey once said that every generation has to accomplish democracy for itself, because social justice is something that cannot be handed down from one person to another: it has to be worked out in terms of the needs, problems, and conditions of the present moment and its distinct challenges. In this impassioned and inspirational work, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. puts Dewey’s idea into the service of his fellow African Americans. According to Glaude, black politics have grown increasingly stagnant and even ineffectual because of their basis in the sufferings and indignities of the past instead of the real-live obstacles of the present moment. To remedy this, Glaude here dislodges black politics from the dogmas and fixed ideas of the Civil Rights movement and points them in the direction of more pragmatic solutions rooted in the here and now. Poor health, alarming rates of imprisonment, drugs, and the advanced concentration of poverty in our nation’s cities warrant a form of political engagement that steps out of the shadows of the black freedom struggles of the 1960s and rises to the complexities of the 21st century with more innovative thinking, a greater emphasis on responsibility and personal accountability, and a fuller embrace of education and participatory democracy.

Heady, provocative, and brimming with practical wisdom, In a Shade of Blue is a remarkable work of political commentary on a scale rarely seen today. To follow its trajectory is to learn how African Americans arrived at this critical moment in their history and to envision where they might head next.

Read the press release. Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Black Studies | Philosophy | Politics and Current Events | Press Releases | Religion
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The current issue of the New York Review of Books is running an interesting article titled "Scandals of Higher Eduction" written by Andrew Delbanco, professor in the humanities and director of American studies at Columbia University. The article is the typical NYRB in-depth review of recent books, in this case offering varying critiques of the state of the American educational system, especially the higher educational system as it is embodied by the nation's elite schools. Delbanco's article draws on several books that rehash now commonplace critiques of flawed admissions policies that favor money over smarts. But he reserves a special place for former U of C dean Donald Levine's new book, Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning in America; a work with an insightful approach that picks up where the others fall short in its incisive analysis of the state of higher eduction. Delbanco writes:

If…it is a scandal that so few disadvantaged students are able to attend our most advantageous colleges, it is also urgent, in the words (the italics are his) of Donald Levine, former dean of the college at the University of Chicago, to notice that

the scandal of higher education in our time is that so little attention gets paid, in institutions that claim to provide an education, to what it is that college educators claim to be providing.

In Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning in America, Levine has written a fascinating history of curricular debates at the University of Chicago, reaching back to its founding more than a century ago. It is a story of serious teachers responding to continuous change in the world and in their particular academic disciplines while always keeping in view the enduring goal of liberal education, which Levine succinctly calls "the cultivation of human powers."

Drawing on his own lifetime of teaching and educational leadership at the University of Chicago, Levine's book looks beyond the headlines to provide an intelligent critique of the American university system and offer a viable paradigm for liberal arts today.

Archived in Education | Reviews
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An appreciative review of James Attlee's new book, Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey, is in yesterday's Economist. The review praises Attlee's literary sojourn along Cowley Road in Oxford saying:

James Attlee’s scholarly, reflective, and sympathetic journey up the Cowley Road is one of the best travel books that has been written about Britain’s oldest university city. It is not—at least not directly—the Oxford of punts and gowns. His raw material is diversity: the Cowley Road as a corner of the outside world, where change and excitement are squeezed into the cramped hinterland of the scholarly theme park of the city centre. …

Isolarion, named after a detail on a medieval map, is unsparing, but not bleak. It blends humour and passion… [into] a vivid account of daily life, fluid and unsettling, in a modern British town with powerful allegorical reflections on the connections between past and present, time and space, and high culture and the hard scrabble world that sustains it. Oxford may be the city of lost causes, and this book is indeed ambitious; it could easily sound sententious or twee. But it works, gloriously.

We have an excerpt from Isolarion. The excerpt is the chapter titled "Further Purification of the Pilgrim," in which Attlee experiences ritual immersion at the Eau-de-Vie Flotation Centre.

Archived in Literature | Reviews
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Situated along the picturesque coastline of Big Sur California, the Esalen institute has long been a world leader in alternative and experiential education—on the cutting edge of everything from Zen to hallucinogenics. Attracting such luminaries as Henry Miller, Joseph Campbell, Aldous Huxley, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Hunter S. Thompson, the institute has had a profound influence on the American counterculture ever since it was first conceived by maverick intellectuals Michael Murphy and Richard Price in the early '60s.

Forthcoming from author Jeffery Kripal, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion is a highly readable and entertaining account of the institute and the unique synthesis of religion, science, and philosophy envisioned by its leaders. Here's an excerpt from an advance review in last month's Publishers Weekly to whet your appetite for Kripal's revealing new look at one of the most important hothouses of America's counterculture:

Many readers will probably not have heard of Esalen—but that doesn't mean they wont find its history fascinating. Kripal, a professor of religious studies at Rice University, tells the story of this beautiful retreat in California's Big Sur region—its history at once sexy, salacious, intellectual, and political—with reverence and playfulness, alternating between the hushed tones of awe and the glee in partaking in Esalen's infamous sinful delights.… Kripal jumps among a wide range of historical moments, from Esalen's alleged relationship to the collapse of the Soviet Union to the idea of the disembodied erotic. Readers shouldn't be scared off by the book's heft. Kripal is an engaging storyteller, Esalen a worthy subject (a kind of US Weekly for the discerning intellectual), and it's as easy to jump from the introduction to chapter 14 as it is to continue in order.

Esalen is currently scheduled for publication in mid April of 2007 and will release in a couple of weeks. We have an excerpt from the book.

Archived in History | Philosophy | Religion | Reviews
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Eddie S. Glaude Jr., author and Princeton University professor of religious studies, was featured on the Tavis Smiley Show last weekend discussing "how his new book, In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America, offers a starting point for examining the upcoming election season through the eyes of African Americans." You can listen to archived audio from the program online at the Tavis Smiley Show website.

With In a Shade of Blue Glaude, one of our nation's rising young African American intellectuals, makes an impassioned plea for black America to address its social problems by recourse to experience and with an eye set on the promise and potential of the future, rather than the fixed ideas and categories of the past. Heady, inspirational, and brimming with practical wisdom, this timely book is a remarkable work of political commentary on a scale rarely seen today. To follow its trajectory is to learn how African Americans arrived at this critical moment in their history and to envision where they might head in the twenty-first century.

Read an excerpt.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Black Studies | Philosophy | Politics and Current Events | Religion | Sociology
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As the recent furor over the publication of O.J. Simpson's "confession" demonstrates, the impact of a high-profile trial doesn’t end with the delivery of the verdict—the emotional, cultural, and political effects can resonate for decades. With The Trial in American Life, distinguished legal scholar Robert Ferguson explores the role of the high-profile trial from America’s earliest days to the present, arguing that far from being mere spectacles, such trials provide an essential forum for discussion of contentious issues.

In a bravura performance that ranges from Aaron Burr to O.J. Simpson, Ferguson traces both the legal implications and the cultural ripples of prominent trials. He brings together courtroom transcripts with newspaper and literary accounts of high-profile trials—including those of John Brown, Lincoln assassination conspirator Mary Surratt, the Haymarket defendants, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—to show what happens when courtrooms are forced to cope with unresolved communal anxieties and make legal decisions that change the American public’s very idea of itself.

Read the press release. Read an excerpt.

Archived in History | Law | Press Releases
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Impotence: A Cultural History, a forthcoming work from Angus McLaren, is a detailed exploration of the cultural history of sexual impotence through the entire course of human civilization. Serious, as well as, of course, highly entertaining, the book is an eloquent demonstration of how cultural attitudes regarding male sexual potency have transformed throughout the ages. An advance review published last week in the Library Journal summarizes the work nicely:

Once seen mainly as a function of siring children, [male sexual potency] is now regarded as an important component of a healthy emotional state. McLaren offers a dynamic survey of masculinity, perceptions of impotence, and the never-ending search for help with male sexual dysfunction. He starts with the Greek and Roman view of male potency, then moves to the understanding of impotence during the early Christian era, the Age of Reason, the 19th century, the Freudian era, and the rise of modern medical research as exemplified by the famous Kinsey and Masters and Johnson studies. The author ends with a timely, thoughtful analysis of the contemporary approach, driven by major drug companies.

From marriage manuals to metrosexuals, from Renaissance Italy to Hollywood movies, Impotence is an insightful examination of a problem that humanity has simultaneously regarded as life’s greatest tragedy and its greatest joke.

Impotence is currently scheduled for release in a week or two and official publication in April.

Updated May 1: We now have an online feature drawn from the book: "Two Millennia of Impotence Cures." Enjoy!

Archived in History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The February 12 edition of Publishers Weekly had an advance review of one of this season's most extraordinary titles from the Press, Claire Nouvian's The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss. As PW's prepublication review notes, The Deep takes readers on a fascinating voyage of discovery into the darkest realms of the ocean with a "stunning collection of more than 160 color photos" of some of the worlds most intriguing organisms. More from PW:

Species from as far down as four and a half miles are depicted in exquisite detail; most are mere centimeters long, though the giant squid, a timid creature despite its size, grows to almost 60 feet. Fifteen short, jargon-free essays assembled by editor and French journalist Nouvian—who became enthralled with the deep after visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium—flesh out the fantastic images with scientific fact. They dismiss the myth of deep sea monsters and describe the amazing persistence of life around hydrothermal vents and methane flues; a thoughtful glossary adds to this impressive book's popular appeal.

We will soon have a preview of the book available.

Archived in Biology | Reviews
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Last year we published Anthony C. Yu's The Monkey and the Monk, his abridged translation of Hsi-yu Chi, a renowned classic of Chinese literature. The Monkey and the Monk chronicles the adventures of Xuanzang, a seventh-century monk, over the course of his sixteen-year journey in search of Buddhist scriptures. Rich with allegory, humor, fantasy, and satire, the book is an exciting foray into the Hsi-yu Chi and the ancient Chinese world.

But even at 528 pages The Monkey and the Monk is but a distillation of a larger project Yu began over thirty years ago to create a full English translation of this ancient Chinese epic.
Yu's Journey to the West is a four-volume translation of the complete Hsi-yu Chi—the only English translation available. We published the four volumes between 1977 and 1983. Now Yu will have the opportunity to revisit and revise his translation, thanks to a $55,000 award from the Mellon Foundation. An article in the University of Chicago's Chronicle details the award saying:

In 1984, Yu was awarded the Gordon J. Laing Prize from the University Press for his four-volume translation of The Journey to the West, the first complete version in English. The Mellon fellowship will support a thorough revision of that translation, featuring the conversion into the now standard Romanization of Chinese characters, a new scholarly introduction and updated annotations.

The Mellon support will enable Yu to reconcile the old full-length edition with the format, style and scholarly substance with the new abridgment.

Professor Yu's work has already contributed immensely to the West's understanding of ancient Chinese culture. With a Mellon grant to bolster his new revisions, Journey to the West will remain an unsurpassed achievement.

Archived in Awards | Literature
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It's been a few years since Alan Wolfe said, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that to understand contemporary politics you have to understand Carl Schmitt. Now it looks like TV critics will have to wrap their minds around political theology as well.

Jerome Eric Copulsky, assistant professor and director of Judaic studies at Virginia Tech, wrote a piece for Sightings, the online journal of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School, in which he calls 24 a "sustained lesson in controversial jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt's decidedly illiberal concept of sovereignty." He continues:

"Sovereign is he who decides upon the exception," Schmitt proclaimed at the beginning of his 1922 treatise Political Theology. To have this power is to stand outside the law, to decide upon the state of exception, when the normal rules do not apply. If we follow Schmitt's claim that "significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts," the human sovereign is the political analogue of the omnipotent God.

What better description could there be of counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer, the hero of 24?

And what better illustration of the mainlining of a philosophical idea?

Our books by Carl Schmitt include Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty and The Concept of the Political. Also relevant: State of Exception by Giorgio Agamben, from which we have an excerpt.

Archived in Commentary | Politics and Current Events
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Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, author of the recent Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers, recently penned an interesting article for OpenDemocracy.org discussing Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning film Letters from Iwo Jima. Eastwood's cinematic exploration of a pivotal battle of World War II, says Ohnuki-Tierney (and others), parallels the objective of her recent book in trying to "undo the demonization of Japanese soldiers that was propagated by the American mass media during and after the Pacific war of 1941-45." And in fact, Eastwood's film not only shares a common objective with Ohnuki-Tierney's book, but also the means of accomplishing that objective. Both the movie and the book focus on the writings of Japanese soldiers during the war as a vehicle through which to arrive at a deeper understanding of who these soldiers were. Ohnuki-Tierney writes:

Clint Eastwood's film Letters from Iwo Jima begins and ends sixty years after the end of the war it depicts. At the start, a team of Japanese investigators is searching for whatever may have been left by Japanese soldiers holed up on Iwo Jima, part of a group of Pacific islands around 1,000 kilometres south of Tokyo. The team finds a large sack buried where the soldiers had made their last headquarters. The closing scene of the film shows hundreds of letters and postcards the soldiers wrote to their families and friends but were never sent spilling out of this sack.

The letters symbolize the frail thread of humanity that these soldiers, facing imminent death and trapped in a war their country soon lost, managed to hold onto.

Likewise, Ohnuki-Tierney's own work focuses on a collection of diaries and letters by the tokkotai (kamikaze pilots) in order to confront the various myths and stereotypes surrounding these tragic figures, and seek out "the humanity behind the brutality of war." Taken in tandem, both of these new works prove to be indispensable corrections to the history of Japan and World War II. Read the preface to the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Biography | History
Posted by TXM at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)