""Imaginary Communities" is a beautiful treatment of utopian narratives as the quintessential genre for figuring social space in the modern nation-state. Wegner demonstrates a wide-ranging yet lighthanded philosophical learnedness, an urgent political conscience, and a deeply historical sense that narrative utopias are like specters that haunt particular moments of upheaval, crisis, and contradiction within modernity: whether the threshold between the vestiges of feudal agrarian society and early modern English capitalism, ...
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""Imaginary Communities" is a beautiful treatment of utopian narratives as the quintessential genre for figuring social space in the modern nation-state. Wegner demonstrates a wide-ranging yet lighthanded philosophical learnedness, an urgent political conscience, and a deeply historical sense that narrative utopias are like specters that haunt particular moments of upheaval, crisis, and contradiction within modernity: whether the threshold between the vestiges of feudal agrarian society and early modern English capitalism, conflicts between the new oligarchy of industrializing late 19th c. United States and the increasing militancy of the labor movement, the uneven successes and failures of the Russian Revolution of 1905, or the mid-century Cold War struggles."--Lisa Lowe, author of "Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics" "In this important book, Wegner argues that the historical work done by utopian narratives should be reconsidered, interrogated, challenged--and continued. Insightful and provocative, "Imaginary Communities" will prove a valuable contribution to our thinking about the politics of imagination."--Daniel Cottom, author of "Cannibals and Philosophers: Bodies of Enlightenment" "Phillip Wegner's "Imaginary Communities" represents a major intervention in our understanding not merely of utopian literature, but the very ways in which we view our world. His concept of utopian narrative as both vision and practice, as participating in "real" worlds, a force for change rooted in the social world "as it is" and as it is becoming and is "imagined," succeeds wonderfully well; his notion of the imperative of "failure" as a resource of hope is deeply humane. He provides a body of work worth thinking through and thinking with. As a historian, I find the historicity of his approach, the literary arch spanning from the origins of the European nation-state to our global present and future, compelling in its ambition and execution. Wegner moves well beyond the more tired moves of "new historicist" literary criticism: this is historicist scholarship in a new key."--James Epstein, author of "Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England, 1790-1850"
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Good Condition. Cover a little creased and bent. Previous owner's name on first inside page. Pages are unmarked and uncreased. Sound overall. Publisher's note: 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, Jürgen Habermas, Slavoj Zizek, and Homi Bhabha. Size: 22.4 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm. xxvi, 297 pp. Shipped Weight: Under 500 grams. Category: History; Orwell, George, 1903-1950--Criticism and interpretation; More, Thomas, Saint, 1478-1535 Utopia; Utopias; Utopias in literature; American fiction--History and criticism; Comparative literature--American and Russian; Comparative literature--Russian and American; Russian fiction--History and criticism; Space and time in literature; Nationalism in literature; Communities in literature; Modernism (Literature); ISBN: 0520228294. ISBN/EAN: 9780520228290. Add. Inventory No: 240226NPG010029.
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Like New. Like New Inside and Outside. Clean and crisp! No markings! You will be pleased. Excellent book! ( z1s103A ) Some minor shelf wear on cover. ** Fast Shipping! **
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Like New. Like New Inside and Outside. Clean and crisp! No markings! You will be pleased. Excellent book! ( z1s103A ) Some minor shelf wear on cover. ** Fast Shipping! **
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Good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used textbooks may not include companion materials such as access codes, etc. May have some wear or writing/highlighting. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
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Good. Clean softcover. text has a few hilited sections ip to page 31. solid binding. very light coenwewear. ISBN matches listing FAST SHIPPING W/ CONFIRMATION. NO PRIORITY OR INTERNATIONAL ORDERS OVER 4LBs.
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Very Good Condition. The text appears clean, the cover is in nice condition. Quantity Available: 1. ISBN: 0520228294. ISBN/EAN: 9780520228290. Pictures of this item not already displayed here available upon request. Inventory No: 1560796001.
