Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature, 1865-1920

The term culture in its anthropological sense did not enter the American lexicon with force until after 1910—more than a century after Herder began to use it in Germany and another thirty years after E. B. Tylor and Franz Boas made it the object of anthropological attention. Before Cultures explores this delay in the development of the culture concept and its relation to the description of difference in late nineteenth-century America. In this work, Brad Evans weaves together the histories of American literature and anthropology. His study brings alive not only the regionalist and ethnographic fiction of the time but also revives a range of neglected materials, including the Zuni sketchbooks of anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing; popular magazines such as Century Illustrated Monthly, which published Cushing's articles alongside Henry James's; the debate between Joel Chandler Harris, author/collector of the Uncle Remus folktales, and John Wesley Powell, perhaps the most important American anthropologist of the time; and Du Bois's polemics against the culture concept as it was being developed in the early twentieth century. Written with clarity and grace, Before Cultures will be of value to students of American literature, history, and anthropology alike.

Literature & Fiction

Evans, Brad

History & Criticism

University of Chicago Press

The term culture in its anthropological sense did not enter the American lexicon with force until after 1910—more than a century after Herder began to use it in Germany and another thirty years after E. B. Tylor and Franz Boas made it the object of anthropological attention. Before Cultures explores this delay in the development of the culture concept and its relation to the description of difference in late nineteenth-century America. In this work, Brad Evans weaves together the histories of American literature and anthropology. His study brings alive not only the regionalist and ethnographic fiction of the time but also revives a range of neglected materials, including the Zuni sketchbooks of anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing; popular magazines such as Century Illustrated Monthly, which published Cushing's articles alongside Henry James's; the debate between Joel Chandler Harris, author/collector of the Uncle Remus folktales, and John Wesley Powell, perhaps the most important American anthropologist of the time; and Du Bois's polemics against the culture concept as it was being developed in the early twentieth century. Written with clarity and grace, Before Cultures will be of value to students of American literature, history, and anthropology alike.

Ecce Humanitas: Beholding the Pain of Humanity (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)

The very idea of humanity seems to be in crisis. Born in the ashes of devastation after the slaughter of millions, the liberal conception of humanity imagined a suffering victim in need of salvation. Today, this figure appears less and less capable of galvanizing the political imagination. But without it, how are we to respond to the inhumane violence that overwhelms our political and philosophical registers? How can we make sense of the violence that was carried out in the name of humanism? And how can we develop more ethical relations without becoming parasitic on the pain of others? Through a critical exploration of violence and the sacred, Ecce Humanitas recasts the fall of liberal humanism. Brad Evans offers a rich analysis of the changing nature of sacrificial violence, from its theological origins to the exhaustion of the victim in the contemporary world. He critiques the aestheticization that turns victims into sacred objects, sacrificial figures that demand response, perpetuating a cycle of violence that is seen as natural and inevitable. In novel readings of classic and contemporary works, Evans traces the sacralization of violence as well as art's potential to incite resistance. Countering the continued annihilation of life, Ecce Humanitas calls for liberating the political imagination from the scene of sacrifice. A new aesthetics provides a form of transgressive witnessing that challenges the ubiquity of violence and allows us to go beyond humanism to imagine a truly liberated humanity.

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Columbia University Press

This book offers a genealogical investigation into the phenomenon of terror in the 21st century. Terror has become the defining political emblem of our globally inter-connected age, resulting in an unprecedented global security effort which has given renewed purpose to the Liberal cause. This book charts these developments, moving beyond attempts at either establishing a universal definition or seeking to resurrect outdated Realist modes of analysis, arguing instead that the phemonenon's transient and elusive nature is unavoidable given its alignment with changing Liberal attempts to strategise species life. The book argues that the tendency to write of terror in morally inclusive terms reveals to us the political-theology at work in which Liberalism affords itself divine status. Terror as such is the generative principle of its very formation, providing us with the truest diagnostic of modern Liberal societies, along with the rationalities which underwrite its very reasoning. Thus, the book argues that while terror is widely recognised to be a complex, adpative and emerging phenomenon, displaying many of the hallmarks of Liberal societies, the conceptual significance of these parallels continues to be overlooked. This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism and security studies, political sociology and IR in general.

Liberal Terror: Global Security, Divine Power and Emergency Rule (PRIO New Security Studies)

Reference

Routledge

Conversations on Violence: An Anthology

<div>Whether physical or metaphorical, institutional or interpersonal, violence is everywhere. A seemingly immutable fact of life, it is nonetheless rarely engaged with at the conceptual level. What does violence actually mean? And is it an inevitable part of the human condition? Violence: An Anthology brings together many of the world's leading critical scholars, artists, writers and cultural producers to provide a kaleidoscopic exploration of the concept of violence. Through in-depth interviews with thirty figures including Marina Abramovic, Russell Brand and Simon Critchley, Brad Evans and Adrian Parr interrogate violence in all its manifestations, including its role in politics, art, gender discrimination and decolonization. Provocative, eye-opening and bracingly original, Violence: An Anthology sheds light on a defining philosophical concern of our age.</div>

Arts & Photography

Parr, Adrian

Pluto Press

Review\n'Brad Evans in one of the brightest critical minds of his generation' -- Henry A. Giroux\n'Violence has been extraordinarily difficult to account for in conception and explanation. This compelling collection of first-rate contributions goes a long way to addressing these difficulties ... it serves as an anchor for critical thinking on the complex range, power and impacts of violence' -- David Theo Goldberg, author of Dread: Facing Futureless Futures (2021)\n'Conversations on Violence may have a foreboding title, but the collected interviews with artists, academics, activists, and entertainers is lively, stimulating, and engaging it is more like a salon than a crime scene. The topics discussed are serious and urgent from climate change, to the re-emergence of fascism, to sexual assault but the brilliant minds included here address these issues in direct and clear-eyed ways that point to fairer, safer, and more fully realized modes of existence in the future' -- Deborah Berke, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture and founding partner of Deborah Berke Partners\nReviews for the previous volume, Violence: Humans in Dark Times also by Brad Evans\n'Notable contemporary thinkers and creators give their individual perspectives in this compelling look at violence. ... A provocative volume that challenges humanity to correct its runaway course toward an increasingly violent future by learning from its violent past' 
Kirkus Reviews\n'The purpose of the work is to challenge humanity to create more meaningful solutions when it comes to these kinds of violence--or at least to name violence without inadvertently inciting even more anger. . . . passion roars through every chapter . . . This book delivers on what it promises, which is an achievement' 
The Los Angeles Review of Books\n'Many of us live today with a pervasive sense of unease, worried that our own safety is at risk, or that of our loved ones, or that of people whose bad circumstances appear to us through networked media. Violence feels ever-present. Natasha Lennard and Brad Evans help us to analyze those feelings, talking with a wide range of thinkers in order to gain insight into the worst of what humans do, and challenging us to imagine a world in which violence is no longer a given. Their book is full of surprising insights and intelligent compassion' 
Sarah Leonard, co-editor of The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century\n'In Violence, Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard have created, alongside their interview subjects, a kaleidoscopic exploration of the concept of violence, in terrains expected and not, in prose taut and unexpectedly gorgeous. Their philosophical rigor provides the reader with an intellectual arsenal against the violence of the current moment' 
Molly Crabapple, author of Drawing Blood\n'This is a book that will make everyone feel clever. Reflections on violence, both actual, and the possibility of, mediating so much of social interaction, also makes for critical reading. The range of interviews with leading academics, to filmmakers and artists, is impressive, at once immediate and relevant, but also profoundly philosophical. More essentially, though, the conversations underline the need and suggest ways to resist and organize in a visionary way, in the extraordinary times we live in' 
Razia Iqbal, BBC News\n'Standing on their own, the interview subjects featured in Violence: Humans In Dark Times might be identified as the foremost intellectuals, artists, and activists engaged with questions of how violence moves, acts, and is witnessed in the world. But summoned together in this collection by two political thinkers distinguished by both their unmatched intellects and their willingness to deploy those intellects in acts of service rather than performance, their voices materialize as a creative space large and fertile enough to lay the groundwork for an actionable hope. The result is a groundbreaking testament to the vital role of the abstract and th

Liberal Terror

Security is meant to make the world safer. Yet despite living in the most secure of times, we see endangerment everywhere. Whether it is the threat of another devastating terrorist attacks, a natural disaster or unexpected catastrophe, anxieties and fears define the global political age. While liberal governments and security agencies have responded by advocating a new catastrophic topography of interconnected planetary endangerment, our desire to securitize everything has rendered all things potentially terrifying. This is the fateful paradox of contemporary liberal rule. The more we seek to secure, the more our imaginaries of threat proliferate. Nothing can therefore be left to chance. For everything has the potential to be truly catastrophic. Such is the emerging state of terror normality we find ourselves in today. This illuminating book by Brad Evans provides a critical evaluation of the wide ranging terrors which are deemed threatening to advanced liberal societies. Moving beyond the assumption that liberalism is integral to the realisation of perpetual peace, human progress, and political emancipation on a planetary scale, it exposes how liberal security regimes are shaped by a complex life-centric rationality which directly undermines any claims to universal justice and co-habitation. Through an incisive and philosophically enriched critique of the contemporary liberal practices of making life more secure, Evans forces us to confront the question of what it means to live politically as we navigate through the dangerous uncertainty of the 21st Century.

Politics & Government

Polity

Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously

What does it mean to live dangerously? This is not just a philosophical question or an ethical call to reflect upon our own individual recklessness. It is a deeply political issue, fundamental to the new doctrine of ‘resilience’ that is becoming a key term of art for governing planetary life in the 21st Century. No longer should we think in terms of evading the possibility of traumatic experiences. Catastrophic events, we are told, are not just inevitable but learning experiences from which we have to grow and prosper, collectively and individually. Vulnerability to threat, injury and loss has to be accepted as a reality of human existence.   In this original and compelling text, Brad Evans and Julian Reid explore the political and philosophical stakes of the resilience turn in security and governmental thinking. Resilience, they argue, is a neo-liberal deceit that works by disempowering endangered populations of autonomous agency. Its consequences represent a profound assault on the human subject whose meaning and sole purpose is reduced to survivability. Not only does this reveal the nihilistic qualities of a liberal project that is coming to terms with its political demise. All life now enters into lasting crises that are catastrophic unto the end.

Reid, Julian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Evans, Brad. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Evans, Brad

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Evans, Brad. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature, 1865-1920

Before Cultures: The Ethnographic Imagination in American Literature, 1865-1920

Ecce Humanitas: Beholding the Pain of Humanity (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)

Ecce Humanitas: Beholding the Pain of Humanity (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)

Liberal Terror: Global Security, Divine Power and Emergency Rule (PRIO New Security Studies)

Conversations on Violence: An Anthology

Conversations on Violence: An Anthology

Liberal Terror

Liberal Terror

Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously