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Our relationship to consumption is not an easy one. Apart from being self-centred, superficial and narcissistic, the consumer is held responsible for global warming, poverty and now, by binging on easy credit, economic crisis. A straw man has many uses, including being part of the solution by reducing carbon footprints, consuming more ethically and tightening the proverbial belt. iCommunism defends the consumer against the prevailing politics of austerity. It splits the fetish from the commodity fetish by taking the shine away from the commodity now signified in the ubiquitous i of i branded products and transfers it over to communism. With ideology once again alive on the streets of Europe, iCommunism reimagines Herbert Marcuse 1960s artistic critique of capitalism s repressive performance principle for today s consumer society. Capitalism promised us shiny things but only communism can deliver them in a different, more liberating, universal and sustainable form.
Videogames are a unique artistic form, and to analyse and understand them an equally unique language is required. Cremin turns to Deleuze and Guattari’s non-representational philosophy to develop a conceptual toolkit for thinking anew about videogames and our relationship to them. Rather than approach videogames through a language suited to other media forms, Cremin invites us to think in terms of a videogame plane and the compositions of developers and players who bring them to life. According to Cremin, we are not simply playing videogames, we are creating them. We exceed our own bodily limitations by assembling forces with the elements they are made up of. The book develops a critical m...
In broadsheet newspapers, television shows and Hollywood films, capitalism is increasingly recognized as a system detrimental to human existence. Colin Cremin investigates why, despite this de-robing, capitalism remains a powerful and seductive force. Using materialist, psychoanalytic and linguistic approaches, Cremin shows how capitalism, anxiety and desire enter into a productive/destructive relationship. He identifies three related kinds of social engagement. These are enterprise and employment, ethics and left-oriented social action, and enjoyment and consumption. As these ideological strands overlap and reinforce one another, the exploitation, violence, injustice, alienation and ecological destruction the system breeds is revealed, but not necessarily identified or addressed as a failure of capitalism.The nuanced and sophisticated argument in Capitalism's New Clothes goes a long way to explaining the contradictions of contemporary existence under a system that has been revealed as damaging and regressive, but is more dominant than ever.
An auto-ethnography of cross-dressing, framed by Marxism and psychoanalytic theory
Flexible, effective and creative primary school teachers require subject knowledge, an understanding of their pupils and how they learn, a range of strategies for managing behaviour and organising environments for learning, and the ability to respond to dynamic classroom situations. This third edition of Learning to Teach in the Primary School is fully updated with reference to the new National Curriculum, and has been revised to provide even more practical advice and guidance to trainee primary teachers. Twenty-two new authors have been involved and connections are now made to Northern Irish, Welsh and Scottish policies. In addition, five new units have been included on: making the most of ...
Paid work is absolutely central to the culture and politics of capitalist societies, yet today’s work-centred world is becoming increasingly hostile to the human need for autonomy, spontaneity and community. The grim reality of a society in which some are overworked, whilst others are condemned to intermittent work and unemployment, is progressively more difficult to tolerate. In this thought-provoking book, David Frayne questions the central place of work in mainstream political visions of the future, laying bare the ways in which economic demands colonise our lives and priorities. Drawing on his original research into the lives of people who are actively resisting nine-to-five employment, Frayne asks what motivates these people to disconnect from work, whether or not their resistance is futile, and whether they might have the capacity to inspire an alternative form of development, based on a reduction and social redistribution of work. A crucial dissection of the work-centred nature of modern society and emerging resistance to it, The Refusal of Work is a bold call for a more humane and sustainable vision of social progress.
A powerful work of utopian critical theory which looks at how the destructive nature of capitalism will eventually be used against itself
Videogames are a unique artistic form, and to analyse and understand them an equally unique language is required. Cremin turns to Deleuze and Guattari’s non-representational philosophy to develop a conceptual toolkit for thinking anew about videogames and our relationship to them. Rather than approach videogames through a language suited to other media forms, Cremin invites us to think in terms of a videogame plane and the compositions of developers and players who bring them to life. According to Cremin, we are not simply playing videogames, we are creating them. We exceed our own bodily limitations by assembling forces with the elements they are made up of. The book develops a critical m...
States of Crisis and Post-Capitalist Scenarios engages with the crisis of our capitalist world, with a view to explaining its origins, unravelling its symptoms, and demystifying the anodyne corrective solutions so far proposed. At the same time, it endorses the necessity for utopian interventions aimed at drastically rethinking our social order. Organised around the themes of economy and politics, critical theory, and culture in order to offer an impressive range of thematic perspectives and critical angles, the book delves into the most pressing of today’s quandaries by combining stringent critical analysis with creative foresight. A rigorous examination of the current crisis of late-capitalist society, States of Crisis and Post-Capitalist Scenarios develops paradigms that promise to rekindle the desire to move beyond capitalism towards a different social order. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences with particular interests in social and political theory, contemporary philosophy and the crises faced by the current capitalist order.