Unruly VoicesUnruly Voices
Essays on Democracy, Civility, and the Human Imagination
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Unknown, 2012
Current format, Unknown, 2012, 1st ed., All copies in use.Unknown, 2012
Current format, Unknown, 2012, 1st ed., All copies in use. Offered in 0 more formats"Mark Kingwell is a beautiful writer, a lucid thinker and a patient teacher ... His insights are intellectual anchors in a fast-changing world."--Naomi Klein, author of No Logo
Meet the "fast zombie" citizen of the current world. He is a rapid, brainless carrier of preference-driven consumption. His Facebook-style 'likes' replace complex notions of personhood. Legacy college admissions and status-seekers gobble up his idea of public education, and positional market reductions hollow out his sense of shared goods. Meanwhile, the political debates of his 24-hour-a-day newscycle are picked clean by pundits, tortured by tweets. Forget the TV shows and doomsday scenarios; when it comes to democracy, the zombie apocalypse may already be here.
Since the publication of A Civil Tongue (1995), philosopher Mark Kingwell has been urging us to consider how monstrous, self-serving public behaviour can make it harder to imagine and achieve the society we want. Now, with Unruly Voices , Kingwell returns to the subjects of democracy, civility, and political action, in an attempt to revitalize an intellectual culture too-often deadened by its assumptions of personal advantage and economic value. These 17 new essays, where zombies share pages with cultural theorists, poets, and presidents, together argue for a return to the imagination--and from their own unruly voices rises a sympathetic democracy to counter the strangeness of the postmodern political landscape.
Mark Kingwell is the author of sixteen books and a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine .
Meet the "fast zombie" citizen of the current world. He is a rapid, brainless carrier of preference-driven consumption. His Facebook-style 'likes' replace complex notions of personhood. Legacy college admissions and status-seekers gobble up his idea of public education, and positional market reductions hollow out his sense of shared goods. Meanwhile, the political debates of his 24-hour-a-day newscycle are picked clean by pundits, tortured by tweets. Forget the TV shows and doomsday scenarios; when it comes to democracy, the zombie apocalypse may already be here.
Since the publication of A Civil Tongue (1995), philosopher Mark Kingwell has been urging us to consider how monstrous, self-serving public behaviour can make it harder to imagine and achieve the society we want. Now, with Unruly Voices , Kingwell returns to the subjects of democracy, civility, and political action, in an attempt to revitalize an intellectual culture too-often deadened by its assumptions of personal advantage and economic value. These 17 new essays, where zombies share pages with cultural theorists, poets, and presidents, together argue for a return to the imagination--and from their own unruly voices rises a sympathetic democracy to counter the strangeness of the postmodern political landscape.
Mark Kingwell is the author of sixteen books and a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine .
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- Emeryville, Ont. : Biblioasis, c2012.
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