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E-book Understanding Public Debates : What Literary Studies Can Do

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Penilaian

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This book makes the case that literary studies can play a key role in un-derstanding public debates in present-day pluralist democracies1 – by his-toricizing and contextualizing them through readings of carefully selected literary texts. The debates I discuss include those on different conceptions of liberty (as they arose, say, during the COVID pandemic), on identity politics and “cancel culture,” on questions of cultural memory, what to remember and how to commemorate key events and figures from a na-tion’s past, but also on challenges of and responses to globalization or on how adequately to deal with climate change. Some of these have become so acrimonious and have often solidified into larger conflict formations along recurring lines that as veritable “culture wars,” they challenge the continued functioning of pluralist democracies (see also Sandel 3). Though readers may immediately think of the U.S. and the immediate present here, debates over these and similar issues – if frequently in somewhat less po-larized form – also rage in other pluralist societies. In the case of debates over historical (dis-)remembering, for instance, though the concrete events and figures will be specific, the debate over monuments, street names and adequate forms of commemoration will be waged in remarkably similar constellations, with remarkably similar arguments and with remarkably similar conflict dynamics (not least those fuelled by social media).Thus, the fact that this book is written from the perspective of some-one working in the field of Anglophone Literary and Cultural Studies at a German university does not matter much to its central proposition. Un-deniably, the role of British, American and other Anglophone literatures s, of course, very different in Germany (or in other non-English-speaking countries) from what it is in the UK or the U.S. themselves. Most of the issues discussed in this book, however, are virtually independent of this fact: I outline what I think may be a useful contribution literary studies can make regarding its potential societal role, and texts from Anglophone literatures just happen to be my examples, which could easily be replaced by texts from other cultural and literary traditions. So to be sure, could the debates themselves: Discussions of literary texts might also have illumi-nated other important debates, say, on questions of migration and integra-tion (Shakespeare?), the limits of satire (Swift’s “Modest Proposal” comes to mind), adequate responses to a pandemic (Defoe’s Plague Year?), the regulation of biomedical innovation (Shelley’s Frankenstein?) and the per-nicious escalation dynamics of social media (one might think of Eggers’s The Circle and The Every2), and many more would have lent themselves to being discussed. Nonetheless, the debates I focus on are clearly among the central ones, not only in U.S. and UK contexts: Debates on liberalism, the connection between anthropological and political convictions as well as the widespread discontents with democracy; on identity politics, societal polarization and the “culture wars”; on whether the genocide of Native Americans, slavery and racism are to be seen as aberrations from the ideal or as America’s original sin and as constitutive of U.S. history; but also debates about the challenges of globalization or about appropriate ways of coping with the climate crisis.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

620 GUR u

Penerbit

USA : Taylor & Francis., 2024

Deskripsi Fisik

224 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781032758589

Klasifikasi

620

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Engineering

Info Detail Spesifik

-

Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

-

Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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