Esrârnâme - Feridüddin-i Attar itibaren Ayrıntı Yayınları içinde LIT biçim

Maria Mota mariaconce5458 — Like the Da Vinci Code. Wait for the movie.

Mèo Mèo meomeopd175 — The book was gifted to me on the day of my graduation by my professor after Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism was central to my senior thesis. Its probably an appropriate stepping stone from my studies as an undergraduate and my possible future as a graduate student. The finishing of the book is the culmination of a year and a half of inconsistent reading and a broadened perspective. It is my academic introduction to historical materialism, which I've only seen previously from afar. Its central theme: that postmodernism, with its fragmentary and ephemeral tendencies, arises as a necessary extension of capitalism and has far reaching affects into cultural aesthetics and our collective experiences in space and time. A few other new (to me) themes are: -The time period preceding following WWII until the early 1970s represented by the Fordist (Keynesian) production model which is paralleled by the cultural movement of modernism. Significant economic descriptors of this period are the acquiescence of capital to labor as the consumer of excess goods. Culturally, it adhered to a post-Enlightenment view that truth and universality are the goal of human aesthetics and expression. Architectural representations were monolithic expressions of state power and functionalism. -This Fordist model was followed, as a result of the economic crises in the 1970s, by a period characterized by Harvey as 'flexible accumulation'. Globalization (although not termed as such in the book) allowed for--and leads to--the need for capital to move more freely in space and time to meet the needs of profit. Harvey writes, "For the labourers this all implied an intensification (speed-up) in labour processes and an acceleration in the de-skilling and re-skilling required to meet new labour needs." The experience of labor in this world of flexible accumulation and time-space compression became the foundation for the postmodern condition. This condition is characterized by accelerating turnover in production and exchange, mobilization of fashion to the masses as a means of accelerated consumption, a lifestyle of disposal (values, relationships, attachments, and identities), and the manipulation of desires and tastes towards consumption in markets described best by volatility, to name a few. -Postmodernism offers many different opportunities to the human experience. Its reaction against the universality of modernism espouses multiple perspectives and insight. There is no singular human experience. And while the rhetoric of postmodernism may sound enticing, the same principles of domination still exist. Those who have practical control over space and the representation of time (lords and nobles of centuries before, capitalists and their government representatives today) have significant power over those who seek a voice in the global society. "Small differences in what the space contains in the way of labour supplies, resources, infrastructures, and the like become of increased significance. Superiour command over space becomes an even more important weapon in class struggle." -At the heart of the condition of postmodernity as presented by Harvey is the tendency towards schizophrenia. Harvey uses the quote of a literary critic (Terry Eagleton) as a possible definition of postmodernism: "There is, perhaps, a degree of consensus that the typical postmodernist artefact is playful, self-ironizing and even schizoid; and that it reacts to the austere autonomy of high modernism by impudently embracing the language of commerce and the commodity. Its stance towards cultural tradition is one of irreverent pastiche, and its contrived depthlessness undermines all metaphysical solemnities, sometimes by a brutal aesthetics of squalor and shock." The schizophrenic nature of postmodernism is a consistent theme presented by Harvey. My previously held understanding of historical materialism was simplistic and uninformed. If anything, my reading of Harvey has taken a giant step forward in developing an understanding, but I know further reading is required. I found Harvey's Marxist-informed insights into capitalism especially enlightening; especially his writing on capitalist crises of accumulation. Having read the book I have a new interest in urban studies and planning (how space is utilized by capital to exhibit control of the labor population), a peaked interest in how capital exhibits control over the experience of time through retirement plans and ability to retire, and a further deepening interest in the social implications of the human experience in capitalism (i.e.-Marxism).