Books Indexed
- Author: Richard Hoggart
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
- ISBN-10: 0141191589
- ISBN-13: 978-0141191584
With some scraps, please
Can we construct a radical politics which takes into account the complexities and contradictions in contemporary culture and does not end up anti-humanist or with a thinly-veiled contempt for ‘the masses’?
Thursday, March 11, 2010
- Author: Chinua Achebe
- Publisher: Allen Lane
- ISBN-10: 1846142598
- ISBN-13: 978-1846142598
To and of humanity
A 1988 essay entitled ‘The University and the Leadership Factor in Nigerian Politics’ perhaps surprisingly offers a message directly applicable to the current moment in British politics. ‘Leadership is a sacred trust, like the priesthood in civilised, humane religions’, Achebe writes. His writings should be on a list of required reading for all those thinking of taking up office; perhaps then we might end up with a political class ready to treat the electorate with the respect it is due.
- Author: James S Fishkin
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- ISBN-10: 0199572100
- ISBN-13: 978-0199572106
‘Democracy’ without politics
Fishkin seems more interested in extracting approval from the public in order to legitimise the power of the elites, than in giving the public a role in political change. Democracy should mean that power is challenged and limited in response to political decisions, not confirmed in advance of them.
- Author: Natasha Walter
- Publisher: Virago Press
- ISBN-10: 1844084841
- ISBN-13: 978-1844084845
Living dolls: reconsidering the legacy of the 1960s
The cultural outgrowths of the new left in general play a key role in many of the processes of social change which Walter hints at. Its stress on ‘independence and self-expression’, the focus on authenticity and self-discovery, ultimately are capable of being uncoupled from their political content and rearticulated in a resolutely depoliticised way. Far from undermining capitalism through a reclamation of authentic subjectivity, this cultural radicalism in fact helped fuel the emergence of contemporary consumer capitalism.
- Author: Jayne Anne Phillips
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape
- ISBN-10: 0224059769
- ISBN-13: 978-0224059763
Shades of light and dark
Phillips is able to deliver a powerful and evocative message through four central characters whose close familial bond is described between shifting narrative perspectives of past and present, to illustrate the endurance of close, personal relationships which permeate and surpass the boundaries of place and time.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
