This timely and provocative book examines a fundamental shift in contemporary Western thought: the replacement of the traditional dualistic and hierarchical model of reality by a holistic one. Betty Jean Craige traces the emergence of this new paradigm to Charles Darwin, whose evolutionary theory exploded the idea of a fixed natural hierarchy and opened the way for a more egalitarian vision of human society as an evolving system of interdependent individuals and cultures.
Since Darwin's time, Craige argues, there has been an ongoing struggle in the West between these two conceptions of order, a clash that in recent years has manifested itself in volatile debates over sexual and racial equality, censorship, multiculturalism, "political correctness," the undergraduate curriculum, and the environment.
Craige analyzes each of these controversies and shows how they are at root reflective of the intellectual revolution that began more than a century ago. In one chapter she discusses the fundamentalist assault on Salman Rushdie; in another, the quarrel involving Robert Mapplethorpe and the National Endowment for the Arts. In still another she explores the powerful conservative backlash against the perceived threat to Western values, comparing it to the creationist attack on Darwin in the late nineteenth century.
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Betty Jean Craige is professor of comparative literature at the University of Georgia. Her most recent book is Reconnection: Dualism to Holism in Literary Study.
Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. University of Mass. Press, 1992. Very good. , Hardcover, Scattered pencil markings, otherwise clean, tight, in dust jacket. 159 pages. Out-of-print and antiquarian booksellers since 1933. We pack and ship with care. Book. Seller Inventory # LINCBOOK023555
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. University of Massachusetts Press hardcover in dust jacket, 1992, 1st edition, unused and carefully stored, No marks/tears or other defects; as New/Fine (like New). We will add a custom fitted mylar cover, bubble-wrap the book and ship it in a BOX with delivery confirmation/tracking. Seller Inventory # 11319
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Book Description x, 159p., dj (Critical perspectives on modern culture). Seller Inventory # 017480