Unruly Voices: Essays on Democracy, Civility and the Human Imagination - Softcover

Kingwell, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1926845846 ISBN 13: 9781926845845

Publisher: Biblioasis, 2012

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"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 Mark Kingwell's first book, A Civil Tongue, predicted with remarkable accuracy the shout-doctrine style decline in political debate. Since then Kingwell has been urging readers to consider how bad public behaviour can make it harder to imagine the society we want. Now, with these 17 new essays, where cultural theorists share pages with poets, zombies, and presidents, Kingwell argues for a sympathetic democracy to counter the strangeness of the modern world.

About the Author:

Mark Kingwell is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, a contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine, and has written for publications ranging from Adbusters and the New York Times to the Journal of Philosophy and Auto Racing Digest. Among his twelve books of political and cultural theory are the Canadian best-sellers Better Living, The World We Want, and Concrete Reveries. In order to secure financing for their continued indulgence he has also written about his various hobbies, including fishing, baseball, cocktails, and contemporary art.

About this edition

• Publisher: Biblioasis
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1926845846
• ISBN 13: 9781926845845
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300