Cathexis: Sorcerer's Ring


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The System of Objects


Book Description

The System of Objects is a tour de force—a theoretical letter-in-a-bottle tossed into the ocean in 1968, which brilliantly communicates to us all the live ideas of the day. Pressing Freudian and Saussurean categories into the service of a basically Marxist perspective, The System of Objects offers a cultural critique of the commodity in consumer society. Baudrillard classifies the everyday objects of the “new technical order” as functional, nonfunctional and metafunctional. He contrasts “modern” and “traditional” functional objects, subjecting home furnishing and interior design to a celebrated semiological analysis. His treatment of nonfunctional or “marginal” objects focuses on antiques and the psychology of collecting, while the metafunctional category extends to the useless, the aberrant and even the “schizofunctional.” Finally, Baudrillard deals at length with the implications of credit and advertising for the commodification of everyday life. The System of Objects is a tour de force of the materialist semiotics of the early Baudrillard, who emerges in retrospect as something of a lightning rod for all the live ideas of the day: Bataille’s political economy of “expenditure” and Mauss’s theory of the gift; Reisman’s lonely crowd and the “technological society” of Jacques Ellul; the structuralism of Roland Barthes in The System of Fashion; Henri Lefebvre’s work on the social construction of space; and last, but not least, Guy Debord’s situationist critique of the spectacle.




A Mythic Journey


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Although The Tin Drum has often been called one of the great novels of the 20th century, most critics have been baffled in attempting to draw its apparent chaos into a single literary framework. Here is the full-length study to penetrate the brilliance of Gunter Grass's style and uncover the novel's mythopoetic core. In A Mythic Journey: Gunter Grass's Tin Drum, author Edward Diller convincingly demonstrates the still valid relationship between modern and classical literary criticism. By reading The Tin Drum as both modern myth and historical epic, he provides a profound and sensitive interpretation of one of the masterpieces of 20th century literature.




The Book of Solomon's Magick


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Libidinal Economy


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Is regarded as the most important response to the philosophies of desire, as expounded by thinkers such as de Sade, Nietzsche, Bataille, Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari. It is a major work not only of philosophy, but of sexual politics, semiotics and literary theory, that signals the passage to postmodern philosophy.




Sims' Symptoms in the Mind


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SIMS' SYMPTOMS IN THE MIND has, since its first publication in 1988, become established as the leading introductory textbook on clinical psychopathology. This new edition has been fully updated to include advances in neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience and changes can be found in the chapters on memory disturbance, disorders of time, pathology of perception, disorders of speech and language, affect and emotional disorders, and disorders of volition and execution. In some cases, novel classifications of the abnormalities under consideration have been provided together with additional pathological phenomena - including palinopsia, akinetopsia, zeitraffer phenomenon, exosomesthesia - many of which have been rediscovered or imported from neurology. The popular and distinctive features are the use of figures, tables and illustrative case examples which have been further enhanced with additional case examples from the classical literature, autobiographical narratives and fiction. New section headings provide firmer thematic unity to the content Check boxes summarize important points such as classification of particular areas Additional examples of psychopathology are included which are drawn from a wide source including fiction, autobiography and clinical textbooks Includes an extended range of abnormalities, including those which have previously been neglected, such as alloaesthesia, palinaptia, teleopsia, pelopsia, akinetopsia, palinopsia, and paraprosopia Fully updated description of the theoretical aspects of memory and its disturbance Fully integrated neuropsychological concepts of imagery and internal mental representations in the chapter on abnormalities of perception




Modern Magick


Book Description

For over two decades, Donald Michael Kraig's Modern Magick has been the world's most popular step-by-step guide to working real magick. Tens of thousands of individuals and groups have used this course as their primary instruction manual. Now, greatly revised and expanded, this set of lessons is more complete and relevant to your life than ever. Written with respect for the student, Modern Magick will safely guide you—even if you know little or nothing—through a progressive series of practical exercises and rituals, complemented by the knowledge, history, insights, and theory you need to become a successful ceremonial magician. Firmly rooted in the Western magickal tradition yet designed to be fully compatible with your contemporary practice, this book will help you attain full mastery of all core topics in magick: The inner mysteries of the Kabalah The most powerful rituals of magick How to create and perform your own rituals True meditation Magickal ethics Astral projection Tools of magick Evocation of spirits Pathworking Tantra and sex magick The importance of the Tarot Talismans and amulets Secrets of visualization Alchemy Psychic self-defense Healing rituals Filled with personal stories and helpful illustrations, along with updated and brand-new material, this new edition of Modern Magick features a completely new lesson that reveals the concepts, techniques, and rituals of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Chaos Magick, and Postmodern Magick. Ideal for beginning, intermediate, or advanced students, and perfect as a manual for magickal temples, this is essential reading for every true magician. "Modern Magick is a modern-day classic. It has become the standard textbook of practical magickal knowledge for magicians all over the world. We highly recommend it to beginner and adept alike."—Chic Cicero and Sandra Tabatha Cicero, authors of Experiencing the Kabbalah and Self-Initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition




The Un-Americans


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In a bold rethinking of the Hollywood blacklist and McCarthyite America, Joseph Litvak reveals a political regime that did not end with the 1950s or even with the Cold War: a regime of compulsory sycophancy, in which the good citizen is an informer, ready to denounce anyone who will not play the part of the earnest, patriotic American. While many scholars have noted the anti-Semitism underlying the House Un-American Activities Committee’s (HUAC’s) anti-Communism, Litvak draws on the work of Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Alain Badiou, and Max Horkheimer to show how the committee conflated Jewishness with what he calls “comic cosmopolitanism,” an intolerably seductive happiness, centered in Hollywood and New York, in show business and intellectual circles. He maintains that HUAC took the comic irreverence of the “uncooperative” witnesses as a crime against an American identity based on self-repudiation and the willingness to “name names.” Litvak proposes that sycophancy was (and continues to be) the price exacted for assimilation into mainstream American culture, not just for Jews, but also for homosexuals, immigrants, and other groups deemed threatening to American rectitude. Litvak traces the outlines of comic cosmopolitanism in a series of performances in film and theater and before HUAC, performances by Jewish artists and intellectuals such as Zero Mostel, Judy Holliday, and Abraham Polonsky. At the same time, through an uncompromising analysis of work by informers including Jerome Robbins, Elia Kazan, and Budd Schulberg, he explains the triumph of a stoolpigeon culture that still thrives in the America of the early twenty-first century.




Hyposubjects


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The time of hyposubjects is just beginning. They are the native species of the Anthropocene and just discovering what they can become.




Visual Thinking


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The 35th anniversary of this classic of art theory.