Customer Reviews:
Paralogisms and enchainment. Literary productions..., .......2007-02-13
The Political Unconscious is a prodigious crical enterprise that unveils in a stimulating protean verve, the relationship between the political structure and the narrative enterprises of a variety of literary movements and/or individual authors. A model work of Marxist Criticism that sharpens our sensitivity and awareness in relation to the confines and intransigence of political schemas, for these affect and filter, construct and deflect the interpretation of artistic ouvres, while also creating the space for them within the tension provided. A treasure as is all of Jameson's criticism, his reading of Conrad's fiction is exceptional and vibrant in tone and exposition, to the extent that one rushes to re-read "Lord Jim" and plunge into a dialogue with Jameson while at it. Fredric Jameson is an artist and a cultural critic whose philosophy is Deluzian and whose literary analysis is Derridian. The Political Unconscious is a fable, an historical approach that disseminates, and disrupts the fixed political schemas in a valient and elegant attempt at rousing readers from the slumber in which we are , however unconsciously, shrouded. A very important work indeed; It is with refreshing vigour that he reminds us of the importance of reading and writing. Yet he does so without the ascendancy of negative theology, such as is done by Blanchot and Agamben, although they also deserve our respect and gratitude. It is just that Jameson's texts are not mired in a restless solitude that asserts itself as feigned indifference. As was the case with Adorno and Allon White, a passionate surge is provoked, and the tragedy of being human(and all the more one of those doomed creatures known as scholars)is evoked in a confessed ambiguity that laments and hates the fact that it loves and believes in this, our life.
Jungian Mysticism Disguised as Marxist Criticism.......2006-04-10
In his untenable book of mysticism, Jameson proposes that works of literature express the collective political unconscious of the age in which they are written, and that they are thus complicitous with power. While he allows for some complexity in this relationship between hegemonic politics and aesthetic production-works of literature, for example, express the deep history of class struggle-he ultimately collapses these categories: dominant politics and literature are one in every age, collapsed into a vague "ideology of form," and literature inevitably sides with the masters.
To forward his argument, Jameson adopts a Jungian definition of the unconscious from Northrop Frye while ignoring some of Frye's more poignant distinctions. For instance, in Frye's work, political, institutional language acts as a controlling commentary on the more profound and radical voice of literature, and they are thus at odds (Frye calls political language literature's "antipode"). However, Jameson's adoption of the Jungian unconscious for his model allows him a slippery, quasi-religious definition of the political unconscious-you cannot see it directly, but, like the wind, like God, it's everywhere, and we all believe in it all at once, whether we know it or not.
Equally "faith-based" criticism generated from Jameson's work has argued specifically that "canonical" authors such as Emerson and Thoreau expressed the political unconscious of the Jacksonian age, and that the critics in the early 20th century who canonized them expressed the political unconscious of the Cold War years, unconsciously underwriting American globalism. A twisted path leads to these conclusions (for example, we have to accept the untenable proposal that an ideology of American individualism lay at the heart of Cold War political ideology). However, the whole path could have been avoided if Jameson had taken Freud's version of the unconscious as his starting point-the place that holds taboo thought and images that have been traumatized out of the individual by a society of repression. This political unconscious would have given us a valid explanation for why activists, radicals, and everyday dissenters go to works of literature to remind themselves of what the political conscious of the age-with its outright, unsubtle, unliterary chatter-has buried in them.
Not About Dreams!.......2003-10-02
This book is not about dreams, so if you want to know about dreams, you should get "The Dream Book" instead. I don't understand this book.
Radical Vision, Utopian Prospective.......2002-04-27
Jameson's groundbreaking literary criticism and sociological analysis underscore the release of the sublimated repressed desires in realist representation (realism) and orientates itself toward a relax of political unconscious.It mediates the symbolic narrative and its mirrored ideological interpellations. As a Marxist, he foresees the fuse of the super/infrastructure and a utopian sense of humanism that isolates from alienation and reification.
Tour de force literary criticism.......2001-11-16
I read "The Political Unconscious" in college and was quite dazzled with it at the time. The book is quite difficult, and I approached it after reading another work of Marxist criticism, Terry Eagleton's "Literary Theory: An Introduction," which contains a footnoted reference to Jameson. The key thing about Jameson's book is that he forgoes a formalistic close-reading approach to works of narrative literature in favor of a historicist, totalizing vision. After I read the book, I recommended it to a graduate student in philosophy, who found it a brilliant synthesis, but no more. It is true that Jameson isn't a philosophical pathbreaker, but the fact that he has read and can convincingly use the work of German Hegelian Marxists like Theodor Adorno and especially George Lukacs is quite amazing. And his readings of authors like Gissing, Hofmannsthal, and Conrad are nothing if not supple. If "Marxist criticism" seems to you the recipe for disaster (or ignorance), this entrancing book is definitely the corrective for you!
Book Description
Knowledge, The Enlightenment believed, could protect us from the follies of ideology. But Saul maintains that 'knowing' has not made us "conscious'. Instead we have become increadingly passive, our society increadingly conformist. These are no easy solutions to this problem, Saul say, but change is still possible.
"Winner of the Govenor General's Award"
Customer Reviews:
Incredibly lucid depiction of contemporary society by a painfully lucid author.......2006-11-03
One of the best books I have ever read.
To be admired: the transgression of the stereotypical, simplistic and delusional split of political discourse into left and right; the rightful denounciation of contemporary universities who are selling their humanist soul to the vacuous structures of mechanistic, self-obssessed, memory-less, profit-obssesed corporate bubbles.
What is important to me, personally, is the impact that this system has on the everyday psyche of individuals and on their ability to form genuine human relations in real, local communities. The author did not touch on these aspects, he stayed mainly at the macro-level of analysis. But anyone with an interest in social-psychology and human relations can figure out quickly what this impact is and what is happening to the average contemporary folk as a result. It's about why workplaces and the inhabiting "managers" are about shuffling empty words in vacuous reports and presentations - and nothing else. Why people (including the so-called "educated" ones at the altars of corporatism) are not capabale of discussing anything of substance, in a common language, on a common ground, with their fellow-humans; why narcissistic western societies (particularly north American) are full of clinically depressed individuals, with lives devoid of any real meaning - despite their historically unique standards of living (which apparently are not enough as they continue to compete for more...and more...and more with no clear purpose in mind other than "success" in and of itself).
Why everyone is always having some personal agenda leading to some sort of "personal, competitive achievement" at the expense of family, small community, close friends and true happiness - as opposed to fake-smiled, commercially-inspired Kodak moments; why everyone is some sort of "volunteer" paying lip service to the idea of community yet so few have truly close friends or local family ties in the name of whom they would refuse to move across the country when the corporation dangles a few extra bucks in front of their materialist, soul-less eyes.
How painful and how real. I used to believe that statements such as "I don't want to bring any children into this kind of world we have today" were just dramatic calls for attention.
Well, after reading this book, such statements acquire a new dimension. We ARE living in an insane, dehumanized system and the goal for any humanist at heart should be to stay lucid and to protect one's children, family and close friends from sliping into vacuity.
The sheep on the cover should be enough to scare anyone conscious human.
A coup d'etat in slow motion?.......2005-08-12
A key premise of the book is that a life worth living, the so-called examined life, the fully aware life cannot take place without individuals in the society being fully conscious - or without seeking the kind of self-knowledge that readily can be translated into action.
Saul maintains that we have a "new religion," the blind pursuit of self-interest. It is led by an ideology of "corporatism," which has deformed the American ideal of a life worth living into one devoid of a concept of the common public good. Through it, one of America's most noble ideas, that of "rugged individualism" has been sullied, distorted and transformed into an ideology of selfishness; an ideology that has so manipulated our reality that our the language and knowledge, usually placed in the service of actions and designed to improve our way of life, has become useless.
The corporate compartmentalization of, and distortion of public knowledge, and the accompanying enforced conformity has so confused us and has so muted our voices that knowledge no longer has any effect on our consciousness nor on our actions. Individual selfishness as "modeled" by corporate self-interest has hi-jacked Western civilization as we have come to know it.
The book describes how corporatism has accomplished this feat: It has used its own ideology of self-interest (and the promise of certainty that all ideologies promote) to render us passive and conformist in areas that matter and non-conformist in those that do not. This new pseudo or false individualism has the effect of immobilizing and disarming our civilization intellectually and thus renders it unconscious.
The most important way it does this is by denying and undermining the legitimacy of the individual as the primary unit and defender of, as well as the center of gravity of the public good. The public good becomes deformed by, and subordinate to, and equated with the narrow pursuit of corporate self-interests, as most often defined by the pursuit of profits and associated corporate perks. The hedonistic model of the corporate life is projected on to society writ large as the only life worth living.
The impetus for placing corporate interests (and the corporate model of our humanity) at center stage in the drama of Western Civilization, seems to have come about through the misconception that rugged individualism, democracy and our current understanding of the public good were once defined by, depend on, and proceed directly from, the pursuit of economic interests. This is a misconception because in actual fact exactly the reverse is true: It was notions of the public good as defined by democracy and individualism that gave rise to economic interests, and not the other way around.
Moreover, economic models have been so spectacularly wrong and unsuccessful, that they could not have survived without an ideology that renders the public unconscious. Saul suggests that even the best economic models amount to little more than passive tinkering. The fact that we have come to rely on them -- even though we know they are seriously flawed and have little or no basis in reality -- is compelling evidence of our lack of memory and thus, of our lack of collective consciousness.
According to the author, it is the proper use of knowledge and memory that renders us conscious (and thus by extension, also renders us human). The misuse of knowledge and memory through corporate and technological, manipulation, specialization and compartmentalization is just a deeper form of collective denial.
Said differently, (corporate generated) specialization creates its own illusions. When knowledge actually becomes confused and is sufficiently narrowed, compartmentalization promotes the illusion that knowledge is multiplied when in fact it has shrunken. It leaves the impression that more rather than less knowledge is being created. It promotes the illusion that truth is only what the specialist can measure; that "managing is doing," (and more importantly that a managerial class is important and necessary). Finally, it creates the illusion that the ideology, which promotes corporatism, produces certainty (the main job of any ideology).
These illusions all have facilitated the corporate takeover of what would otherwise be seen as, the public interest. By doing so, the legitimacy of the individual as the center of gravity of the public good is crowded out, undermined and denied.
Thus the management elite, (with their suitcases full of money to buy off our elected representatives) like a cancer, is let loose on society. It lives within its own insulated cocoon creating an artificially interiorized sense of its own importance, wellbeing and its own distorted vision of civilization as a whole. Insulated from within, the management elite is free to grow without bounds, without accountability, and in complete disregard for the reality "out there," and always only to satisfy and service its own selfish needs. Truth is not in the world "out there" but is in what the professionals can measure and whatever is reported to these insulated elites. The deeper the insulated managerial class retreats into its own interiorized illusions of reality, the more confused language becomes and the less likely knowledge can be translated into actions that will effect the wider reality, and thus the public good.
In its pursuit to deny the legitimacy of the public good and to replace it with corporate econometric models of reality, Saul has traced the history of this process and gives many examples of how it works: through media propaganda, films, ads, music, sports and style-and always through insinuations of what is considered proper thought and ways of behaving.
One of the better examples he gives is how unemployment keeps getting redefined downward with no relation to the reality of the labor market but mostly to suit the needs of the neo-cons (the courtiers of the corporate elites). Or how, even as companies are losing money and are laying-off large numbers of ordinary workers, the salaries and incentive packages of the managerial elites continue to rise - often even until the very day the companies actually go bust.
Another example given is how through the process of globalization, that by the year 2020 the U.S. will be fully reduced to a Third World country. We are told that our future standard of living will depend entirely on globalization. Here globalization (like its companion concept, productivity) is a synonym for pegging workers' wage rates to the lowest wages available worldwide. It is never mentioned in such discussions that the salaries and incentive packages of the managerial elites will actually rise significantly as this "mother of all least common denominators economic formulas" is being applied to the lower end of the economic class scale. Taken to its logical conclusion, the salary of U.S. workers will equal those of Chinese peasants by 2020; and the corporate elites all will be filthy rich like Sam Walton. This "Wal-Martization" of America is already well in train.
Why are we so susceptible to being manipulated by corporate generated ideology and power? Saul gives an answer: We have an addictive weakness for large illusions that are tied to power and that can simplify our worldview by promising emotional certainty. The examples he gives are none other than the great religions themselves, and their spin-offs of Marxism, fascism and most of the autocratic governments of the past, including Hitler's Third Reich.
The roads to serfdom, or to fascism or communism (or pick your own ism) all intersect at the same ideology reference points: they begin as enforced social and political orthodoxy and conformity: first fashion and style; then the social enforcement of ways of thinking; and then patriotism is made into a religious-like requirement; after which rights and free speech are suppressed in the name of national security or loyalty to the state. One-by-one laws are suspended and then arbitrary arrests and disappearances begin; and finally the country is rendered completely passive and unconscious - compressed into a pseudo-patriotic religious trance.
In the modern era, this progression is by now all too familiar: It leads directly to the de-legitimatization of the citizen as the primary defender of the public good. This just as inevitably leads to handing over power to those whose self-interests are larger than their dedication to the preservation of the public good or even to the preservation and defense of the state itself.
The citizen then ceases to be able to determine what is, and is not real. He becomes immobilized like a child, unable to judge what is in his own best interests -- let alone what is in the best interest of the public good or the state. He is then forced to sing for his dinner and to dance to the corporate tune for any sense of wellbeing or self-worth. The "public good" becomes completely subordinate to the "corporate good."
What Saul admonishes us about is already imminently clear: that the kind of society we have is determined by where the true source of legitimacy lies. Today legitimacy in America -- that is its power, organization, and influence -- lies not in the vote and in stylized but impotent public citizen participation, but in the hands of the lobbyists, the technocrats, and the anti-democratic and anti-patriotic corporate vampires.
Saul did not need to tell us that all the serious decisions are now made in the back rooms without consulting the people. The best "the people" can hope for (and indeed what they yearn for) is that the decisions made over their heads will at least retain a semblance of emotional ideological purity.
While the corporate robber barons sneak out the back door to their off-shore tax havens (with the nations valuables in tow), the public good has been distorted and transformed into little more than "What I have" or into bumper sticker sized emotionalisms: the advancement of creative design and the right to post the Ten Commandments on the court house steps, abortion and gun rights, anti-Affirmative Action, states rights, etc. Because of its lack of consciousness, Americans have lost the ability to conceptualize a common good larger than their own immediate individual narrowly defined self-interests.
How do we get out of this coup d'etat in slow motion? Saul's answer is that we must change the dynamics of the process but he gives few specifics on how this can be done. This a great and very sobering read. Five stars.
Wake up and Smell the Oil Wal-Mart Shoppers.......2005-08-10
If the doubling, in less than a year, of the price of oil for no discernable reason (with no end in sight), and with absolutely no reaction from us or our government is not evidence that something is terribly wrong with our collective mind. Then surely an order of magnitude increase in the cost of medical care and prescription drugs, and the quintupling of our health insurance (for those of us who have any), should be.
Or, one might have imagined that the juxtaposition of soaring corporate profits (in these very same areas) with an effective reduction in "actual wages" everywhere else, would also have shaken us from our deep collective slumber?
Or maybe the fact that we have been led into yet another war for no defensible reasons and without either an exit strategy or a fighting plan -- a war whose justifications and rationale keeps changing with each increased attack from the terrorists as our national debt continues to soar -- would have shaken us out of our passivity.
While our government's response to the needs of the "rank-and-file" is increasingly non-existent, or completely ineffectual, and the "managerial class" continues to rob us blind as they laugh all the way to the bank; we are obsessed with the risk of breast implants, abortion rights, hanging the Ten Commandments in the public square, reality shows (that are anything but real), Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, and how to continue to win at the game of "Democrats and Republicans (or liberals and conservatives, or Blacks versus Whites, or males versus females, or pick your own senseless emotional dichotomy)."
But the very best evidence yet of our lack of consciousness and proof that our society is being thrown under the bus while we watch in horror with our eyes wide open, is when the most devastating critique of our own slothfulness is also the sanest, most compassionate and most eloquent.
Saul in this trenchant sanity check of the society that leads the Western World realizes that the time for vitriol and shouting has long since passed. That is why with eloquence, understated passion and with measured but devastating logic and reason (that quality he so distrusts), he has issued a broadside at the foundation stone of what ails our society most: Rampant and immoral Corporatism.
And even though in the end, his prescription for how we are to extricate ourselves from this dilemma is unconvincing, he has laid the necessary groundwork for serious thinking to begin. If "the people" in Western Democracies are ever to regain control of their minds, and then eventually their societies; Saul's ideas in this small volume must inevitably be contended with. Five stars.
SAUL'S PATHWAY.......2004-05-14
THIS BOOK IS A STIRRING READ. WE ARE ALL BURIED UNDER CORPORATE PSEUDO REASON WHERE REASON IS ONLY APPLIED WHERE POWER BENEFITS. SAUL GIVES VOICE TO THE MADNESS OF THIS REASON AND ENCOURAGES US TO REACH INTO THE HEART AND FIND COURAGE TO GO WITH OUR LOGICAL FACILITIES TO EXAMINE THE NOTION OF THE "PUBLIC GOOD" I.E. THE DESIGN OF A GOOD SOCIETY.
HE APPEARS TO SEE THAT THE LEGITIMACY OF THE PUBLIC GOOD AS A SOCIAL CONTRACT, IF ADOPTED, WOULD SERVE AS AN IMPETUS TO DEBATE THE QUESTIONS LEFT OFF OF THE POWER AGENDA. I SENSE THAT HE IS LOOKING FOR A CURRENCY OTHER THAN MONEY TO CREATE AN ENERGY THAT THE POLITICIAN MUST RESPOND TO. IN THEORY ONE MAN ONE VOTE CAN BEAT ONE DOLLAR ONE VOTE. BUT MUCH OF THE SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE SUCH AS PUBLIC SCHOOLS, AN FOCUS ON THE HUMANITIES AND AN EDUCATION DESIGNED TO CREATE CITIZENS AND MORE APPRECIATION FOR PUBLIC SERVICES WILL BE RESISTED BY THE COURTIERS OF POWER.
THIS IS A VERY GOOD LAYOUT OF WHERE THE TENSIONS ARE IN MODERN CAPITALIST-democracy.
WE NEED AN EXTRAORDINARY AND SUSTAINED ACT OF IMAGINATION AND WILL BY THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES, PERHAPS FUELED BY CONTRADICTION BETWEEN OUR FOUNDING PRINCIPLES AND CURRENT PRACTICE TO MAKE HEADWAY. (WONDER IF THERE ARE ANY WEALTHY BENEFACTORS WHO WOULD DONATE COPIES OF "ADBUSTERS" MAGAZINE TO A MILLION HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS? ) COMEDY SHOWS LIKE CHAPELLE, SIMPSONS, AND ESPECIALLY SOUTH PARK ARE TELLING US THAT THE FEELINGS AND ENERGY ARE OUT THERE.
THIS IS A GREAT BOOK. IT IS ALSO PAINFUL AS IT UNDERSCORES WHERE WE ARE AMISS. THE AUTHOR IS CANADIAN. ANYONE WHO WATCHED BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE AND THE SCENES ABOUT CANADA WOULD SENSE THAT A SOPHISTICATED AUTHOR FROM THAT LAND WOULD SEE WHERE THINGS ARE SO EXAGGERATED IN THIS COUNTRY. THOUGH CANADA IS HARDLY FREE FROM CORPORATIST INFLUENCE.
I LOOK FORWARD TO HIS NEXT WORK. ON EQUILIBRIUM. THOUGH IT IS HARD TO BELIEVE IN EQUILIBRIUM/ AS IN A RESTING PLACE. POLITICS WILL BE A DYNAMIC BATTLE FOR EVER. AND THE FORCES OF COMPASSION WILL BE PITCHED AGAINST THE MATRIX OF FEARS AND THE IDEALOGY THAT FEAR SPAWNS.
Every Buzzword in the Book--Knows No Economics.......2003-11-07
Here we have a 'literary figure' writing a book in large part about economics. Unfortunately, he is unqualified to do so because a careful reader will note that, stripped of the claptrap, the author knows very little economics. In typical Canadian fashion, Saul keeps railing against the marketplace
but forgets to notice that his book is for sale in precisely the same marketplace.
He presents his basic thesis in an extremely long-winded manner (one wonders this is the case because there was compensation for the "prestigious" Massey lectures).
The thesis of the book seems to be simply that a completely unregulated "marketplace" is not the solution to all of our problems (duhhh).
Most of the book is rhetoric with scant empirical support. The author uses the classical appeal to (obscure) like-minded authorities to bolster his open-ended case. This is a hazard for such writers who have an hypothesis and seek only confirming evidence.
At several points the author refers to the money markets and the currency futures markets as if he knows anything about either. All one has to do is look at essentially government run countries without such markets to see how great life and growth appear there.
But he does admit that the market system is the 'best way to do business' when properly regulated to take into account externalities. Few economists would disagree with this.
Then there is the usual protectionist argument demonizing globalization and privatization.
Particularly questionable is the thesis that U of Chicago business professors run US Corporations--- if they did they wouldn't be professors.
A book discussing the prerequisite economics against which this diatribe might be judged is Paul Krugman's An Accidental Theorist.
I don't think he graduated from Chicago.
Bahhhh, humbug.
(As a Canadian from Toronto, I can offer a footnote. The problems are the Canadian economy and government. Stifling indeed due to high taxes and clearly incompetent politicians. Canadians apparently like giving away their wages to be squandered by the Government and will even complain when the Canadian dollar appreciates ! Thank goodness that there is still a marketplace in which to barely make a living in Canada.)
Book Description
"[A] lucid discussion of race that does not sell out the black experience." —Tommy Lott, author of The Invention of Race
Revealing Whiteness explores how white privilege operates as an unseen, invisible, and unquestioned norm in society today. In this personal and selfsearching book, Shannon Sullivan interrogates her own whiteness and how being white has affected her. By looking closely at the subtleties of white domination, she issues a call for other white people to own up to their unspoken privilege and confront environments that condone or perpetuate it. Sullivan's theorizing about race and privilege draws on American pragmatism, psychology, race theory, and feminist thought. As it articulates a way to live beyond the barriers that white privilege has created, this book offers readers a clear and honest confrontation with a trenchant and vexing concern.
Customer Reviews:
great book in a field that needs more work.......2007-01-15
Dr Sullivan's work in this book is a masterful blend of pragmatism, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology to reveal the hidden privelges that we white-people engage in without our awareness, and thus helps to open up a new dimension of self-understanding that is sorely needed in our society. Thinking of onesself in terms of race isn't just for minorities anymore!
Book Description
Tribal Warfare thoroughly investigates a central element of the hit reality television show Survivor that the existing literature on reality television has overlooked: class politics. Christopher J. Wright combines textual analysis and survey research to demonstrate that Survivor operates and resonates as a political allegory.
Book Description
The fact of the unconscious stops you, in effect, from taking advantage of your good faith, your good intention, your beautiful soul. "I didn't want that" is not worthy of absolution. Yes, what you have done, or that which results from what you have done, you wanted. The consequences instruct you. Man is condemned not to know what he wanted until after the fact. The beginning of analysis is signaled by a gesture that made Lacan famous: the short session. Thus Jacques-Alain Miller argues that hysterical intersubjectivity, tampered with the time of the analytical session, is an effective tool against the ego, the enemy.
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The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France
Elizabeth Ezra
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
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ASIN: 0801486475 |
Book Description
France between the two World Wars was pervaded by representations of its own colonial power, expressed forcefully in the human displays at the expositions coloniales, films starring Josephine Baker, and the short stories of Paul Morand, and more subtly in the avant-garde writings of Ren Crevel and Raymond Roussel. In her lively book, Elizabeth Ezra interprets a fascinating array of cultural products to uncover what she terms the "colonial unconscious" of the Jazz Age--the simultaneous attraction and repulsion of exoticism and the double bind of a colonial discourse that foreclosed the possibility of the very assimilation it invited.
Ezra situates the apotheosis of French colonialism in relation to both the internal tensions of the colonial project and the competing imperialisms of Great Britain and the United States. Examining both the uses and the limits of psychoanalytic theories of empire, she proposes a reading of French colonialism which, while historically specific, also contributes to our understanding of contemporary culture. The enduring legacy of empire is felt to this day, as Ezra demonstrates in a provocative epilogue on the remarkable similarities between the rhetoric of colonial France and accounts of the French victory in the 1998 World Cup.
Book Description
A Selection of the Executive Program and Fortune Book Clubs
Leaders beware. There's an unconscious conspiracy afoot, aiming to sabotage your plans and undermine your vision. Entrenched bureaucracy, ominous social trends, and mind-numbing routine are among its members?and their proliferation is an unfortunate sign of our times. But take heart. In this highly acclaimed work, legendary management consultant Warren Bennis unmasks the culprits, analyzes their tactics, and offers new insights for change agents struggling to take charge in an era that conspires against effective leadership.
The best book on how leaders can lead.
--Peter Drucker
Bennis teaches leaders to maximize their virtues, correct their faults, face change successfully, and love their work. Leaders will win, but so will their organizations: Bennis advocates a collaborative leadership that empowers employees and enhances organizational effectiveness.
A priceless gift to those seeking to be accountable leaders.
--Max De Pree, author of Leading Without Power
So learn why leaders can't lead. Then learn how they can lead. This book--alive with warmth and wisdom--is essential reading both for leaders and for the human resource professionals who teach them.
Customer Reviews:
Sad.......2003-09-27
I read this several years ago, set it aside, and idly picked it up to reread recently. I had forgotten just how bad this book is. It's the cry of a frustrated 1960s liberal who found, at the end of the 1980s, that the world had refused to reshape itself in accordance with his utopian wishes. Bennis is usually pretty coherent, but this book isn't. Rather than providing insight into the dilemmas of leadership, it really makes me wonder if Bennis knows much about leading at all.
80% Rant.......2001-09-27
I am mystified why Peter Drucker would lend his endorsement to this book. I'm only 70 pages into it, but have elected to write my first book review because I DISLIKE this book!
So far, I have read chapter after chapter of ranting about why the golden of age of America began in 1962 and ended in 1963. Television, fast food, yuppies, and above all, rock and roll, have conspired to corrupt America and with it, ostensibly, the world.
What a crock! How about getting on with life!
Bennis' style is chaotic and has a serious left-wing bias........1999-05-21
I agree with Bennis' premise that there is an "Unconscious Conspiracy" which sucks the life and creativity out of would be modern leaders. However, I was extremely disappointed in the chaotic prose and exclusive stabs at politically conservative leaders. For example, he highlighted Ralph Nader as an example of a good modern leader.
Throughout the book, I had trouble figuring out what Bennis was trying to convey. I don't normally hate a book, having loved so many before. But I hate this one. Stick to Dilbert, it's more apropo.
One of the most exciting books I have ever read!.......1999-03-31
Warren Bennis has a talent for being able to see and articulate the "big picture" problems that are plaguing the majority of organizations today. He uses many, many examples to show cause and effect relationships between poor leadership and organizational health. He is an outspoken fan of creativity, vision, trust and momentum within the work force and exegetic in his treatment of corporations, colleges, the military, Non-Profits, etc.- He is blunt about greed, reactionism and hubris while presenting an exciting picture of our Country and it's potential when leaders (not managers) are allowed to instill hope in the people who do the work.
I am buying a copy for each of my employees!!
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Desire and the Political Unconscious in American Literature: Eros and Ideology
Sam B. Girgus
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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Freud's Philosophy of the Unconscious (Studies in Cognitive Systems)
D.L. Smith , and
David Livingstone Smith
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ASIN: 0792358821 |
Book Description
Freud's Philosophy of the Unconscious is the only comprehensive, systematic study of Sigmund Freud's philosophy of mind. Freud emerges as a sophisticated philosopher who addresses many of the central questions that concern contemporary philosophers and cognitive scientists while anticipating many of their views. While still a student in Vienna, Freud was initiated into philosophy by Franz Brentano. The book charts Freud's intellectual development as he deals with the mind-body problem, the nature of consciousness, folk psychology versus scientific psychology, the relationship between language and thought, realism and antirealism in psychology, and the nature of unconscious mental events.
The book also critically examines writings on Freud by Wittgenstein, Davidson, and Searle, demonstrating their weakness as interpretations and criticisms of Freud's position.
Readership: Philosophers, cognitive scientists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and psychiatrists.
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