Saul Bellow

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan R. Chavkin
Keyword(s):  
Nobel Prize ◽  
White Male ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Saul Bellow ◽  
The Public ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Low Culture ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Colloquial Style

Over a career of six decades, Saul Bellow (1915–2005) published novels, short stories, essays, and plays that attracted immense attention from the public and the literary establishment. The value of his creative work was recognized with numerous awards, including three National Book Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize for Literature. The fourth child of Jewish parents who immigrated from Russia, Bellow spent the first years of his life in Lachine, Canada, before he and his family moved in 1924 to Chicago. After graduating from Northwestern University in 1937, he spent a semester at the University of Wisconsin studying anthropology but quit his graduate study to become a writer. In 1938 Bellow married the first of his five wives. In 1944 he published his first novel, Dangling Man, a novel of existential alienation. Three years later he published The Victim, a novel about anti-Semitism, but it was his next novel, The Adventures of Augie March (1953), that catapulted Bellow from relative obscurity to being regarded as one of the most important living American writers. This long picaresque novel was narrated by its larky eponymous hero in a vivid, colloquial style. Herzog (1964) secured his reputation as one of America’s foremost writers. With its complex style that captures the interior life, the novel was a surprising bestseller. The publication of Humboldt’s Gift (1975) was probably instrumental in his being awarded the Nobel Prize the following year. In this complicated novel with its inextricable blending of high and low culture and many flashbacks, the narrator ruminates on widely divergent subjects and describes his comic involvement with a variety of colorful people, especially the poet Von Humboldt Fleisher, modeled on Delmore Schwartz, and the gangster Rinaldo Cantabile. Bellow continued to publish for the next twenty-five years, but like John Updike and some other white male writers of his generation, Bellow’s reputation was hurt to some extent by critics upset by his white masculine-centered orientation. His popularity with the public and with critics is less than it was at the high point of his career in the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, but he is still regarded as one of the major 20th-century American writers. His fiction is known for its unique narrative voice, its ability to portray the intricacies of human consciousness, its metaphysical speculation, and its comedy.

Public Lands and Their Administration

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam M. Sowards
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Public Lands ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Resource Scarcity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Conflicting Demands ◽  
Park Service ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

For more than a century after the republic’s founding in the 1780s, American law reflected the ideal that the commons—the public domain—should be turned into private property. As Americans became concerned about resource scarcity, waste, and monopolies at the end of the 19th century, reform-minded bureaucrats and scientists convinced Congress to maintain in perpetuity some of the nation’s land as public. This shift offered a measure of protection and an alternative to private property regimes. The federal agencies that primarily manage these lands today—U.S. Forest Service (USFS), National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and Bureau of Land Management (BLM)—have worked since their origins in the early decades of the 20th century to fulfill their diverse, competing, evolving missions. Meanwhile, the public and Congress have continually demanded new and different goals as the land itself has functioned and responded in interdependent ways. In the mid-20th century, the agencies intensified their management, hoping they could satisfy the rising—and often conflicting—demands American citizens placed on the public lands. This intensification often worsened public lands’ ecology and increased political conflict, resulting in a series of new laws in the 1960s and 1970s. Those laws strengthened the role of science and the public in influencing agency practices while providing more opportunities for litigation. Predictably, since the late 1970s, these developments have polarized public lands’ politics. The economies, but also the identities, of many Americans remain entwined with the public lands, making political standoffs—over endangered species, oil production, privatizing land, and more—common and increasingly intractable. Because the public lands are national in scope but used by local people for all manner of economic and recreational activities, they have been and remain microcosms of the federal democratic system and all its conflicted nature.

A Discussion of Aviezer Tucker's The Legacies of Totalitarianism: A Theoretical Framework

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 535-535
Author(s):  
Valerie Bunce
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Scientific Validity ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
The Public ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Post Communism ◽  
The 1960S

The concept of totalitarianism emerged between the two world wars in twentieth-century Europe to become a central concept of Cold War social science designed to highlight similarities between the Nazi and Soviet regimes and implicitly to contrast these forms of dictatorship with liberal democracy. While in the 1960s and 1970s many critics challenged the concept’s Cold War uses as an ideology of “the West,” the idea of totalitarianism and later “post-totalitarianism” played important roles in East Central Europe, where they helped dissident intellectuals, academics, and activists both to understand and to challenge Soviet-style communism. The concept of “totalitarianism” remains heavily contested. But whatever one thinks about the concept’s social scientific validity, there can be no doubt that it played a crucial role in both the scholarship of communism and the public intellectual debates about the possibilities of post-communism. Aviezer Tucker’s The Legacies of Totalitarianism: A Theoretical Framework (Cambridge 2015) addresses many of these issues, and so we have invited a range of political scientists to comment on the book and the broader theme denoted by its title.

Gender insurgency and neoliberal reform: the academy twice transformed?

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-91
Author(s):  
Richard Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Considerable Change ◽  
The Public ◽  
Neoliberal Reform ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Internal Relations ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Neoliberal Restructuring

English higher education, like other parts of the public sector and higher education in other countries, is currently undergoing considerable change as it is being restructured as if it were a market in which universities, departments and academics compete against one another. This restructuring is producing new processes of subjectivity that discipline those who work and study in higher education institutions. Feminist poststructuralists have suggested that this restructuring is enabled partly through new forms of accountability that seemingly offer the 'carrot' of self-realisation alongside the 'stick' of greater management surveillance of the burgeoning number of tasks that academics, amongst others, must perform. This paper, located in the context of these changes, builds on Judith Butler's insight that processes of subjection to the dominant order through which the self is produced entail both mastery and subjection. That is, submission requires mastery of the underlying assumptions of the dominant order, In this paper I adopt an auto/biographical method and a critique of abstract social theories to explore how the neoliberal restructuring of universities interacts with the gender order. Many universities are being remoulded as businesses for other businesses, with profound effects on internal relations, the subjectivities of academics and students, and practices of education and scholarship. Yet I doubt if we can understand this, nor resist the deep corruption, through grasping neoliberalism's dynamics alone. A longer memory and a more concrete analysis are needed. Today's intense individualisation impacts on pre-existing social relations, which inflect it unpredictably. From my own experience, I evoke the baseline of an older academy, gender-segregated, explicitly patriarchal and privileged in class and ethnic terms. I stress the feminist and democratic gains of the 1960s and 1970s. I sketch the (neoliberal) strategies that undermine or redirect them. I write this, hoping that the next episode can be written differently.

In the service of the nation: intellectuals’ articulation of the Muslim national identity1

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iva Lucic
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Building Activities ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

This article explores the emerging national narratives about Muslim national identity in the period of the 1960s and 1970s. After the national recognition of a Bosnian Muslim nation, which was proposed by the members of the Central Committee of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was the intellectuals’ task to endow the national category with cultural repertoire. Hereby affirmative as well as negating discursive practices on the national status of Muslims entered the debates, which geographically expanded the republican scope of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The author examines internal discussions of the LCY on that issue as well as the intellectuals’ engagement in the public spheres in Socialist Yugoslavia. By integrating the nation-building activities of intellectuals outside Yugoslavia, the author postulates for a trans-national dimension of nation-building processes.

scholarly journals Political ethics about the phenomenon of politics in its interaction with morality

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 05002
Author(s):  
Marina Shirokova
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Political Ethics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

The article considers the reasons for the formation of political ethics as a science and a discipline. Its appearance was caused by the crisis of the state domestic and foreign policies in the 1960s and 1970s, the collapse of value orientations in the public consciousness, as well as the loss of the authority of politics in the eyes of society. All this led to a steadily high interest in ethical issues and criticism of politics from a moral standpoint. The author traces the evolution of the interpretation of the concept of politics from antiquity to our days. Like all human activities, politics needs values and the axiological system. But in the modern world, the dehumanization of politics is taking place. Thus, the issue of restoring ties between politics and morality is largely a matter of continuing existence and prospects for human development.

The Kraków Jewish Culture Festival

2003 ◽  
pp. 357-368
Author(s):  
Ruth Ellen Gruber
Keyword(s):  
Martial Law ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Published Research ◽  
Jewish Intellectuals

This chapter describes on the Kraków Festival of Jewish Culture, founded in 1988 by Jewish intellectuals Janusz Makuch and Krzysztof Gierat. The public embrace of Jewish culture in Poland had its roots in the anti-communist dissident movements of the 1960s and 1970s and developed steadily after the success of Solidarność in 1980 opened up new cultural and intellectual freedoms that were only partially stifled by the imposition of martial law in 1981. The pervasiveness of underground networks forced some relaxation of official strictures, too. Many taboos remained in place, but from the early 1980s on, with official sanction that at times verged on co-option, books on Jewish topics were published, research on Jewish subjects was carried out, and exhibitions, concerts, and performances on Jewish themes were held with increasing frequency. The Kraków festival was a milestone in this process and throughout the 1990s served as an important, continuing catalyst, changing and developing as overall conditions in post-communist Poland evolved.

A Discussion of Aviezer Tucker's The Legacies of Totalitarianism: A Theoretical Framework

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 533-534
Author(s):  
András Bozóki
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Scientific Validity ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
The Public ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Post Communism ◽  
The 1960S

The concept of totalitarianism emerged between the two world wars in twentieth-century Europe to become a central concept of Cold War social science designed to highlight similarities between the Nazi and Soviet regimes and implicitly to contrast these forms of dictatorship with liberal democracy. While in the 1960s and 1970s many critics challenged the concept’s Cold War uses as an ideology of “the West,” the idea of totalitarianism and later “post-totalitarianism” played important roles in East Central Europe, where they helped dissident intellectuals, academics, and activists both to understand and to challenge Soviet-style communism. The concept of “totalitarianism” remains heavily contested. But whatever one thinks about the concept’s social scientific validity, there can be no doubt that it played a crucial role in both the scholarship of communism and the public intellectual debates about the possibilities of post-communism. Aviezer Tucker’s The Legacies of Totalitarianism: A Theoretical Framework (Cambridge 2015) addresses many of these issues, and so we have invited a range of political scientists to comment on the book and the broader theme denoted by its title.

More than Cosmetic Changes: The Challenges of Experiments with Police Demilitarization in the 1960s and 1970s

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 1002-1025 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Schrader
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Police Reform ◽  
Civil Unrest ◽  
The Public ◽  
Black Neighborhood ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

In response to civil unrest, many U.S. police forces in the 1960s and 1970s adopted more aggressive postures, including “militarized” uniforms and tactics. A few, however, directed reform efforts toward “demilitarization.” This article focuses on the Menlo Park Police Department, in California, led by the maverick reformer Victor Cizanckas. It analyzes his attempts to change relations between the police and the public in his municipality, especially by decreasing incidents of abuse in one predominantly poor, black neighborhood. He instituted, for example, new uniforms and a nonhierarchical bureaucracy in the department. The article details how Cizanckas used emerging networks of law-enforcement professionalization to disseminate his ideas. It also analyzes the failures and challenges of these reform efforts. The article concludes that even radical police reform efforts in the period could not overcome racial inequality or a right-wing backlash against progressive ideas in policing.

Accessing Democracy: The Critical Relationship between Academics and the Access to Information Act

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 613-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Kazmierski
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Government Information ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Adequate Knowledge ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The Government ◽  
The 1960S

Parliament recognized the fundamental importance of protecting access to government information when it enacted the federal Access to Information Act. When the Act came into force on Canada Day 1983, Canada was just one of a handful of countries to have legislative protection of access to government information. Now, 27 years later, over 80 countries across the globe have enacted some form of access to information legislation.Although the world has followed Canada's lead in recognizing the importance of protecting access to government information, Canada has “fallen behind” (to borrow the descriptor used by journalist and author Stanley Tromp) and may even be “backsliding” (in the words of Laura Neuman of the Carter Center). What has gone wrong with the federal access regime? Why should legal studies scholars care? I address these questions in this article. I start by outlining the symbiotic role between academics and access to government information. I then identify three key factors that have contributed to the decline of the federal access regime: administrative resistance, legislative degeneration, and political indifference. Finally, I close by briefly discussing three ways in which scholars can continue to work to protect and promote access to information in Canada.Academics and AccessAcademics took the lead in advocating for access to government information in the 1960s and 1970s in Canada. One of the earliest advocates was Donald C. Rowat, a professor of Political Science at Carleton University. In a 1965 article entitled “How Much Administrative Secrecy?”, he summarized the key arguments in favour of protecting access to government information, writing Parliament and the public cannot hope to call the government to account without an adequate knowledge of what is going on; nor can they hope to participate in the decision-making process and contribute their talents to the formation of policy and legislation if that process is hidden from view.

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