1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9911135750803321

Autore

Haynes Holly

Titolo

The history of make-believe : Tacitus on imperial Rome / / Holly Haynes

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2003

ISBN

9786612357015

9781282357013

1282357018

9780520929555

0520929551

9781597349383

1597349380

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xi, 231 pages)

Collana

The Joan Palevsky imprint in classical literature

Disciplina

937/.07/092

Soggetti

HISTORY / Ancient / General

Rome History Flavians, 69-96 Historiography

Rome History Civil War, 68-69 Historiography

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-215) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Belief and Make-Believe -- 1. An Anatomy of Make-Believe -- 2. Nero -- 3. Power and Simulacra -- 4. Vespasian -- 5. A Civil Disturbance -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

A theoretically sophisticated and illuminating reading of Tacitus, especially the Histories, this work points to a new understanding of the logic of Roman rule during the early Empire.Tacitus, in Holly Haynes' analysis, does not write about the reality of imperial politics and culture but about the imaginary picture that imperial society makes of these concrete conditions of existence-the "making up and believing" that figure in both the subjective shaping of reality and the objective interpretation of it. Haynes traces Tacitus's development of this fingere/credere dynamic both backward and forward from the crucial year A.D. 69. Using recent theories of ideology, especially within the



Marxist and psychoanalytic traditions, she exposes the psychic logic lurking behind the actions and inaction of the protagonists of the Histories. Her work demonstrates how Tacitus offers penetrating insights into the conditions of historical knowledge and into the psychic logic of power and its vicissitudes, from Augustus through the Flavians. By clarifying an explicit acknowledgment of the difficult relationship between res and verba, in the Histories, Haynes shows how Tacitus calls into question the possibility of objective knowing-how he may in fact be the first to allow readers to separate the objectively knowable from the objectively unknowable. Thus, Tacitus appears here as going further toward identifying the object of historical inquiry-and hence toward an "objective" rendering of history-than most historians before or since.

2.

Record Nr.

UNINA9911153211803321

Autore

Kilgore De Witt Douglas

Titolo

Astrofuturism : Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space / / De Witt Douglas Kilgore

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia : , : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2010]

©2003

ISBN

9786613211132

9781283211130

1283211130

9780812200669

0812200667

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (305 p.)

Disciplina

813/.08762093299

Soggetti

SCIENCE

Space Science

Science fiction, American - History and criticism - United States

Literature and science

Life on other planets in literature

Space and time in literature

Astronautics in literature

Utopias in literature

Future, The, in literature

Race in literature

English

Languages & Literatures



American Literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: The Wonderful Dream -- 1. Knocking on Heaven's Door: David Lasser and the First Conquest of Space -- 2. An Empire in Space: Europe and America as Science Fact -- 3. Building a Space Frontier: Robert A. Heinlein and the American Tradition -- 4. Will There Always Be an England? Arthur C. Clarke's New Eden -- 5. The Domestication of Space: Gerard K. O'Neill's Suburban Diaspora -- 6. Ben Bova: Race, Nation, and Renewal on the High Frontier -- 7. On Mars and Other Heterotopias: A Conclusion -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

Astrofuturism: Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space is the first full-scale analysis of an aesthetic, scientific, and political movement that sought the amelioration of racial difference and social antagonisms through the conquest of space. Drawing on the popular science writing and science fiction of an eclectic group of scientists, engineers, and popular writers, De Witt Douglas Kilgore investigates how the American tradition of technological utopianism responded to the political upheavals of the twentieth century.Founded in the imperial politics and utopian schemes of the nineteenth century, astrofuturism envisions outer space as an endless frontier that offers solutions to the economic and political problems that dominate the modern world. Its advocates use the conventions of technological and scientific conquest to consolidate or challenge the racial and gender hierarchies codified in narratives of exploration. Because the icon of space carries both the imperatives of an imperial past and the democratic hopes of its erstwhile subjects, its study exposes the ideals and contradictions endemic to American culture.Kilgore argues that in the decades following the Second World War the subject of race became the most potent signifier of political crisis for the predominantly white and male ranks of astrofuturism. In response to criticism inspired by the civil rights movement and the new left, astrofuturists imagined space frontiers that could extend the reach of the human species and heal its historical wounds. Their work both replicated dominant social presuppositions and supplied the resources necessary for the critical utopian projects that emerged from the antiracist, socialist, and feminist movements of the twentieth century. This survey of diverse bodies of literature conveys the dramatic and creative syntheses that astrofuturism envisions between people and machines, social imperatives and political hope, physical knowledge and technological power. Bringing American studies, utopian literature, popular conceptions of race and gender, and the cultural study of science and technology into dialogue, Astrofuturism will provide scholars of American culture, fans of science fiction, and readers of science writing with fresh perspectives on both canonical and cutting-edge astrofuturist visions.