Dark affinities, dark imaginaries : a mind's odyssey / Joseph Natoli.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Natoli, Joseph P., 1943- author.

Standardized Title:

Essays. Selections

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Essays.

Physical Description:

xxviii, 367 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [2017]

Summary:

Uniting personal history with cultural history, Dark Affinities, Dark Imaginaries tells a story of a mind, a time, and a culture. The vehicle or medium of this excursion is an overview and sampling of the author's work, and what is revealed are cautionary tales of a once-aspiring egalitarian democracy confronted with plutocracy's gentrification; of analog history and off-line life superseded by a rush toward virtualized, robotic, AI transformation of the human life-world; of everything social and public giving way to everything personal and opinionated. The vagaries of a lifetime of paths taken are woven together by a narrative that reveals in every piece a significance that was only partially present at its initial writing. Thus, the reader becomes involved in a developing story of a certain personal psyche working toward understanding its own development within a changing American culture. Sometimes angry, sometimes joyful, but always curious and wry, Joseph Natoli crosses the boundary lines of psychology, politics, literature, philosophy, education, and economics to show how we bring ourselves and our cultural imaginaries simultaneously into being through the processes and pleasures of thinking beyond the confines of the personal. Book jacket.

Contents:

Chapter 1 William Blake: Prophet against Empire 1

Introduction, Twentieth-Century Blake Criticism: Northrop Frye to the Present 6

Excerpt from Mots d'Ordre: Disorder in Literary Worlds 10

Why Are We Not Roused to Action? 13

Chapter 2 A Patient Appears at the Psychiatrist's Office: The Turn to Phenomenological Psychopathology 19

Dark Affinities: The Father 22

Phenomenological Psychology and Literary Interpretation 31

The Code of Crisis and Disaster 37

Chapter 3 The World Is a Book 45

Textual Studies and the Selection of Editions 47

Meditating on a Postmodern Strategy of Reading 48

Endless Deferment: The Inequitable Melee of Events and Words 50

Chapter 4 Looking for Disorder in Literary Worlds 55

Mapping the Inconceivable: Disordering Taxonomies 57

Chapter 5 Postmodernity Is a Hoot 63

Go to Citizen Kane to Find Twentieth-Century Modernism: On the Edge of Postmodernity 72

The Deep Morals of Inglourious Basterds 86

Chapter 6 At the Theory Carnival 95

Preface to Tracing Literary Theory 97

Preface to Literary Theory's Future(s) 101

Chapter 7 Into the American Mass Psyche of the Nineties 103

Hauntings: Popular Film and American Culture 103

Hun tint; the Haunted Heart 108

Speeding to the Millennium: Film and Culture 1993-1995 111

Court and Culture: The Days of Our Life with O.J. 112

Postmodern Journeys: Film and Culture 1996-1998 117

That Rug Really Tied the Room Together 120

Memory's Orbit: Film and Culture 1999-2000 129

After September 11, 2001 132

Hearing the Ping of Poverty-or Not 137

Chapter 8 Railing through Europe: "Is This a Postmodern World?" 1995-2010 147

This is a Picture and Not the World 154

Chapter 9 A Long Journey to Find an Online Political Home 161

Truthout's Public Intellectual Project 161

Political Affairs: "From each according to his ability to each according to their work" 165

Why the Rich Get Richer and Other Truth Stones 168

Bad Subjects: Polities in Everyday Life 171

The Leftist Psyche 172

The "Free Exchange of Ideas": Our New Normal 178

Counterpunching 184

Gun Control, Illegal Aliens, Moochers, Planned Parenthood, Gay Marriages, "Big Brother" Government, and Obama 187

Chapter 10 Popular Culture: What I Did at the Movies 193

Doing the American Hustle 194

The Hateful Eight: History's Dark Bouncy 201

Chapter 11 I Roam into TV: Rebel Sons, Foodies, DBs, TV Pharmacy, and Sports 211

TVs Rebel Sons: The Anger of Deep Revolt 211

Autopsy TV 222

Food TV 227

The Emergence of Greater-than-Human Sports ... and Baseball 237

Chapter 12 Dark Affinities 243

Dark Affinities: Liberal and Neoliberal 245

The Economics of Immigration/The Politics of Seduction 253

US Higher Education: The New "Treasure Island" for Investors 258

Plutocracy, Gentrification, and Racial Violence 265

Chapter 13 Dark Imaginaries 271

What Climate Scenarios Do We Imagine? 272

A Modest Proposal, 2014 277

The Coming Transformation of Work to Leisure 285

The American Middle Class: The Politic11 Chosen People? 290

Charier 14 Portrait of Generation Next 295

To Gaga Is co Dada 297

The Twitter Moment 303

Living Backward: The Millennial Alice 312

Our Millennial Age of Magic 319

Chapter 15 Occupy Wall Street 325

Epilogue to the Kindle Publication of Occupying Here & Now: The New Class Warfare 325

Psychomachia: Battles within the Amen can Cultural Psyche 329

Chapter 16 Travels of a New Gulliver 337

In Which the Author Introduces Himself and Then Sets Out 339

The Author Is Admitted to the Academy, Inhabited by Enormous-Headed Giants; Visits the Wick, the Great Augury, and The Singularity Club; Meets a Terrorist, and Then Ends Badly 342

The Author Comes to the End of His Travels 344.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 349-351) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Natoli, Joseph P., 1943- author. Dark affinities, dark imaginaries.

ISBN:

9781438463513

1438463510

OCLC:

956263881