Deconstructing Prehumanity

Deconstructing Prehumanity is an investigation into the role of archaeological perception in the construction of race. It explores how social knowledge and disciplinary subjectivity have shaped our organization of the human past and how this organization and its lexicon have fueled racialism.

This important book offers a critical and timely reassessment of one of the cornerstones of analytical psychology, Jung’s concept of archetypes. Exploring not only Jung’s original writings but also the range of interpretations used by Jungian scholars today, the book argues that Jung’s conceptualization of archetype theory is not a single coherent theory; rather, it is four different theories which must be understood separately. Roesler goes onto deconstruct these four ideas: the biological, the anthropological, the transcendental and the psychological in context with contemporary insights from each of these disciplines. A thorough analysis of the state of knowledge in the respective disciplines (i.e. biology, anthropology, religious and mythological studies) makes clear that the claims archetype theory makes in these fields have no support and should be given up. Deconstructing Archetype Theory concludes by arguing that a universal process of psychological transformation is the only part of archetype theory which should be maintained, as it provides a map for psychotherapy. Rigorous and insightful, this is a book that will fascinate scholars and practitioners of analytical psychology, as well as anyone with an interest in Jung’s original work.

Neoclassical economists assume that people act to maximize their well-being: they choose based on their desires and only desire what they will like. Neuroscientists and psychologists disagree. Their research demonstrates that cues and evolutionary quirks cause people to act against their best interests, even choosing alternatives they will not like. In this book, Edward R. Morey contrasts neoclassical choice theory with behavioral models and findings in psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and animal behavior. The book addresses the fundamental idea within economics that behaviors are chosen, and it explains why other disciplines disagree. The chapters touch on modeling behavior, judging behavior, and policies. Morey breaks down judgment using the ethics of welfare economics, and it compares and contrasts this recognized approach with others, including Mill’s liberalism, virtue ethics, duty-based ethics, Buddhist ethics, and utilitarianism.

This book examines the complex dynamics of India-Pakistan relations, by situating the same in the postcolonial setting of the subcontinent. In pursuit of this, the book analyses the impact of the linkages between the postcolonial processes of state-making and the structuring of political communities, upon the evolution of the problématique of state security in South Asia. For the purpose of undertaking this task, the author deconstructs the countries’ colonial history, with an aim to mapp its impact on the making of the foreign policy of Pakistan. Drawing primarily from colonial discourse theory and historical sociology, the book links the trajectory of Pakistan’s international politics, to its domestic politics and “weak state” inheritances. By doing this, it offers a stimulating treatment of the history of the country’s troubled postcolonial relations with India. This has been done in the book, by presenting the modes by which the religio-military and politico-bureaucratic classes that constitute the power elite in Pakistan, tended to have moulded an India-centred State security problématique. This book will be of interest to researchers studying South Asian security, India-Pakistan relations and the defence and foreign policy of Pakistan.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In a Rationalist Critique of Deconstruction, Morgan A. Brown engages in the most thorough criticism of Deconstruction and Structuralism to date, working from the standpoint of rationalist philosophy. Not only does he outline exactly what Deconstruction is, but he also outlines the methodology at the root of Jacques Derrida's pet philosophy of language. Brown draws amply from the insights of Austrian Economics in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek, and guides the reader through his critique with a self-consistent structure of methodical argumentation. Part epistemology, part linguistics, and part microeconomic theory, the book is a veritable textbook for the Humanities and a handy reference for the libertarian and conservative intellectual. Deconstruction is best examined through the lens of microeconomic rationalism, since Derrida's theory is at base a literary incarnation of Vilfredo Pareto's Indifference Theory.

Leading media scholars consider the social and cultural changes that come with the contemporary development of ubiquitous computing. Ubiquitous computing and our cultural life promise to become completely interwoven: technical currents feed into our screen culture of digital television, video, home computers, movies, and high-resolution advertising displays. Technology has become at once larger and smaller, mobile and ambient. In Throughout, leading writers on new media--including Jay David Bolter, Mark Hansen, N. Katherine Hayles, and Lev Manovich--take on the crucial challenges that ubiquitous and pervasive computing pose for cultural theory and criticism. The thirty-four contributing researchers consider the visual sense and sensations of living with a ubicomp culture; electronic sounds from the uncanny to the unremarkable; the effects of ubicomp on communication, including mobility, transmateriality, and infinite availability; general trends and concrete specificities of interaction designs; the affectivity in ubicomp experiences, including performances; context awareness; and claims on the "real" in the use of such terms as "augmented reality" and "mixed reality."

Revising her Ph.D. dissertation in comparative literature for the University of North Carolina, where she now teaches, Zeng deconstructs Chinese natural philosophy into time, self, and language, with time as the primary rupture that triggers the other two. She considers a variety of art forms, including Taoism and Zen Buddhism, classical Chinese painting, the novel The Dream of the Red Chamber, the contemporary film Farewell, My Concubine, linguistic characteristics of classical Chinese poetry, and modern American poetry. Then she analyzes in detail the work of several classical Chinese poets. The text is double spaced. Annotation :2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).