Plasti E Cological Thinking Working Out An Infra Structural Geoerotics

This monograph, 'Plasti(e)cological Thinking: Working out an (Infra)structural Geoerotics,' seeks to put forward ‘plasti(e)cological thinking’ as an advanced and ‘new’ epistemic framework which can facilitate readers to think beyond the stratified planetarity that ends up breaking the earth down into territories and strata, blocs and codes, fragments and pieces, ‘sides’ and ‘besides.’ ‘Plasti(e)cological thinking’ is at once grounded in the logics of ‘deterritorialization’ and ‘rhizomatics’ thereby calling the structured and well-thought-out ways of looking into planetary phenomena into question and at times contingent upon the pervasive trajectories of ‘zoe-politics’ which enables it to cut across varied segmentarities on the ‘Plane of Consistency’. Divided into three chapters, this book draws on critical theory, continental thinking, and certain Indian eco-texts to put a spotlight on the nuanced operation of ‘plasti(e)cological thinking’. In a nutshell, this book stands wedded to the production of the ‘new’ and is a contribution to the domain of planetary thinking.

Emerging concerns and contexts of geological thinking seek to bring out how energopolitical interventions into the geokinetic "unfolding" of the Earth assume new dimensions and directions, owing to the complex and evolving intersections between "folds" and "fluxes" of energy in the context of oceans. Written in negotiation with the notion of energopolitics articulated by Dominic Boyer, Remapping Energopolitics calls for ruling out any epistemic attempt to structure the rhizomatic movements of energy through the transformations of oceans. Aiming to delve deeper into the complex junctures among energy, ocean and earth(ing), epistemic ends of Blue Humanities are reworked with the help of geophilosophical reading of some Sri Lankan minor writings and in doing so, Remapping Energopolitics makes a series of attempts to reconceptualize "energy thinking" in line with the differential and deterritorial grammatology of Deleuzo-Guattarian micropolitics, thereby offering a critique of the structured and stratified understandings of "energy linkages".

This volume explores film and television for children and youth. While children’s film and television vary in form and content from country to country, their youth audience, ranging from infants to “screenagers”, is the defining feature of the genre and is written into the DNA of the medium itself. This collection offers a contemporary analysis of film and television designed for this important audience, with particular attention to new directions evident in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. With examples drawn from Iran, China, Korea, India, Israel, Eastern Europe, the Philippines, and France, as well as from the United States and the United Kingdom, contributors address a variety of issues ranging from content to production, distribution, marketing, and the use of film, both as object and medium, in education. Through a diverse consideration of media for young infants up to young adults, this volume reveals the newest trends in children’s film and television and its role as both a source of entertainment and pedagogy.

This volume provides a key analysis of Asian children’s literature and film and creates a dialogue between East and West and between the cultures from which they emerge, within the complex symbiosis of their local, national and transnational frameworks. In terms of location and content the book embraces a broad scope, including contributions related to the Asian-American diaspora, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Taiwan. Individually and collectively, these essays broach crucial questions: What elements of Asian literature and film make them distinctive, both within their own specific culture and within the broader Asian area? What aspects link them to these genres in other parts of the world? How have they represented and shaped the societies and cultures they inhabit? What moral codes do they address, underpin, or contest? The volume provides further voice to the increasingly diverse and fascinating output of the region and emphasises the importance of Asian art forms as depictions of specific cultures but also of their connection to broader themes in children’s texts, and scholarship within this field.

With intense and violent portrayals of death becoming ever more common on television and in cinema and the growth of death-centric movies, series, texts, songs, and video clips attracting a wide and enthusiastic global reception, we might well ask whether death has ceased to be a taboo. What makes thanatic themes so desirable in popular culture? Do representations of the macabre and gore perpetuate or sublimate violent desires? Has contemporary popular culture removed our unease with death? Can social media help us cope with our mortality, or can music and art present death as an aesthetic phenomenon? This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the discussion of the social, cultural, aesthetic, and theoretical aspects of the ways in which popular culture understands, represents, and manages death, bringing together contributions from around the world focused on television, cinema, popular literature, social media and the internet, art, music, and advertising.

In a coastline as long and diverse as India’s, fish inhabit the heart of many worlds — food of course, but also culture, commerce, sport, history and society. Journeying along the edge of the peninsula, Samanth Subramanian reports upon a kaleidoscope of extraordinary stories. In nine essays, Following Fish conducts rich journalistic investigations: among others, of the famed fish treatment for asthmatics in Hyderabad; of the preparation and the process of eating West Bengal’s prized hilsa; of the ancient art of building fishing boats in Gujarat; of the fiery cuisine and the singular spirit of Kerala’s toddy shops; of the food and the lives of Mumbai’s first peoples; of the history of an old Catholic fishing community in Tamil Nadu; of the hunt for the world’s fastest fish near Goa. Throughout his travels, Subramanian observes the cosmopolitanism and diverse influences absorbed by India’s coastal societies, the withdrawing of traditional fishermen from their craft, the corresponding growth of fishing as pure and voluminous commerce, and the degradation of waters and beaches from over-fishing. Pulsating with pleasure, adventure and discovery, and tempered by nostalgia and loss, Following Fish speaks as eloquently to the armchair traveler as to lovers of the sea and its lore.

"A spellbinding work of literature, Latitudes of Longing follows the interconnected lives of characters searching for true intimacy. The novel sweeps across India, from an island, to a valley, a city, and a snow desert to tell a love story of epic proportions. We follow a scientist who studies trees and a clairvoyant who speaks to them; a geologist working to end futile wars over a glacier; octogenarian lovers; a mother struggling to free her revolutionary son; a yeti who seeks human companionship; a turtle who transforms first into a boat and then a woman; and the ghost of an evaporated ocean as restless as the continents. Binding them all together is a vision of life as vast as the universe itself. A young writer awarded one of the most prestigious prizes in India for this novel, Shubhangi Swarup is a storyteller of extraordinary talent and insight. Richly imaginative and wryly perceptive, Latitudes of Longing offers a soaring view of humanity: our beauty and ugliness, our capacity to harm and love each other, and our mysterious and sacred relationship with nature"--

Winner of the Macmillan Prize for African Adult Fiction An uncompromising novel by one of Africa's premiere writers, detailing the horrors of civil war in luminous, haunting prose In 1980, after decades of guerilla war against colonial rule, Rhodesia earned its hard-fought-for independence from Britain. Less than two years thereafter when Mugabe rose to power in the new Zimbabwe, it signaled the begining of brutal civil unrest that would last nearly a half decade more. With The Stone Virgins Yvonne Vera examines the dissident movement from the perspective of two sisters living in a small township outside of Bulawayo. In a portrait painted in successive impressions of life before and after the liberation, Vera explores the quest for dignity and a centered existence against a backdrop of unimaginable violence; the twin instincts of survival and love; the rival pulls of township and city life; and mankind's capacity for terror, beauty, and sacrifice. One sister will find a reason for hope. One will not make it through alive. Weaving historical fact within a story of grand passions and striking endurance, Vera has gifted us with a powerful and provocative testament to the resilience of the Zimbabwean people.