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Robbins' cultural criticism, in other words, affords us much more than an understanding of how culture \"shapes our lives.\" Instead, Robbins shows, particularly in his discussions of Martha Nussbaum, Richard Rorty, Susan Sontag, Michael Walzer and others, how \"culture\" itself has become a term that blocks—for commentators on both the right and the left—serious engagement with the contemporary cosmopolitan ideal of a nonuniversalist discourse of human rights.   Rescuing \"cosmopolitanism\" itself from its connotations of leisured individuals loyal to no one and willing to sample all cultures at will, Feeling Global presents a compelling way to think about the ethical obligations of intellectuals at a time when their place in the new world order is profoundly uncertain.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49540542726417,"sku":"GOR008257804","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52427546788113,"sku":"NLS9780814775141","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53348072325393,"sku":"GOR014865080","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0814775144.jpg?v=1763220138"},{"product_id":"secular-vocations-book-bruce-robbins-9780860916307","title":"Secular Vocations","description":"During the 1980s, university-based intellectuals came under heavy fire from both radicals and conservatives. They were accused by the former of betraying their public duty as general critics of society, and by the latter of promulgating radical ideologies and corrupting the young. In this work, the author counters both left and right, arguing that the professionalization of literary study was inevitable and fortuitous. Robbins undertakes close studies of such figures as Edward Said, Fredric Jameson and Raymond Williams, while considering the major trends in contemporary cultural studies and giving significant attention to relevant developments in such disciplines as ethnology and sociology. Secular Vocations ranges over materials from Britain, France and the US, knitting them together in a synthesis that places, in bold relief, many of the major controversies in contemporary intellectual life. It concludes with a plea for what Robbins calls \"comparative cosmopolitanism\" to displace the more militantly particularist projects that have come to dominate the human sciences.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49973783494929,"sku":"CIN0860916308G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50406822510865,"sku":"CIN0860916308VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50574733738257,"sku":"GOR014002782","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0860916308.jpg?v=1751170786"},{"product_id":"phantom-public-sphere-book-bruce-robbins-9780816621262","title":"The Phantom Public Sphere","description":"In the recent “culture wars” over canon, curriculum, and multiculturalism, enraged voices repeatedly claim that the academy has failed in its duty to “the public.”  These cries echo older charges against the schools and the media for failing to produce active, informed citizens and, more recently, against race and gender politics for dividing the body politic against itself.  The Phantom Public Sphere interrogates the concept of the public in whose name all such charges are leveled.  The public sphere is presented as something already lost, an unrepresented absence.  In the heterogeneous, electronically mediated society we call postmodern, can we still speak meaningfully of a public sphere?  On the other hand, can supporters of democracy afford not to speak of it?  In The Phantom Public Sphere, voices from numerous disciplines and perspectives share a common concern with what the public means now - not as an object of nostalgia, but as a presence within the institutions, movements, and  events that have redefined contemporary life, including Jesse Helm’s censorship campaign and the televised Senate hearing that made the names of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill household words.  Provocative and disturbing, The Phantom Public Sphere both engages the challenge Walter Lippmann posed for democracy in 1925 when he called the public a “phantom” and speaks in the name of democracy and its radical possibilities.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50206894162193,"sku":"CIN0816621268G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50445664354577,"sku":"GOR013953789","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0816621268.jpg?v=1751169661"},{"product_id":"criticism-and-politics-book-bruce-robbins-9781503633209","title":"Criticism and Politics","description":"An accessible introduction to cultural theory and an original polemic about the purpose of criticism.   What is criticism for? Over the past few decades, impassioned disagreements over that question in the academy have burst into the news media. These conflicts have renewed the culture wars over the legacy of the 1960s, becoming entangled in national politics and leading to a new set of questions about critics and the power they do or don't wield.    Re-examining theorists from Matthew Arnold to Walter Benjamin, to Fredric Jameson, Stuart Hall, and Hortense Spillers, Criticism and Politics explores the animating contradictions that have long propelled literary studies: between pronouncing judgment and engaging in philosophical critique, between democracy and expertise, between political commitment and aesthetic autonomy. Both a leftist critic and a critic of the left, Robbins unflinchingly defends criticism from those who might wish to de-politicize it, arguing that working for change is not optional for critics, but rather a core part of their job description.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50338137178385,"sku":"CIN1503633209G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51031590568209,"sku":"NIN9781503633209","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51424474824977,"sku":"CIN1503633209VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1503633209.jpg?v=1757413523"},{"product_id":"perpetual-war-book-bruce-robbins-9780822352099","title":"Perpetual War","description":"For two decades Bruce Robbins has been a theorist of and participant in the movement for a \"new cosmopolitanism,\" an appreciation of the varieties of multiple belonging that emerge as peoples and cultures interact. In Perpetual War he takes stock of this movement, rethinking his own commitment and reflecting on the responsibilities of American intellectuals today. In this era of seemingly endless U.S. warfare, Robbins contends that the declining economic and political hegemony of the United States will tempt it into blaming other nations for its problems and lashing out against them.Under these conditions, cosmopolitanism in the traditional sense—primary loyalty to the good of humanity as a whole, even if it conflicts with loyalty to the interests of one's own nation—becomes a necessary resource in the struggle against military aggression. To what extent does the \"new\" cosmopolitanism also include or support this \"old\" cosmopolitanism? In an attempt to answer this question, Robbins engages with such thinkers as Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Anthony Appiah, Immanuel Wallerstein, Louis Menand, W. G. Sebald, and Slavoj Zizek. The paradoxes of detachment and belonging they embody, he argues, can help define the tasks of American intellectuals in an era when the first duty of the cosmopolitan is to resist the military aggression perpetrated by his or her own country.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50430954602769,"sku":"CIN0822352095G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52740364173585,"sku":"NIN9780822352099","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0822352095.jpg?v=1752316411"},{"product_id":"beneficiary-book-bruce-robbins-9780822370215","title":"The Beneficiary","description":"From iPhones and clothing to jewelry and food, the products those of us in the developed world consume and enjoy exist only through the labor and suffering of countless others. In his new book Bruce Robbins examines the implications of this dynamic for humanitarianism and social justice. He locates the figure of the \"beneficiary\" in the history of humanitarian thought, which asks the prosperous to help the poor without requiring them to recognize their causal role in the creation of the abhorrent conditions they seek to remedy. Tracing how the beneficiary has manifested itself in the work of George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Jamaica Kincaid, Naomi Klein, and others, Robbins uncovers a hidden tradition of economic cosmopolitanism. There are no easy answers to the question of how to confront systematic inequality on a global scale. But the first step, Robbins suggests, is to acknowledge that we are, in fact, beneficiaries.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50834572476689,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50834572738833,"sku":"GOR009335942","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52471005544721,"sku":"CIN0822370212VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53035347018001,"sku":"NIN9780822370215","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53631509397777,"sku":"CIN0822370212G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0822370212.jpg?v=1763480689"},{"product_id":"criticism-and-politics-book-bruce-robbins-9781503630192","title":"Criticism and Politics","description":"An accessible introduction to cultural theory and an original polemic about the purpose of criticism.   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Both a leftist critic and a critic of the left, Robbins unflinchingly defends criticism from those who might wish to de-politicize it, arguing that working for change is not optional for critics, but rather a core part of their job description.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51031639654673,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51031641391377,"sku":"NIN9781503630192","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1503630196.jpg?v=1757414862"},{"product_id":"atrocity-book-bruce-robbins-9781503640559","title":"Atrocity","description":"Exploring literary representations of mass violence, Bruce Robbins traces the emergence of a cosmopolitan recognition of atrocity.    Mass violence did not always have a name. Like conquest, what we think of now as atrocities have not always invited indignation or been seen to violate moral norms. Venturing from the Bible to Zadie Smith, Robbins explores the literature of suffering, to show how, over time, abhorrence of mass violence takes shape. With it comes the emergence of a necessary element of cosmopolitanism: the ability to look at one's own nation with the critical eyes of a stranger.   Drawing on a vast written archive and with penetrating insight, Robbins takes up such literary representations of violence as Bartolomé de las Casas's account of his fellow Spaniards' atrocities, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Grimmelshausen's 1668 novel Simplicissimus, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Homero Aridjis's short novel Smyrna in Flames, and Tolstoy's Hadji Murat. These essential texts do more than simply testify to atrocious acts. In their literariness, they take the risk of contextualizing and relativizing, thereby extending beyond the legal paradigm of accusation. They recognize atrocity as a moral scandal about which something should be done and can be done, while they also place that scandal within a larger and more uncertain history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51235326755089,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51235326918929,"sku":"NGR9781503640559","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52111530721553,"sku":"NIN9781503640559","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1503640558.jpg?v=1757413538"},{"product_id":"servant-s-hand-book-bruce-robbins-9780822313977","title":"The Servant's Hand","description":"A work of innovative literary and cultural history, The Servant's Hand  examines the representation of servants in nineteenth-century British fiction. Wandering in the margins of these texts that are not about them, servants are visible only as anachronistic appendages to their masters and as functions of traditional narrative form.  Yet their persistence, Robbins argues, signals more than the absence of the \"ordinary people\" they are taken to represent.  Robbins's argument offers a new and distinctive approach to the literary analysis of class, while it also bodies forth a revisionist counterpolitics to the realist tradition from Homer to Virginia Woolf.  Originally published in 1986 (Columbia University Press), The Servant's Hand is appearing for the first time in paperback.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51453272031505,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51453272391953,"sku":"CIN0822313979G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0822313979.jpg?v=1752317517"},{"product_id":"cosmopolitanisms-book-bruce-robbins-9781479829682","title":"Cosmopolitanisms","description":"An indispensable collection that re-examines what it means to belong in the world.     \"Where are you from?\" The word cosmopolitan was first used as a way of evading exactly this question, when Diogenes the Cynic declared himself a \"kosmo-polites,\" or citizen of the world. Cosmopolitanism displays two impulses—on the one hand, a detachment from one's place of origin, while on the other, an assertion of membership in some larger, more compelling collective.   Cosmopolitanisms works from the premise that there is more than one kind of cosmopolitanism, a plurality that insists cosmopolitanism can no longer stand as a single ideal against which all smaller loyalties and forms of belonging are judged. Rather, cosmopolitanism can be defined as one of many possible modes of life, thought, and sensibility that are produced when commitments and loyalties are multiple and overlapping. Featuring essays by major thinkers, including Homi Bhabha, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Thomas Bender, Leela Gandhi, Ato Quayson, and David Hollinger, among others, this collection asks what these plural cosmopolitanisms have in common, and how the cosmopolitanisms of the underprivileged might serve the ethical values and political causes that matter to their members. In addition to exploring the philosophy of Kant and the space of the city, this volume focuses on global justice, which asks what cosmopolitanism is good for, and on the global south, which has often been assumed to be an object of cosmopolitan scrutiny, not itself a source or origin of cosmopolitanism.   This book gives a new meaning to belonging and its ground-breaking arguments call for deep and necessary discussion and discourse.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52146475663633,"sku":"NLS9781479829682","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781479829682.jpg?v=1761387500"},{"product_id":"feeling-global-book-bruce-robbins-9780814775134","title":"Feeling Global","description":"Whether global culture is merely a pale and sinister reflection of capitalist globalization is among the questions addressed in this text on nationalism, culturalism, and the role of intellectuals in the age of globalization.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52426680566033,"sku":"NLS9780814775134","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780814775134.jpg?v=1759158638"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-bruce-robbins.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}