The
author takes us on a fascinating journey into one of the most mesmerizingly
contradictory megalopolis of the world: Tehran, the capital city of Iran.
From
the beautiful anecdotes about “nude watching” in the public baths of pre-modern
Iran, to the hustle and bustle in the ultra-modern shopping malls of today,
this book is an ode to Tehran and a complete guide into its labyrinthine
political and social forces at the same time.
As a scholar, but also as someone
who visited Tehran several times, this book will always be a reminder of why this
place has had such a unique influence on so many people from East and West,
North and South.
All the more, perhaps, because the book was preceded by
tragedy as the young author died in an avalanche while mountain climbing at the
tender age of 37.
Tehran, the capital of Iran since the late eighteenth century, is now one of the largest cities in the Middle East. Exploring Tehran's development from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Ashkan Rezvani Naraghi paints a vibrant picture of a city undergoing rapid and dynamic social transformation. Rezvani Naraghi demonstrates that this shift was the product of a developing discourse around spatial knowledge, in which the West became the model for the social practices of the state and sections of Iranian society. As traditional social spaces, such as coffee houses, bathhouses, and mosques, were replaced by European-style cafes, theatres, and…
I
finally managed to read this book en route from Cambridge to London – my usual
commute to the SOAS office, which has helped with reading the amount of books
indicated above, especially during train strikes.
Okay, the book is Eurocentric
like most Western philosophy, and yes, it should have had more exposure to other
‘magicians’ of thought.
But in entertaining and repeatedly hilarious prose,
Eilenberger teases out some extremely interesting anecdotes of some of the most prominent minds of human history: philosophers such as Walter Benjamin, Martin
Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Ernst Cassirer who shaped almost everything
that we know. Their knowledge appears in places that you and I never expected.
AN ECONOMIST, GUARDIAN AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR
A gripping narrative of the intertwined lives of the four philosophers whose ideas reshaped the twentieth century
The year is 1919. Walter Benjamin flees his overbearing father to scrape a living as a critic. Ludwig Wittgenstein, scion of one of Europe's wealthiest families, signs away his inheritance, seeking spiritual clarity. Martin Heidegger renounces his faith and aligns his fortunes with Husserl's phenomenological school. Ernst Cassirer sketches a new schema of human culture on a cramped Berlin tram. The stage is set for a great intellectual drama. Over the next decade…
Not
so much the book that I have read but most, if not all, of the essays that will
be contained therein. These are true classics written by one of the greatest
minds of the 20th century: Anibal Quijano.
The words of caution
expressed by this world-famous Peruvian intellectual resonate with me today,
precisely because they presaged the age of “untruth” that we are living in.
Quijano
was something that we rarely find these days: A true humanist who coined pivotal
concepts such as “coloniality of power” and “coloniality of knowledge” that are
celebrating a much-deserved global revival as a part of the “decolonization”
movement that has merged with several other global movements for social and
political emancipation.
Duke University Press will publish the best and the
brightest essays of Quijano in the next year under the poignant title: Aníbal
Quijano: Foundational Essays on the Coloniality of Power – Pre-ordered!
How did racism creep into the algorithms that govern our daily lives, from banking and shopping, to job applications?
Connecting the legacy of enlightenment racism to forms of discrimination in modern-day algorithms and Artificial Intelligence, this volume examines what data feeds into AI technology - and how this data will shape the future of humanity.
Delving into the narratives enveloping the development of AI systems, with a particular emphasis on "tech-giants" and the ideas of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Bill Gates, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam explains how and why technology aids and abets various forms of extremism, entrenches social hierarchies and discriminatory boundaries and how this will impact international security and human rights in the future.
