Publication date:
18 March 2014Length of book:
148 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
228x152mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780739192887
The concepts that organize our thinking wield, by virtue of this fact, a great deal of political power. This book looks at five concepts whose dominion has increased, steadily, during the bourgeois period of modernity: Labor, Time, Property, Value, and Crisis. These ruling ideas are central not only to many academic disciplines— from philosophy and law to the political, social, and economic sciences— but also to everyday life.
These ruling ideas explain the cultural attitudes of boredom and multitasking, revealing the inescapable internalized consciousness of time that has become a mode of political domination. They also explain the terrifying environmental problem of privatized property in water and the terrifying humanitarian problem of privatized property in human bodies and body parts. Finally, they explain the affective dimensions of the housing crisis, and especially why capitalism cultivates the desire to own a home that is beyond one’s means.
These ruling ideas explain the cultural attitudes of boredom and multitasking, revealing the inescapable internalized consciousness of time that has become a mode of political domination. They also explain the terrifying environmental problem of privatized property in water and the terrifying humanitarian problem of privatized property in human bodies and body parts. Finally, they explain the affective dimensions of the housing crisis, and especially why capitalism cultivates the desire to own a home that is beyond one’s means.
In her engaging and engaged new book, Amy E. Wendling subjects five clusters of ‘ruling ideas’ in bourgeois societies to illuminating critiques. Probing the economic, political, social, and ethical implications of labor, time, property, value, and crisis, she locates these concepts historically, explores their ontological and epistemological underpinnings, and, in often surprising and thought-provoking ways, identifies their implications for everyday practices and large-scale crises. The author shows how ruling ideas are grounded in and transform social relations, are embodied and ingrained, provoke resistance and rebellion, and generate paradoxes and contradictions. The result is a powerful and accessible critique of ruling ideas and their role in sustaining inequality, domination, and injustice.