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Overview
The readings in this section explore the very nature of existential insecurity. In other words, what happens when structures are threatened? What happens when entities, whether they be individuals, governments, or companies, start to feel themselves crumble?
The existential insecurity often results when there is competition for scarce resources.
Often, it arises from power struggles.
At other times, the insecurity results simply from the fact that two quite distinct ways of knowing / being / thinking come into collision with each other.
Instead of becoming flexible and/or malleable, it often means that the entities become rigid as they feel threatened. This can result in very dangerous situations -- and, history is filled with examples.
Can you think of historical examples? What major value systems were on a collision course with each other? Why? When? What would you have done?
Readings
THEORETICAL BASES
Bakunin, Mikhail. pages 90 - 110 in Statism and Anarchy. ed. Marshall Shatz. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1990.
READINGS & CASE STUDIES
MODERNITY AND SELF-IDENTITY: Anthony Giddens // Identity Resources
"THE ENEMY WITHIN" CONCEPT -- HOW DOES THAT BEGIN?
"The Enemy Within" by James T. Patterson -- The Atlantic Monthly Online
MUSIC
Cat Stevens
Why Cat Stevens Left the Music Business
Public Enemy: One of the most controversial and influential groups in rap music? *** ADVISORY -- LANGUAGE
Public Enemy: lyrics to "Kevorkian" ***
ADVISORY -- LANGUAGE IS VERY OFFENSIVE IN PUBLIC ENEMY'S WORK
FILM & TELEVISION
Far From Heaven (2002) (dir. Todd Haynes)
Brazil (1985) Terry Gilliam, director and screenwriter. First-draft screenplay entitled: The Ministry of Torture, or Brazil, or How I Learned to Live with the System - So Far
LITERATURE -- PROSE
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World -- "A Defense of Paradise Engineering"
Backgrounds for George Orwell's 1984
Summary of George Orwell's 1984
Conrad, Joseph
from "The Secret Agent" (1907)
Chapter 4
POETRY
Aime Cesaire
An Excerpt from "Notebook on a Return to a Native Land"
Nazim Hikmet
"Some Advice to Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison"
Sylvia Plath (knowing through archetypal myth -- rebirth, etc.)
"Lady Lazarus" (1962)
Thomas Hardy
"Channel Firing" (the world is as it used to be -- it's just practice)
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