Latin America's leading political scientist Jorge G. Castaneda reconstructs the complicated life of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, explaining how Che ultimately transcended ideology and politics to become a counter-cultural hero and idol of American college students. photos.
One need only remember the role of Jacques Louis David in the French Revolution of 1789 and the quasi-official status of art in French national history to understand the prominence of art and artists in the Fédération des Artistes of the Paris Commune of 1871. Focusing on artists' political activities rather than their artistic efforts, Gonzalo J. Sánchez Jr. examines the artists' assembly formed in the Commune, recounts the program and activities of the group and its members, and charts their fate after the fall of the Commune and during the ensuing repression of the Communards. Departing from the tradition established by Karl Marx, which views the Commune as a precursor of revolutionary socialism, the author portrays the artists' federation as a complex mixture of conservative and reformist elements, situated at a historical crossroads. These artists—including Gustave Courbet, Jules Héreau, Edouard Lockroy, Jules Dalou, and Léon and August Ottins—were part of a tradition of artists' assemblies dating to 1789 even as they argued for radical change in artists' social status and autonomy. Many of the reforms they advocated were realized during the Third Republic, making the federation a social and political, if not an aesthetic, precursor of modernism.
Dramatic developments in the international communist world over the last decade make a reevaluation of Mao's thought from a critical left perspective an urgent task. Critical Perspectives on Mao Zedong's Thought addresses this task, challenging the dominance of conservative perspectives in China studies while presenting alternative constructions which draw on concepts and modes of discourse characteristic of left scholarship.
Here, distinguished contributors from a variety of disciplines offer a critical reevaluation of Mao Zedong's thought in light of post-Mao developments in Marxism in general, and Chinese Marxism in particular. Conceptually, the essays share common ground in viewing Mao's Marxism as a third world revolutionary Marxism, and fall broadly into two areas: the relationship of Mao Zedong's thought to the Marxist tradition, and the place of Mao Zedong's thought within a Third World revolutionary discourse. At its broadest, the goal of this volume is to examine the relationship between Marxism as a product of the European historical experience, and its unfolding globablly with the globalization of capitalism.
The book, which has no parallel in either the themes addressed or the range of specialists it draws upon, should be of interest to students of China, of Marxism, and of Third World revolutionary movements. Given China's rapid economic development and its emergence as the central figure on the world's economic stage, this book will also be of interest to the educated layperson.
To "Herland" and Beyond is Ann J. Lane's perceptive biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, one of America's most important fin-de-siecle feminists. Drawing from an abundance of diaries, letters, essays, and two autobiographies- one published and one unpublished- Lane contends that her subject's inner life can be traced through the major relationships that gave form to her personality. Accordingly, instead of being a straightforward chronology of Gilman's life, the book is divided into chapters reflecting her relationships with her parents, closest female friends, two husbands, her neurologist, and finally her daughter. Of particular significance and interest ar ethe author's analysis of the intellectual legacy of Gilman's writings and an engaging meditation on Lane's own role as biographer that manifests her affection for her subject.
