Beneficiary

AvBruce Robbins

Häftad, Engelska, 2017

388 kr

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Beskrivning

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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2017-12-08
Mått:152 x 229 x 13 mm
Vikt:272 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:200
Förlag:Duke University Press
ISBN:9780822370215

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Mer om författaren

Bruce Robbins is Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and the author and editor of several books, including Perpetual War: Cosmopolitanism from the Viewpoint of Violence, also published by Duke University Press, and Upward Mobility and the Common Good: Toward a Literary History of the Welfare State. Robbins has written for The Nation, n+1, and other publications.

Recensioner i media

"In The Beneficiary, Bruce Robbins wants to make room for the note of guilt in our songs of gratitude. Who is a beneficiary? Robbins’s answer is that it is probably you. . . . Perhaps in the future tallying up the planetary cost of national happiness will become so painful we’ll give up that thought experiment altogether. But if Robbins has his way, we’ll not only still be thinking globally - we’ll live in a world that makes doing so tolerable." - Christina Lupton (Los Angeles Review of Books) "The Beneficiary succeeds brilliantly in focusing its readers on the urgencies of our time." - Michael Rothberg (Contemporary Literature)

Innehållsförteckning

Acknowledgments ixIntroduction 11. The Starving Child 152. You Acquiesce In It: George Orwell on the System 333. A Short History of Commodity Recognition 514. The Nation-State as Agent of Cosmopolitanism 755. Naomi Klein's Love Story 936. Life Will Win 117Conclusion: You Can't Handle the Truth 139Notes 155Bibliography 169Index 177