Spirit and System: Media, Intellectuals, and the Dialectic in Modern German Culture - Softcover

Boyer, Dominic

 
9780226068916: Spirit and System: Media, Intellectuals, and the Dialectic in Modern German Culture

Inhaltsangabe

Combining ethnography, history, and social theory, Dominic Boyer's Spirit and System exposes how the shifting fortunes and social perceptions of German intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries influenced Germans' conceptions of modernity and national culture.

Boyer analyzes the creation and mediation of the social knowledge of "German-ness" from nineteenth-century university culture and its philosophies of history, to the media systems and redemptive public cultures of the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic, to the present-day experiences of former East German journalists seeking to explain life in post-unification Germany. Throughout this study, Boyer reveals how dialectical knowledge of "German-ness"—that is, knowledge that emphasizes a cultural tension between an inner "spirit" and an external "system" of social life —is modeled unconsciously upon intellectuals' self-knowledge as it tracks their fluctuation between alienation and utopianism in their interpretations of nation and modernity.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dominic Boyer is assistant professor of anthropology at Cornell University.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Combining ethnography, history, and social theory, Dominic Boyer's Spirit and System exposes how the shifting fortunes and social perceptions of German intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries influenced Germans' conceptions of modernity and national culture.

Boyer analyzes the creation and mediation of the social knowledge of "Germanness" from nineteenth-century university culture and its philosophies of history, to the media systems and redemptive public cultures of the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic, to the present-day experiences of former East German journalists seeking to explain life in post-unification Germany. Throughout this study, Boyer reveals how dialectical knowledge of "Germanness"--that is, knowledge that emphasizes a cultural tension between an inner "spirit" and an external "system" of social life--is modeled unconsciously upon intellectuals' self-knowledge as he tracks their fluctuation between alienation and utopianism in their interpretations of nation and modernity across two centuries.

Aus dem Klappentext

Combining ethnography, history, and social theory, Dominic Boyer&;s Spirit and System exposes how the shifting fortunes and social perceptions of German intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries influenced Germans&; conceptions of modernity and national culture.

Boyer analyzes the creation and mediation of the social knowledge of &;Germanness&; from nineteenth-century university culture and its philosophies of history, to the media systems and redemptive public cultures of the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic, to the present-day experiences of former East German journalists seeking to explain life in post-unification Germany. Throughout this study, Boyer reveals how dialectical knowledge of &;Germanness&;&;that is, knowledge that emphasizes a cultural tension between an inner &;spirit&; and an external &;system&; of social life&;is modeled unconsciously upon intellectuals&; self-knowledge as he tracks their fluctuation between alienation and utopianism in their interpretations of nation and modernity across two centuries.
 

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels