How Long to Read The Postcolonial Present

How Long Does it Take to Read The Postcolonial Present?

It takes the average reader 4 hours and 44 minutes to read The Postcolonial Present by Duy Lap Nguyen

Assuming a reading speed of 250 words per minute. Learn more

Description

This dissertation explores what Walter Benjamin described as the messianic possibility of a "real state of exception" in relation to the war in Vietnam, a conflict which has been characterized as the longest state of emergency in modern world history and the most emblematic example of the failure of decolonization to actualize the ideals of the French Revolution and the European Enlightenment. In Benjamin's writings, the notion of a "real state of exception" is related to the Marxian critique of capitalism, or what Benjamin referred to as Marx's "prognosis" on the "conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself." For Marx, these conditions include the increase of "disposable time" created by industrial capitalism. The introduction to the dissertation will examine the connection between Marx's concept of disposable time and Benjamin's notion of historical suspension in a "real state of exception." For Marx, the increase in disposable time made possible by machinery is both the condition for a post-capitalist society as well as the cause of economic catastrophe. For Benjamin, similarly, the utopian possibilities of machinery are accompanied by the continual threat of a technological "imperialist warfare" used in order to preserve the existing property system under capitalism. This dissertation examines the war in Vietnam as an instance of "imperialist warfare," a conflict whose most horrifying features arise from the excess of disposable time and material wealth used in waging the war. Chapter one analyzes the uses of disposable time by National Liberation Front in the practice of the indoctrination, employed in the production of political subjects and historical agents. Chapter two examines mass culture in the urban, Non-communist South during the war. Drawing on Benjamin's analysis of mechanical reproducibility and his diagnosis of the proximity of catastrophe to human redemption, the chapter attempts to identify the possibility of a new kind of mass politics in what communist critics have characterized as the most disastrous effect of "American neocolonialism:" the purportedly demoralizing impact of mass media on the urban South Vietnamese population. Chapter three presents an interpretation of Bao Ninh's Sorrow of War. In the novel, the possibility of human redemption is identified paradoxically with what Benjamin called the most "horrifying feature ... of imperialist warfare," the meaningless and anonymous mass death that imperialist warfare produces. For the main character in the novel, the impossibility of properly mourning the millions of lives lost in the war becomes the very occasion for a peculiar form of redemption, one in which the dead are saved not by remembrance or historical recollection, but rather by means a literary-historiographical practice that fictionalizes their memory and suspends the impulse to memorialize.

How long is The Postcolonial Present?

The Postcolonial Present by Duy Lap Nguyen is 282 pages long, and a total of 71,064 words.

This makes it 95% the length of the average book. It also has 87% more words than the average book.

How Long Does it Take to Read The Postcolonial Present Aloud?

The average oral reading speed is 183 words per minute. This means it takes 6 hours and 28 minutes to read The Postcolonial Present aloud.

What Reading Level is The Postcolonial Present?

The Postcolonial Present is suitable for students ages 12 and up.

Note that there may be other factors that effect this rating besides length that are not factored in on this page. This may include things like complex language or sensitive topics not suitable for students of certain ages.

When deciding what to show young students always use your best judgement and consult a professional.

Where Can I Buy The Postcolonial Present?

The Postcolonial Present by Duy Lap Nguyen is sold by several retailers and bookshops. However, Read Time works with Amazon to provide an easier way to purchase books.

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