The Case of California

Rating:
Summary: You need to read this book...whoever you are!
Review: Before I give you the back cover of this book, I have to tell you that this book is not necessarily an "easy read" despite its alliterated and enticing chapter titles. Having been a student of Laurence Rickels', I feel obligated to tell you that if you haven't read this book or any of his others (Aberrations of Mourning:Writing on German Crypts, Der unbetrauerbare Tod) you are absolutely missing out on some of the most interesting contemporary literary theory you can find!

"In 'cultural clips' that fast-forward and rewind through a variety of images, disciplines,and time zones, Laurence Rickels explores 'California' as both an empirical place and a symbolic configuration. Focusing on the changing image of the West Coast to study politics, sexuality, and the effects of mass media in modern culture, The Case of California is Rickels' dizzying psychohistory of postmodernity.

In California, Rickels locates 'the intersection between technology and the unconscious' and thus reconstructs the political front of pshoanalysis which arose to combat National Socialism. California and Germany, he contends, are two coasts of an era that 'lets roll' in the Enlightenment and continues to this day. Kafka is the 'ultimate Kalifornian'. The fall of the Berlin wall and the San Francisco Earthquake appear 'symptomatically in sync'. And the invention of the California teenager - the archetypical adolescent - begins with 'a certain central European refusal of death'.

As he addresses an array of popcultural phenomena, Rickels situates the Frankfurt School of Adorno Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Marcuse within the Freudian system - and within the critical boundaries of deconstruction. Along the way he explores music and sound, mourning and the charge of sexual abuse, group and adolescent psychology, female sexuality, the convergence of religious and hysterical conversion, and the shifting status of writing and literature brought about through the rise of 'reproductive' media such as photography, film, and television."

"The Case of California is one of the most powerful attempts we have so far to establish connections between contemporary culture and certain German texts that are inseparable from modernity." - Samuel Weber, University of California, Los Angeles

Rating:
Summary: You need to read this book...whoever you are!
Review: Before I give you the back cover of this book, I have to tell you that this book is not necessarily an "easy read" despite its alliterated and enticing chapter titles. Having been a student of Laurence Rickels', I feel obligated to tell you that if you haven't read this book or any of his others (Aberrations of Mourning:Writing on German Crypts, Der unbetrauerbare Tod) you are absolutely missing out on some of the most interesting contemporary literary theory you can find!

"In 'cultural clips' that fast-forward and rewind through a variety of images, disciplines,and time zones, Laurence Rickels explores 'California' as both an empirical place and a symbolic configuration. Focusing on the changing image of the West Coast to study politics, sexuality, and the effects of mass media in modern culture, The Case of California is Rickels' dizzying psychohistory of postmodernity.

In California, Rickels locates 'the intersection between technology and the unconscious' and thus reconstructs the political front of pshoanalysis which arose to combat National Socialism. California and Germany, he contends, are two coasts of an era that 'lets roll' in the Enlightenment and continues to this day. Kafka is the 'ultimate Kalifornian'. The fall of the Berlin wall and the San Francisco Earthquake appear 'symptomatically in sync'. And the invention of the California teenager - the archetypical adolescent - begins with 'a certain central European refusal of death'.

As he addresses an array of popcultural phenomena, Rickels situates the Frankfurt School of Adorno Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Marcuse within the Freudian system - and within the critical boundaries of deconstruction. Along the way he explores music and sound, mourning and the charge of sexual abuse, group and adolescent psychology, female sexuality, the convergence of religious and hysterical conversion, and the shifting status of writing and literature brought about through the rise of 'reproductive' media such as photography, film, and television."

"The Case of California is one of the most powerful attempts we have so far to establish connections between contemporary culture and certain German texts that are inseparable from modernity." - Samuel Weber, University of California, Los Angeles