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

Boyer, Dominic

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226068919 ISBN 13: 9780226068916

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2005

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Dominic Boyer is assistant professor of anthropology at Cornell University.

From the Back Cover

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.

From the Inside Flap

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.
 

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226068919
• ISBN 13: 9780226068916
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 334