life after death

Democratic planning allows us to effectively address the multiple crises of our time through cooperative modes of collective coordination. Given the destructive consequences of contemporary capitalism, such a structural alternative to market economies is needed more than ever. This accessible work examines various approaches that theorise, practise and nurture a creative construction towards varieties of democratic planning. Drawing from current socio-economic and ecological movements, it explores what future non-capitalist democratic planning could look like. Bringing together important voices in the ongoing debates from scholars to activists, this volume proposes an interdisciplinary and innovative approach to democratic planning in the 21st century and beyond.

Imagining After Capitalism by Andy Hines is a book that explores potential futures beyond capitalism, arguing for the need to develop positive alternatives to current systemic problems. Hines, a professional futurist, presents three "guiding images" for a post-capitalist world: the Circular Commons (environmentally focused), the Non-Workers' Paradise (socially focused), and Tech-Led Abundance (technology-focused). The book aims to provide a hopeful framework for thinking about and building a better future, moving beyond critiques of capitalism to envision what could come next. 

This work attempts to present Rumi to the English-speaking world and to shed light on his life as seen from within the Islamic mystical tradition. The knowledge presented in this work comes from Sefik Can, a great expert of Rumi and who used to be the highest authority, Sertariq, of the Mevlevi Sufi order in Turkey until he passed away on January 24, 2005. Two aspects of this work make it unique. The first is that the book was originally authored by a man who is ninety five years old and who has dedicated his entire life to the teachings of Rumu. Such a Mevlevi's view of Rumi makes this work greatly valuable. The second important contribution to the book is the foreword, which was translated by from the original turkish, written by M. Fethullah Gulen, a prominent Muslim thinker and interfaith activist of Turkey

Dear Milena, I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say: “Come with me, Milena. We are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.” Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don't have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much. Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

"Poverty does not consist in the want of money, nor is begging to be deplored. Poverty consists in the desire to have everything, and through violent means if necessary" —Diogenes of Sinope

The Star by Esmail Shahroudi Tonight, a hidden star revealed itself Thrusted the spear of light in the eyes of all that existed But none saw that the star had set the light assail toward us from thousands of years afar Perhaps amidst the darkness of an endless night, the tempest of death had uprooted the star it is gone, however had illuminated the depths of every niche on its course! It has been dead for a while and Without hesitation had placed its coffin on the shoulders of limitless spaces Alas, whilst its heart was illuminating, no one sought with their gaze any sign of it But now it shines ablaze in the sight of all spectators That light which had been poured from the dead star onto the earth The star is no more, though its light carries on and on in every road One night if our body in the land of sorrow Would hang itself in plain sight from the gallows of death We would shine as that star without existence We would remain eternal in the light of our own love Tehran-1955

No, the old "I" has died and rotted away, but no barrier, no gulf, exists between it and the new one Sadegh Hedayat

François Hartog explores crucial moments of change in society's "regimes of historicity," or its ways of relating to the past, present, and future. Inspired by Hannah Arendt, Reinhart Koselleck, and Paul Ricoeur, Hartog analyzes a broad range of texts, positioning The Odyssey as a work on the threshold of historical consciousness and contrasting it with an investigation of the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins's concept of "heroic history." He tracks changing perspectives on time in Chateaubriand's Historical Essayand Travels in America and sets them alongside other writings from the French Revolution. He revisits the insights of the French Annales School and situates Pierre Nora's Realms of Memory within a history of heritage and today's presentism, from which he addresses Jonas's notion of our responsibility for the future. Our presentist present is by no means uniform or clear-cut, and it is experienced very differently depending on the position we occupy in society. We are caught up in global movement and accelerated flows, or else condemned to the life of casual workers, living from hand to mouth in a stagnant present, with no recognized past, and no real future either (since the temporality of plans and projects is inaccessible). The present is therefore experienced as emancipation or enclosure, and the perspective of the future is no longer reassuring, since it is perceived not as a promise, but as a threat. Hartog's resonant readings show us how the motor of history(-writing) has stalled and help us understand the contradictory qualities of our contemporary presentist relation to time.

Tales from the Freudian Crypt is a fundamental reassessment of the Freud legend that aims to shake the very foundations of Freud studies. Writing from the perspective of intellectual history, the author traces the impact that Freud's essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle has had, and continues to have, on twentieth-century thought. Designed as both an introduction and a corrective to the vast literature on Freud, the book explores the trail left by Freud's late theory of the death drive, paying special attention to its ramifications in the fields of biography, biology, psychotherapy, philosophy, and literary theory. The author ironically concludes that if there were such a thing as a death drive, it would look like this seemingly endless and in many ways arbitrary proliferation of the literature on Freud. After first undertaking to demystify the pretensions of this literature, from the works of Sandor Ferenczi to those of Jacques Lacan, the author proposes a theory that sheds new light on the so-called cultural works of Freud's final years. He argues that the death drive theory was an elaborate ruse that Freud adopted to insulate his "findings" against criticism directed from outside the field of psychoanalysis―that Freud's troubling recourse to metapsychology was closely tied to his lifelong fear of suggestion. The author delivers a carefully reasoned, sustained blow to the culture of psychoanalysis―theoretical, therapeutic, institutional―which is driven by what it desires and fears death. In sum, Tales from the Freudian Crypt is offered as a kind of bankbook, audit, and investment plan for future work in Freud studies.