Global Futures Speaker Series - Douglas Kellner Event

Engaging with the North African Uprisings and what Al-Jazeera calls the “Arab Awakening,” I will discuss how the democratic uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya produce models of political transformation that have been transmitted throughout the region as media spectacle and have generated intense conflict. I argue that these events raise the issue of whether once again one can use the concept of revolution circulated in the 1960s, and exemplified in the work of Herbert Marcuse. I will discuss the sense in which the Arab Uprisings are or are not revolutions, and how the Arab Uprisings impacted political movements in Spain, Greece, and the Occupy movements which became a global phenomenon. Finally, I'll suggest that 2011 may be seen as a revolutionary rupture parallel to 1968 in an earlier political imaginary.

Biography:

Douglas Kellner is George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education and Distinguished Professor at UCLA and is author of many books on social theory, politics, history, and culture, including Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film, co-authored with Michael Ryan and an Emile de Antonio Reader co-edited with Dan Streible. Other works include Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity; Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond; works in cultural studies such as Media Culture and Media Spectacle; a trilogy of books on postmodern theory with Steve Best; and a trilogy of books on the media and the Bush administration, encompassing Grand Theft 2000, From 9/11 to Terror War, and Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy. Author of Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism, Kellner is editing collected papers of Herbert Marcuse, five volumes of which have appeared with Routledge. Kellner’s Guys and Guns Amok: Domestic Terrorism and School Shootings from the Oklahoma City Bombings to the Virginia Tech Massacre won the 2008 AESA award as the best book on education. In 2010, he published with Blackwell Cinema Wars: Hollywood Film and Politics in the Bush/Cheney Era and just published Media Spectacle and Insurrection, 2011: From the Arab Uprisings to Occupy Everywhere! Kellner’s website is at http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/kellner.html