front cover of Critical Excess
Critical Excess
Watch the Throne and the New Gilded Age
J. Griffith Rollefson
University of Michigan Press, 2021
Jay-Z and Kanye West’s 2011 Watch the Throne is a self-avowed “luxury rap” album centered on Eurocentric conceptions of nobility, artistry, and haute coutureCritical Excess performs a close reading of the sonic and social commentary on this album, examining how the album alternately imagines and critiques the mutually reinforcing ideas of Europe, nobility, old money, art, and their standard bearer, whiteness. Reading the album alongside Black critical theory and work on the prophetic nature of music, Rollefson argues that through their performance of black excellence, opulence, and decadence, Jay-Z and Kanye West poured gas on the white resentment of the Obama presidency—a resentment that would ultimately spill over into public life, make audible the dog whistling of the Far Right, and embolden white supremacists to come out from under their rocks. Ultimately, Rollefson argues, Jay-Z and Kanye West’s performance of what Rollefson calls “critical excess” on this hip hop album exceeds the limits of conspicuous consumption and heralds the final stage of late capitalism—“the New Gilded Age.” 
[more]

front cover of Pretender to the Throne
Pretender to the Throne
Further Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin
Vladimir Voinovich
Northwestern University Press, 1995
This hilarious novel following the continuing adventures of Ivan Chonkin, a simple peasant who has been arrested as a traitor after spending World War II happily tending a garden. In this sequel to The Extraordinary Life and Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, Vladimir Voinovich ridicules everything sacred to the Soviet Union—the army, the justice system, the press, and Stalin himself—in a refreshing combination of dissident conscience and universal humor.
[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
Throne and Mandarins
China’s Search for a Policy during the Sino-French Controversy, 1880–1885
Lloyd Eastman
Harvard University Press

This study of the policy-making process in China during the Sino–French controversy of 1880–1885 adds a new dimension to our understanding of China’s response to the West in the nineteenth century. The implicit threat presented by French efforts to extend her control into northern Vietnam was the catalyst in Chinese policy decisions, and Lloyd Eastman traces the dramatic process by which the problem was eventually resolved. Analyzing the complicated balance of internal political forces in the Ch’ing dynasty in the late nineteenth century, he makes the first thorough study of the factors which shaped Chinese foreign policy in this period.

Three major power groups affected the decision-making process: the throne, high administrative officials, and lesser officials whose role was largely ideological. Eastman shows the considerable extent to which the throne’s power was limited by the interests of the officials (or mandarins); discusses the role of ch’ing-i, or literati opinion; and emphasizes the importance of the conservative, low-ranking officials who stood overwhelmingly in opposition to the few proponents of reform and modernization and strongly influenced the course of Chinese policy. Discussing the diplomatic objectives involved—preservation of hegemony in Vietnam, reluctance to fight a war that might expose its military weakness, desire to save face—as manifestations of underlying cultural assumptions and values, Eastman offers a fresh perspective on the formulation of policy during the Ch’ing government’s confrontation with the Western powers.

[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter