Unmasking L.A.: Third Worlds and the City

by D. Sawhney (Editor)

Overview

Since its birth in 1781, Los Angeles has come to define both the material and spiritual force of American civilization. The American dream is realized, experienced, and lost in the City of Angels. Unmasking L.A.: Third Worlds and the City, an interdisciplinary collection of essays, dialogues, and photographs, seeks to reveal the third world geographies, cultures, and populations of Los Angeles. It examines the social, political, cultural, and literary climate of the city, bringing together diverse responses to the complexities facing Los Angeles from respected intellectuals, writers, and artists such as Mike Davis, Deepak Chopra, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. By uncovering the forces that marginalize Los Angeles's ever-shifting populations into internal third worlds, the collection unmasks the raw contradictions, the grim paradoxes, and the understated ironies of the global city.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312292898
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	05/29/2002
Edition description:	2002
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

DEEPAK NARANG SAWHNEY is Professor of Philosophy at The Union Institute in Los Angeles, California. He is the editor of Must We Burn Sade? and The Divine Sade.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Photographs Journey beyond the Stars: Los Angeles and Third Worlds; D.N.Sawhney Sanbhashana: Los Angeles and the Philosophies of Disaster; M.Davis L.A.'s Changing Demographics; M.Baldassare Third World and 'Illegal' in the City of Angels; J.Nevins This Side of Paradise: South Central Los Angeles and Minor Literature; D.N.Sawhney Resistance Art in Los Angeles; P.V.Blum Earth Swans, Conversation-Inside-outside, L.A. is Still the Place, These Hands, and If I Were to Say; J.S.Baca The Occidental Accident; G.C.Spivak Satellites of Sorrow: Los Angeles, Prison, and Circuits of Social Control; C.Parenti The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy; Situationist International Los Angeles as Metaphor: Boiling Frogs, Killer Bees, and Subversive Politics; R.Keil Global L.A.: A Transnational Social Imaginary; N.Klein Deepak on Deepak: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Spiritual Third Worlds, and the City; D.Chopra The Birth of Los Angeles; M.Mayo

Editorial Reviews

"Here is the first installment, strong and compelling, of the breakthrough analysis Los Angeles has so long deserved ." - Dr. Kevin Starr, State Librarian of California

From the Publisher

Here is the first installment,strong and compelling,of the breakthrough analysis Los Angeles has so long deserved...

Kevin Starr

The Third World geographies, cultures and populations of Los Angeles are explored in this collection of essays, dialogues, poetry, and photographs. In tracing its 200 years-plus history, the authors examine how L.A. has grown from a tiny to one of the most influential cities in the world, and the social and cultural forces which have made it such an un-American American metropolis. The contributing authors, from a variety of backgrounds, include Jimmy Santiago Baca, Paul Von Blum, Deepak Chopra, Mike Davis, Roger Keil, Norman M. Klein, Morrow Mayo, Joseph Nevins, Christina Parenti, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and members of Situationist International. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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