A World Without Meaning: The Crisis of Meaning in International PoliticsIn this provocative and incisive book, Zaki Laidi argues that as our world becomes ever larger, our ability to find meaning in it diminishes. With the end of communism came the end of the intimate alliance between power and ideology. No power in our globalised world can any longer claim to provide meaning. In despair we look back to old models (religious traditions, nationalism, ethnicity) to give us a sense of identity. But in a globalised world in a permanent state of flux, just how effective are these old certainties? |
Contents
The meaning of the Cold War | 15 |
The fall of the Wall The end of the Enlightenment | 29 |
Out of step with time | 43 |
Universalism runs out of steam | 51 |
Europe and the crisis of meaning | 67 |
The loss of the link between nations | 86 |
Global social links 1 conflicts without identity | 97 |
Global social links 2 actors without a project | 105 |
The regionalization of meaning | 136 |
Europe as meaning | 144 |
Asia or regionalism without a goal | 153 |
America as a social power | 162 |
The post Cold War a world of its own | 171 |
Notes | 179 |
| 210 | |
| 222 | |
Other editions - View all
A World Without Meaning: The Crisis of Meaning in International Politics Zaki Laidi Limited preview - 2005 |
A World Without Meaning: The Crisis of Meaning in International Politics Zaki Laidi Limited preview - 2005 |
A World Without Meaning: The Crisis of Meaning in International Politics Zaki Laïdi Limited preview - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
action American après la guerre Asia Asian become Berlin Wall Cambridge cent challenge China Chinese claim collective communism competition concept conflict constraints construction countries crisis of meaning cultural debate defined demand difficult domination Eastern Europe economic enemy Enlightenment European Union example final goal Financial FNSP force France fundamental future Gallimard global social system historical humanitarian Ibid idea identity ideological increasingly integration International Herald Tribune Islamic issue Japan Japanese kolkhoz Laïdi Le Seuil less longer loss of meaning Maastricht Treaty market democracy meaning and power military power modernity monde nation-state nationalist nature paradoxically Paris political politique post Cold principle problem provide meaning question reality regime regional relationship role Russia seems Seuil Social Market Foundation societies Somalia sovereignty Soviet space stems strategy subsidiarity symbolic teleological temps tion tradition United University Press USSR utopia values West Western words world order
Popular passages
Page 11 - ... emergency. And emergency does not constitute the first stage of a project of meaning: it represents its active negation (Laidi, 1998: 11).
Page 1 - Our feeling of an exceptionally strong change in world order after the fall of the Berlin Wall is coupled with our equally enormous inability to interpret it, to give it meaning. Though all the upheavals we experience daily can have several meanings, nothing indicates they have a meaning, if by meaning we imply the triple notion of foundation, unity and final goal...
Page 7 - Political actions no longer find their legitimacy in a vision of the future, but have been reduced to managing the ordinary...