Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development. Vanessa Pupavac
Studies in Social and Global Justice
Series Editors:
Ben Holland, Lecturer in International Relations, University of Nottingham
Tony Burns, Associate Professor, University of Nottingham
As transnational interactions become more prevalent and complex in our interconnected world, so do the questions of social justice that have often featured in political discourse. From new debates in human rights and global ethics to changing patterns of resistance and precarity in the global economy, via an interrogation of the impact of climate change, Studies in Social and Global Justice publishes books that grapple with a broad array of critical issues faced in the world today.
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Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development: Rekindling Faust’s Humanism
Vanessa Pupavac and Mladen Pupavac
Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development
Rekindling Faust’s Humanism
Vanessa Pupavac and Mladen Pupavac
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
London • New York
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom
Copyright © Vanessa Pupavac and Mladen Pupavac, 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: HB 978-1-5381-4493-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 9781538144930 (cloth)
ISBN 9781538144947 (electronic)
Library of Congress Control Number: 202094189
‘A free people standing on free land’
Goethe Faust II (1832) To Jelena and Carl
Contents
1 Faustian Visions of ‘A Free People Standing on Free Land’
2 The Disastrous Birth of Modernity in Europe
3 Faustian Work and ‘The Hope of the Poor’
4 The Rise and Fall of Faust the Developer
5 Nikola Tesla’s Faustian Dream
6 The Metamorphosis of Risk Cosmopolitanism
7 Submerging Humanity and Rewilding Tesla’s Homeland
Epilogue: The New European Wilderness
About the Authors
Vanessa Pupavac is a senior lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham.
Mladen Pupavac is a researcher and member of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice in the School of Politics at the University of Nottingham.
Acknowledgements
The original idea for the book came from reading some lines of Sigmund Freud, describing the Dutch construction of the Zuyder Zee dam project completed in 1932 as a work of culture (Freud 1973 [1933]: 112). This took us to thinking about the hydro-electric engineering of Tesla, celebrated in his region of birth where Mladen was also born, and the construction of the Thames Barrier where one of Vanessa’s uncles worked as an engineer.
We submitted the manuscript to the publishers at the end of January 2020,