Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development. Vanessa Pupavac

      

Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development

      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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       Social Institutions and the Politics of Recognition: From the Ancient Greeks to the Reformation

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       Social Institutions and the Politics of Recognition: From the Reformation to the French Revolution

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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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       www.rowman.com

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      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

      

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992.

      ‘A free people standing on free land’

      Goethe Faust II (1832) To Jelena and Carl

      Contents

       About the Authors

       Acknowledgements

       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

       Bibliography

       Index

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,