Works of John David Ebert

The Age of Catastrophe: Disaster and Humanity in Modern Times

Disasters, both natural and man-made, are on the rise. Indeed, a catastrophe of one sort or another seems always to be unfolding somewhere on the planet. We have entered into a veritable Age of Catastrophes which have grown both larger and more complex and now routinely very widespread in scope. The old days of the geographically isolated industrial accidents, of the sinking of a Titanic or the explosion of a Hindenburg, together with their isolated causes and limited effects, are over. Now, disasters on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill or the Japan tsunami and nuclear reactor accident, threaten to engulf large swaths of civilization.

This book analyzes the efforts of Westerners to keep the catastrophes outside, while maintaining order on the inside of society. These efforts are breaking down. Nature and Civilization have become so intertwined they can no longer be separated. Natural disasters, moreover, are becoming increasingly more difficult to differentiate from "man-made."

Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Art After Metaphysics

Contemporary art is a very different kind of art from anything that has ever been practiced in the past. It is an art that takes place after the age of metaphysics, when all the imaginary significations that once used to anchor art in traditional meaning systems have disintegrated. Today's artist, consequently, is left with a rubble heap of broken meaning systems, discarded signifiers and semiotic vacancies that must be sifted through in a quest for new meanings appropriate to an age that has been reshaped by globalization. Through discussions of the works of artists such as Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor, Anselm Kiefer, Christian Boltanski and many others, John David Ebert attempts to fathom the nature of what it means to be an artist in a post-metaphysical age in which all certainties of meaning have collapsed.

The New Media Invasion: Digital Technologies and the World They Unmake

From the 15th century until the mid–1990s, media based on the printed word—books, magazines, handbills, newspapers, and journals—dominated society. Today, an onslaught of digital media centered on the Internet is developing at a breathtaking pace, destabilizing the very idea of printed media and fundamentally reshaping our world in the process.

This study explores how Internet entities like Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Google, and gadgets such as digital cameras, cell phones, video games, robots, drones, and all things MacIntosh have affected everything from the book industry and copyright law to how we conduct social relationships and consider knowledge. Including a chronology of significant events in the history of the digital explosion, this investigation of the often overlooked “shadow” side of new technology chronicles life during a radical societal shift and follows the process whereby one world disintegrates while another takes its place.

Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Myths, Gods, Machines: Illuminations on Mythology, History and Science

In this new collection of essays cultural critic John David Ebert traces the history of what Jacques Derrida termed "Transcendental Signifieds" as they have evolved from the archetypes of ancient myth through the philosophical Ideas of German Idealist philosophy and on down to their disintegration into the floating signifiers of today's consumer society. From myth to philosophy to science, these ultimate signifieds have undergone many transformations: beginning as the Sumerian gods, Ebert carefully traces the impacts of science and technology upon these Ideas as they changed over the millenia, finally becoming dismantled by Heidegger's "abbau" and then dangerously assaulted by the Unabomber's attempts to assassinate the very men of science who are creating today's mass of consumerist archetypes. Science and popular culture have deconstructed the ultimate signifieds of ancient ritual, symbol and myth, and now we are set adrift in a sea of floating signifiers that are competing with each other to fill the semiotic vacancies left behind by the collapse of such ancient and ultimate referents as God, Soul, Freedom and Immortality. This collection of nine essays, never before published in book form, spans the breadth of Ebert's career from 1997 to 2015.

Cultural Decay Rate: Essays on Contemporary Art, Literature and Social Disintegration

This book, a sort of “John David Ebert Reader,” collects and gathers his most recent essays, displaying a broad range of topics from spree killers to disappearing planes; from the disintegrative effects of technology upon society to ruminations on contemporary art and literature; and also includes a section on the cult and culture of the multi-media celebrity. These essays, never before published in book form, show the broad range of Ebert’s thought and give the reader a sense of his wide grasp upon the various cultural phenomena of contemporary post-historic society.

Dead Celebrities, Living Icons: Tragedy and Fame in the Age of the Multimedia Superstar

This in-depth series of literary portraits studies celebrities who died in famous and tragic ways—ways that still resonate as archetypal death scenarios in present day.

We know their likes and dislikes, admire their talents, envy them for daring to be what we can't or what we won't. When they are snatched from us, we feel a personal loss and an unwillingness to let go. And so we transform these mere human beings into icons whose stars often shine in death even more brilliantly than in life.

Dead Celebrities, Living Icons: Tragedy and Fame in the Age of the Multimedia Superstar explores this phenomenon through a series of essays on 14 men and women who are, arguably, the most famous people of the 20th and early 21st centuries. The book covers the epoch of the celebrity beginning in the 1930s with Howard Hughes and Walt Disney and continues to the present day with the life and death of Michael Jackson. Far more than just a collection of biographies, Dead Celebrities, Living Icons documents the philosophical importance and significance of the contemporary cult of the celebrity and analyzes the tragic consequences of a human life lived in the glare of the media spotlight.