Liberalism: A Counter-History by Domenico Losurdo (Verso) stimulatingly uncovers the contradictions of an ideology that is much too self-righteously invoked.
That, though, may have been the lure that Richard Braithwaite self-mockingly invoked by calling his 1640 book on display here "a boulster lecture".
Guitarists sprouted mop-top hairdos, Union Jacks were hoisted above drum-risers and a wave of young bands flooded the airwaves with records whose jaunty, tuneful Anglicisms self-consciously invoked the legacy of the 60's greats.
The man in question — and the subject of this fascinating new book — is Abraham Lincoln, not Barack Obama, who self-consciously invoked memories of the Civil War president in 2007 by announcing his candidacy for the White House in Springfield, Ill., Lincoln's hometown for 17 years.
The notion of self-ownership invoked in this argument is quite murky though.
It was against this gloomy backdrop of stagflation in the North and debt crisis in the South that Britain's "Iron Lady," Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, so self-confidently invoked the notorious "There Is No Alternative" (TINA) dictum.
A recent essay in The Atlantic by James Parker vigorously fleshes out this idea, defining the Carrey canon as "a uniquely sustained engagement with the problem of the self" and invoking philosophical heavyweights like Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Buber and José Ortega y Gasset.
"The Contender" opens by self-consciously invoking this history.
Mr. Zimmerman has told the police that he shot Mr. Martin, who was unarmed, in self-defense, invoking a state law known as Stand Your Ground.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, its standard-bearer in this election, has become an almost comic figure, jaunty and self-deprecating, invoking coming doom to virtually no audience at all.
