The literary and cultural rhetoric of victimhood : Western Europe, 1970-2005 / Fatima Naqvi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Naqvi, Fatima.

Contributor:

John G. Hartman Memorial Library Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social perception--Europe, Western.

Social perception.

Victims.

Victims in literature.

Social psychology--Europe, Western.

Social psychology.

Western Europe.

Physical Description:

viii, 264 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Summary:

This study analyzes the pervasive rhetoric of victimhood in European culture since 1968. In a fragmented public sphere, individuals perceive themselves as dissociated from all others, while at the same time they feel similar to everyone else. Where communality is attenuated, people present themselves as victims to garner media attention, create fragile social bonds, or escape supposed marginalization. Fatima Naqvi commences with interpretations of Sigmund Freud, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer, arguing that contemporary discourse continues a trajectory mapped in the shadow of Nazism. In a series of paradigmatic readings of Rene Girard, Peter Sloterdijk, Michael Haneke, Anselm Kiefer, Christoph Ransmayr, Friederike Mayrocker, Michel Houellebecq, Giorgio Agamben, and Elfriede Jelinek, she traces the on-going fascination with victimhood and the desire for victim status in the West. She looks at the way in which such cultural anxiety expresses itself, how victim rhetoric calls itself into question, and how it perpetuates itself in the moment that it becomes philosophically ungrounded.

Contents:

A Prefatory Note on Translations vi

Introduction: Sacrificial Victims: Sigmund Freud, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer 1

1 Politics of Indifference: Rene Girard and Peter Sloterdijk 27

2 Mediated Invisibility: Michael Haneke 47

3 Apocalyptic Cosmologies: Christoph Ransmayr and Anselm Kiefer 73

4 Mourning is Moot: A Brief Reprise of Freud 101

5 Feminization and Impoverishment: Friederike Mayrocker 111

6 The Domain of Sexual Struggle: Michel Houellebecq 135

7 Cognitive Dissonances: Elfriede Jelinek 169.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [243]-259) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the John G. Hartman Memorial Library Fund.

ISBN:

1403975701

9781403975706

OCLC:

71312981

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description