Human remains : medicine, death, and desire in nineteenth-century Paris / Jonathan Strauss.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Strauss, Jonathan.

Series:

Forms of living

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Death--France--Paris--History--19th century.

Death.

Dead--Social aspects--History--19th century.

Dead.

Public health--France--Paris--History--19th century.

Public health.

Medicine--France--Paris--History--19th century.

Medicine.

Human body--Social aspects--France--Paris--History--19th century.

Human body.

Human body--Social aspects.

History.

Dead--Social aspects.

Paris (France)--Social conditions--19th century.

Paris (France).

France--Paris.

Physical Description:

xiv, 394 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2012.

Summary:

The living and the dead cohabited Paris until the late eighteenth century, when, in the name of public health, measures were taken to drive the latter from the city. Cemeteries were removed from urban space, and corpses began to be viewed as terrifyingly noxious entities.

The dead had fallen victim to a sustained reflection on the notions of life and death that emerged from the two new medical fields of biology and hygiene, In large part, the Paris of the nineteenth century-the Paris of modernity-arose, both theoretically and physically, out of this concern over the relations between the animate and the inanimate.

As the dead became a source of pervasive and intense auxiousness, they also became an object of fascination that at once exceeded and guided the medical imagination attempting to control them. Human Remains examines that exuberant anxiety to discover the irrational-indeed, erotic-forces motivating the medicalization of death.

Working across a broad range of disciplines, including history, literature, the visual arts, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, this book seeks to understand the meaning of the dead and their role in creating one of the most important cities of the contemporary world. Book jacket.

Contents:

Medicine and authority

The medical uses of nonsense

A hostile environment

Death comes alive

Pleasure in revolt

Monsters and artists

Abstracting desire

What abjection means.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780823233793

0823233790

9780823233809

0823233804

OCLC:

699767190