Convulsing bodies : religion and resistance in Foucault / Mark D. Jordan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jordan, Mark D., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984--Religion.

Foucault, Michel.

Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984.

Human body (Philosophy).

Religion.

Physical Description:

259 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2015]

Summary:

Following religion to the core of Michel Foucault's thinking, this book offers a strong alternative to the usual ways of reading him across the humanities and social sciences. Foucault is famously interested in Christianity as both the rival to ancient ethics and the parent of modern discipline. He is ever alert to the hypocrisy and violence in churches. Yet religion stands at the center of his thought, particularly when it comes to shaping human bodies. Foucault finds in religion not only an object of historical analysts or present critique, but a perennial provocation to think about how speech works on bodies-and how bodies resist. Since Foucault conducts experiments in writing to frustrate academic expectations, Mark Jordan gives equal weight to the performative and theatrical aspects of the philosopher's writing and lecturing. He asks! How does Foucault stage possibilities of self-transformation? How arc his books or lectures akin to the rituals and liturgies that he dissects in them? Convulsing Bodies follows its own game of hide-and-seek with the agents of totalizing systems (not least in the academy). The book gives readers a Foucault who plays with his audiences as he plays for them-as he teaches them. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : embodied reading or the masked philosopher

Hunter of the sacred

The dismembered assassin and the well scrubbed delinquents

The buffoon-tyrant and the possessed nuns

Chatting genitals

The sobbing matron and the loquacious monk

The artist of pleasures

The violated mother and the naked philosopher

Conclusion : Embodied writing or Among the mourners.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-238) and index.

ISBN:

9780804789028

0804789029

9780804792769

0804792763

OCLC:

881406994