The virtual point of freedom : essays on politics, aesthetics, and religion / Lorenzo Chiesa.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chiesa, Lorenzo, author.

Series:

Diaeresis

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Liberty.

Political science--Philosophy.

Political science.

Philosophy, Modern.

Physical Description:

x, 148 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2016.

Summary:

The principal motif that runs throughout The Virtual Point of Freedom is a confrontation with the discourse of freedom, or, more specifically, the falsely transgressive ideal of a total emancipation that would know no constraints. Far from delineating a supposed "subject of freedom" that would allegedly overcome alienation once and for all, the seven chapters in Chiesa's book seek to unfold an innovative reading of the dialectical coincidence between dis-alienation and re-alienation in politics, aesthetics, and religion, using psychoanalysis as a privileged critical tool. Topics include Pier Paolo Pasolini's attack on the visual and biological degeneration of bodies brought about by pleasure-seeking "liberal" consumerism, Giorgio Agamben's and Slavoj Zizek's conflicting negotiations with the Christian tradition of "poverty" and "inappropriateness" as potential redemption, and Alain Badiou's inability to develop a philosophical anthropology that could sustain a coherent politics of emancipation. The book concludes by sketching out the figure of the partisan, a subject who makes it possible to conceive of an intersection between provisional morality and radical politics. Book jacket.

Contents:

Topology of fear : psychoanalysis, urban theory, and the space of phobia

Pasolini and the ugliness of bodies

Wounds of testimony and martyrs of the unconscious : Lacan and Pasolini contra the discourse of freedom

A theater of subtractive extinction : Bene without Deleuze

Giorgio Agamben's Franciscan ontology

Christianity or communism? Zizek's Marxian Hegelianism and Hegelian Marxism

The body of structural dialectic :Badiou, Lacan, and the "human animal".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780810133730

0810133733

9780810133747

0810133741

OCLC:

945585894