Medusa's ear : university foundings from Kant to Chora L / Dawne McCance.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McCance, Dawne, 1944-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Derrida, Jacques.

Postmodernism and higher education.

Philosophy, European.

Education, Higher--Philosophy.

Education, Higher.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (181 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, c2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Reads modern philosophy (and the university) as rooted in an audiocentric fantasy. In traditional mythology and iconography, Medusa's killing powers are attributed to visual means: the monster is slain for her looks and her effect is to kill men for looking at her. Challenging the familiar account of the modern era as ocularcentric, this book reads the Medusa-effect on the philosophy of the modern research university as rooted in an audiocentric fantasy. Author Dawne McCance links phonocentrism to an aural imaginary by tracking the trope--and terror--of the deaf ear and mute mouth in the discourse on the university that was inaugurated by Kant and that extends through Hegel and Heidegger to the present. She shows how, repeatedly, in founding texts on the modern research university, the philosopher's fearful recoil from an animal-female figure that he defines as deaf and dumb has the effect--the Medusa-effect--of cutting off his own, and therefore the institution's, ear and tongue. McCance also considers some recent efforts to shake the modern institution out of its Medusa-effect petrification. Dawne McCance is Professor and Head of the Department of Religion at the University of Manitoba and a Fellow of St. John's College. She is the author of Posts: Re Addressing the Ethical , also published by SUNY Press, and the editor of Life Ethics in World Religions .

Contents:

Intro

MEDUSA'S EAR

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

1. MOURNING THE VOICE

2. THE ARCHITECTURE OF INSTITUTION

3. PASSAGES

4. WHO HAS EARS TO HEAR?

5. FOUR WAYS OF READING TWO PAIRS: OF SHOES

6. ARCHITECTURE'S (THE UNIVERSITY'S) CHORA: TWO POSTMODERN COLLABORATIONS

NOTES

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

WORKS CITED

INDEX

A

B

C

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

Z.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 149-158) and index.

ISBN:

0-7914-8429-7

1-4237-4015-7

OCLC:

124132301