Binding violence : literary visions of political origins / Moira Fradinger.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fradinger, Moira.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Violence in literature.

Politics in literature.

Politics and literature.

Comparative literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (347 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Binding Violence exposes the relation between literary imagination, autonomous politics, and violence through the close analysis of literary texts—in particular Sophocles' Antigone, D. A. F. de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, and Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat—that speak to a blind spot in democratic theory, namely, how we decide democratically on the borders of our political communities. These works bear the imprint of the anxieties of democracy concerning its other—violence—especially when the question of a redefinition of membership is at stake. The book shares the philosophical interest in rethinking politics that has recently surfaced at the crossroads of literary criticism, philosophy, critical theory, and psychoanalysis. Fradinger takes seriously the responsibility to think through and give names to the political uses of violence and to provoke useful reflection on the problem of violence as it relates to politics and on literature as it relates to its times.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Literature, Violence, and Politics

Antigone and the Polis

The Most Modern of Tragedies: The Politics of Burial

Creon’s Edict: The Barbarians at Home

Dying Democratically: Antigone’s Ritual

Modern Tempo— Democratic Overture, State Finale

Sade’s Text and Sade’s Times

The Libertine Alliance: No Ordinary Pact in Times of War

Necrophiliac Cannibals: Dismembering “Nonpeople,” Membering “The People”

Domestic Consistency: Not Laws, but Order

Frame within the Frame: Riveting Voices and Gazes

Modern Sovereignty: Perversion of Democracy?

Vargas Llosa’s Appeal to History: Within and Beyond Latin America

Necropolitics I: From an “African Horde” to a Modern Country

Necropolitics II: Rebonding the Nation

The Force of Imagination

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804774659

080477465X

OCLC:

646068279