How literature changes the way we think Michael Mack.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mack, Michael, 1969- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature--Philosophy.

Literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (209 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York Continuum 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The capacity of the arts and the humanities, and of literature in particular, to have a meaningful societal impact has been increasingly undervalued in recent history. Both humanists and scientists have tended to think of the arts as a means to represent the world via imagination. Mack maintains that the arts do not merely describe our world but that they also have the unique and underappreciated power to make us aware of how we can change accustomed forms of perception and action. Mack explores the works of prominent writers and thinkers, including Nietzsche, Foucault, Benjamin, Wilde, Roth, and Zizek, among others, to illustrate how literature interacts with both people and political as well as scientific issues of the real world. By virtue of its distance from the real world-its virtuality-the aesthetic has the capability to help us explore different and so far unthinkable forms of action and thereby to resist the repetition and perpetuation of harmful practices such as stereotyping, stigma, exclusion, and the exertion of violence

Contents:

Think again: an introduction

Death again: reimagining the end

Revisiting torture and torment

Revisiting clones: change and the politics of life

Rethinking suffering: self and substance

The birth of literature

The birth of politics

Rethinking birth and aging: a conclusion

Acknowledgments

1. Think Again: An Introduction

2. Death Again: Reimagining the End

3. Revisiting Torture and Torment

4. Revisiting Clones: Change and the Politics of Life

5. Rethinking Suffering: Self and Substance

6. The Birth of Literature

7. The Birth of Politics

8. Rethinking Birth and Aging: A Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [179]-186) and index

ISBN:

9786613380418

9781472542465

1472542460

9781283380416

1283380412

9781441197818

1441197818

OCLC:

769344396