Social Contract, Masochist Contract

Social Contract, Masochist Contract PDF Author: Fayçal Falaky
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438449895
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
Provocative reading of the role masochism plays in structuring the aesthetics and political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Theorization of sensual desire was not uncommon in the eighteenth century; like many materialists of the French Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau rejected imperatives founded on metaphysical suppositions and viewed the senses as the only valid source of philosophical knowledge. In Social Contract, Masochist Contract, Fayçal Falaky demonstrates that what distinguishes Rousseau is that the foundational measure on which he bases his materialist philosophy is a sexual instinct endowed, paradoxically, with the same sublime, self-abnegating attributes historically associated with Christian, metaphysical desire. To understand the aesthetics of Rousseau’s masochism is, Falaky argues, to understand how ideals of Christian morality and spiritual ennoblement survived the Enlightenment, and how God died, only to be repackaged in new fetishes. Whether it is the imperious mistress of his erotic fantasies, the Arcadian nature of his philosophical reveries, or the sublime Law designed to elevate the citizen from enslaving appetite, Rousseau’s fetishes herald the new regulative Ideals of the modern secular state.

Social Contract, Masochist Contract

Social Contract, Masochist Contract PDF Author: Fayçal Falaky
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438449917
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
Theorization of sensual desire was not uncommon in the eighteenth century; like many materialists of the French Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau rejected imperatives founded on metaphysical suppositions and viewed the senses as the only valid source of philosophical knowledge. In Social Contract, Masochist Contract, Fayçal Falaky demonstrates that what distinguishes Rousseau is that the foundational measure on which he bases his materialist philosophy is a sexual instinct endowed, paradoxically, with the same sublime, self-abnegating attributes historically associated with Christian, metaphysical desire. To understand the aesthetics of Rousseau's masochism is, Falaky argues, to understand how ideals of Christian morality and spiritual ennoblement survived the Enlightenment, and how God died, only to be repackaged in new fetishes. Whether it is the imperious mistress of his erotic fantasies, the Arcadian nature of his philosophical reveries, or the sublime Law designed to elevate the citizen from enslaving appetite, Rousseau's fetishes herald the new regulative Ideals of the modern secular state.

1650-1850

1650-1850 PDF Author: Kevin L. Cope
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1684480760
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 461

Book Description
1650-1850 publishes essays and reviews from and about a wide range of academic disciplines—literature (both in English and other languages), philosophy, art history, history, religion, and science. Interdisciplinary in scope and approach, 1650-1850 emphasizes aesthetic manifestations and applications of ideas, and encourages studies that move between the arts and the sciences—between the “hard” and the “humane” disciplines. The editors encourage proposals for “special features” that bring together five to seven essays on focused themes within its historical range, from the Interregnum to the end of the first generation of Romantic writers. While also being open to more specialized or particular studies that match up with the general themes and goals of the journal, 1650-1850 is in the first instance a journal about the artful presentation of ideas that welcomes good writing from its contributors. First published in 1994, 1650-1850 is currently in its 24th volume. ISSN 1065-3112. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Gilles Deleuze

Gilles Deleuze PDF Author: Constantin V. Boundas
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847065171
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Gilles Deleuze: The Intensive Reduction brings together eighteen essays written by an internationally acclaimed team of scholars to provide a comprehensive overview of the work of Gilles Deleuze, one of the most important and influential European thinkers of the twentieth century. Each essay addresses a central issue in Deleuze's philosophy (and that of his regular co-author, Félix Guattari) that remains to this day controversial and unsettled. Since Deleuze's death in 1994, the technical aspects of his philosophy have been largely neglected. These essays address that gap in the existing scholarship by focusing on his contribution to philosophy. Each contributor advances the discussion of a contested point in the philosophy of Deleuze to shed new light on as yet poorly-understood problems and to stimulate new and vigorous exchanges regarding his relationship to philosophy, schizoanlysis, his aesthetic, ethical and political thought. Together, the essays in this volume make an invaluable contribution to our understanding of Deleuze's philosophy.

Tolerance

Tolerance PDF Author: Lars Tønder
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190203234
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Book Description
In Tolerance, Lars Tønder offers a thought-provoking theory on what tolerance means in pluralistic societies. Tønder begins by showing the limitations of the way democratic theory currently understands tolerance: either as a form of restraint or as benevolence, but always divorced from what it is that the tolerant person really senses. According to Tønder, what is missing from current theories of tolerance is the idea of pain, or the lived experience of what it means to become tolerant. Introducing what he calls a "sensorial orientation to politics" and a "theory of active tolerance," he argues that the act of becoming tolerant (and the reasoning it entails) depends on sensing the world in an expansive manner attentive to the new and unforeseen. In order to illustrate, he engages with a number of theorists, from Seneca, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Marcuse to Locke, Kant and Mill, and he draws upon a wide range of examples, including the 2005 controversy over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs, Dave Chappelle's comedy, and methods of torture used in the war on terror. Tolerance is at once a sweeping account of the history of political thought and an invitation to rethink the meaning of tolerance within the sensorial conditions that define twenty first century democratic politics.

Contract with the Skin

Contract with the Skin PDF Author: Kathy O'Dell
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816628872
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
Having oneself shot. Putting out fires with the bare hands and feet. Biting the body and photographing the marks. Sewing one's own mouth shut--all in front of an audience. What do these kinds of performances tell us about the social and historical context in which they occurred? Fascinating and accessibly written, CONTRACT WITH THE SKIN addresses the question in relation to psychoanalytic and legal concepts of masochism. 34 photos.

Body Art/performing the Subject

Body Art/performing the Subject PDF Author: Amelia Jones
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816627738
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
"With great originality and scholarship, Amelia Jones maps out an extraordinary history of body art over the last three decades and embeds it in the theoretical terrain of postmoderism. The result is a wonderful and permissive space in which the viewer...can wander"...-Moira Roth, Trefethen professor of art history, Mills College.

The Existential Foundations of Political Economy

The Existential Foundations of Political Economy PDF Author: Christopher M. England
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527542041
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Book Description
This volume argues that economic thought has long been shaped by deeply human forms of attachment, anxiety, desire, fear of suffering and death, and even historical speculation about the ultimate destiny of humanity. Starting in the 17th century, modern economics began to incorporate patterns of speculation and rhetoric that mirror postulates found in religion and the philosophy of history. This text demonstrates that the political significance of economic theory can only be fully understood when the existential commitments that motivated its seminal thinkers, from Smith and Marx to Hayek and beyond, have been excavated. Featuring incisive examinations and revisionist interpretations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, F.A. Hayek, and Karl Polanyi, it is powerfully written and exhaustively researched. It will appeal to anyone interested in political economy, the history of political thought, or the roots of contemporary ideologies.

Theorizing Sexual Violence

Theorizing Sexual Violence PDF Author: Renée J. Heberle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135218838
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 421

Book Description
Taking sexual violence in the form of rape and hetero-psychological/physical abuse, trafficking, and harassment as a point of departure, the authors of this volume explore questions about the relationship between sex, sexuality and violence in order to better understand the terms on which women's sexual suffering is perpetuated, thereby undermining their capacity for personhood and autonomy. This volume perceives that while sexual violence as a phenomenon is heavily researched, it remains under-theorized. With anti-essentialist views of gender identity, of subjectivity and agency, and of rationality and consent, the essays study both the dynamics and consequences of sexual violence. The contributing authors blend the insights of postmodern critique with the common goal of theorizing and acting effectively against the material and psychic suffering perpetuated by the rigid rituals of gendered and sexed life.

Gilles Deleuze and FŽlix Guattari

Gilles Deleuze and FŽlix Guattari PDF Author: François Dosse
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231145616
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 688

Book Description
In May 1968, Gilles Deleuze was an established philosopher teaching at the innovative Vincennes University, just outside of Paris. Felix Guattari was a political militant and director of an unusual psychiatric clinic at La Borde. Their meeting was unlikely, and the two were introduced in an arranged encounter of epic consequence. From that moment on, Deleuze and Guattari engaged in a surprising, productive partnership, collaborating on several groundbreaking works, including Anti-Oedipus, What Is Philosophy? and A Thousand Plateaus. Francois Dosse, a prominent French intellectual, examines the prolific, if improbable, relationship between two men of distinct and differing sensibilities. Drawing on unpublished archives and hundreds of personal interviews, Dosse elucidates a collaboration that lasted more than two decades, underscoring the role that family and history--particularly the turbulence of May 1968--played in their monumental work. He also takes the measure of Deleuze and Guattari's posthumous fortunes and weighs the impact of their thought within intellectual, academic, and professional circles.