March 28th, 2012 at 6:00PM
(via BiblioVault - Binding Violence: Literary Visions of Political Origins) Oooh, interesting: 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.

(via BiblioVault - Binding Violence: Literary Visions of Political Origins)

Oooh, interesting:

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.

Source: bibliovault.org #academic press#Stanford University Press#books#history#literature#political theory#philosophy#violence#democracy#literary analysis
February 12th, 2012 at 12:19PM
(via BiblioVault - Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal) Click through for the full description and a link to get your own copy. I just finished reading this (got it for free as part of my Christmas bonus this year) and I have to recommend it very highly. Please be forewarned, though, that this is a piece of scholarly analysis by a historian of religion who was trained here at the U of C Divinity School under Wendy Doniger. It will offer no easy reading, and may presume a certain level of scholarship and understanding on your part of gnosticism, esotericism, and mysticism. Tracing what he calls the “Super Story” of comic book mythos through the lived experiences of authors’ own paranormal experiences and their expressions in comic books throughout their history, Kripal brings his own extensive experience, both scholarly and personal, of the mystical and paranormal to bear upon the interpretation of texts and contexts. The major meta-themes he explores are laid out in a particularly good progression to take the reader through the thought process that led to writing of this book. It actually turns out to become, in and of itself, a particularly good example of how Kripal sees the texts he analyses functioning in relation to their authors and their readers.

(via BiblioVault - Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal)

Click through for the full description and a link to get your own copy.

I just finished reading this (got it for free as part of my Christmas bonus this year) and I have to recommend it very highly. Please be forewarned, though, that this is a piece of scholarly analysis by a historian of religion who was trained here at the U of C Divinity School under Wendy Doniger. It will offer no easy reading, and may presume a certain level of scholarship and understanding on your part of gnosticism, esotericism, and mysticism.

Tracing what he calls the “Super Story” of comic book mythos through the lived experiences of authors’ own paranormal experiences and their expressions in comic books throughout their history, Kripal brings his own extensive experience, both scholarly and personal, of the mystical and paranormal to bear upon the interpretation of texts and contexts. The major meta-themes he explores are laid out in a particularly good progression to take the reader through the thought process that led to writing of this book. It actually turns out to become, in and of itself, a particularly good example of how Kripal sees the texts he analyses functioning in relation to their authors and their readers.

Source: bibliovault.org #book#reading#University of Chicago Press#academic press#literary analysis#cultural analysis#religion#mysticism#comic books#science fiction#paranormal#superheroes#history#ufology