Sonia Kruks
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780195381443
- eISBN:
- 9780199979165
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381443.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter engages with an essay that Beauvoir wrote in 1946, at time of the trial and execution of Robert Brasillach, a French intellectual who had collaborated with the Nazis. Beauvoir’s ...
More
This chapter engages with an essay that Beauvoir wrote in 1946, at time of the trial and execution of Robert Brasillach, a French intellectual who had collaborated with the Nazis. Beauvoir’s phenomenological account of the desire for revenge that she and others experienced at the time challenges the widely held assumption that wanting revenge after atrocity is a “natural” response. Beauvoir shows revenge instead to be a complex social emotion, but one that is almost always doomed to failure. This is so regardless of whether revenge involves a direct exchange of positions between victim and perpetrator or whether it is pursued on behalf of others or through formal, judicial processes. Turning to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa after apartheid, the chapter then explores whether more recent projects of forgiveness or reconciliation after political atrocity may be preferable to vengefulness.Less
This chapter engages with an essay that Beauvoir wrote in 1946, at time of the trial and execution of Robert Brasillach, a French intellectual who had collaborated with the Nazis. Beauvoir’s phenomenological account of the desire for revenge that she and others experienced at the time challenges the widely held assumption that wanting revenge after atrocity is a “natural” response. Beauvoir shows revenge instead to be a complex social emotion, but one that is almost always doomed to failure. This is so regardless of whether revenge involves a direct exchange of positions between victim and perpetrator or whether it is pursued on behalf of others or through formal, judicial processes. Turning to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa after apartheid, the chapter then explores whether more recent projects of forgiveness or reconciliation after political atrocity may be preferable to vengefulness.
Sandrine Sanos
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804774574
- eISBN:
- 9780804782838
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804774574.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This book examines the writings of a motley collection of interwar far-right intellectuals, showing that they defined Frenchness in racial, gendered, and sexual terms. A broad, ambitious cultural and ...
More
This book examines the writings of a motley collection of interwar far-right intellectuals, showing that they defined Frenchness in racial, gendered, and sexual terms. A broad, ambitious cultural and intellectual history, the book offers a provocative reinterpretation of a topic that has long been the subject of controversy. In works infused with rhetorics of abjection, disgust, and dissolution, such writers as Maulnier, Brasillach, Céline, and Blanchot imagined the nation through figures deemed illegitimate or inferior—Jews, colonial subjects, homosexuals, women. The author argues that these intellectuals offered an “aesthetics of hate,” reinventing a language of far-right nationalism by appealing to the realm of beauty and the sublime for political solutions. By acknowledging the constitutive relationship of anti-Semitism and colonial racism at the heart of these canonical writers' nationalism, this book makes us rethink how aesthetics and politics function, how race is imagined and defined, how gender structured far-right thought, and how we conceive of French intellectualism and fascism.Less
This book examines the writings of a motley collection of interwar far-right intellectuals, showing that they defined Frenchness in racial, gendered, and sexual terms. A broad, ambitious cultural and intellectual history, the book offers a provocative reinterpretation of a topic that has long been the subject of controversy. In works infused with rhetorics of abjection, disgust, and dissolution, such writers as Maulnier, Brasillach, Céline, and Blanchot imagined the nation through figures deemed illegitimate or inferior—Jews, colonial subjects, homosexuals, women. The author argues that these intellectuals offered an “aesthetics of hate,” reinventing a language of far-right nationalism by appealing to the realm of beauty and the sublime for political solutions. By acknowledging the constitutive relationship of anti-Semitism and colonial racism at the heart of these canonical writers' nationalism, this book makes us rethink how aesthetics and politics function, how race is imagined and defined, how gender structured far-right thought, and how we conceive of French intellectualism and fascism.
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804774574
- eISBN:
- 9780804782838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804774574.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This introductory chapter presents an overview of the discussions in this book. The book focuses on far-right intellectuals composed of men such as novelist Robert Brasillach, essayist Thierry ...
More
This introductory chapter presents an overview of the discussions in this book. The book focuses on far-right intellectuals composed of men such as novelist Robert Brasillach, essayist Thierry Maulnier, music and film critic Lucien Rebatet, and editors Jean de Fabrègues and Jean–Pierre Maxence. The book determines the extent of their redefinition of far-right and fascist politics by exploring the logic by which gender, sex, race, and empire structured and underscored their particular vision of the nation. The chapter also explains the meaning of the term, “aesthetics of hate”, which characterizes the reflections of these far-right intellectuals.Less
This introductory chapter presents an overview of the discussions in this book. The book focuses on far-right intellectuals composed of men such as novelist Robert Brasillach, essayist Thierry Maulnier, music and film critic Lucien Rebatet, and editors Jean de Fabrègues and Jean–Pierre Maxence. The book determines the extent of their redefinition of far-right and fascist politics by exploring the logic by which gender, sex, race, and empire structured and underscored their particular vision of the nation. The chapter also explains the meaning of the term, “aesthetics of hate”, which characterizes the reflections of these far-right intellectuals.
