C. C. W. Taylor
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199226399
- eISBN:
- 9780191710209
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199226399.003.0017
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy
This chapter contains a brief account of Socrates' life, including his trial and death, Socratic literature, Socrates' thought, including ethics and religion, and Socrates' later influence. It ...
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This chapter contains a brief account of Socrates' life, including his trial and death, Socratic literature, Socrates' thought, including ethics and religion, and Socrates' later influence. It concludes with a selective bibliography.Less
This chapter contains a brief account of Socrates' life, including his trial and death, Socratic literature, Socrates' thought, including ethics and religion, and Socrates' later influence. It concludes with a selective bibliography.
David Landreth
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199773299
- eISBN:
- 9780199932665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199773299.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Everyone knows that The Merchant of Venice is all about money, but if the characters of the play know it too, they do their best to avoid saying so. This chapter examines the variety of ways in which ...
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Everyone knows that The Merchant of Venice is all about money, but if the characters of the play know it too, they do their best to avoid saying so. This chapter examines the variety of ways in which the play's characters seek to articulate extramonetary values for the objects of their desires, and so disavow the centrality of the three thousand ducats through which their desires contend. The mechanism of disavowal is that of dividing and regrouping the play's central problematic into not only different problems, but different kinds of problem: the twofold dilemma (as between justice and mercy, or Jew and Christian), the unitary mystery of the self to the self, the triplicate riddle of the three caskets. In the play's cynical assessment of the relation of its individuals to its society, self-knowledge is willfully mystified in order to validate the institution that, by its own consensual disavowal, holds the Venetian commonwealth together: its money.Less
Everyone knows that The Merchant of Venice is all about money, but if the characters of the play know it too, they do their best to avoid saying so. This chapter examines the variety of ways in which the play's characters seek to articulate extramonetary values for the objects of their desires, and so disavow the centrality of the three thousand ducats through which their desires contend. The mechanism of disavowal is that of dividing and regrouping the play's central problematic into not only different problems, but different kinds of problem: the twofold dilemma (as between justice and mercy, or Jew and Christian), the unitary mystery of the self to the self, the triplicate riddle of the three caskets. In the play's cynical assessment of the relation of its individuals to its society, self-knowledge is willfully mystified in order to validate the institution that, by its own consensual disavowal, holds the Venetian commonwealth together: its money.
Jean-Luc Nancy
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823273843
- eISBN:
- 9780823273898
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823273843.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Over thirty years after Maurice Blanchot writes The Unavowable Community (1983)—a book that offered a critical response to an early essay by Jean-Luc Nancy on “the inoperative community”—Nancy ...
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Over thirty years after Maurice Blanchot writes The Unavowable Community (1983)—a book that offered a critical response to an early essay by Jean-Luc Nancy on “the inoperative community”—Nancy responds in turn with The Disavowed Community (2014). Unfolding as a close reading of Blanchot’s text, Nancy’s essay addresses a range of themes and motifs that mark both his proximity to and distance from Blanchot’s thinking. These themes and motifs include: their respective readings of Georges Bataille, notably his political writings as well as his appeal to the “community of lovers”; pre- and post-war responses in France to fascism and communism; the relation between community, communitarianism, and being-in-common; the relation between the disenchantment with democracy and “aristocratic anarchism”; readings of Marguerite Duras’s récit, The Malady of Death; references to the Eucharist and Christianity; and a rethinking of politics and the political. In short, the exchange between Blanchot and Nancy opens up a rethinking of community that raises at once questions of affirmation and critique, of avowal and disavowal.Less
Over thirty years after Maurice Blanchot writes The Unavowable Community (1983)—a book that offered a critical response to an early essay by Jean-Luc Nancy on “the inoperative community”—Nancy responds in turn with The Disavowed Community (2014). Unfolding as a close reading of Blanchot’s text, Nancy’s essay addresses a range of themes and motifs that mark both his proximity to and distance from Blanchot’s thinking. These themes and motifs include: their respective readings of Georges Bataille, notably his political writings as well as his appeal to the “community of lovers”; pre- and post-war responses in France to fascism and communism; the relation between community, communitarianism, and being-in-common; the relation between the disenchantment with democracy and “aristocratic anarchism”; readings of Marguerite Duras’s récit, The Malady of Death; references to the Eucharist and Christianity; and a rethinking of politics and the political. In short, the exchange between Blanchot and Nancy opens up a rethinking of community that raises at once questions of affirmation and critique, of avowal and disavowal.
Grace Kyungwon Hong
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816695263
- eISBN:
- 9781452952352
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695263.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This book utilizes “difference” as theorized by women of color feminists to analyse works of cultural production by people of color as expressing a powerful antidote to the erasures of contemporary ...
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This book utilizes “difference” as theorized by women of color feminists to analyse works of cultural production by people of color as expressing a powerful antidote to the erasures of contemporary neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is first and foremost a structure of disavowal enacted as a reaction to the successes of the movements for decolonization, desegregation, and liberation of the post-World War II era. It does so in order to posit that racial, gendered, and sexualized violence and inequity are conditions of the past, rather than the very foundations of contemporary neoliberalism’s exacerbation of premature death. Neoliberal ideologies hold out the promise of protection from premature death in exchange for complicity with this pretense. The writings and archival materials of the late Barbara Christian, Death Beyond Disavowal and other author’s works find the memories of death and precarity that neoliberal ideologies attempt to erase. This books treatment of neoliberalism expands upon the typical definitions of neoliberalism in order to describe it as first and foremost a structure of erasure, to center race, gender, and sexuality, and to posit cultural production as an effective rejoinder to neoliberalism’s violence against people of color. Furthermore, this book situates women of color feminism, often dismissed as narrow or limited in its effect, as a powerful diagnosis of and alternative to, such violence. Thus, it situates culture and ideology as political economic forces, and argues for the importance of women of color feminism to any critical engagement with contemporary neoliberalism.Less
This book utilizes “difference” as theorized by women of color feminists to analyse works of cultural production by people of color as expressing a powerful antidote to the erasures of contemporary neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is first and foremost a structure of disavowal enacted as a reaction to the successes of the movements for decolonization, desegregation, and liberation of the post-World War II era. It does so in order to posit that racial, gendered, and sexualized violence and inequity are conditions of the past, rather than the very foundations of contemporary neoliberalism’s exacerbation of premature death. Neoliberal ideologies hold out the promise of protection from premature death in exchange for complicity with this pretense. The writings and archival materials of the late Barbara Christian, Death Beyond Disavowal and other author’s works find the memories of death and precarity that neoliberal ideologies attempt to erase. This books treatment of neoliberalism expands upon the typical definitions of neoliberalism in order to describe it as first and foremost a structure of erasure, to center race, gender, and sexuality, and to posit cultural production as an effective rejoinder to neoliberalism’s violence against people of color. Furthermore, this book situates women of color feminism, often dismissed as narrow or limited in its effect, as a powerful diagnosis of and alternative to, such violence. Thus, it situates culture and ideology as political economic forces, and argues for the importance of women of color feminism to any critical engagement with contemporary neoliberalism.
Jeffrey S. Librett
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823262915
- eISBN:
- 9780823266401
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823262915.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Orientalism and the Figure of the Jew proposes a new way of understanding modern Orientalism. Retracing the path of modern Orientalist thought in German across crucial writings from the eighteenth to ...
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Orientalism and the Figure of the Jew proposes a new way of understanding modern Orientalism. Retracing the path of modern Orientalist thought in German across crucial writings from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, the book argues that Orientalism and anti-Judaism are inextricably entangled. The book suggests, further, that the violent colonialist assertion of Western “material” power in the East is predicated in the modern period upon a “spiritual” weakness of the West: its panic or anxiety about an absence of absolute foundations and values entailed by modernity itself. Secularization and the critique of arbitrary authority, that is, lead to a crisis of value in the West which Orientalism attempts to deny. In detailed readings of writers from the historicist and idealist period—Herder, F. Schlegel, Goethe, Hegel, and Schopenhauer—the book shows how the modern West posits, through disavowal, an Oriental origin as fetish to fill this absent place of lacking foundations. The book argues that this fetish is repeatedly appropriated as Western through a quasi-secularized application of Christian typology, or figural interpretation. In addition, the book reveals that this Western appropriation of the “good” Orient always leaves behind a remainder, the “bad,” inassimilable Orient. The Aryan-Semite opposition illustrates this with painful clarity. Finally, the book demonstrates how certain key modernists—such as Kafka, Mann, Freud, and to some extent Buber—place in question this historicist narrative of modern Orientalism. A number of methodological consequences emerge in the Conclusion, which also indicates how this problematic survives in contemporary German-language cultures.Less
Orientalism and the Figure of the Jew proposes a new way of understanding modern Orientalism. Retracing the path of modern Orientalist thought in German across crucial writings from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, the book argues that Orientalism and anti-Judaism are inextricably entangled. The book suggests, further, that the violent colonialist assertion of Western “material” power in the East is predicated in the modern period upon a “spiritual” weakness of the West: its panic or anxiety about an absence of absolute foundations and values entailed by modernity itself. Secularization and the critique of arbitrary authority, that is, lead to a crisis of value in the West which Orientalism attempts to deny. In detailed readings of writers from the historicist and idealist period—Herder, F. Schlegel, Goethe, Hegel, and Schopenhauer—the book shows how the modern West posits, through disavowal, an Oriental origin as fetish to fill this absent place of lacking foundations. The book argues that this fetish is repeatedly appropriated as Western through a quasi-secularized application of Christian typology, or figural interpretation. In addition, the book reveals that this Western appropriation of the “good” Orient always leaves behind a remainder, the “bad,” inassimilable Orient. The Aryan-Semite opposition illustrates this with painful clarity. Finally, the book demonstrates how certain key modernists—such as Kafka, Mann, Freud, and to some extent Buber—place in question this historicist narrative of modern Orientalism. A number of methodological consequences emerge in the Conclusion, which also indicates how this problematic survives in contemporary German-language cultures.
Anthony Lloyd
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781529204018
- eISBN:
- 9781529204063
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529204018.003.0008
- Subject:
- Sociology, Occupations, Professions, and Work
This chapter asks a simple question – if we know the problematic nature of capitalism and its attendant harms and inequalities, why can’t we fix it? The answer lies in an account of ideology which ...
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This chapter asks a simple question – if we know the problematic nature of capitalism and its attendant harms and inequalities, why can’t we fix it? The answer lies in an account of ideology which lies in action, not thought – we know there are problems but act as if we do not. The disavowal of problematic working conditions – and other significant issues such as environmental harm, migration and automation – makes it difficult to challenge the status quo and enact meaningful change. The search for human recognition and flourishing is hampered by the progressive search for change within the existing system rather than contemplating a different set of social relations and structures. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for ‘fixing the harms of work’ which centre around the need for social science to reconnect with analysis of political economy and problematise capitalism in a way that demands consideration of alternatives.Less
This chapter asks a simple question – if we know the problematic nature of capitalism and its attendant harms and inequalities, why can’t we fix it? The answer lies in an account of ideology which lies in action, not thought – we know there are problems but act as if we do not. The disavowal of problematic working conditions – and other significant issues such as environmental harm, migration and automation – makes it difficult to challenge the status quo and enact meaningful change. The search for human recognition and flourishing is hampered by the progressive search for change within the existing system rather than contemplating a different set of social relations and structures. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for ‘fixing the harms of work’ which centre around the need for social science to reconnect with analysis of political economy and problematise capitalism in a way that demands consideration of alternatives.
Ian Bogost
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816699117
- eISBN:
- 9781452952406
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816699117.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter looks at the controversial appearance of a racial slur in a game about language and how that teaches one about our expectations for language, and games. The focuse of this chapter is on ...
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This chapter looks at the controversial appearance of a racial slur in a game about language and how that teaches one about our expectations for language, and games. The focuse of this chapter is on the 5th Cell’s Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts, which features an enormous dictionary of terms, any of which can be written to summon objects to solve puzzles in the game. Including, the word “sambo”, which is a racial slur for a derogatory way to refer to a black man. This chapter looks at the origins of the racial slur and its connections to the book Little Black Sambo. This chapter emphasizes the fact that it is not the inclusion of this word that is troubling, since the game developers did not recognize it as a racial slur, but rather people’s reaction to the inclusion of this word into the game. On the one hand, it is tempting to celebrate this new ignorance, as some players suggest. If a more accepting and less bigoted society is one we want to live in, then there is some sign of cultural success when a racial slur obsolesces. But on the other hand, this very neglect points to a social ill even worse than racism itself: disavowal. We must strive for more than the destruction of stereotype, slur, and other visible signs of bigotry, as if eliminating the symptoms also cures the cause.Less
This chapter looks at the controversial appearance of a racial slur in a game about language and how that teaches one about our expectations for language, and games. The focuse of this chapter is on the 5th Cell’s Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts, which features an enormous dictionary of terms, any of which can be written to summon objects to solve puzzles in the game. Including, the word “sambo”, which is a racial slur for a derogatory way to refer to a black man. This chapter looks at the origins of the racial slur and its connections to the book Little Black Sambo. This chapter emphasizes the fact that it is not the inclusion of this word that is troubling, since the game developers did not recognize it as a racial slur, but rather people’s reaction to the inclusion of this word into the game. On the one hand, it is tempting to celebrate this new ignorance, as some players suggest. If a more accepting and less bigoted society is one we want to live in, then there is some sign of cultural success when a racial slur obsolesces. But on the other hand, this very neglect points to a social ill even worse than racism itself: disavowal. We must strive for more than the destruction of stereotype, slur, and other visible signs of bigotry, as if eliminating the symptoms also cures the cause.
Grace Kyungwon Hong
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816695263
- eISBN:
- 9781452952352
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816695263.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
The Introduction begins by looking at the meaning of the word “difference” in relation to Audre Lorde’s essay called “Learning from the 60s,” which demanded that everyone regardless of their race ...
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The Introduction begins by looking at the meaning of the word “difference” in relation to Audre Lorde’s essay called “Learning from the 60s,” which demanded that everyone regardless of their race take into account their own complicities with power over and against others. In this book “difference” references a cultural and epistemological practice that holds in suspension (without requiring resolution) contradictory, mutually exclusive, and negating impulses. “Difference” names an epistemological position, ontological condition, and political strategy that reckon with the shift in the technologies of power that one might as well call “neoliberal.” The Introduction goes on to look at how the term “neoliberal” has been used historically and how it is used in this book. It defines neoliberalism foremost as an epistemological structure of disavowal, a means of claiming that racial and gendered violence are things of the past. It does so by affirming certain modes of racialized, gendered, and sexualized life, particularly through invitation into reproductive respectability, so as to disavow its exacerbated production of premature death. The introduction concludes by explaining that the author takes inspiration from Lorde and bends toward the project of pursuing a complex liberation without any guarantee of a certain or knowable future.Less
The Introduction begins by looking at the meaning of the word “difference” in relation to Audre Lorde’s essay called “Learning from the 60s,” which demanded that everyone regardless of their race take into account their own complicities with power over and against others. In this book “difference” references a cultural and epistemological practice that holds in suspension (without requiring resolution) contradictory, mutually exclusive, and negating impulses. “Difference” names an epistemological position, ontological condition, and political strategy that reckon with the shift in the technologies of power that one might as well call “neoliberal.” The Introduction goes on to look at how the term “neoliberal” has been used historically and how it is used in this book. It defines neoliberalism foremost as an epistemological structure of disavowal, a means of claiming that racial and gendered violence are things of the past. It does so by affirming certain modes of racialized, gendered, and sexualized life, particularly through invitation into reproductive respectability, so as to disavow its exacerbated production of premature death. The introduction concludes by explaining that the author takes inspiration from Lorde and bends toward the project of pursuing a complex liberation without any guarantee of a certain or knowable future.
Yannis Stavrakakis
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748619801
- eISBN:
- 9780748672073
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748619801.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Zizek's thoughts on capitalism, ‘the radical act’, and the ethico-political example of Antigone, are often presented as integral parts of a Lacan-inspired radical political philosophy. Hence, the ...
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Zizek's thoughts on capitalism, ‘the radical act’, and the ethico-political example of Antigone, are often presented as integral parts of a Lacan-inspired radical political philosophy. Hence, the main theme examined in the third chapter is the relation between negativity (the negative ontology of Lacanian theory) and the more positive, utopian and heroic political attitude implied by Zizek. The central hypothesis explored is that in Zizek's recent work Lacanian negativity is ultimately disavowed and a positive politics of the act as miracle takes its place. Thus, the problem here is symmetrically opposite to the one associated with discourse theory (ch. 2) and analogous with the one encountered in the work of Castoriadis (ch. 1). We reach then a full circle in this theoretical exploration of the Lacanian Left. The question, of course, is whether the circle is vicious or not. Does such an orientation have a place within the Lacanian Left? How does it relate to Lacan's teaching and to Zizek's earlier work?Less
Zizek's thoughts on capitalism, ‘the radical act’, and the ethico-political example of Antigone, are often presented as integral parts of a Lacan-inspired radical political philosophy. Hence, the main theme examined in the third chapter is the relation between negativity (the negative ontology of Lacanian theory) and the more positive, utopian and heroic political attitude implied by Zizek. The central hypothesis explored is that in Zizek's recent work Lacanian negativity is ultimately disavowed and a positive politics of the act as miracle takes its place. Thus, the problem here is symmetrically opposite to the one associated with discourse theory (ch. 2) and analogous with the one encountered in the work of Castoriadis (ch. 1). We reach then a full circle in this theoretical exploration of the Lacanian Left. The question, of course, is whether the circle is vicious or not. Does such an orientation have a place within the Lacanian Left? How does it relate to Lacan's teaching and to Zizek's earlier work?
Peter Starr
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823226030
- eISBN:
- 9780823240920
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823226030.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The aim of this chapter is to use the concept of “confusion” in the wide range of its manifestations in La Débâcle—military, historical, ideological, sexual, and so on—to unpack the several forms of ...
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The aim of this chapter is to use the concept of “confusion” in the wide range of its manifestations in La Débâcle—military, historical, ideological, sexual, and so on—to unpack the several forms of ideological ambivalence at the heart of Zola's novel. No other text of Zola's uses the term “confusion” as often or to such patently critical effect, yet that critical thrust is curiously undercut by the novel's deployment of confusion to specific aesthetic ends. In the first section of this chapter, the author explores the tension between Zola's critique of confusion and his recourse there to in terms of a larger pattern of disavowal typical of Zola's plotting. This focus on disavowal leads, in the chapter's middle section, to an analysis of the melancholic ambivalence inherent in Zola's take on Republican ideology.Less
The aim of this chapter is to use the concept of “confusion” in the wide range of its manifestations in La Débâcle—military, historical, ideological, sexual, and so on—to unpack the several forms of ideological ambivalence at the heart of Zola's novel. No other text of Zola's uses the term “confusion” as often or to such patently critical effect, yet that critical thrust is curiously undercut by the novel's deployment of confusion to specific aesthetic ends. In the first section of this chapter, the author explores the tension between Zola's critique of confusion and his recourse there to in terms of a larger pattern of disavowal typical of Zola's plotting. This focus on disavowal leads, in the chapter's middle section, to an analysis of the melancholic ambivalence inherent in Zola's take on Republican ideology.
Clayton Crockett
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823227211
- eISBN:
- 9780823235308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823227211.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter considers the complex topic of foreclosure and combines a reading of Freud and Lacan with a consideration of Heidegger and Julia Kristeva. Foreclosure is not the same as disavowal. The ...
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This chapter considers the complex topic of foreclosure and combines a reading of Freud and Lacan with a consideration of Heidegger and Julia Kristeva. Foreclosure is not the same as disavowal. The chapter concludes that if people foreclose God in a certain way, people do not shut down, but rather open up theological thinking.Less
This chapter considers the complex topic of foreclosure and combines a reading of Freud and Lacan with a consideration of Heidegger and Julia Kristeva. Foreclosure is not the same as disavowal. The chapter concludes that if people foreclose God in a certain way, people do not shut down, but rather open up theological thinking.
Lisa Purse
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638178
- eISBN:
- 9780748670857
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638178.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Using Bad Boys II, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Alexander, Spider-Man 3 and 300 as illustrative case studies, this chapter maps out homosexuality's status as both structuring presence and structuring ...
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Using Bad Boys II, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Alexander, Spider-Man 3 and 300 as illustrative case studies, this chapter maps out homosexuality's status as both structuring presence and structuring absence in contemporary action cinema, as well as documenting how action movies speak to this presence/absence. After a brief history of homosexual screen representations, the chapter argues that the imposition or regulation of a straight-gay binary remains readable in contemporary action cinema, and that as a violent, risk-filled homosocial space the action ?lm provides a fertile ground for the anxieties about losing one's proper gender that Judith Butler has described. Representation of and performance of homosexuality, current practices of presenting and policing homosocial space, and patterns of knowing avaowal and disavowal, are historicized and analysed. The chapter explores how homosexuality operates as metaphor in the superhero action cycle, and as an indicator of villainy in films like Gamer, 300 and Watchmen, and also points up the persistent invisibility of female homosexuality in contemporary action cinema.Less
Using Bad Boys II, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Alexander, Spider-Man 3 and 300 as illustrative case studies, this chapter maps out homosexuality's status as both structuring presence and structuring absence in contemporary action cinema, as well as documenting how action movies speak to this presence/absence. After a brief history of homosexual screen representations, the chapter argues that the imposition or regulation of a straight-gay binary remains readable in contemporary action cinema, and that as a violent, risk-filled homosocial space the action ?lm provides a fertile ground for the anxieties about losing one's proper gender that Judith Butler has described. Representation of and performance of homosexuality, current practices of presenting and policing homosocial space, and patterns of knowing avaowal and disavowal, are historicized and analysed. The chapter explores how homosexuality operates as metaphor in the superhero action cycle, and as an indicator of villainy in films like Gamer, 300 and Watchmen, and also points up the persistent invisibility of female homosexuality in contemporary action cinema.
Don Randall
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719068324
- eISBN:
- 9781781701140
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719068324.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter discusses Marlouf's Remembering Babylon, a novel that serves as the cornerstone of his reputation. It shows that this novel brings into focus the specifically postcolonial aspects of ...
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This chapter discusses Marlouf's Remembering Babylon, a novel that serves as the cornerstone of his reputation. It shows that this novel brings into focus the specifically postcolonial aspects of Marlouf's vision and that it provides a significant perspective on the work that comes before it. It determines that the novel's narrative presents Marlouf's view that Australian dismembering and disavowal have been exercised principally upon Aboriginal peoples, and that the novel also immediately sets up a divided presentation of time. This chapter also tries to determine how Remembering Babylon takes its place in the modern world of racial and cultural borders.Less
This chapter discusses Marlouf's Remembering Babylon, a novel that serves as the cornerstone of his reputation. It shows that this novel brings into focus the specifically postcolonial aspects of Marlouf's vision and that it provides a significant perspective on the work that comes before it. It determines that the novel's narrative presents Marlouf's view that Australian dismembering and disavowal have been exercised principally upon Aboriginal peoples, and that the novel also immediately sets up a divided presentation of time. This chapter also tries to determine how Remembering Babylon takes its place in the modern world of racial and cultural borders.
Jeanne Morefield
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199387328
- eISBN:
- 9780199345397
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199387328.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter examines the metanarrative histories of Harvard historian and media personality Niall Ferguson. It begins by analyzing Ferguson’s growing influence on political culture and discusses the ...
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This chapter examines the metanarrative histories of Harvard historian and media personality Niall Ferguson. It begins by analyzing Ferguson’s growing influence on political culture and discusses the relationship between his neoliberal economic agenda, his conception of time, and his counterfactual approach to history. It argues that to fully understand Ferguson’s imperial vision, it is important to look not only at those historical facts that he omits from his stories of British and American imperial development, but also at the way he uses misdirection to both acknowledge and then dismiss political violence. Similarly, Ferguson’s histories reflect a complicated form of rhetorical disavowal that works to reinforce the liberal identity of the imperial state. The chapter concludes by arguing that the primary purpose of Ferguson’s work is to bolster the faith of Americans in their empire in the face of its potential decline.Less
This chapter examines the metanarrative histories of Harvard historian and media personality Niall Ferguson. It begins by analyzing Ferguson’s growing influence on political culture and discusses the relationship between his neoliberal economic agenda, his conception of time, and his counterfactual approach to history. It argues that to fully understand Ferguson’s imperial vision, it is important to look not only at those historical facts that he omits from his stories of British and American imperial development, but also at the way he uses misdirection to both acknowledge and then dismiss political violence. Similarly, Ferguson’s histories reflect a complicated form of rhetorical disavowal that works to reinforce the liberal identity of the imperial state. The chapter concludes by arguing that the primary purpose of Ferguson’s work is to bolster the faith of Americans in their empire in the face of its potential decline.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226301204
- eISBN:
- 9780226301365
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226301365.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Ethical Issues and Debates
A patient in psychoanalysis, shortly after contemplating and then voicing agreement with an interpretation that had been offered, announced an intense urge to get up and leave—that is, wishing the ...
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A patient in psychoanalysis, shortly after contemplating and then voicing agreement with an interpretation that had been offered, announced an intense urge to get up and leave—that is, wishing the not-yet-terminated analytic hour were at an end. Yet no sooner had this thought been uttered than there followed another wish of possibly equal intensity: that the hour not soon end. One might readily say that this patient was ambivalent about staying versus leaving, and surely it could also be said that he was in conflict about these two impulses or feelings. In “Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety,” Sigmund Freud presents his prototypical version of a conflict due to ambivalence. The significance of his presentation was to underscore the presence of opposition in the form of love versus hate. This chapter examines a form of moral dilemma represented by the narcissistic behavior disorders, which range from cross-dressing to thievery to all manner of substance abuse, and discusses the connection between psychoanalysis and morality, as well as the contribution of disavowal to superego explanations.Less
A patient in psychoanalysis, shortly after contemplating and then voicing agreement with an interpretation that had been offered, announced an intense urge to get up and leave—that is, wishing the not-yet-terminated analytic hour were at an end. Yet no sooner had this thought been uttered than there followed another wish of possibly equal intensity: that the hour not soon end. One might readily say that this patient was ambivalent about staying versus leaving, and surely it could also be said that he was in conflict about these two impulses or feelings. In “Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety,” Sigmund Freud presents his prototypical version of a conflict due to ambivalence. The significance of his presentation was to underscore the presence of opposition in the form of love versus hate. This chapter examines a form of moral dilemma represented by the narcissistic behavior disorders, which range from cross-dressing to thievery to all manner of substance abuse, and discusses the connection between psychoanalysis and morality, as well as the contribution of disavowal to superego explanations.
Neil Roberts
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226127460
- eISBN:
- 9780226201184
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226201184.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter begins with an analysis of two republican notions of freedom, the first articulated by Hannah Arendt: freedom in the founding of non-sovereign human action; and the second developed by ...
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This chapter begins with an analysis of two republican notions of freedom, the first articulated by Hannah Arendt: freedom in the founding of non-sovereign human action; and the second developed by Philip Pettit: the concept of freedom as non-domination. It outlines the claims of each while highlighting the locus of their respective disavowals of slavery and slave agency. Disavowal herein refers to a simultaneous double movement with traumatic consequences: an acknowledgment and a denial of an event. The second republican ideal does not hide the importance of slavery to freedom in the Roman tradition it seeks to revive. It makes a point to address slavery explicitly in a manner the first notion fails to articulate. Strict doctrinaire adherents of these two systems nevertheless disavow the experiences, thoughts, and agency of slaves, and this act unites them. After explaining the adverse effects of disavowal, the next section turns to the meaning of slave agency and employs the work of W.E.B. Du Bois. More than the rest of the book, chapter one is theme-centered with authors invoked insofar as they describe the role of political language and problem of disavowal that we must eliminate to explain sufficiently the idea of freedom.Less
This chapter begins with an analysis of two republican notions of freedom, the first articulated by Hannah Arendt: freedom in the founding of non-sovereign human action; and the second developed by Philip Pettit: the concept of freedom as non-domination. It outlines the claims of each while highlighting the locus of their respective disavowals of slavery and slave agency. Disavowal herein refers to a simultaneous double movement with traumatic consequences: an acknowledgment and a denial of an event. The second republican ideal does not hide the importance of slavery to freedom in the Roman tradition it seeks to revive. It makes a point to address slavery explicitly in a manner the first notion fails to articulate. Strict doctrinaire adherents of these two systems nevertheless disavow the experiences, thoughts, and agency of slaves, and this act unites them. After explaining the adverse effects of disavowal, the next section turns to the meaning of slave agency and employs the work of W.E.B. Du Bois. More than the rest of the book, chapter one is theme-centered with authors invoked insofar as they describe the role of political language and problem of disavowal that we must eliminate to explain sufficiently the idea of freedom.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226301204
- eISBN:
- 9780226301365
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226301365.003.0013
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Ethical Issues and Debates
In answering a question about his personal struggle with moral issues, one analyst with a wide range of experience said that his entire life of practice had had to do with moral quandaries of one ...
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In answering a question about his personal struggle with moral issues, one analyst with a wide range of experience said that his entire life of practice had had to do with moral quandaries of one form or another. The same question put to another psychoanalyst of equal seniority and sincerity was answered with the somewhat casual comment that such issues were not of much moment at all. How could this be, that two analysts had such disparate ideas about their life's work? One possibility was that the question was vague; it could be that moral issues and dilemmas and quandaries simply meant different things to different people. This chapter examines the personal moral dilemmas faced by analysts in dealing with patients. It also considers moral blindness, the inability to see both sides of an issue, no matter how abhorrently one may feel about what one is asked to experience; the therapist's disavowal of the segment of his personality that is similar to that of the patient's; and the virtue of honesty in psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.Less
In answering a question about his personal struggle with moral issues, one analyst with a wide range of experience said that his entire life of practice had had to do with moral quandaries of one form or another. The same question put to another psychoanalyst of equal seniority and sincerity was answered with the somewhat casual comment that such issues were not of much moment at all. How could this be, that two analysts had such disparate ideas about their life's work? One possibility was that the question was vague; it could be that moral issues and dilemmas and quandaries simply meant different things to different people. This chapter examines the personal moral dilemmas faced by analysts in dealing with patients. It also considers moral blindness, the inability to see both sides of an issue, no matter how abhorrently one may feel about what one is asked to experience; the therapist's disavowal of the segment of his personality that is similar to that of the patient's; and the virtue of honesty in psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.
Christopher Peterson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823245208
- eISBN:
- 9780823252602
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245208.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This introductory chapter asks how speciesism engenders the bestialization of racial and sexual others. How does the stereotype of the black ape work to disavow the Darwinian principle of a ...
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This introductory chapter asks how speciesism engenders the bestialization of racial and sexual others. How does the stereotype of the black ape work to disavow the Darwinian principle of a universally shared human apehood? To what extent are both racist and antiracist discourses predicated on a shared repudiation of animality? How might we comprehend animality in nonpejorative terms? Analogous to the racialization of animality, the homophobic claim that granting civil rights such as marriage to gays and lesbians would also require the state to sanction bestiality denies the animality inherent in all sexuality by portraying homosexuality as a bestial act. If negative stereotypes about nonhuman animals are the condition of possibility for negative stereotypes about social and political minorities, then avowing human animality would seem to hold much political promise. Against some recent trends in “posthumanism,” however, this chapter asserts that an anti-discriminatory politics cannot be founded on a simple reversal of humanism. Human animality cannot be fully avowed. Rather, we must cultivate a weaker disavowal of difference that resonates with what Jacques Derrida characterizes as a “lesser violence,” which acknowledges our unavoidable implication in systems of exclusion.Less
This introductory chapter asks how speciesism engenders the bestialization of racial and sexual others. How does the stereotype of the black ape work to disavow the Darwinian principle of a universally shared human apehood? To what extent are both racist and antiracist discourses predicated on a shared repudiation of animality? How might we comprehend animality in nonpejorative terms? Analogous to the racialization of animality, the homophobic claim that granting civil rights such as marriage to gays and lesbians would also require the state to sanction bestiality denies the animality inherent in all sexuality by portraying homosexuality as a bestial act. If negative stereotypes about nonhuman animals are the condition of possibility for negative stereotypes about social and political minorities, then avowing human animality would seem to hold much political promise. Against some recent trends in “posthumanism,” however, this chapter asserts that an anti-discriminatory politics cannot be founded on a simple reversal of humanism. Human animality cannot be fully avowed. Rather, we must cultivate a weaker disavowal of difference that resonates with what Jacques Derrida characterizes as a “lesser violence,” which acknowledges our unavoidable implication in systems of exclusion.
Jane Anna Gordon
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823254811
- eISBN:
- 9780823260881
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823254811.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This conclusion explains how creolizing political theory is different from the comparative political theory of Fred Dallmayr, Roxanne Euben, Michaelle Browers, Leigh Jenco, Farah Godrej, and Andrew ...
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This conclusion explains how creolizing political theory is different from the comparative political theory of Fred Dallmayr, Roxanne Euben, Michaelle Browers, Leigh Jenco, Farah Godrej, and Andrew March, on the one hand, and work on processes of disavowal by Sibylle Fischer and on moments of universal history by Susan Buck-Morss, on the other. While creating professional space to study political thought beyond the U.S. and Western Europe, focus in comparative political theory has been monopolized by East Asia, East India, and Muslim worlds to the exclusion of African, Caribbean, Latin and Native American ones. Work on disavowal and universal history has illuminated the larger historical patterns of such exclusions but often with some skepticism about the possibility of forging more viable, inclusive political collectivities. Creolization then draws on both academic developments while being far less reluctant about how we can forge new creolizing alternatives. Finally, creolized approaches are compared with problem-driven research within political science.Less
This conclusion explains how creolizing political theory is different from the comparative political theory of Fred Dallmayr, Roxanne Euben, Michaelle Browers, Leigh Jenco, Farah Godrej, and Andrew March, on the one hand, and work on processes of disavowal by Sibylle Fischer and on moments of universal history by Susan Buck-Morss, on the other. While creating professional space to study political thought beyond the U.S. and Western Europe, focus in comparative political theory has been monopolized by East Asia, East India, and Muslim worlds to the exclusion of African, Caribbean, Latin and Native American ones. Work on disavowal and universal history has illuminated the larger historical patterns of such exclusions but often with some skepticism about the possibility of forging more viable, inclusive political collectivities. Creolization then draws on both academic developments while being far less reluctant about how we can forge new creolizing alternatives. Finally, creolized approaches are compared with problem-driven research within political science.
Harry Berger
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823245161
- eISBN:
- 9780823252657
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245161.003.0014
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter offers a reading of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with particular emphasis on the humiliation of Prospero, the play’s protagonist. Prospero was the duke of Milan who was forced to ...
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This chapter offers a reading of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with particular emphasis on the humiliation of Prospero, the play’s protagonist. Prospero was the duke of Milan who was forced to flee with his daughter Miranda and spent twelve years on an island. But he sees a way to get back after the honest lord Gonzalo helps him to escape. He uses magic to get his revenge and punish and forgive his enemies. This chapter analyzes the subtext that Prospero’s narrative labors to disavow: the disavowal is reinforced by his interpretation of Gonzalo’s complicity in his forced exile. It also considers the play’s casual depiction of louche behavior as well as the world Prospero showed Miranda.Less
This chapter offers a reading of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with particular emphasis on the humiliation of Prospero, the play’s protagonist. Prospero was the duke of Milan who was forced to flee with his daughter Miranda and spent twelve years on an island. But he sees a way to get back after the honest lord Gonzalo helps him to escape. He uses magic to get his revenge and punish and forgive his enemies. This chapter analyzes the subtext that Prospero’s narrative labors to disavow: the disavowal is reinforced by his interpretation of Gonzalo’s complicity in his forced exile. It also considers the play’s casual depiction of louche behavior as well as the world Prospero showed Miranda.
