An Utterly Dark Spot

Download or read book An Utterly Dark Spot written by Miran Bozovic and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slovenian philosopher Miran Bozovic's An Utterly Dark Spot examines the elusive status of the body in early modern European philosophy by examining its various encounters with the gaze. Its range is impressive, moving from the Greek philosophers and theorists of the body (Aristotle, Plato, Hippocratic medical writers) to early modern thinkers (Spinoza, Leibniz, Malebranche, Descartes, Bentham) to modern figures including Jon Elster, Lacan, Althusser, Alfred Hitchcock, Stephen J. Gould, and others. Bozovic provides startling glimpses into various foreign mentalities haunted by problems of divinity, immortality, creation, nature, and desire, provoking insights that invert familiar assumptions about the relationship between mind and body. The perspective is Lacanian, but Bozovic explores the idiosyncrasies of his material (e.g., the bodies of the Scythians, the transvestites transformed and disguised for the gaze of God; or Adam's body, which remained unseen as long as it was the only one in existence) with an attention to detail that is exceptional among Lacanian theorists. The approach makes for engaging reading, as Bozovic stages imagined encounters between leading thinkers, allowing them to converse about subjects that each explored, but in a different time and place. While its focus is on a particular problem in the history of philosophy, An Utterly Dark Spot will appeal to those interested in cultural studies, semiotics, theology, the history of religion, and political philosophy as well. Miran Bozovic is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of Der grosse Andere: Gotteskonzepte in der Philosophie der Neuzeit (Vienna: Verlag Turia & Kant, 1993) and editor of The Panopticon Writings by Jeremy Bentham (London: Verso, 1995).

Download or read book Jacques Lacan written by Slavoj Žižek and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jacques Lacan (1901-1980) is undoubtedly the central figure of psychoanalysis in the second half of the 20th century. The texts selected here present the entire scope of the Lacan debate.

Download or read book An Utterly Dark Spot written by Miran Bozovic and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2000-07-12 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two concepts of special interest to contemporary theorists--the gaze and the body--approached in a fresh and fascinating way

Download or read book Architecture in the Age of Pornography written by Nadir Lahiji and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Architecture, and its pedagogy in the academy, is dominated by the technology of image production that veils the ‘naked power’ behind its operation. It conforms to the principles of cultural logic of the society of the spectacle, consistent with neoliberal capitalism. The problem with this dominant pedagogy is that it violates the fundamental ethical imperative, putting architecture in direct contradiction with the ‘common good’. In addition, it has let architecture enter the brothel of pornographic capitalism which turns every object into an object of obscene gratification of the senses. In this book, Nadir Lahiji adopts Alain Badiou’s thesis from The Pornographic Age to demonstrate that contemporary architecture is in absolute complicity with the pornographic present. The traits that Badiou identifies in this age are manifestly visible in architectural surfaces which are subordinated to the same ‘regime of images’. Similarly to Badiou’s political indictments of the society which has given rise to the pornographic present, the book condemns the architecture that has lent its service to the same society with a license to consummate its transgression to better cater to the imperative of the ‘regime of images’. Transposing the conceptual categories in Badiou’s analysis to the critique of architecture’s pornographic turn in contemporary society, the book constructs a conceptual framework by which to demonstrate the specific manifestations of pornography in building. The book is aimed at architecture students at higher graduate and post-graduate levels.

Download or read book The Panopticon Writings written by Jeremy Bentham and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Panopticon project for a model prison obsessed the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham for almost 20 years. In the end, the project came to nothing; the Panopticon was never built. But it is precisely this that makes the Panopticon project the best exemplification of Bentham's own theory of fictions, according to which non-existent fictitious entities can have all too real effects. There is probably no building that has stirred more philosophical controversy than Bentham's Panopticon. The Panopticon is not merely, as Foucault thought, "a cruel, ingenious cage", in which subjects collaborate in their own subjection, but much more-constructing the Panopticon produces not only a prison, but also a god within it. The Panopticon is a machine which on assembly is already inhabited by a ghost. It is through the Panopticon and the closely related theory of fictions that Bentham has made his greatest impact on modern thought; above all, on the theory of power. The Panopticon writings are frequently cited, rarely read. This edition contains the complete "Panopticon Letters", together with selections from "Panopticon Postscript I" and "Fragment on Ontology", Bentham's fullest account of fictions. A comprehensive introduction by Miran Bozovic explores the place of Panopticon in contemporary theoretical debate.

Download or read book Sociological Noir written by Kieran Flanagan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contrary to secular claims regarding the expulsion of religion, modernity does in fact produce unprecedented forms whose understanding re-casts the relationships between sociology and theology. This book explores ‘irruptions’ which disturb modernity from without: fragments or deposits of history that have spectral – or ‘noir’ – properties, whether ruins, collective memories, or the dark Gothic or the Satanic as manifested in culture. The study investigates what irrupts from these depths to unsettle our understanding of modernity so as to reveal its theological roots. A ground-breaking and extensive work, Sociological Noir explores literature, history and theology to re-cast the sociological imagination in ways that inspire reflection on new configurations in modernity. As such, it will have wide-spread appeal to sociologists and social theorists with interests in religion, theology and debates on postsecularism and culture.

Download or read book Investigating Franz Kafka's “Der Bau” written by Andrea Ebarb and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-04-26 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Die 1992 gegründete Buchreihe ist interdisziplinär ausgerichtet; sie umfasst wissenschaftliche Monographien, Aufsatzsammlungen und kommentierte Quelleneditionen vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Der Begriff deutsch-jüdische Literatur bzw. Kultur verweist auf Werke jüdischer Autoren in deutscher Sprache, insoweit jüdische Aspekte erkennbar sind. Aber auch das häufig vom Antisemitismus geprägte Judenbild nichtjüdischer Autoren wird zu einem Faktor der literarisch vermittelten deutsch-jüdischen Beziehungsgeschichte. Der Erforschung des gesamten Problemfelds bietet die Reihe ein angemessenes Forum.