Raids on Human Consciousness: Writing, Anarchism, and ViolenceHowever one looks at violence -- as an instrument of bureaucracy or ideology; as a product of racial, gender, or class antagonisms; or as the inevitable result of power politics -- it is an integral part of every social system and is one of the most pressing problems of our tortured century. In Raids on Human Consciousness Arthur Redding examines the contention that violence, be it the mass product of revolutionary uprising or a private sadomasochistic indulgence, may be taken to instill in those who commit it the capacity for radical change. Conscious that mainstream theory considers violence deviant, a departure from the normal equilibrium of social and aesthetic structures, while other critiques take it to be integral to any dynamic system, Redding begins with the anarchist inquiry into the relationship of violence to the imaginary representation of modern communities. He explores the "public images" of anarchism in literature and popular culture and emphasizes the diverse strategies by which modern writers encounter, derive, deflect, and manipulate fantasies of political violence. Redding recognizes that language fails when confronted with the extreme suffering of human bodies. Acknowledging that flesh is subject to war, torture, and everyday brutality -- violations to which language can never do justice -- he nonetheless finds it urgent to reclaim language on the far side of suffering. |
From inside the book
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... IRON HEEL The socialist revolution portrayed in Jack London's apocalyptic novel The Iron Heel ( 1907 ) is a pronounced , and last - ditch , attempt at a Sorelian myth . London , a committed but increasingly frustrated socialist , is ...
... Iron Heel , as Howard Zinn makes clear in his didactic 1971 introduction to the paperback version , is generally ... Iron Heel . We mined the organization of the Iron Heel with our secret agents , and the Iron Heel countermined with its ...
... Iron Heel cannot be read as a socialist manifesto , and this seems true enough , at least not in the Sorelian form ... Iron Heel is presented as a historical aberration and throws a boomerang into the smug theories of social evolution ...
Contents
Satire Georges Sorel | 30 |
Anarchism and | 71 |
Violence and Modernism | 117 |
Copyright | |
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Raids on Human Consciousness: Writing, Anarchism, and Violence Arthur F. Redding No preview available - 1998 |