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
Results 1-3 of 41
... narrative . We are , in fact , at least two steps removed from the " events . " Avis is the author of the " Everhard Manuscript , " but the manuscript is pre- sented with textual notes of a future century's scholar ; the scholar is ...
... narrative structure , the " point of view " which in early modern novels involves itself in a heroic effort to manipulate political horrors and hold them at a considered dis- tance , degenerates through the course of this narrative into ...
... narrative , has unleashed difference ( and its own anarchic violence ) . Violences swim in the capaciousness of heterogeneous meaning . What now ? In The Differend ( 1983 ) , his meditation on the possibility of language after Auschwitz ...
Contents
Satire Georges Sorel | 30 |
Anarchism and | 71 |
Violence and Modernism | 117 |
Copyright | |
5 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Raids on Human Consciousness: Writing, Anarchism, and Violence Arthur F. Redding No preview available - 1998 |