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. |
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... into an organized nonsubjective collective . That slogans are usually “ spoken ,
” as it were , by organized institutions does not mean necessarily that the
institution itself defines the limits and population of that collective arrangement ...
by the accumulative alien has been met by an equally chaotic epidemic of “
organized ' violence ( increasingly the state ' s familiar ) , which has been ,
however , emptied of content . It does not “ mean ” anything , as Stavrogin knows .
10 I will ...
Organization ” will set its own traps , as we have come to know so well . ... which
named two of those traps for organized labor ( organized crime , the misplaced
trust in the paternal state ) , writers of the time were interested in collective action
...
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Raids on Human Consciousness: Writing, Anarchism, and Violence Arthur F. Redding No preview available - 1998 |
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| Title | Raids on Human Consciousness: Writing, Anarchism, and Violence Cultural frames, framing culture Raids on Human Consciousness: Writing, Anarchism, and Violence, Arthur F. Redding |
| Author | Arthur F. Redding |
| Publisher | University of South Carolina Press, 1998 |
| Original from | the University of California |
| Digitized | 19 Jun 2008 |
| ISBN | 1570032300, 9781570032301 |
| Length | 275 pages |
| Subjects | › › Literary Criticism / American / General Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |