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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... tradition stretching from Matthew Arnold to John Gardner , a tradition that has conceived of " culture " as the containment or channeling of chaos . While there is certainly a great deal of popularity to this tradition , it is , as ...
... tradition ” as any writer and attuned to the contours and rhythms of our ambivalence regarding it . As D. H. Lawrence commented regarding Melville : “ Many races , many peoples , many nations , under the Stars and Stripes . Beaten with ...
... tradition , and the idea of revolutionary desire is clearly one of the main themes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia . It is important , I think , that the phantasm was theorized in 1969 , for it seems to describe the locale of a ...
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 |