Christ's subversive body : practices of religious rhetoric in culture and politics / Olga V. Solovieva
- Author:
- Solovieva, Olga V.
- Published:
- Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2018.
- Copyright Date:
- ©2018
- Physical Description:
- xviii, 307 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Contents:
- Foreword / by Haun Saussy -- Introduction -- Christ's body versus Christ's image : the iconoclasm of Epiphanius of Salamis -- Corpus libri as Corpus Christi: subversion, alchemy, and the poetics of transsubstantiation in the Book of the Holy Trinity -- The world as Christ and representation, or Johann Caspar Lavater's practice of redemptive aesthetics -- Christ's vanishing body in Dostoevsky's Genealogy of ethical consciousness -- The scene of Christ, or the cinematic body of Pier Paolo Pasolini -- A "sacred enterprise" : Christ's body in the contemporary United States.
- Summary:
- Offers a fascinating exploration of six historical examples of politically or culturally subversive usages of the body of Christ. Shining a light on the enabling potential of religious rhetoric, the author examines how, in moments of crisis or transition throughout Western history, the body of Christ has been deployed in a variety of discourses including recent neo- and theoconservative moments in the United States. The author's survey includes the iconoclastic polemics of Epiphanius at the moment of struggles for supremacy between the Roman state and the Christian church, the mystical theologico-political alchemy of an anonymous treatise circulated at the Council of Constance, Lavater's counter-Enlightenment visions of the afterlife expressed through physiognomy, Dostoevsky's refashioning of ethical communities, Pier Paolo Pasolini's attempts to provoke the "scandal" of Jesus's mission once more in the modern world, and the elaboration of a political theology subordinating democratic dissent to the higher unity of a corporately conceived "unitary executive" in early twenty-first-century America.
- Subject(s):
- ISBN:
- 9780810136007 hardcover ; alkaline paper
0810136007 hardcover ; alkaline paper
9780810135994 paperback
081013599X paperback - Bibliography Note:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
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