Death-drive : Freudian hauntings in literature and art / Robert Rowland Smith

Author:: Smith, Robert Rowland
Published:: Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2010]
Copyright Date:: ©2010
Physical Description:: xvi, 215 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

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Series:

The frontiers of theory

Contents:

1. Memento Mori -- 2. The death-drive does not think -- 3. A subject is being beaten -- 4. White over red -- 5. Literature-repeat nothing -- 6. A harmless suggestion -- 7. The rest of radioactive light -- Postscript: Approaching death.

Summary:

"Robert Rowland Smith takes Freud's work on the death-drive and compares it with other philosophies of death - Pascal, Heidegger and Derrida, in particular. He also applies it in a new way to literature and art - to Shakespeare, Rothko and Katharina Fritsch, among others. He asks whether artworks are dead or alive, if artistic creativity isn't actually a form of destruction, and whether our ability to be seduced by fine words means we don't put ourselves at risk of death. In doing so, he proposes a new theory of aesthetics in which artworks and literary texts have a death-drive of their own."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject(s):

Aesthetics

ISBN:

9780748640393 (hbk.)
0748640398 (hbk.)

Bibliography Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

View MARC record | catkey: 6275147