Bloodrites of the Post-structuralists: Word, Flesh, and Revolution

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Psychology Press, 2002 - 206 páginas
Publisher description: In Bloodrites of the Post-Structuralists provocative theorist Anne Norton presents an alternative narrative of the history of the world She starts by reminding us of the real interplay between words (laws, scriptures, myths, and history) and the world of flesh (of bloodties and bloodshed, skin color and sexuality). The seemingly precious and all too literary constructs of the poststructuralists really do act on the body politic. The book is written on three historical sites: the revolutions in England and France, the struggle against colonialism, and the modern liberal order. In this telling, we see liberal constitutions born in Terror and regicide, we see a word, a text, a document, write "slave" on the darkness of the body, we see the guillotine release the power in the blood, and we hear the words that declare a people free. Norton re-reads and re-writes foundational myths from Abraham and Isaac on the mountain top in the Bible to legends of the American Revolution. This lyrical and mesmerizingbook serves, in its way, as a catalog of oppressions, and a history of the justifications oppressors have made for injustices. It also makes clear that that these oppressions and justifications continue on today, as certainly as they did in any point in history. Defying easy categorization, Bloodrites of the Post-Structuralists is the ultimate challenges to all those who claim that history has come to end, or that life is classifiable or uncomplex, or that we understand all we need to understand about the story of Western History.

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Contenido

INTRODUCTION
1
Power in the Blood
9
Closed Body Open Mind
15
Barbarities
25
Hand and
33
Open Bodies Closed Minds
43
Writing over Blood
51
The Man of Blood and the Army of Scripture
65
Revolutionary Memories
91
The Death of Marat
111
The Perverse Authority of Writing
119
Sacrifice
129
Semele or the Enlightenment in Flames
149
The Laughter of Sarah
163
The Circumcised
177
Index
197

The Jews of Change Alley
71
25
78

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Acerca del autor (2002)

Anne Norton is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the founding co-editor of the journal, Theory and Event.

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