Overview
"Words like ""terrorism"" and ""war"" no longer encompass the scope of contemporary violence. With this explosive book, Adriana Cavarero, one of the world's most provocative feminist theorists and political philosophers, effectively renders such terms obsolete. She introduces a new word-""horrorism""-to capture the experience of violence. Unlike terror, horrorism is a form of violation grounded in the offense of disfiguration and massacre. Numerous outbursts of violence fall within Cavarero's category of horrorism, especially when the phenomenology of violence is considered from the perspective of the victim rather than that of the warrior. Cavarero locates horrorism in the philosophical, political, literary, and artistic representations of defenseless and vulnerable victims. She considers both terror and horror on the battlefields of the Iliad, in the decapitation of Medusa, and in the murder of Medea's children. In the modern arena, she forges a link between horror, extermination, and massacre, especially the Nazi death camps, and revisits the work of Primo Levi, Hannah Arendt's thesis on totalitarianism, and Arendt's debate with Georges Bataille on the estheticization of violence and cruelty. In applying the horroristic paradigm to the current phenomena of suicide bombers, torturers, and hypertechnological warfare, Cavarero integrates Susan Sontag's views on photography and the eroticization of horror, as well as ideas on violence and the state advanced by Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt. Through her searing analysis, Caverero proves that violence against the helpless claims a specific vocabulary, one that has been known for millennia, and not just to the Western tradition. Where common language fails to form a picture of atrocity, horrorism paints a brilliant portrait of its vivid reality."
Full Product Details
Author: Adriana Cavarero ,
William McCuaig
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Volume: 14
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.00cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.397kg
ISBN: 9780231144568
ISBN 10: 0231144563
Pages: 168
Publication Date: 24 November 2008
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Language: English
Reviews
Essential. Choice Her book is indispensable for anyone keen to understand violence in our society today. -- Joanna Bourke Environment and Planning D
Essential. -- Choice
Essential. Choice 7/1/09
Essential. * Choice * Her book is indispensable for anyone keen to understand violence in our society today. -- Joanna Bourke * Environment and Planning D *
Author Information
Adriana Cavarero is professor of political philosophy at the University of Verona and has been a visiting professor at New York University, Harvard University, and the University of California at Berkeley. Her books in English include In Spite of Plato: A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy; Stately Bodies: Literature, Philosophy, and the Question of Gender; Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood; and For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression.
