Overview

Western culture has always been obsessed with death, but now death has taken on a new, anonymous form. The 20th Century saw the mass production of corpses through war and the triumph of technology over the human body. The new millennium has opened with global terrorism and the suspension of all human rights in far-flung prison camps. We live in an age of panic, when the fear of death at any time and in any place is present. And we live in an age of apathy towards both science and institutional politics, an age which has sanctioned the rise of techno-medical and political powers which can deny our control over our own bodies and lives and the lives of others. The Culture of Death explores this moment to analyse our exposure to death in modern culture.

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9781845200688

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Reviews

'All periods of western philosophy and culture have been obsessed with death, but the horror and banality of modern death calls into question the very nature of our biological existence. Clearly and accessibly written, The Culture of Death engages with pressing current political issues: the significance of concentration camps, the distinctions and similarities between democracy and totalitarianism, the phenomenon of the refugee, and the medical/philosophical criteria of actual death.' Jonathan Dollimore, author of Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture 'Benjamin Noys has written a thought-provoking book on the cultural change of death in contemporary western culture. Noys is clearly not only well read but equally well informed about contemporary artistic representational culture.' Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Mortality

Author Information

Benjamin Noys is Lecturer in English at University College Chichester. He is the author of Georges Bataille.

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