Overview

The emergence of the alphabet in ancient Greece, usually heralded as the first step in the inexorable march toward reason and progress, in fact signaled the introduction of a chance technology that hijacked the future, with devastating consequences for humanity. By investigating an array of cultural artifacts, ranging from Kubrick's “2001: A Space Odyssey” to the Oracle at Delphi to Luther's challenge to the Church, this book demonstrates how the apparently benign emergence of writing made possible far-ranging systems of organized domination and unprecedented levels of violence. The Violence of the Letter considers how a twenty-six letter code changed the face of the world, and not always for the better.

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9780472075911

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Reviews

The Violence of the Letter is exceptionally well written, and the style is original and enjoyable. It engages insightfully with domination, offers a reframing of the Oedipus complex, returns on the separation of soul and body, dissects the violence of alphabetization, and observes the interaction of writing, colonialism, and capitalism: a must read. - Lorenzo Veracini, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne This book is a provocative, innovative, and engaging work . . . will prove an important and novel contribution to 'theory' in general and to 'theory of writing' in particular. - Ron Scapp, College of Mount Saint Vincent McMahon activates a range of scholarship from neuroscience, literary theories, and cultural histories. The Violence of the Letter explores diverse sets of relations which about how the alphabet works as a particular kind of phenomena for writing. Its significance is a theory of literacy about the governing of social life in Western modernities. - Thomas S. Popkewitz, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Author Information

Melanie McMahon has a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from King's College London and a Master's degree in History from Washington University in St. Louis. Her articles have appeared in Irish Studies Review, Textual Practice, and Angelaki. Her current project is about Jacques Derrida and settler colonialism. The Violence of the Letter is her first book.

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