Download or read book Oedipus Unbound written by René Girard and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These hard-to-find writings afford an inside look at the emergence of Girard's scapegoat theory from his pioneering analysis of rivalry and desire. Girard unbinds the Oedipal triangle from its Freudian moorings, replacing desire for the mother with desire for anyoneor anythinga rival desires."
Download or read book The Oedipus Casebook written by Mark R. Anspach and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2020-02-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who killed Laius? Most readers assume Oedipus did. At the play’s end, he stands convicted of murdering his father, marrying his mother, and triggering a deadly plague. With selections from a stellar assortment of critics including Walter Burkert, Terry Eagleton, Michel Foucault, René Girard, and Jean-Pierre Vernant, this book reopens the Oedipus case and lets readers judge for themselves. The Greek word for tragedy means “goat song.” Is Oedipus the goat? Helene Peet Foley calls him “the kind of leader a democracy would both love and desire to ostracize.” The Oedipus Casebook readings weigh the evidence against Oedipus, place the play in the context of Greek scapegoat rites, and explore the origins of tragedy in the festival of Dionysus. This unique critical edition includes a new translation of the play by distinguished classics scholar Wm. Blake Tyrrell and the authoritative Greek text established by H. Lloyd-Jones and N. G. Wilson.
Download or read book Oedipus written by Lowell Edmunds and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-11-22 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a volume in the Gods and Heroes series, this book explores a key figure in ancient myth incisively and accessibly, yet with enough scholarly detail to be an 'all-you-need-to-know' for lower level courses, a platform for further study at a more advanced level or as a reference book of key information for researchers/academics.
Download or read book Intimate Domain written by Martha J. Reineke and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For René Girard, human life revolves around mimetic desire, which regularly manifests itself in acquisitive rivalry when we find ourselves wanting an object because another wants it also. Noting that mimetic desire is driven by our sense of inadequacy or insufficiency, Girard arrives at a profound insight: our desire is not fundamentally directed toward the other’s object but toward the other’s being. We perceive the other to possess a fullness of being we lack. Mimetic desire devolves into violence when our quest after the being of the other remains unfulfilled. So pervasive is mimetic desire that Girard describes it as an ontological illness. In Intimate Domain, Reineke argues that it is necessary to augment Girard’s mimetic theory if we are to give a full account of the sickness he describes. Attending to familial dynamics Girard has overlooked and reclaiming aspects of his early theorizing on sensory experience, Reineke utilizes psychoanalytic theory to place Girard’s mimetic theory on firmer ground. Drawing on three exemplary narratives—Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Sophocles’s Antigone, and Julia Kristeva’s The Old Man and the Wolves—the author explores familial relationships. Together, these narratives demonstrate that a corporeal hermeneutics founded in psychoanalytic theory can usefully augment Girard’s insights, thereby ensuring that mimetic theory remains a definitive resource for all who seek to understand humanity’s ontological illness and identify a potential cure.
Download or read book Ren Girard s Mimetic Theory written by Wolfgang Palaver and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic introduction into the mimetic theory of the French-American literary theorist and philosophical anthropologist René Girard, this essential text explains its three main pillars (mimetic desire, the scapegoat mechanism, and the Biblical “difference”) with the help of examples from literature and philosophy. This book also offers an overview of René Girard’s life and work, showing how much mimetic theory results from existential and spiritual insights into one’s own mimetic entanglements. Furthermore it examines the broader implications of Girard’s theories, from the mimetic aspect of sovereignty and wars to the relationship between the scapegoat mechanism and the question of capital punishment. Mimetic theory is placed within the context of current cultural and political debates like the relationship between religion and modernity, terrorism, the death penalty, and gender issues. Drawing textual examples from European literature (Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kleist, Stendhal, Storm, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Proust) and philosophy (Plato, Camus, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida, Vattimo), Palaver uses mimetic theory to explore the themes they present. A highly accessible book, this text is complemented by bibliographical references to Girard’s widespread work and secondary literature on mimetic theory and its applications, comprising a valuable bibliographical archive that provides the reader with an overview of the development and discussion of mimetic theory until the present day.
Download or read book Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma written by Curtis A. Gruenler and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2017-04-30 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Curtis Gruenler proposes that the concept of the enigmatic, latent in a wide range of medieval thinking about literature, can help us better understand in medieval terms much of the era’s most enduring literature, from the riddles of the Anglo-Saxon bishop Aldhelm to the great vernacular works of Dante, Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and, above all, Langland’s Piers Plowman. Riddles, rhetoric, and theology—the three fields of meaning of aenigma in medieval Latin—map a way of thinking about reading and writing obscure literature that was widely shared across the Middle Ages. The poetics of enigma links inquiry about language by theologians with theologically ambitious literature. Each sense of enigma brings out an aspect of this poetics. The playfulness of riddling, both oral and literate, was joined to a Christian vision of literature by Aldhelm and the Old English riddles of the Exeter Book. Defined in rhetoric as an obscure allegory, enigma was condemned by classical authorities but resurrected under the influence of Augustine as an aid to contemplation. Its theological significance follows from a favorite biblical verse among medieval theologians, “We see now through a mirror in an enigma, then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Along with other examples of the poetics of enigma, Piers Plowman can be seen as a culmination of centuries of reflection on the importance of obscure language for knowing and participating in endless mysteries of divinity and humanity and a bridge to the importance of the enigmatic in modern literature. This book will be especially useful for scholars and undergraduate students interested in medieval European literature, literary theory, and contemplative theology.
Download or read book Selfhood and Sacrifice written by Andrew O'Shea and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-04-08 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: >
Download or read book Ren Girard and the Nonviolent God written by Scott Cowdell and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his latest book on the ground-breaking work of René Girard (1923–2015), Scott Cowdell sets out a new perspective on mimetic theory and theology: he develops the proposed connection between Girardian thought and theological dramatic theory in new directions, engaging with issues of evolutionary suffering and divine providence, inclusive Christian uniqueness, God's judgment, nonviolent atonement, and the spiritual life. Cowdell reveals a powerful, illuminating, and life-enhancing synergy between mimetic theory and Christianity at its best. With religion widely seen as increasingly violent and intransigent, the true Christian emphasis on divine solidarity, mercy, and healing is in danger of being lost. René Girard provides a countervailing voice. He emerges from Cowdell's study not only as a necessary dialogue partner for theology today, but as a global prophet offering hope and challenge in equal measure. René Girard was a Catholic cultural theorist whose mimetic theory achieved a powerful symbiosis of social science with scripture and theology, yielding a unique perspective on humanity’s origins, violent history, and future prospects. Cowdell maps this synergy, revealing theological themes present from Girard’s earliest writings to the latest, less-familiar publications. He resolves a number of theological challenges to Girard’s work, engaging mimetic theory in fruitful dialogue with key themes, movements, and thinkers in theology today. Bringing a distinctive Anglican voice to a largely Catholic debate, Cowdell gives an orthodox theological account of Girard’s intellectual achievement, bearing witness to Christianity’s nonviolent God. This book will be of great interest to theologians, seminarians and clergy of all traditions, Girardians, and Christian peace activists.
Download or read book A Genealogy of Social Violence written by Clint Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the mimetic theory of René Girard, this book investigates the development of society as a result of an original crime (a murder) that shaped the way the earliest humans organized the social structures we live with today - an analysis that reveals the dangerous structure of the most basic social relationships. With attention to family relationships, A Genealogy of Social Violence sheds light on the processes by which the traditional nuclear family, through the mimetic behaviour of children, embeds violence into human desires and hence society as whole. Challenging the thought of Girard and of Rawls in order to offer a new understanding of justice, this book suggests that in order to achieve a more peaceful society, what is required is not the self-defeating narrative of equality, developed in order to manage the violence engendered by our social institutions, but a reconceptualisation of the nuclear family structure. A striking critique of modern society, which draws on religion, mythology, literature, history, philosophy and political theory, A Genealogy of Social Violence will be of interest to social and political theorists, as well as philosophers working in the area of contemporary social and European thought.
Download or read book Ren Girard and the Western Philosophical Tradition volume 1 written by Andreas Wilmes and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2024-07-01 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume situates René Girard in relation to the Western philosophical tradition. Each chapter engages the French anthropologist in dialogue with a key figure from the history of Western philosophy, from Plato to Kierkegaard. The pivotal question of René Girard and the Western Philosophical Tradition revolves around Girard’s assertion, “Since the attempt to understand religion on the basis of philosophy has failed, we ought to try the reverse method and read philosophy in the light of religion.” Major philosophers influenced Girard and contributed valuable insights into questions of desire, religion, violence, and the sacred. At the same time, he felt that Western philosophy often, if not always, neglected the founding violence that lies at the origin of culture. This is the first collective scholarly effort at situating René Girard in relation to the Western philosophical tradition. Volume 1 features chapters on Plato, Augustine of Hippo, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Blaise Pascal, Baruch Spinoza, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Alexis de Tocqueville, Søren Kierkegaard, and René Girard.
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion written by James Alison and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion draws on the expertise of leading scholars and thinkers to explore the violent origins of culture, the meaning of ritual, and the conjunction of theology and anthropology, as well as secularization, science, and terrorism. Authors assess the contributions of René Girard’s mimetic theory to our understanding of sacrifice, ancient tragedy, and post-modernity, and apply its insights to religious cinema and the global economy. This handbook serves as introduction and guide to a theory of religion and human behavior that has established itself as fertile terrain for scholarly research and intellectual reflection.
Download or read book The Head Beneath the Altar written by Brian Collins and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the beginning, says the ancient Hindu text the Rg Veda, was man. And from man’s sacrifice and dismemberment came the entire world, including the hierarchical ordering of human society. The Head Beneath the Altar is the first book to present a wide-ranging study of Hindu texts read through the lens of René Girard’s mimetic theory of the sacrificial origin of religion and culture. For those interested in Girard and comparative religion, the book also performs a careful reading of Girard’s work, drawing connections between his thought and the work of theorists like Georges Dumézil and Giorgio Agamben. Brian Collins examines the idea of sacrifice from the earliest recorded rituals through the flowering of classical mythology and the ancient Indian institutions of the duel, the oath, and the secret warrior society. He also uncovers implicit and explicit critiques in the tradition, confirming Girard’s intuition that Hinduism offers an alternative anti-sacrificial worldview to the one contained in the gospels.
Download or read book The Dying Body as a Lived Experience written by Alan Blum and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The anxiety over death persists in everyday life- though often denied or repressed- lingering as an unconscious worry or intuition that typically seems to compromise one’s feelings of well-being and experience in a range of areas; coming out often as malaise, depression, and anger in much conduct. If one accepts the cliché that life is preparation for death, we must accept that the lived experience of the dying body is not highlighted merely in obvious cases of deterioration such as in the ageing or diseased body, but in everyday life as a normal phenomenon. This book proposes that sensitivity to this dimension can empower us to develop creative relationships to the vulnerability of others and to ourselves as well. Part One lays the groundwork for a study of the ways the aura and fear of death recurs as a constant premonition in life and how people try to deal with this uneasiness. Part Two then goes on to apply this focus to particular concerns and problems such as dementia, depression, aging, retirement, and a range of anxieties, frustrations and aggressions. The Dying Body as Lived Experience will be of interest to a wide interdisciplinary audience in the health sciences, in the sociology of health and illness, philosophy, bioethics and in the expanding field of medical humanities.
Download or read book Violence Desire and the Sacred Volume 1 written by Scott Cowdell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-08-16 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violence, Desire and the Sacred presents the most up-to-date inter-disciplinary work being developed with the ground-breaking insights of René Girard's mimetic theory. The collection showcases the work of outstanding scholars in mimetic theory and how they are applying and developing Girard's insights in a variety of fields. Girard's mimetic insight has provided a fruitful way for different disciplines, such as literature, anthropology, theology, religion studies, cultural studies, and philosophy, to engage on common anthropological ground, with a shared understanding of the human person. The aim of this edited collection is to present this interdisciplinary work and to illustrate how Girard's insights provide fertile ground for bringing together disparate disciplines in a shared purpose. As academic work on Girard's insights is growing, this collection would meet the need to show the critical, interdisciplinary applications of these insights.
Download or read book Death and Mastery written by Benjamin Y. Fong and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first philosophers of the Frankfurt School famously turned to the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud to supplement their Marxist analyses of ideological subjectification. Since the collapse of their proposed "marriage of Marx and Freud," psychology and social theory have grown apart to the impoverishment of both. Returning to this union, Benjamin Y. Fong reconstructs the psychoanalytic "foundation stone" of critical theory in an effort to once again think together the possibility of psychic and social transformation. Drawing on the work of Hans Loewald and Jacques Lacan, Fong complicates the famous antagonism between Eros and the death drive in reference to a third term: the woefully undertheorized drive to mastery. Rejuvenating Freudian metapsychology through the lens of this pivotal concept, he then provides fresh perspective on Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse's critiques of psychic life under the influence of modern cultural and technological change. The result is a novel vision of critical theory that rearticulates the nature of subjection in late capitalism and renews an old project of resistance.
Download or read book What Is Psychoanalysis written by Barnaby B Barratt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis (ABAPsa) book award winner! In a radically powerful interpretation of the human condition, this book redefines the discipline of psychoanalysis by examining its fundamental assumptions about the unconscious mind, the nature of personal history, our sexualities, and the significance of the "Oedipus Complex". With striking originality, Barratt explains the psychoanalytic way of exploring our inner realities, and criticizes many of the schools of "psychoanalytic psychotherapy" that emerged and prospered during the 20th century. In 1912, Sigmund Freud formed a "Secret Committee", charged with the task of protecting and advancing his discoveries. In this book, Barratt argues both that this was a major mistake, making the discipline more like a religious organization than a science, and that this continues to infuse psychoanalytic institutes today. What is Psychoanalysis? takes each of the four "fundamental concepts" that Freud himself said were the cornerstones of his science of healing, and offers a fresh and detailed re-examination of their contemporary importance. Barratt's analysis demonstrates how the profound work, as well as the playfulness, of psychoanalysis, provides us with a critique of the ideologies that support oppression and exploitation on the social level. It will be of interest to advanced students of clinical psychology or philosophy, as well as psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.
Download or read book Taking Ancient Mythology Economically written by Silver and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-08-21 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The primary objective of this study is to decipher the 'codes' or polysemous signs of many prominent myths of the Graeco-Roman and Near Eastern worlds and thereby to expose their hidden economic meaning. The study is highlighted by analyses of the following themes: Birth of Athena from Zeus' Head, Perseus and the Gorgon, and Gilgamesh in the Cedar Forest; Oedipus of Thebes and the biblical myth of the Five Golden Tumors; Semele the daughter of Kadmos; Heroic Twins; Labors of Herakles; Cain, Janus, and the Rainbow; Dogs as Merchants and Male Prostitutes; Virgin Priestesses in Treasuries; Danae and the Birth of Perseus and the biblical myth of the 'House of Rahab'; Circuiting Gods; Contest Between Athena and Poseidon for Supremacy in Athens; and Hermes versus Apollo, David and his Lyre at King Saul's Court, and Gilgamesh the Infernal Musician. A striking result of these studies is the extent to which ancient myths are saturated by economic content, especially commercial idioms and the standardized gestures required of contractors. It becomes quite clear that the ancients were far more aware of and interested in the economy than many contemporary scholars give them credit for.
