Download or read book The Absence of Myth written by Georges Bataille and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Bataille, the absence of myth had itself become the myth of the modern age. In a world that had lost the secret of its cohesion, Bataille saw surrealism as both a symptom and a beginning of an attempt to address this loss. His writings on this theme are the result of a profound reflection in the wake of World War Two. The Absence of Myth is the most incisive study yet made of surrealism, insisting on its importance as a cultural and social phenomenon with far-reaching consequences. Clarifying Bataille's links with the surrealist movement, and throwing revealing light on his complex and greatly misunderstood relationship with Andre Breton, The Absence of Myth shows Bataille to be a much more radical figure than his postmodernist devotees would have us believe: a man who continually tried to extend Marxist social theory; a pessimistic thinker, but one as far removed from nihilism as can be.
Download or read book The Absence of Myth written by Sophia Heller and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative work, Sophia Heller challenges the assumption that we cannot be without myth, that myth is necessary to vital, soulful living. Indeed, Heller argues, we have been living in a world without myth for a long time. The Absence of Myth examines the loss of a religious mode of being-in-the-world and demonstrates how theorists who insist on the presence of myth deny its historical end. Absence of myth may seem obvious: evidenced by our lack of cult and ritual, and by our de-animated natural world, as well as in the emergence of conceptual thought and psychological awareness, which could only arise with the dissolution of a prereflective (mythic) mode of being-in-the-world. But what appears to be straightforward becomes complicated when myth is intentionally conflated with thought and reflection, usually in the attempt to cultivate a "mythic consciousness" that aims to restore meaning to life and assuage the spiritual malaise of contemporary culture. Myth cannot rest in peace. It must be continually unearthed, redefined, and recontextualized such that modern and postmodern notions of myth are made to substitute for something that has never been experienced, only imagined.
Download or read book Absence of Mind written by Marilynne Robinson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ambitious book, acclaimed writer Marilynne Robinson applies her astute intellect to some of the most vexing topics in the history of human thought—science, religion, and consciousness. Crafted with the same care and insight as her award-winning novels, Absence of Mind challenges postmodern atheists who crusade against religion under the banner of science. In Robinson’s view, scientific reasoning does not denote a sense of logical infallibility, as thinkers like Richard Dawkins might suggest. Instead, in its purest form, science represents a search for answers. It engages the problem of knowledge, an aspect of the mystery of consciousness, rather than providing a simple and final model of reality.By defending the importance of individual reflection, Robinson celebrates the power and variety of human consciousness in the tradition of William James. She explores the nature of subjectivity and considers the culture in which Sigmund Freud was situated and its influence on his model of self and civilization. Through keen interpretations of language, emotion, science, and poetry, Absence of Mind restores human consciousness to its central place in the religion-science debate.
Download or read book Community Myth and Recognition in Twentieth Century French Literature and Thought written by Nikolaj Lübecker and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-10-20 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking as its point of departure the notion of community in mid-twentieth century French literature and thought, this ambitious study seeks to uncover the ways in which Breton, Bataille, Sartre and Barthes used literature and art to engage with the question of reconceptualizing society. In exploring the relevance these writings hold for contemporary debates about community, Lubecker argues for the continuing social importance of literary studies. Throughout the book, he suggests that literature and art are privileged fields for confronting some of the anti-social desires situated at the periphery of human rationality. The authors studied put to work the concepts of Thanatos, sado-masochism and (self-)sacrifice; they also write more poetically about man's attraction to Silence, the Night and the Neutral. Many sociological discourses on the question of community tend to marginalize the drives inherent within these concepts; Lubecker argues it is essential to take these drives into account when theorising the question of community, otherwise they may return in the atavistic form of myths. Moreover if handled with care and attention they can prove to be a resource.
Download or read book The Absence of Myth written by Sophia D. Heller and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Myth Society and Profanation written by William Pawlett and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-31 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work challenges the dominant pejorative view of myth by showing how myth is implicated in the deepest layers of society, politics, individuality and temporality. This work draws upon European cultural theorists, particularly Schelling, Nietzsche, Freud, Bataille and Baudrillard, to challenge the dominant pejorative view of myth. It argues that myth has been subjected to an intensive process of profanation yet nevertheless is always implicated in society, politics and temporality. The work examines sacred dimensions of myth, the modern myth of desire and some cultural effects of the profanation process. The intended audience is undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.
Download or read book The Myth of Sisyphus And Other Essays written by Albert Camus and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity.
Download or read book Surrealism Cinema and the Search for a New Myth written by Kristoffer Noheden and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-06-28 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines post-war surrealist cinema in relation to surrealism’s change in direction towards myth and magic following World War II. Intermedial and interdisciplinary, the book unites cinema studies with art history and the study of Western esotericism, closely engaging with a wide range of primary sources, including surrealist journals, art, exhibitions, and writings. Kristoffer Noheden looks to the Danish surrealist artist Wilhelm Freddie’s forays into the experimental short film, the French poet Benjamin Péret’s contribution to the documentary film L’Invention du monde, the Argentinean-born filmmaker Nelly Kaplan’s feature films, and the Czech animator Jan Svankmajer’s work in short and feature films. The book traces a continuous engagement with myth and magic throughout these films, uncovering a previously unknown strain of occult imagery in surrealist cinema. It broadens the scope of the study of not only surrealist cinema, but of surrealism across the art forms. Surrealism, Cinema, and the Search for a New Myth will appeal to film scholars, art historians, and those interested in the impact of occultism on modern culture, film, and the arts.
Download or read book The Myth of Disenchantment written by Jason Ananda Josephson Storm and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines’ founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world. By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past.
Download or read book Myth written by Robert Ellwood and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2008-12-07 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The book will be a superb introduction to mythological studies for a long time to come." -William G. Doty, Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama/Tuscaloosa author of Myth: A Handbook (University of Alabama Press, 2007) Structured around a typical program of study, Robert Ellwood's accessible introduction covers all the major theories concerning the meaning and interpretation of myth, from structuralist to psychoanalytic, and includes illustrative examples throughout, including modern literary and cinematic myths, from Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings.
Download or read book Visions of Excess written by Georges Bataille and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the publication of Visions of Excess in 1985, there has been an explosion of interest in the work of Georges Bataille. The French surrealist continues to be important for his groundbreaking focus on the visceral, the erotic, and the relation of society to the primeval. This collection of prewar writings remains the volume in which Batailles’s positions are most clearly, forcefully, and obsessively put forward.This book challenges the notion of a “closed economy” predicated on utility, production, and rational consumption, and develops an alternative theory that takes into account the human tendency to lose, destroy, and waste. This collection is indispensible for an understanding of the future as well as the past of current critical theory.Georges Bataille (1897-1962), a librarian by profession, was founder of the French review Critique. He is the author of several books, including Story of the Eye, The Accused Share, Erotism, and The Absence of Myth.
Download or read book Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism written by N. J. Girardot and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Myth and Meaning in Early Daoism examines some of the earliest texts associated with the Daoist tradition (primarily the Daode jing, Zhuangzi, and Huainanzi) from the outlook of the comparative history of religions and finds a kind of thematic and soteriological unity rooted in the mythological symbolism of hundun, the primal chaos being and principle that is foundational for the philosophy and practice of the Dao as creatio continua in cosmic, social, and individual life. Dedicated to the proposition that ancient Chinese texts and traditions are often best understood from a broad interdisciplinary and interpretive perspective, this work when it was written challenged many prevailing conceptions of the Daode jing and Zhuangzi as primarily philosophical texts without any religious significance or affinity with the later sectarian traditions. While controversial and at times playfully provocative, the methodology and findings of this book are still important for the ongoing scholarship about Daoism in China and the world.
Download or read book The Last Myth written by Matthew Barrett Gross and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the first dozen years of the twenty-first century, apocalyptic anticipation in America has leapt from the cultish to the mainstream. Today, nearly 60 percent of Americans believe that the events foretold in the book of Revelation will come true. But many secular readers also seem hungry for catastrophe and have propelled books about peak oil, global warming, and the end of civilization into bestsellers. How did we come to live in a culture obsessed by the belief that the end is near? The Last Myth explains why apocalyptic beliefs are surging within the American mainstream today. Demonstrating that our expectation of the end of the world is a surprisingly recent development in human thought, the book reveals the profound influence of apocalyptic thinking on America’s past, present, and future.
Download or read book Mythogenesis Interdiscursivity Ritual written by Burkhard Fehr and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-08-15 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The studies included in Mythogenesis, Interdiscursivity, Ritual —offered to Professor Demetrios Yatromanolakis, a pioneering scholar— shed new light on a variety of areas: the encounters of ancient Greece with other societies and cultures in antiquity; the interplay between art (vase-painting and sculpture) and broader ideological developments/mentalities in antiquity; ritual in ancient Greek contexts; political ideologies and religion; history of scholarship, textual criticism/critical editing, and hermeneutics; the reception of myth and of archaic and classical Greek culture and philosophy in diverse discursive, mediatic, and sociocultural contexts — from impressionist painting, to modernism and the avant-garde, to Foucauldian thought.
Download or read book The Seductiveness of Jewish Myth written by S. Daniel Breslauer and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1997-07-10 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays focusing on myth in Judaism from biblical to modern times, this book offers a sense of the great diversity of the Jewish religion.
Download or read book The Myth of the Missing Black Father written by Roberta L. Coles and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common stereotypes portray black fathers as being largely absent from their families. Yet while black fathers are less likely than white and Hispanic fathers to marry their child's mother, many continue to parent through cohabitation and visitation, providing caretaking, financial, and other in-kind support. This volume captures the meaning and practice of black fatherhood in its many manifestations, exploring two-parent families, cohabitation, single custodial fathering, stepfathering, noncustodial visitation, and parenting by extended family members and friends. Contributors examine ways that black men perceive and decipher their parenting responsibilities, paying careful attention to psychosocial, economic, and political factors that affect the ability to parent. Chapters compare the diversity of African American fatherhood with negative portrayals in politics, academia, and literature and, through qualitative analysis and original profiles, illustrate the struggle and intent of many black fathers to be responsible caregivers. This collection also includes interviews with daughters of absent fathers and concludes with the effects of certain policy decisions on responsible parenting.
Download or read book The Myth Gap written by Alex Evans and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why, with absolutely no idea what Brexit actually meant, did the UK vote for Brexit? Why, rather than vote for the best-qualified candidate ever to stand as US President, did voters opt for a reality TV star with no political experience? In both cases, the winning side promised change and offered hope. They told a story voters longed to hear. And in the absence of greater, more unifying narratives, then true or not, voters plumped for the best story available. Once upon a time our society was rich in stories. They brought us together and helped us to understand the world and ourselves. We called them myths. Today, we have a myth gap – a vacuum that Alex Evans argues powerfully and persuasively is both dangerous and an opportunity. In this time of global crisis and transition– mass migration, inequality, resource scarcity, and climate change - It is stories, rather than facts and pie-charts,that will animate us and bring us together. It is by finding new myths, those that speak to us of renewal and restoration, that we will navigate our way to a better future. Drawing on his first-hand experience as a political adviser within British government and at the United Nations, and examining the history of climate change campaigning and recent contests such as Brexit and the US presidential election, Alex Evans explores: *how tomorrow’s activists are using narratives for change, * how modern stories have been used and abused, * where we might find the right myths that will take us forward
