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Forbidden Aesthetics, Ethical Justice, and Terror in Modern Western
Culture explores the potential links between terror and aesthetics
in modern Western society, specifically the affinity between
terrorism and the possibility of an aesthetic appreciation of
terrorist phenomena or events. But can we actually have an
aesthetic appreciation of terror or terrorism? And if we can, is it
ethical or legitimate? Emmanouil Aretoulakis proposes that Western
spectators and subjects from the eighteenth century onwards have
always felt, unconsciously or not, a certain kind of fascination or
even exhilaration before scenes of tragedy and natural or manmade
disaster. Owing to their immorality, such "forbidden" feelings go
unacknowledged. It would definitely be callous as well as
politically incorrect to acknowledge the existence of aesthetics in
witnessing or representing human misery. Still, as Aretoulakis
insists, our aesthetic faculties or even our appreciation of the
beautiful are already inherent in how we view, appraise, and pass
judgment upon phenomena of terrorism and disaster. Paradoxically,
such a "forbidden aesthetics" is ethical despite its utter
immorality.
This book focuses on literal and metaphorical ruins, as they are
appropriated and imagined in different forms of writing. Examining
British and American literature and culture in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, the book begins in the era of industrial
modernity with studies of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Henry
James and Daphne Du Maurier. It then moves on to the significance
of ruins in the twentieth century, against the backdrop of
conflict, waste and destruction, analyzing authors such as Beckett
and Pinter, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Leonard
Cohen. The collection concludes with current debates on ruins,
through discussions of Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, as well
as reflections on the refugee crisis that take the ruin beyond the
text, offering new perspectives on its diverse legacies and
conceptual resources.
This book focuses on literal and metaphorical ruins, as they are
appropriated and imagined in different forms of writing. Examining
British and American literature and culture in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, the book begins in the era of industrial
modernity with studies of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Henry
James and Daphne Du Maurier. It then moves on to the significance
of ruins in the twentieth century, against the backdrop of
conflict, waste and destruction, analyzing authors such as Beckett
and Pinter, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Leonard
Cohen. The collection concludes with current debates on ruins,
through discussions of Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, as well
as reflections on the refugee crisis that take the ruin beyond the
text, offering new perspectives on its diverse legacies and
conceptual resources.
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