Our Dark Side (eBook)

A History of Perversion

Elisabeth Roudinesco (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2013
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-0-7456-8369-0 (ISBN)

Infos

Where does perversion begin? Who is perverse? Ever since the word
first appeared in the Middle Ages, anyone who delights in evil and
in the destruction of the self or others has been described as
'perverse'. But while the experience of perversion is universal,
every era has seen it and dealt with it in its own way.

The history of perversion in the West is told here through a
study of great emblematic figures of the perverse - Gilles de Rais,
the mystical saints and the flagellants in the middle ages, the
Marquis de Sade in the eighteenth century, the masturbating child,
the male homosexual and the hysterical woman nineteenth century,
Nazism in the twentieth century, and the complementary figures of
the paedophile and the terrorist in the twenty-first.

The perverse are rarely talked about and when they are it is
usually only to be condemned. They are commonly viewed as monstrous
and cruel, as something alien to the very nature of being human.
And yet, perversion can also attest to creativity and
self-transcendence, to the refusal of individuals to submit to the
rules and prohibitions that govern human life. Perversion
fascinates us precisely because it can be both abject and sublime.
Whether they are sublime because they turn to art or mysticism, or
abject because they surrender to their murderous impulses, the
perverse are part of us because they exhibit something that we
always conceal: our own negativity and our dark side.

Autor

Élisabeth Roudinesco is Professor of History at the University of Paris VII - Denis Diderot.

Inhalt

Introduction.

I The Sublime and The Abject.

II Sade Pro and Contra Sade.

III Dark Enlightenment or Barbaric Science?

IV The Auschwitz Confessions.

V The Perverse Society.

Bibliography.

Rezensionen

"In this provocative, timely, and engaging study of famous perverse
figures, Elisabeth Roudinesco offers us a 'dark mirror' for
human experience. She persuasively argues that because perversion
is a uniquely human activity, it allows us to gain access to
aspects of the human psyche that are normally hidden from view. By
examining case histories of perversion throughout history,
Roudinesco shows that perverts provide us with a disturbing
reflection of the dark side of the very human societies in which
they perform their extreme acts."

Elissa Marder, Emory University

"This fascinating book takes us from the question of the origin
of the perverse through its semiotic displacements in Christianity
and libertinism, by way of Freud as a thinker of the dark
Enlightenment, into the emergence of contemporary biocracy and
genocide as delight in evil. Required reading for all studies of
the history of consciousness."

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Columbia University

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.10.2013
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Ethik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Allgemeine Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Psychoanalyse / Tiefenpsychologie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Sozialpsychologie
• Schlagworte: AGEs • anyone • delights • Destruction • emblematic • ERA • every • Evil • Experience • Figures • First • Flagellants • Great • History • Middle • Mystical • others • perverse • Perversion • Psychologie • Psychology • Saints • self • Study • Told • Universal • Way • West • Wissenschaft • WORD
• ISBN-10: 0-7456-8369-X / 074568369X
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8369-0 / 9780745683690