Death-drive: Freudian Hauntings In Literature And Art (the Frontiers Of Theory)
by Robert Rowland Smith /
2010 / English / PDF
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Robert Rowland Smith takes Freud's work on the death-drive and
compares it with other philosophies of death--Pascal, Heidegger and
Derrida in particular. He also applies it in a new way to
literature and art - to Shakespeare, Rothko and Katharina Fritsch,
among others. He asks whether artworks are dead or alive, if
artistic creativity isn't actually a form of destruction, and
whether our ability to be seduced by fine words means we don't put
our selves at risk of death.In doing so, he proposes a new theory
of aesthetics in which artworks and literary texts have a
death-drive of their own, not least by their defining ability to
turn away from all that is real, and where the effects of the
death-drive mean that we are constantly living in imaginary,
rhetorical or 'artistic' worlds. The book also provides a valuable
introduction to the rich tradition of work on the death-drive since
Freud.
Robert Rowland Smith takes Freud's work on the death-drive and
compares it with other philosophies of death--Pascal, Heidegger and
Derrida in particular. He also applies it in a new way to
literature and art - to Shakespeare, Rothko and Katharina Fritsch,
among others. He asks whether artworks are dead or alive, if
artistic creativity isn't actually a form of destruction, and
whether our ability to be seduced by fine words means we don't put
our selves at risk of death.In doing so, he proposes a new theory
of aesthetics in which artworks and literary texts have a
death-drive of their own, not least by their defining ability to
turn away from all that is real, and where the effects of the
death-drive mean that we are constantly living in imaginary,
rhetorical or 'artistic' worlds. The book also provides a valuable
introduction to the rich tradition of work on the death-drive since
Freud.
