Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture

By: Jonathan Dollimore

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Paperback | 8 August 2001 | Edition Number 1

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418 Pages

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From Odysseus' seduction by the song of the Sirens to Oscar Moore's 1991 novel A Matter of Life and Sex , whose protagonist courts death through sex and dies of AIDS, the frustrated relationship between death and desire has fixated the Western imagination. Philosophers have grappled with it and poets have told of its beauty and pain. In this strikingly original work, cultural critic Jonathan Dollimore once again demonstrates his remarkable ability to take on the complex and reveal its relevance with eloquence and grace. Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture is a rich testament to our ubiquitous preoccupation with the tangled web of death and desire. In these pages we find nuanced analysis that blends Plato with Shelley, Holderlin with Foucault. Dollimore, a gifted thinker, is not content to summarize these texts from afar; instead, he weaves a thread through each to tell the magnificent story of the making of the modern individual. An immensely important book, Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture is a challenge to the way we understand desire, sexuality, and the very notion of identity.

Industry Reviews

"Prodigiously intelligent, deeply challenging and ultimately rewarding...." -"Publishers Weekly "This is a work of breath-taking scope and reach. ...impressive command of sources and penetrating vision...." -"Theological Studies ..."this immensely wide-ranging account repays careful study." -"Library Journal ..."an impressively versatile survey... "Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture is a boldly transhistorical book from one who would lay claim to the title of cultural materialist." -"London Review of Books, 16 April 1998 "In [Dollimore's] engaging study of death and its corresponding link to desire. . . . he offers a substantial contribution to Western intellectual history. . . . Dollimore presents a marvelous, enrapturing, and accessible work for both the scholar and the armchair philosopher." -"Booklist, starred review

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Introduction	p. ix
The Ancient World
Eros and Thanatos, Change and Loss in the Ancient World	p. 3
'All Words Fail through Weariness': Ecclesiastes	p. 36
Escaping Desire: Christianity, Gnosticism and Buddhism	p. 43
Mutability, Melancholy and Quest: the Renaissance
Fatal Confusions: Sex and Death in Early Modern Culture	p. 59
'Death's Incessant Motion'	p. 71
Death and Identity	p. 84
'Desire is Death': Shakespeare	p. 102
Social Death
The Denial of Death?	p. 119
Degeneration and Dissidence	p. 128
Between Degeneration and the Death Drive: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness	p. 145
Modernity and Philosophy: the Authenticity of Nothingness
The Philosophical Embrace of Death: Hegel	p. 153
Heidegger, Kojeve and Sartre	p. 161
The Desire Not to Be: Late Metaphysics and Psychoanalysis
Dying as the Real Aim of Life: Schopenhauer	p. 173
Freud: Life as a Detour to Death	p. 180
Renouncing Death
The Philosophy of Praxis and Emancipation: Feuerbach, Marx, Marcuse	p. 201
The Aesthetics of Energy
Fighting Decadence: Nietzsche against Schopenhauer and Wagner	p. 231
Ecstasy and Annihilation: Georges Bataille	p. 249
In Search of Potency: D. H. Lawrence	p. 258
Death and the Homoerotic
Wrecked by Desire: Thomas Mann	p. 275
Promiscuity and Death	p. 294
The Wonder of the Pleasure	p. 312
Notes	p. 329
Bibliography	p. 360
Index	p. 381
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture

At a Glance

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Industry Reviews

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