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Weakness

Weakness

0 - Default Title
Description
Examining the nature of weakness has inspired some of the most influential aesthetic and philosophical portraits of the human condition. By reading a selection of canonical literary and philosophical texts, Michael O'Sullivan charts a history of responses to the experience and exploration of weakness. Beginning with Plato and Aristotle, this first book-length study of the concept explores weakness as it is interpreted by Lao Tzu, Nietzsche, Derrida, the Romantics, Dickens and the Modernists. It examines what feminist writers Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray have made of the gendered biomythology constructed around the figure of the "weaker vessel" and it considers related notions such as im-potentiality, a "syntax of weakness" and human vulnerability in the work of Agamben, Beckett and Coetzee. Through analysis of these differing versions of weakness, O'Sullivan's study challenges the popular myth that aligns masculine identity with strength and force and presents a humane weakness as a guiding motif for debates in ethics.
Product details
Edition:
1
Number of Pages:
226
Release Date:
2012-05-24
Publication Date:
2012-05-31
Publisher:
Continnuum-3PL
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
1441162992
ISBN13:
9781441162991
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
508 g
Height:
161 cm
Width:
240 cm
Thickness:
17 cm
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