Our Dark Side: A History of Perversion

ISBN-13: 9780745645926 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 224 str.

Elisabeth Roudinesco

Opis

The history of perversion in the West is told here through a study of great emblematic figures from the Middle Ages (Gilles de Rais, the mystics and the flagellants), the eighteenth century (Sade), the nineteenth century (the masturbating child, the male homosexual and the hysterical woman) to modern times (Nazism in the twentieth century, and the complementary figures of the paedophile and the terrorist in the twenty-first). Our era has less and less faith in emancipation through the exercise of human freedom and does not really believe that we all have our dark side, but pretends to believe that science will enable us to do away with perversion. But if we claim to eradicate perversion, is there not a danger that we will destroy the idea that there might be a distinction between good and evil, which is the very basis of civilization?

Recenzje

"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

Spis treści

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.

O autorze

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

Blurb

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.