The pursuit of death and the love of death has characterized Western culture from Homeric times through centuries of Christianity, taking particular deadly shapes in Western postmodernity. This necrophilia shows itself in destruction and violence, in a focus on other worlds and degradation of this one, and in hatred of the body, sense and sexuality. In her major new book project Death and the Displacement of Beauty, Grace M. Jantzen seeks to disrupt this wish for death, opening a new acceptance of beauty and desire that makes it possible to choose life.
Foundations of Violence...

The pursuit of death and the love of death has characterized Western culture from Homeric times through centuries of Christianity, taking particular deadly shapes in Western postmodernity. This necrophilia shows itself in destruction and violence, in a focus on other worlds and degradation of this one, and in hatred of the body, sense and sexuality. In her major new book project Death and the Displacement of Beauty, Grace M. Jantzen seeks to disrupt this wish for death, opening a new acceptance of beauty and desire that makes it possible to choose life.
Foundations of Violence...

In Western Christianity, the mystic was seen as having direct access to God, and therefore great authority. Dr. Jantzen discusses how men of power defined and controlled who should count as a mystic, and thus who would have power: women were pointedly excluded. The modern philosophical assumption that mysticism is essentially about intense subjective experiences is misguided. This book is the first on the subject to take issues of gender seriously, and to use them as a point of entry for a deconstructive approach to Christian mysticism.

Forever fluid is a rich feast of literary and philosophical insight. It provides the first English commentary on Luce Irigaray's poetic text, Elemental Passions, setting it within its context within continental thought. It explores Irigaray's images and intentions, developing the gender drama that takes place within her book, and draws the reader into the conversation in the text between 'I-woman' and 'you-man'. But the book is also much more than this, as it uses the exploration of sexual difference as a means to challenge the system of binary logic which has pervaded western thought since...