The Cultural Life of Catastrophes and Crises / / ed. by Carsten Meiner, Kristin Veel.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• MitwirkendeR: BJØRNSTEN, THOMAS,; BRODESCO, ALBERTO,; CAPELOA GIL, ISABEL,; DIETRICH, RENÉ,; ELIASSEN, KNUT OVE,; GONÇALVES, DIANA,; HANKOVSZKY, ANIKÓ,; HOLM, ISAK WINKEL,; JOSHI, SARAH A.,; KALLENBACH, ULLA,; KOOIJMAN, JAAP,; MACKINTOSH, ALEX,; MEINER, CARSTEN,; NYIRUBUGARA, OLIVIER,; NÜNNING, ANSGAR,; PERRET, CATHERINE,; SOEWARTA, AGUS,; WIND MEYHOFF, KARSTEN,; WINKEL HOLM, ISAK,; ŠPRAH, ANDREJ,
• HerausgeberIn: Meiner, Carsten,; Veel, Kristin,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2012]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Language: English
• Series: Concepts for the Study of Culture (CSC) , 3
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (322 p.)

Catastrophes and crises are exceptions. They are disruptions of order. In various ways and to different degrees, they change and subvert what we regard as normal. They may occur on a personal level in the form of traumatic or stressful situations, on a social level in the form of unstable political, financial or religious situations, or on a global level in the form of environmental states of emergency. The main assumption in this book is that, in contrast to the directness of any given catastrophe and its obvious physical, economical and psychological consequences our understanding of catastrophes and crises is shaped by our cultural imagination. No matter in which eruptive and traumatizing form we encounter them, our collective repertoire of symbolic forms, historical sensibilities, modes of representation, and patterns of imagination determine how we identify, analyze and deal with catastrophes and crises.This book presents a series of articles investigating how we address and interpret catastrophes and crises in film, literature, art and theory, ranging from Voltaire’s eighteenth-century Europe, haunted by revolutions and earthquakes, to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to the bleak, prophetic landscapes of Cormac McCarthy.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- I. THINKING CATASTROPHES AND CRISES -- The Cultural Analysis of Disaster -- Catastrophic Turns – From the Literary History of the Catastrophic -- Making Crises and Catastrophes – How Metaphors and Narratives shape their Cultural Life -- The Metaphysics of Catastrophe – Voltaire’s Candide -- Adorno’s Idea of Art as the Revelation of a Permanent and Universal Catastrophe -- II. WITNESSING AND REMEMBERING CATASTROPHES AND CRISES -- Memory Crisis – Remembering and Forgetting in Post-genocide Rwanda -- Catastrophe, Documentary and the Limits of Cinematic Representation -- The Excess of Kali Yuga – Repetition, Remembrance and Longing -- The Visual Literacy of Disaster in Ernst Jünger’s Photo Books -- Dreaming the American Nightmare – The Cultural Life of 9/11 -- III. IMAGINING CATASTROPHES AND CRISES -- Macbeth – The Catastrophe of Regicide and the Crisis of Imagination -- “The Dead shall inherit the Dead” – After Life and beyond Catastrophe in Mark Strand’s Post-Apocalyptic Poetry -- September 11 and the Disruption of Singularity -- Resounding Catastrophe – Auditory Perspectives on 9/11 -- The Frailty of Everything – Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Modern Disaster Discourse -- IV. DESIRING AND CONSUMING CATASTROPHES AND CRISES -- The Aesthetics of Catastrophe – Edmund Burke on Sympathy -- Kunst macht frei – Misrepresenting the Holocaust in Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Hell -- The New Flesh – A Variation on David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Pierre Klossowski’s La monnaie vivante -- “Nobody came, nobody settled, nobody shopped” – When the World ends in a Mall: Dawn of the Dead, WALL-E, The Wild Blue Yonder -- Freak Ecology – An Introduction to the Fictional History of Natural Disaster -- List of Contributors -- Index