Barbarism revisited : : new perspectives on an old concept / / edited by Maria Boletsi, Christian Moser.

• Superior document: Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex and Race, Volume 29
• Author: Barbarism revisited Leiden, The Netherlands)
• TeilnehmendeR: Boletsi, Maria,; Moser, Christian, 1963-
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands ;, Boston, [Massachusetts] : : Brill,, 2015.; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Thamyris intersecting ; Volume 29.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (392 p.)
• Notes: "Conference papers and proceedings."

The figure of the barbarian has captivated the Western imagination from Greek antiquity to the present. Since the 1990s, the rhetoric of civilization versus barbarism has taken center stage in Western political rhetoric and the media. But how can the longevity and popularity of this opposition be accounted for? Why has it become such a deeply ingrained habit of thought that is still being so effectively mobilized in Western discourses? The twenty essays in this volume revisit well-known and obscure chapters in barbarism's genealogy from new perspectives and through contemporary theoretical idioms. With studies spanning from Greek antiquity to the present, they show how barbarism has functioned as the negative outside separating a civilized interior from a barbarian exterior; as the middle term in-between savagery and civilization in evolutionary models; as a repressed aspect of the civilized psyche; as concomitant with civilization; as a term that confuses fixed notions of space and time; or as an affirmative notion in philosophy and art, signifying radical change and regeneration. Proposing an original interdisciplinary approach to barbarism, this volume includes both overviews of the concept's travels as well as specific case studies of its workings in art, literature, philosophy, film, ethnography, design, and popular culture in various periods, geopolitical contexts, and intellectual traditions. Through this kaleidoscopic view of the concept, it recasts the history of ideas not only as a task for historians, but also literary scholars, art historians, and cultural analysts.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material / Maria Boletsi and Christian Moser -- Introduction / Christian Moser and Maria Boletsi -- Barbarians: From the Ancient to the New World / François Hartog -- Towards a Cultural History of Barbarism from the Eighteenth Century to the Present / Markus Winkler -- Laughing (at the) Barbarians: On Barbarism and Humor in Homer and Herodotus / Daniel Wendt -- On the Evil Side of Creation: Barbarians in Middle Dutch Texts / Clara Strijbosch -- Naked Indians, Trousered Gauls: Montaigne on Barbarism / Paul J. Smith -- The Conceptual History of Barbarism: What Can We Learn from Koselleck and Pocock? / Peter Vogt -- Sublime Barbarism?: Affinities between the Barbarian and the Sublime in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics / Reinhard M. Möller -- Staging the Barbarian: The Case of Voltaire’s Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le prophète / Madeleine Kasten -- Liminal Barbarism: Renegotiations of an Ancient Concept in (Post-)Enlightenment Social Theory and Literature / Christian Moser -- “The Seat of the Young, Loving Feelings, thus Delusionally, Barbarically –”: Barbarism and the Revolutionary State in Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea / Steven Howe -- Trusting Barbarians?: Franz Grillparzer’s The Golden Fleece and the Challenge to the Mythography of Empire / Tim Albrecht -- Des künic Etzelen man: The Huns and their King in Fritz Lang’s Classic Silent Film Die Nibelungen and in the Nibelungenlied / Elke Brüggen and Franz-Josef Holznagel -- Barbarians and Their Cult: On Walter Benjamin’s Concept of New Barbarism / Georgios Sagriotis -- Barbarians Betwixt and Between: Figurations of the Barbarian in Elfriede Jelinek’s The Children of the Dead / Anna-Maria Valerius -- The Limes Mexicanicus or the ‘Barbarians at the Gate’: The Depiction of ‘Southern Invaders’ in American Film of the Twenty-First Century / Heidi Denzel de Tirado -- Writing Designed Anxieties on Barbarism, Ornament, / Marjan Groot -- Organizing Cultuur?Barbaar!: Some Problems of Creating Concepts Through Art / Gerlov van Engelenhoven and Looi van Kessel -- Ultimi Barbarorum: Eloquence and Subjectivity in Twenty-First-Century Social Movements / Nikos Patelis -- Waiting for the Barbarians after 9/11: Functions of a Topos in Liminal Times / Maria Boletsi -- The Politics of Barbarism / Terry Eagleton -- The Contributors / Maria Boletsi and Christian Moser -- Index / Maria Boletsi and Christian Moser.