The Cultural Life of Catastrophes and Crises

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The Cultural Life of Catastrophes and Crises

Edited by: Carsten Meiner and Kristin Veel

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2012

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This book is in the series

Volume 3 | Concepts for the Study of Culture (CSC)

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Carsten Meiner and Kristin Veel, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

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Contents

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Table of Contents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	v
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	1
I. THINKING CATASTROPHES AND CRISES
The Cultural Analysis of Disaster ISAK WINKEL HOLM Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	15
Catastrophic Turns – From the Literary History of the Catastrophic KNUT OVE ELIASSEN Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	33
Making Crises and Catastrophes – How Metaphors and Narratives shape their Cultural Life ANSGAR NÜNNING Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	59
The Metaphysics of Catastrophe – Voltaire’s Candide CARSTEN MEINER Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	89
Adorno’s Idea of Art as the Revelation of a Permanent and Universal Catastrophe AGUS SOEWARTA Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	103
II. WITNESSING AND REMEMBERING CATASTROPHES AND CRISES
Memory Crisis – Remembering and Forgetting in Post-genocide Rwanda OLIVIER NYIRUBUGARA Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	115
Catastrophe, Documentary and the Limits of Cinematic Representation ANDREJ ŠPRAH Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	125
The Excess of Kali Yuga – Repetition, Remembrance and Longing SARAH A. JOSHI Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	137
The Visual Literacy of Disaster in Ernst Jünger’s Photo Books ISABEL CAPELOA GIL Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	147
Dreaming the American Nightmare – The Cultural Life of 9/11 JAAP KOOIJMAN Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	177
III. IMAGINING CATASTROPHES AND CRISES
Macbeth – The Catastrophe of Regicide and the Crisis of Imagination ULLA KALLENBACH Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	193
“The Dead shall inherit the Dead” – After Life and beyond Catastrophe in Mark Strand’s Post-Apocalyptic Poetry RENÉ DIETRICH Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	203
September 11 and the Disruption of Singularity DIANA GONÇALVES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	213
Resounding Catastrophe – Auditory Perspectives on 9/11 THOMAS BJØRNSTEN Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	223
The Frailty of Everything – Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Modern Disaster Discourse ISAK WINKEL HOLM Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	233
IV. DESIRING AND CONSUMING CATASTROPHES AND CRISES
The Aesthetics of Catastrophe – Edmund Burke on Sympathy ANIKÓ HANKOVSZKY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	251
Kunst macht frei – Misrepresenting the Holocaust in Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Hell ALEX MACKINTOSH Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	263
The New Flesh – A Variation on David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Pierre Klossowski’s La monnaie vivante CATHERINE PERRET Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	273
“Nobody came, nobody settled, nobody shopped” – When the World ends in a Mall: Dawn of the Dead, WALL-E, The Wild Blue Yonder ALBERTO BRODESCO Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	283
Freak Ecology – An Introduction to the Fictional History of Natural Disaster KARSTEN WIND MEYHOFF Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	295
List of Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	309
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	311

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

October 30, 2012

eBook ISBN:

9783110282955

Hardcover published on:

October 15, 2012

Hardcover ISBN:

9783110282832

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

Front matter:

8

Main content:

322

Illustrations:

4

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110282955

eBook ISBN: 9783110282955

Hardcover ISBN: 9783110282832

Keywords for this book

Catastrophes; Crises; Trauma; Film; Art; Literature

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The Cultural Life of Catastrophes and Crises

Overview

About this book

Author / Editor information

Supplementary Materials

Topics

Table of contents

Bibliographic data