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Ecce Humanitas
Beholding the Pain of Humanity
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Preface by:
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2021
About this book
Through a critical exploration of violence and the sacred, Ecce Humanitas recasts the fall of liberal humanism. Brad Evans offers a rich analysis of the changing nature of sacrificial violence, from its theological origins to the exhaustion of the victim in the contemporary world.
Author / Editor information
Brad Evans is professor of political violence and aesthetics at the University of Bath. His many books include Atrocity Exhibition: Life in the Age of Total Violence (2019) and Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle (2015). He led a dedicated series on violence for The Stone, a forum for contemporary philosophers from the New York Times, and is the lead editor for the Histories of Violence section of the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Jake Chapman is a British visual artist who works with his brother Dinos as the Chapman Brothers. In their provocative practice, the Chapman Brothers reappropriate work by figures from Goya to Hitler.
Jake Chapman is a British visual artist who works with his brother Dinos as the Chapman Brothers. In their provocative practice, the Chapman Brothers reappropriate work by figures from Goya to Hitler.
Reviews
James Martel, author of Unburied Bodies: Subversive Corpses and the Authority of the Dead:
In Ecce Humanitas, Brad Evans has given us a manifesto for how to effectively address the cryptotheology that lies at the heart of Western modernity. Whereas we tend to think of the sacred as an archaic concept, Evans shows how it remains central to our lives; unrecognized, it wreaks havoc (violent havoc) upon subject populations. Evans proposes that we rethink the void that is at the heart of the sacred as a place of power and creativity and, in that way, both reaffirm the sacred and redeploy it against the very violent forces that it is ordinarily instantiates. In so doing, Evans has capped a highly successful career of studying violence with a way out and through its dangerous entanglements. This is a brave and extraordinarily timely work in a period when the threat of violence is particularly acute and ubiquitous.
In Ecce Humanitas, Brad Evans has given us a manifesto for how to effectively address the cryptotheology that lies at the heart of Western modernity. Whereas we tend to think of the sacred as an archaic concept, Evans shows how it remains central to our lives; unrecognized, it wreaks havoc (violent havoc) upon subject populations. Evans proposes that we rethink the void that is at the heart of the sacred as a place of power and creativity and, in that way, both reaffirm the sacred and redeploy it against the very violent forces that it is ordinarily instantiates. In so doing, Evans has capped a highly successful career of studying violence with a way out and through its dangerous entanglements. This is a brave and extraordinarily timely work in a period when the threat of violence is particularly acute and ubiquitous.
Srećko Horvat, author of After the Apocalypse:
A breathtaking exploration of violence and monstrosity by one of our leading political philosophers. How to make sense of the void that is, whether we want it or not, always gazing back at us? Brad Evans has courageously thrown himself into the void and as a result we can read this outstanding book that offers not only a fierce critique of liberal humanism but also points toward poetic alternatives that are more necessary than ever.
Simon Critchley, author of Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us:
This is a bold and brave intervention that clear-mindedly attempts to think the human in our current inhuman conditions of plague, ultra-violence, and the fading out of liberalism. If philosophy is its time comprehended in thought, then Evans has comprehended our time philosophically. Highly recommended.
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Illustrations
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Foreword: An Obituary for the Liberal
xi -
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Preface: Encountering the Void
xvii - PART I: The Sacrifice
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Chapter 1. Humanity Bound
3 -
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Chapter 2. The Sacred Order of Politics
39 -
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Chapter 3. The Shame of Being Human
73 - PART II: The Fall of Liberal Humanism
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Chapter 4. A Higher State of Killing
103 -
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Chapter 5. The Death of the Victim
123 -
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Chapter 6. A Sickness of Reason
156 - PART III: Into the Void
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Chapter 7. Annihilation
191 -
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Chapter 8. The Transgressive Witness
228 -
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Chapter 9. Wounds of Love
262 -
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Notes
289 -
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Index
313
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
September 8, 2021
eBook ISBN:
9780231545587
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Other:
22 b&w illustrations
This book is in the series
eBook ISBN:
9780231545587
Audience(s) for this book
Professional and scholarly;
