Download Free The Violence Mythos Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Violence Mythos and write the review.

Presents a powerful thesis on the nature and significance of violence and its mythos in Western culture, and offers an alternative interactive mythos that bridges the mind/body split inherent in most theories of violence. "The Violence Mythos presents us with a powerful thesis on the nature and significance of violence in human society. It develops its argument with passion and concern, combined with a lucid and sensitive intelligence. The book is sharp .and to the point, challenging any complacency with its idealism and its commitment to change. Whitmer is an author with attitude and with spirit. The violence mythos is a collection of beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and social expectations about violence in Western culture. It includes the war hero myth, the victimizer/victim exploitative dynamic, the theory of innate violence, the mind/body dualism, the myth of male aggression and the subordination of women, the marginalization of trust, and the development of technology in a tradition of destructive instrumentalism. At the core of the violence mythos is the belief that humans are innately violent. The cultural system is then able to legitimate, rationalize, and use violence to control "violent humans", and thus becomes a self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating system of direct and indirect means of social control. This is the repetitive cycle of violence in trauma reenactment, transferred intergenerationally through the roles and rituals of the hero/perpetrator myth. The cycle ceases with the understanding of trauma in the trust triad of the interdependent mythos.
Images of violence enjoy a particular privilege in contemporary continental philosophy, one manifest in the ubiquity of violent metaphors and the prominence of a kind of rhetorical investment in violence as a motif. Such images have also informed, constrained, and motivated recent continental feminist theory. In Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, Ann V. Murphy takes note of wide-ranging references to the themes of violence and vulnerability in contemporary theory. She considers the ethical and political implications of this language of violence with the aim of revealing other ways in which identity and the social bond might be imagined, and encourages some critical distance from the images of violence that pervade philosophical critique.
Ten essays explore violence in relation to notions of difference, representation, and power; and the role of mediation in providing communal space in which cultural differences can interplay without conflict. Among the topics are the semiotics of windows and television screens, gender relations in contemporary film, and the image of Mormons in popular literature. The fiction of Kafka, Lu Xun, Conrad Aiken, Toni Morrison, and Ronald Sukenick is also examined. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
This volume explores the relationship among beauty, violence, and representation in a broad range of artistic and cultural texts, including literature, visual art, theatre, film, and music. Charting diversifying interests in the subject of violence and beauty, dealing with the multiple inflections of these questions and representing a spectrum of voices, the volume takes its place in a growing body of recent critical work that takes violence and representation as its object. This collection offers a unique opportunity, however, to address a significant gap in the critical field, for it seeks to interrogate specifically the nexus or interface between beauty and violence. While other texts on violence make use of regimes of representation as their subject matter and consider the effects of aestheticization, beauty as a critical category is conspicuously absent. Furthermore, the book aims to "rehabilitate" beauty, implicitly conceptualized as politically or ethically regressive by postmodern anti-aesthetics cultural positions, and further facilitate its come-back into critical discourse.
The Archaeology of Violence is an interdisciplinary consideration of the role of violence in social-cultural and sociopolitical contexts. The volume draws on the work of archaeologists, anthropologists, classicists, and art historians, all of whom have an interest in understanding the role of violence in their respective specialist fields in the Mediterranean and Europe. The focus is on three themes: contexts of violence, politics and identities of violence, and sanctified violence. In contrast to many past studies of violence, often defined by their subject specialism, or by a specific temporal or geographic focus, this book draws on a wide range of both temporal and spatial examples and offers new perspectives on the study of violence and its role in social and political change. Rather than simply equating violence with warfare, as has been done in many archaeological cases, the volume contends that the focus on warfare has been to the detriment of our understanding of other forms of "non-warfare" violence and has the potential to affect the ways in which violence is recognized and discussed by scholars, and ultimately has repercussions for understanding its role in society.
The Greek myths are amongst the best stories ever told, passed down through millennia and inspiring writers and artists as varied as Shakespeare, Michelangelo, James Joyce and Walt Disney. They are embedded deeply in the traditions, tales and cultural DNA of the West. You'll fall in love with Zeus, marvel at the birth of Athena, wince at Cronus and Gaia's revenge on Ouranos, weep with King Midas and hunt with the beautiful and ferocious Artemis. Spellbinding, informative and moving, Stephen Fry's Mythos perfectly captures these stories for the modern age - in all their rich and deeply human relevance.
Advocates of pacifism usually stake their position on the moral superiority of nonviolence and have generally been reluctant or unwilling to concede that violence can be an effective means of conducting politics. In this compelling new work, which draws its examples from both everyday experience and the history of Western political thought, author Dustin Ells Howes presents a challenging argument that violence can be an effective and even just form of power in politics. Contrary to its proponents, however, Howes argues that violence is no more reliable than any other means of exercising power. Because of this there is almost always a more responsible alternative. He distinguishes between violent and nonviolent power and demonstrates how the latter can confront physical violence and counter its claims. This brand of pacifism gives up claims to moral superiority but recuperates a political ethic that encourages thoughtfulness about suffering and taking responsibility for our actions.
Bloomsbury Semiotics offers a state-of-the-art overview of the entire field of semiotics by revealing its influence on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. With four volumes spanning theory, method and practice across the disciplines, this definitive reference work emphasizes and strengthens common bonds shared across intellectual cultures, and facilitates the discovery and recovery of meaning across fields. It comprises: Volume 1: History and Semiosis Volume 2: Semiotics in the Natural and Technical Sciences Volume 3: Semiotics in the Arts and Social Sciences Volume 4: Semiotic Movements Written by leading international experts, the chapters provide comprehensive overviews of the history and status of semiotic inquiry across a diverse range of traditions and disciplines. Together, they highlight key contemporary developments and debates along with ongoing research priorities. Providing the most comprehensive and united overview of the field, Bloomsbury Semiotics enables anyone, from students to seasoned practitioners, to better understand and benefit from semiotic insight and how it relates to their own area of study or research. Volume 2: Semiotics in the Natural and Technical Sciences presents the state-of-the art in semiotic approaches to disciplines ranging from mathematics and biology to neuroscience and medicine, from evolutionary linguistics and animal behaviour studies to computing, finance, law, architecture, and design. Each chapter casts a vision for future research priorities, unanswered questions, and fresh openings for semiotic participation in these and related fields.
It was over a decade ago that experimental psychologists and media-effects researchers declared the debate on the effects of violent video gaming as “essentially over,” referring to the way violence in videogames increases aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviors in players. Despite the decisive tone of this statement, neither the presence nor popularity of digital games has since diminished, with games continuing to attract new generations of players to experience its technological advancements in the narration of violence and its techniques of depiction. Drawing on new insights achieved from research located at an intersection between humanities, social and computer sciences, Gareth Schott's addition to the Approaches in Digital Game Studies series interrogates the nature and meaning of the “violence” encountered and experienced by game players. In focusing on the various ways "violence" is mediated by both the rule system and the semiotic layer of games, the aim is to draw out the distinctiveness of games' exploitation of violence or violent themes. An important if not canonical text in the debates about video games and violence, Violent Games constitutes an essential book for those wishing to make sense of the experience offered by games as technological, aesthetic, and communicational phenomena in the context of issues of media regulation and the classification of game content “as” violence.
This book examines portrayals of political and psychological trauma, particularly sexual trauma, in the work of seven American women writers. Concentrating on novels by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Pauline Hopkins, Gayl Jones, Leslie Marmon Silko, Dorothy Allison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Margaret Atwood, Horvitz investigates whether memories of violent and oppressive trauma can be preserved, even transformed into art, without reproducing that violence. The book encompasses a wide range of personal and political traumas, including domestic abuse, incest, rape, imprisonment, and slavery, and argues that an analysis of sadomasochistic violence is our best protection against cyclical, intergenerational violence, a particularly timely and important subject as we think about how to stop "hate" crimes and other forms of political and psychic oppression.