Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture [Paperback]

Jonathan Dollimore (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415937728 | ISBN-13: 978-0415937726 | Publication Date: August 10, 2001

Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture is a rich testament to our ubiquitous preoccupation with the tangled web of death and desire. In these pages we find nuanced analysis that blends Plato with Shelley, Hölderlin with Foucault. Dollimore, a gifted thinker, is not content to summarize these texts from afar; instead, he weaves a thread through each to tell the magnificent story of the making of the modern individual.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his prodigiously intelligent, deeply challenging and ultimately rewarding book, Dollimore (Sexual Dissidence) argues that the death/desire dynamic, while banefully associated in recent times with AIDS, is not a new or alternate phenomenon but was crucial in the formation of Western culture. In chapter after chapter, inspired, finely honed analysis of canonical works of philosophy, fiction, drama and more shows how early civilization's ambiguous ideas about death repeat themselves and shape gender and identity. In the Renaissance, for example, death was fused with desire via the concept of mutability and its inherent paradox. To put it simply, if man loves most what is fleeting (especially beauty, which will eventually fade), then will his desire always be unfulfilled. Similarly, Socrates, accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, willingly takes the poison that kills him and his cravings while "the sun is still on the mountains," putting a strange twist to Seneca's carpe diem. Since Dollimore's analysis is structured by intellectual trends rather than by era, there is a dizzying effecthere, and one begins to wonder what kind of "non-specialist" reader the author has in mind, particularly given the density of many of the thinkers he takes on. Yet his hopeful conclusion works toward a way out of the death/desire rubric with convincing passion.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

The German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer once said that "without death there would hardly have been any philosophizing." Dollimore attests to this thought in his engaging study of death and its corresponding link to desire. In presenting funereal discourses of thinkers, writers, poets, and other literati throughout the ages, he offers a substantial contribution to Western intellectual history. As he examines the conversations between philosophers and writers, beginning with the pre-Socratics and finishing with postmodern theorists, his findings prove interesting--death has always been linked to desire in Western culture. He touches upon the work of almost every conceivable thinker: Heraclitus and Camille Paglia, Machiavelli and Marx, Shakespeare and Wagner, and, of course, the venerable Foucault. He concludes with a study of homoeroticism and AIDS, perhaps the most poignant modern example of desire linked with death. Although a little shaky on facts that are not within his usual academic milieu, and despite some antiquated bibliographic sources, Dollimore presents a marvelous, enrapturing, and accessible work for both the scholar and the armchair philosopher. Michael Spinella --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (August 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415937728
• ISBN-13: 978-0415937726
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,020,723 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good book, August 24, 2001

By 

PsicopBester (Sacamento CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture (Literary Studies) (Hardcover)

I thought that this book was a very good insight into the views of many philosophers and a big part in many of their lives and views to come