Robert Rowland Smith takes Freud’s work on the death-drive and compares it with other philosophies of death, focusing on the work of Pascal, Heidegger and Derrida, giving a valuable introduction to the rich tradition of work on the death-drive since Freud. Smith then applies this theory to literature and art in a new way – to Shakespeare, Rothko and Katharina Fritsch and more – he asks whether artworks are dead or alive, if artistic creativity is actually a form of destruction, and whether our ability to be seduced by fine words means we can avoid putting ourselves at risk of death. Through this approach, Smith proposes a new theory of aesthetics in which artworks and literary texts have a death-drive of their own, not least by their defining ability to turn away from all that is real, and where the effects 3 b&w illustrations of the death-drivemean that we are constantly living in imaginary, rhetorical or ‘artistic’ worlds.
- ISBN: 978-0-7486-4039-3
- Editorial: Edinburgh University
- Encuadernacion: Cartoné
- Páginas: 256
- Fecha Publicación: 01/04/2010
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés