A Politics of Melancholia: From Plato to Arendt
Hardcover
Paperback
- Price:
- $35.00/拢30.00
- ISBN:
- Published:
- Mar 12, 2024
- Copyright:
- 2024
- Pages:
- 304
- Size:
- 6.13 x 9.25 in.
- Main_subject:
- Literature
ebook
Melancholia is wrongly condemned as a condition of withdrawal and despair that alienates its sufferer from community. Countering that misconception, A Politics of Melancholia reclaims an understanding of melancholia not as an affliction in need of a remedy but as an affirmative stance toward decay and ruination in political life, and restores the melancholic figure鈥攂y turns inventive and destructive, outraged and inspired鈥攖o their rightful place as the poet of political thought.
George Edmondson and Klaus Mladek identify pivotal moments of political melancholia in ancient and modern texts, offering new perspectives on the death of Socrates in Plato鈥檚 dialogues, the fratricide in Hamlet, Woyzeck鈥檚 killing of Marie in Georg B眉chner鈥檚 Woyzeck, the murder of Moses in Freud鈥檚 thought, and the betrayal of the revolutionary idea that Hannah Arendt identifies in her critique of eighteenth-century revolutions. Melancholia emerges here as a disposition that is mournful but also jubilant, a mood of unbending disconsolation that remains faithful to a scene of downfall, to events that cannot be forgotten, and to things that cannot be governed.
Recovering a tradition of thought that is both affirmative and hopeful, this eloquent book reveals how political melancholia embodies a shared condition of discontent that binds communities together and inspires change.