Malicious Objects, Anger Management, and the Question of Modern Literature - Couverture souple

Kreienbrock, Jörg

 
9780823245291: Malicious Objects, Anger Management, and the Question of Modern Literature

Synopsis

Why do humans get angry with objects? Why is it that a malfunctioning computer, a broken tool, or a fallen glass causes an outbreak of fury? How is it possible to speak of an inanimate object's recalcitrance, obstinacy, or even malice? When things assume a will of their own and seem to act out against human desires and wishes rather than disappear into automatic, unconscious functionality, the breakdown is experienced not as something neutral but affectively--as rage or as outbursts of laughter. Such emotions are always psychosocial: public, rhetorically performed, and therefore irreducible to a "private" feeling.

By investigating the minutest details of life among dysfunctional household items through the discourses of philosophy and science, as well as in literary works by Laurence Sterne, Jean Paul, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, and Heimito von Doderer, Kreienbrock reconsiders the modern bourgeois poetics that render things the way we know and suffer them.

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À propos de l?auteur

Jörg Kreienbrock is Associate Professor of German at Northwestern University.

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Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780823245284: Malicious Objects, Anger Management, and the Question of Modern Literature

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  0823245284 ISBN 13 :  9780823245284
Editeur : Fordham University Press, 2012
Couverture rigide