Cover Picture
References
- Title: Bodies at Risk: Unsafe Limits in Romanticism and Postmodernism.
- Author: Robert Burns Neveldine.
- Published by State University of New York Press.
- ISBN: 0-7914-3649-7 (hardcover) / 0-7914-3650-0 (paperback).
Contents
ix. Acknowledgments.
xi. Preface.
xv. Overture: The Limits of Bodies at Risk.
001. Part I: Romantic Assemblages.
003. Prelude I: Wordsworth, Godwin, and the Shelleys.
007. Chapter One: Wordsworth's "Nutting" and the Violent End of Reading.
027. Chapter Two: Romantic Fiction Double Feature: Caleb Williams, the Homotextual Adventure Begins and Frankenstein Meets Pygmalion.
053. Part II: Postmodern Virtualities.
055. Prelude II: French Theorists, Minimalism, AIDS.
065. Chapter Three: On Lacan, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari.
091. Chapter Four: Music Into the Body: Philip Glass and Others. Discussing such Glass works as Koyaanisqatsi, Mishima and Akhnaten.
141. Chapter Five: Skeletons in the Closet: Paradox, Resistance, and the Undead Body of the PWA.
163. Epilogue: The Virtual Body of Aesthetics.
167. Notes.
187. Works Cited.
201. Index.Total Pages 208.
Notes
- Taking a post-psychoanalytic, queer-theoretical approach, this book links philosophical and aesthetic issues in two distinct periods through the examination of a variety of imaginative texts, from canonical poetry and fiction to avant-garde music and film.
Taking a fundamentally post-psychoanalytical approach, Bodies at Risk links philosophical and aesthetic issues in two distinct periods, with postmodernism continuing and amplifying the central concerns of Romanticism, including subject formation, the disruptive effects of the human body, and the unique forms of textuality they enable through risky personal and artistic conflicts. Neveldine investigates how the body, designated as queer or otherwise, has placed itself at risk, such that it has questioned dominant notions of what it is to be a human subject in Western society, roughly since the time of the Romantics. Neveldine also explores how certain kinds of artistic conflicts have played themselves out in various texts in the Romantic period and postmodernism and what these conflicts have produced, both corporeally and textually.
From Wordsworth's poem "Nutting" to Gregg Araki's film The Living End, from the Marquis de Sade's prose to the autobiographical fiction of Thomas Bernhard, the artifact radically interrogates our notions of textuality, setting aside forever its status as a mere imitation or representation, and becomes a testimony to the body's ability to resist oppression and create new types of human being.
"Bodies at Risk is exhilarating; it negotiates among texts and theoretical positions with a dexterity and sophistication that is both illuminating and refreshing. There are any number of books now on the market that address the nature and politics of postmodernism, and I don't think we really need another. But then Neveldine's book is not just another--there is, to my knowledge, nothing quite like it. Bodies at Risk is something of a genre unto itself." -- Paul Morrison, Brandeis University
"This is an eccentric book (in the best sense of the term): it is highly personal and idiosyncratic, yet it speaks to a common queer-theoretical pursuit." -- Eric Savoy, University of Calgary
Robert Burns Neveldine earned his Ph.D. at the University of Washington, where he completed Bodies at Risk and taught as an instructor. He is currently at work on a book about Kurt Cobain, Lee Harvey Oswald, Alan Turing, and Gustav Mahler, as well as a long novel entitled Monster Zero.
A volume in the SUNY series, Postmodern Culture.
Joseph Natoli, editor.
- A neoromantic theory of corporeality and a new aesthetics
In Bodies at Risk, I outline a new type of aesthetics based in contemporary literary theory and exemplified by a variety of imaginative texts, from Anglo-American canonical poetry and fiction to avant-garde music and film. My work links philosophical and aesthetic issues in two distinct periods,with postmodernism continuing and amplifying the central concerns of romanticism, including subject formation; the disruptive effects of the human body; and the unique forms of textuality they enable through risky personal and artistic conflicts. I often discuss such conflicts in psychoanalytic terms, although I also demonstrate how imaginative texts complicate psychoanalytic models. The body keeps reinventing itself through conflict via the exploration of limits, that is, by surviving extreme experience more than from the results of the dialectic. Experiential limits discussed in my book include violation, in Lyrical Ballads and The Prelude; rivalry, in Frankenstein and Caleb Williams; ecstasy, in musical, filmic, and fictional minimalism, including Philip Glass, Godfrey Reggio, John Barth, and Thomas Bernhard; and terminal illness, during the AIDS crisis in Hollywood film. The artifact thus becomes less a record of utter loss, as in Percy Shelley, or Freud's followers, than a testimony to the body's ability to resist oppression and create new types of human being. The first chapter, "Wordsworth's 'Nutting' and the Violent End of Reading," was published in the fall 1996 issue of English Literary History, while the final chapter, "Skeletons in the Closet: Paradox, Resistance, and the Undead Body of the PWA," was published in the February 1997 issue of College Literature.
Dr. Robert Burns Neveldine.
Links
Abstract for Bodies at Risk by Robert Burns Neveldine. Interview with Robert Burns Neveldine on Bodies at Risk by Amazon.com. A Philip Glassography by Robert Burns Neveldine. A very complete list of recordings and publications by Philip Glass.
Pictures
Please click inside a picture to view it in its full size.
GlassPages - Philip Glass on the Web
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