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Cargando... Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means {abridged} (2004)por William T. Vollmann
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. The moral calculus was a slog, and the case studies a bit less so, the latter due to what felt like going on too long. (But then again, doesn't perpetual violence always feel like—and isn't it really—too long?) Most of the rest of the book, though, was fascinating in a way I can't fully describe, which in addition to actually being a good thing for reading purposes, may also get at why we can't just make neat categories or judgments about violence and call it a day. ( ) I almost never do this, but I am going to set this one aside without finishing it. It is a 700 page abbreviated version of a much longer work (which, believe it or not, was actually published) that sets out to use detailed case studies and inductive reasoning to develop a comprehensive moral calculus on the use of violence. It's an audacious idea, and the writer is very talented, but I decided about a hundred pages in that finishing it would just not be worth the effort. The first big hint that ...more I almost never do this, but I am going to set this one aside without finishing it. It is a 700 page abbreviated version of a much longer work (which, believe it or not, was actually published) that sets out to use detailed case studies and inductive reasoning to develop a comprehensive moral calculus on the use of violence. It's an audacious idea, and the writer is very talented, but I decided about a hundred pages in that finishing it would just not be worth the effort. The first big hint that such might be the case was an early example that he intended as an illustration that social context plays a big role in determining the impact of a given action -- a point I agree with, in general -- that amounted to him dismissing the trauma experienced by a female friend from an instance of sexual assault. Yuck. He has thought hard and read broadly, and he includes serious engagement with important figures from the left, but...well, he proclaims a project grounded in examples and attention to intent and respect for cotnext, but at least what I read before I set it aside did not feel like it tried to enact those things at all like I would. And there are ways where he includes himself very visibly and openly in the text, which I approve of, but more in a way that allows him to include lots of colourful (and well written) detail and texture than as an act of taking responsibility for one's place in social relations as one acts and makes judgments. The very act of trying to construct a comprehensive moral calculus of violence is an indulgence in a kind of liberal-democratic hubris, a kind of unilateral declaration of how "I" relates to all the rest of humanity, a kind of claim that certain kinds of judgment can ultimately be reduced to reason alone provided a sufficiently clever and hardworking privileged man makes the effort. So, yeah...no thanks
The author says he spent nearly 20 years writing ''Rising Up and Rising Down.'' It is the product of a restless spirit that is driven -- for reasons that never become clear, that the text itself never really reflects upon -- to put the body in harm's way. All the threads ultimately converge on the ''Moral Calculus,'' which consists of a set of numbered propositions. With its intricately layered structure and its internal cross-references, it seems an attempt to find or impose some stability on a world that the rest of the book suggests may be hopelessly insane. .... While his convoluted philosophizing suggests a deep ambivalence about the legitimacy of violence, the prose itself suggests that Vollmann's effort to create a moral system is actually a pretext for exploring his fascination with the aesthetic dimensions of carnage and its instruments. Either form of contemplation (moral or aesthetic) renders weapons and corpses into emblems of ultimate truth. ''The real aim of violence,'' he writes, ''is to conquer, direct, instruct, mark, warn, punish, injure, suppress, reduce, destroy or obliterate the consciousness within the body.'' He describes the uncanny fascination of gazing upon a corpse -- ''something with my form and shape'' but with ''no volition to give it buoyancy.'' Es una versión abreviada de
An abridged edition of the author's seven-volume work on the possible justification of violence is based on his war-zone observations and draws on the theories of philosophers, theologians, military strategists, and other thinkers. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)303.6Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Social Processes Conflict and conflict resolution ; ViolenceClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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