Language of Ruin and Consumption: On Lamenting and Complaining (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781501372315)

Laments and complaints are among the most ancient poetical forms and ubiquitous in everyday speech. Understanding plaintive language, however, is often prevented by the resentment and fear it evokes. Lamenting and complaining seems pointless, irreconcilable, and destructive. Language of Ruin and Consumption examines Freud's approaches to lamenting and complaining, the heart of psychoanalytic therapy and theory, and takes them as guidelines for reading key works of the modern canon. The re-negotiation of older--ritual, dramatic, and juridical--forms in Rilke, Wittgenstein, Scholem, Benjamin, and Kafka puts plaintive language in the center of modern individuality and expounds a fundamental dimension of language neglected in theory: reciprocity is at issue in plaintive language.

Language of Ruin and Consumptionadvocates that a fruitful reception of psychoanalysis in criticism combines the discussion of psychoanalytical concepts with an adaptation of the hermeneutical principle ignored in most philosophical approaches to language, or relegated to mere rhetoric: speech is not only by someone and on something, but also addressed to someone.

Author: Juliane Prade-Weiss
ISBN-10: 1501372319
ISBN-13: 9781501372315
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Language: English
Published: 02/24/2022
Pages: 296
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.87lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.61d