{"product_id":"the-pathos-of-the-real-robert-buch-9780801897566","title":"The Pathos of the Real: On the Aesthetics of Violence in the Twentieth Century","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis book is about the ambition, in a set of paradigmatic writers of the twentieth century, to simultaneously enlist and break the spell of the real--their fascination with the spectacle of violence and suffering--and the difficulties involved in capturing this kind of excess by aesthetic means.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe works at the center of this study--by Franz Kafka, Georges Bataille, Claude Simon, Peter Weiss, and Heiner Müller--zero in on scenes of agony, destruction, and death with an astonishing degree of precision and detail. The strange and troubling nature of the appeal engendered by these sights is the subject of \u003ci\u003eThe Pathos of the Real\u003c\/i\u003e. Robert Buch shows that the spectacles of suffering conjured up in these texts are deeply ambivalent, available neither to cathartic relief nor to the sentiment of compassion. What prevails instead is a peculiar coincidence of opposites: exaltation and resignation; disfiguration and transfiguration; agitation and paralysis.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFeaturing the experiences of violent excess in strongly visual and often in expressly pictorial terms, the works expose the nexus between violence and the image in twentieth-century aesthetics. Buch explores this tension between visual and verbal representation by drawing on the rhetorical notion of pathos as both insurmountable suffering and codified affect and the psychoanalytic notion of the real, that is, the disruption of the symbolic order.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn dialogue with a diverse group of thinkers, from Erich Auerbach and Aby Warburg to Alain Badiou and Jacques Lacan, \u003ci\u003eThe Pathos of the Real\u003c\/i\u003e advances an innovative new framework for rethinking the aesthetics of violence in the twentieth century.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Robert Buch\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0801897564\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780801897566\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Johns Hopkins University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/25\/2010\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 232\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.95lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.20w x 0.60d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 06\/01\/2011\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eReference and Research Bk News\u003c\/i\u003e 04\/01\/2011 pg. 12","brand":"Robert Buch","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48086874947839,"sku":"9780801897566","price":65.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_fdd6803a-20c4-497e-b8a0-5f3167e10a9d.jpg?v=1769097084","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-pathos-of-the-real-robert-buch-9780801897566","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}