Name: Topology of Violence (Untimely Meditations)
Price: 314.03 ZAR
Availability: InStock
Author: Han, Byung-Chul ; DeMarco, Amanda
ISBN: 9780262534956

portada Topology of Violence (Untimely Meditations)

Topology of Violence (Untimely Meditations)

Type

Physical Book

Author

Byung-Chul Han

Translated by

Amanda DeMarco

Publisher

Mit Press

Year

2018

Language

English

Pages

168

Format

Paperback

ISBN13

9780262534956

Edition No.

N/A

Synopsis "Topology of Violence (Untimely Meditations) "

One of today's most widely read philosophers considers the shift in violence from visible to invisible, from negativity to excess of positivity.Some things never disappear―violence, for example. Violence is ubiquitous and incessant but protean, varying its outward form according to the social constellation at hand. In Topology of Violence, the philosopher Byung-Chul Han considers the shift in violence from the visible to the invisible, from the frontal to the viral to the self-inflicted, from brute force to mediated force, from the real to the virtual. Violence, Han tells us, has gone from the negative―explosive, massive, and martial―to the positive, wielded without enmity or domination. This, he says, creates the false impression that violence has disappeared. Anonymized, desubjectified, systemic, violence conceals itself because it has become one with society. Han first investigates the macro-physical manifestations of violence, which take the form of negativity―developing from the tension between self and other, interior and exterior, friend and enemy. These manifestations include the archaic violence of sacrifice and blood, the mythical violence of jealous and vengeful gods, the deadly violence of the sovereign, the merciless violence of torture, the bloodless violence of the gas chamber, the viral violence of terrorism, and the verbal violence of hurtful language. He then examines the violence of positivity―the expression of an excess of positivity―which manifests itself as over-achievement, over-production, over-communication, hyper-attention, and hyperactivity. The violence of positivity, Han warns, could be even more disastrous than that of negativity. Infection, invasion, and infiltration have given way to infarction.

Byung-Chul Han

(Author)

View Author's Page

Byung-Chul Han (Seoul, South Korea, 1959) studied Philosophy at the University of Freiburg and German Literature and Theology at the University of Munich. In 1994, he earned his doctorate from the first of these universities with a thesis on Martin Heidegger. After his habilitation, he taught philosophy at the University of Basel, from 2010 he was a professor of philosophy and media theory at the Karlsruhe College of Design, and since 2012 he has been a professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the Berlin University of the Arts. He is the author of more than a dozen titles, most of which have been translated into Spanish by Herder Editorial.

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