TransgressionTransgression is truly a key idea for our time. Society is created by constraint and boundaries, but as our culture is increasingly subject to uncertainty and flux we find it more and more difficult to determine where those boundaries lie. In this fast moving study, Chris Jenks ranges widely over the history of ideas, the major theorists, and the significant moments in the formation of the idea of transgression. He looks at the definition of the social and its boundaries by Durkheim, Douglas and Freud, at the German tradition of Hegel and Nietzsche and the increasing preoccupation with transgression itself in Baudelaire, Bataille and Foucault. The second half of the book looks at transgression in action in the East End myth of the Kray twins, in Artaud's theatre of cruelty, the spectacle of the Situationists and Bakhtin's analysis of carnival. Finally Jenks extends his treatment of transgression to its own extremity. |
Contents
The Centre Cannot Hold 151 | 15 |
To Have Done With the Judgement of God | 49 |
Excess | 82 |
Extreme Seductiveness is at the Boundary of Horror | 111 |
Journey to the End of the Night | 135 |
The World Turned Upside Down | 161 |
Theatres of Cruelty | 175 |
| 187 | |
| 195 | |
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Common terms and phrases
action appearance Bataille become begin body boundaries carnival clearly collective commitment complete concept concerning condition consciousness constitutes constraint contained contemporary continuity conventional crime criminal critical cultural danger death derives described desire dialectic Durkheim East economy elements emerged eroticism essentially established evil excess existence experience expression fact follows force further Hegel human ideas identity important individual kind Krays limits living meaning mechanical metaphor mind moral move nature never Nietzsche object original particular perhaps person philosophical political position possible postmodern practice present principle reality reason referred relation relationship remains response reveals rules sacred seen sense sexuality shared significance simply social society sovereignty space speaks status structure Surrealism symbolic taboo theatre theory things thinking thought tradition transgression turn Twins understanding universal values violence