Malicious Objects, Anger Management, and the Question of Modern Literature - Hardcover

Kreienbrock, Jörg

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823245284 ISBN 13: 9780823245284

Publisher: Modern Language Initiative, 2012

Synopsis

Why do humans get angry with objects? Why is it that a malfunctioning computer, a broken tool, or a fallen glass causes an outbreak of fury? How is it possible to speak of an inanimate object’s recalcitrance, obstinacy, or even malice? When things assume a will of their own and seem to act out against human desires and wishes rather than disappear into automatic, unconscious functionality, the breakdown is experienced not as something neutral but affectively―as rage or as outbursts of laughter. Such emotions are always psychosocial: public, rhetorically performed, and therefore irreducible to a “private” feeling.

By investigating the minutest details of life among dysfunctional household items through the discourses of philosophy and science, as well as in literary works by Laurence Sterne, Jean Paul, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, and Heimito von Doderer, Kreienbrock reconsiders the modern bourgeois poetics that render things the way we know and suffer them.

About this title

About the Author

Jörg Kreienbrock is Associate Professor of German at Northwestern University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Modern Language Initiative
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0823245284
• ISBN 13: 9780823245284
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 328