Description
Book SynopsisThe question of evil is one of the oldest and most intensely studied topics in intellectual history. In fiction, legend and mythology the boundary between good and evil is often depicted as clear-cut, at least to the reader or listener, who is supposed to understand such tales as lessons and warnings. Evil is something that must be avoided by the hero in some cases and vanquished in others; it is either the exact opposite of the expected good behaviour, or its complete absence. Even so, for the characters in these didactic fictions, it turns out to be deceptively easy to fall to the infernal, ‘dark’ side. This volume draws on the expertise of an interdisciplinary group of contributors to chart events and deeds of an ‘evil’ nature that have been lived in the (recent) past and have become part of history, from individual to institutionalised evil.
Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors Introduction Kanta Dihal Part 1 The Banality and the Familiarity of Evil 1 From Victims to Perpetrators: the Banality of Evil in Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones Damian Catani 2 Unspeakable Banality: Discourse in Dispute Cassie Pedersen Part 2 Genocide in Rwanda 3 In Plain Sight: the Ethics of Proximity in the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide Sarah Gendron 4 On the Role of Nation-States in Regulating Evil: a Case Study on Rwanda Sally Nadeau 5 Extraordinary Forgiveness Jennifer Vanderheyden Part 3 Capitalism and the Socio-Psychology of Evil 6 Late Capitalism, Psychopathy and the Ontology of Evil Helen Patey 7 Psychologising Evil in the Media: a Market-Like Exchange of Political Responsibility for Isolation in the Greek Crisis Environment Sophia Kanaouti 8 The Fury of ‘Ressentiment’: Binary Codes, Evil and Society Spiros Gangas 9 On the Usefulness of Being Unrealistic: a Critique of Freud’s Arguments against Neighbour Love Regan Lance Reitsma Part 4 Dehumanization, the Law and the Prison 10 Socio-Spatial Scripts: Evil and the Contestation of Space and Being Rallie Murray 11 The Intersection between Evil and Architecture: Environment and Agency Robert W. Butler 12 Choosing between Two Evils: a Philosophical Consideration of the Defences of Necessity and Duress in English Law Stephen Banks Index
