Description
Book SynopsisExamines modern Western cultural and social explorations of other forms or aspects of life that are devalued or coded as unacceptable in the modern ethos. The author describes how the body seeks to go beyond the conventional pieties of modern rationality to uncover these other dimensions.
Trade Review"Transgressing the Modern is what should be impossible: 'a carnival of representation' which subverts controversial boundaries between social theory, the humanities and the arts. It excavates the richest veins in modern western societies' endless struggles to marginalize, exclude and repress whatever makes them uncomfortable. John Jervis has written a wonderful synthesizing book - creative, imaginative and deeply suggestive of a better way forward."
Rob Stones, University of EssexTable of ContentsList of Plates.
Acknowledgements.
Introduction.
Part I: The Civilising Imperative.
1. Carnival Pleasures and The Spectre of Misrule.
2. Manners and Morals: The Civilisation of Culture.
Part II: Modernity and its Others.
3. Exotic Encounters: Savagery, Civilisation and the Imperial Other.
4. The Alienated Mind: Reason and The Exile of Madness.
5. Modernity's Sphinx: Woman as Nature and Culture.
6. The Rape and Romance of 'Nature'.
7. Forbidden Desires: Taboo, Transgression and Sexuality.
Part III: Continuities, Challenges, Transformations.
8. Blacks, Whites and Hybrids.
9. Postmodern Possibilities: Alienating The Modern.
Key Terms.
Guide to Further Reading.
Index.
