Search results for ""Author Ben Morgan""
Fordham University Press On Becoming God: Late Medieval Mysticism and the Modern Western Self
Do we have to conceive of ourselves as isolated individuals, inevitably distanced from other people and from whatever we might mean when we use the word God? On Becoming God offers an innovative approach to the history of the modern Western self by looking at human identity as something people do together rather than on their own. Ben Morgan argues that the shared practices of human identity can be understood as ways of managing and keeping at bay the impulses and experiences associated with the word God. The “self” is a way of doing things, or of not doing things, with “God.” The book draws on phenomenology (Heidegger), gender studies (Beauvoir, Butler) and contemporary neuroscience to present a new approach to the history of modern identity. It surveys existing approaches to modern selfhood (Foucault, Charles Taylor) and proposes an alternative account by investigating late medieval mysticism, in particular texts written in Germany by Meister Eckhart and others in the same milieu. Reactions to the condemnation of Meister Eckhart’s teaching for heresy in 1329 offer a microcosm of the circumstances in which something like the modern self arises as people change their behavior toward others, toward themselves, and toward what they call “God.” The book makes Meister Eckhart and his contemporaries appear as our contemporaries by changing the assumptions with which we approach our own identity. To make this change requires a revision of current vocabularies for approaching ourselves, and in particular the vocabulary and habits inherited from psychoanalysis. The book finishes by exploring the parallel between late medieval confessors and their spiritual charges, and late-nineteenth-century psychoanalysts and their patients. The result is a renewed vision of the Freud’s project of finding a vocabulary for acknowledging and nurturing our everyday commitments to others and to our spiritual longings.
£61.13
Boydell & Brewer Ltd German in the World: The Transnational and Global Contexts of German Studies
Weighs the value of Germanophone culture, and its study, in an age of globalization, transnationalism, and academic change. The study of German-language culture has been rapidly diversifying to express the vibrant multiplicity of what it is now possible to research, and teach, under the rubric of "German Studies." Responding to these developments, German in the World explores what happens when the geographic, linguistic, and temporal boundaries that have traditionally been used to define German-language culture are questioned, and are placed alongside more global perspectives. Chapters consider the transformation of the German-language cultural canon through its engagement with the world, trace the value of German Studies as an interdisciplinary subject practiced across different global locations, and investigate the impact of both on the work of organizations and practitioners entirely beyond the academy. In questioning where German-language culture can be found across these different "worlds," German in the World thus uncovers the continued value of German Studies as a field of critical cultural discourse within a globalized public sphere, placing that culture at the heart of debates on Transnational and World Literature. Ultimately, the contributions to this innovative volume demonstrate how attempts to locate German Studies in its wider geographic and social contexts result not in a discipline undone, but in a discipline reinvigorated and transformed.
£89.10
