Dostoyevsky in the Face of Death: or Language Haunted by Sex
Book Details
- Publisher : Columbia U.P.
- Published : 2023
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 344
- Category :
Culture and Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 98071
- ISBN 13 : 9780231210515
- ISBN 10 : 0231210515
Reviews and Endorsements
Poetic, stunning, fascinating, and deeply insightful, Kristeva’s readings of Dostoyevsky are as much about us and our time as they are about him and his works. This book is a celebration of literature and language as an antidote to the extremes of nihilism and fundamentalism that still threaten us today.
Kelly Oliver, philosopher, novelist, and professor emerita, Vanderbilt University
The full force of Julia Kristeva’s lifetime of (psycho)analyzing revolutionary writers and speaking beings come together in this masterful analysis of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s life and work. Dostoyevsky’s polyphonic novels, as Kristeva brilliantly shows, exemplify the human capacity for sublimation. Decades before Freud’s discovery of the unconscious and its primary processes, Dostoyevsky was very deliberately wielding the sting of the negative, turning demons into words, new meanings, and art.
Noëlle McAfee, author of Fear of Breakdown: Politics and Psychoanalysis