The Writing of Violence in the Middle East: Inflictions

by Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh (Editor), Lucian Stone (Editor)

Overview

Writing has come face-to-face with a most crucial juncture: to negotiate with the inescapable presence of violence. From the domains of contemporary Middle Eastern literature, this book stages a powerful conversation on questions of cruelty, evil, rage, vengeance, madness, and deception. Beyond the narrow judgment of violence as a purely tragic reality, these writers (in states of exile, prison, martyrdom, and war) come to wager with the more elusive, inspiring, and even ecstatic dimensions that rest at the heart of a visceral universe of imagination. Covering complex and controversial thematic discussions, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh forms an extreme record of voices, movements, and thought-experiments drawn from the inner circles of the Middle Eastern region. By exploring the most abrasive writings of this vast cultural front, the book reveals how such captivating outsider texts could potentially redefine our understanding of violence and its now-unstoppable relationship to a dangerous age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472529442
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/09/2014
Series:	Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Babson College, USA.

Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Babson College, USA.

Lucian Stone is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, The University of North Dakota, USA.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword
Preface: Violence, East/West
Acknowledgements
0. Zero-World Consciousness
1. Threat: Writings of Betrayal
2. Annihilation: Writings of Cruelty
3. Sharpening: Writings of Evil
4. Deception: Writings of Midnight
5. Rage: Writings of Overthrow
6. Assassination: Writings of War
6.5. Interlude (Of the Factions, of the Barriers)
7. Conclusion (Of Those Who Have Become Jagged): Reckonings of an Eastern Violence
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Perhaps the major merit of Inflictions is not only the strength of its argument, but it is more the book's relentless counter canonical approach - a timely political-methodological intervention which boldly contemplates the inscriptions of real violence as integral to the very movement of absolute laceration of writing itself and the ultimate depleting of the metaphysics of presence … From this multi-dimensional perception of how we ought to begin reading violence, from this deferred universe, the ideas of post-apocalyptic visions emerge and unfold. By all means, one can only hope that this book excites more inquiries peeling through more engravings-of-thought contained in concealed poetic, fictional, and philosophical palimpsests waiting for their moments to emerge.” —Youssef Yacoubi, The Ohio State University, SCTIW Review

From the Publisher