Death-Drive: Freudian Hauntings in Literature and Art

ENDORSEMENTS TO FOLLOWThe Frontiers of TheorySeries Editor: Martin McQuillanThis series brings together internationally respected figures to comment on and re-describe the state of theory in the twenty-first century. It takes stock of an ever-expanding field of knowledge and opens up possible new modes of inquiry within it, identifying new theoretical pathways, innovative thinking and productive motifs.Death-Drive: Freudian Hauntings in Literature and ArtRobert Rowland SmithRobert Rowland Smith takes Freud's work on the death-drive and compares it with other philosophies of death - Pascal, Heidegger and Derrida in particular. He also applies it in a new way to literature and art - to Shakespeare, Rothko and Katharina Fritsch, among others. He asks whether artworks are dead or alive, if artistic creativity isn't actually a form of destruction, and whether our ability to be seduced by fine words means we don't put our selves at risk of death.In doing so, he proposes a new theory of aesthetics in which artworks and literary texts have a death-drive of their own, not least by their defining ability to turn away from all that is real, and where the effects of the death-drive mean that we are constantly living in imaginary, rhetorical or 'artistic' worlds. The book also provides a valuable introduction to the rich tradition of work on the death-drive since Freud.Robert Rowland Smith has written widely on philosophy, psychoanalysis and literature, including Derrida and Autobiography. Now independent, he also writes non-fiction that applies philosophy to everyday life.