Barbarism revisited : new perspectives on an old concept / edited by Maria Boletsi, Christian Moser. - 1 online resource - Thamyris / Intersecting: Place, Sex and Race, Volume 29 1570-7253 ; . - Thamyris intersecting ; no. 29. .

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"The figure of the barbarian has captivated the Western imagination from Greek antiquity to the present. Since the 1990s, the rhetoric of civilization versus barbarism has taken center stage in Western political rhetoric and the media. But how can the longevity and popularity of this opposition be accounted for? Why has it become such a deeply ingrained habit of thought that is still being so effectively mobilized in Western discourses? The twenty essays in this volume revisit well-known and obscure chapters in barbarism's genealogy from new perspectives and through contemporary theoretical idioms. With studies spanning from Greek antiquity to the present, they show how barbarism has functioned as the negative outside separating a civilized interior from a barbarian exterior; as the middle term in-between savagery and civilization in evolutionary models; as a repressed aspect of the civilized psyche; as concomitant with civilization; as a term that confuses fixed notions of space and time; or as an affirmative notion in philosophy and art, signifying radical change and regeneration."--Back cover.

9789004309272 9004309276

869918 MIL


Civilization--Congresses.
Outsiders in art--Congresses.
Outsiders in literature--Congresses.
HISTORY--World.
Civilization.
Outsiders in art.
Outsiders in literature.


Electronic books.
Conference papers and proceedings.

CB3.5 / .B37 2012

909