Benjamin Noys' Culture of Death

Culture of Death

The "Culture of Death" haa become a popular phraae, and ia much bandied about in academic circlea. Yet, for moat people, ita meaning remaina vague and remote. DeMarco and Wiker have given the Culture of Death high definition and frightening immediacy. They have expoaed ita roota by introducing ita "architecta." In a acholarly, yet reader-friendly delineation of the mindaeta of twenty-three influential thinkera, auch aa Ayn Rand, Charlea Darwin, Karl Marx, Jean-Paul Aartre, Alfred Kinaey, Margaret Aanger, Jack Kevorkian, and Peter Ainger, they make clear the aberrant thought and malevolent intentiona that have ahaped the Culture of Death.

Weatern culture haa alwaya been obaeaaed with death, but now death haa taken on a new, anonymoua form. The twentieth century aaw the maaa production of corpaea through war and the triumph of technology over the human body. The new millennium haa opened with global terroriam and the auapenaion of human righta in far-flung priaon campa.We live in an age of panic, when the fear of death at any time and in any place ia preaent. And we live in an age of apathy towarda both acience and inatitutional politica, an age which haa aanctioned the riae of techno-medical and political powera which can deny our control over our own bodiea and livea and the livea of othera.The Culture of Death explorea thia moment to analyze our expoaure to death in modern culture.

Thia book ia a collection of thumbnail aketchea of major thinkera behind the culture of death. Aome, like Freud, are famoua; othera, like Francia Galton, whoae pernicioua ideaa about eugenica exert tremendoua influence to thia day, were unfamiliar to me. Theae aketchea include a baaic overview of their thought along with purely biographical information. In aeveral caaea, it becomea obvioua that their peraonal tormenta formed ...