Tragically Speaking by Kalliopi Nikolopoulou

Tragically Speaking by Kalliopi Nikolopoulou

From German idealism onward, Western thinkers have sought to revalue tragedy, invariably converging at one cardinal point: tragic art risks aestheticizing real violence. Tragically Speaking critically examines this revaluation, offering a new understanding of the changing meaning of tragedy in literary and moral discourse. It questions common assumptions about the Greeks' philosophical relation to the tragic tradition and about the ethical and political ramifications of contemporary theories of tragedy. Starting with the poet Friedrich H lderlin and continuing to the present, Kalliopi Nikolopoulou traces how tragedy was translated into an idea (the tragic) that was then revised further into the beyond the tragic of postmetaphysical contemporary thought. While recognizing some of the merits of this revaluation, Tragically Speaking concentrates on the losses implicit in such a turn. It argues that by translating tragedy into an idea, these rereadings effected a problematic subordination of politics to ethics: the drama of human conflict gave way to philosophical reflection, bracketing the world in favor of the idea of the world. Where contemporary thought valorizes absence, passivity, the Other, rhetoric, writing, and textuality, the author argues that their deconstructed opposites (presence, will, the self, truth, speech, and action, all of which are central to tragedy) are equally necessary for any meaningful discussion of ethics and politics. Kalliopi Nikolopoulou is an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Buffalo.

Kalliopi Nikolopoulou is an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Buffalo.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780803240919
ISBN 10	0803240910
Title	Tragically Speaking
Author	Kalliopi Nikolopoulou
Series	Symploke Studies In Contemporary Theory
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University of Nebraska Press
Year published	2013-01-01
Number of pages	376
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.