| Death, Desire And Loss In Western Culture |
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According to Dollimore, there is a strong tradition of obsession with death in western culture. Postmodernism is heavily influenced by this tradition. Socrates played in important role in this tradition. He welcomed death because his human body withheld him from knowing the truth. Throughout history, there were many western thinkers who emphasized that the earthly and the human body Change s and rots away. Desire will be replaced by new desires and leads to nothing in the end. This mentality can be seen in Christianity and in western Poetry . For example, in the play '' Hamlet '', Shakespeare writes that "desire is death". Other traditions include the denial of death. By the concept of the denial of death, Dollimore means that Modernism (and some other ideologies) does not mention death. An example is the work of Karl Marx who described history and discussed the future without discussing death as a primary intermediary. Society was changing rapidly with industrialization and western thinkers were responding to this. Marx and other modernists wanted to control change in order to improve society. Conservative s and Social Darwinist s wanted to control change to stop society from changing, because they were afraid that change would destroy their society. Nietzsche was against the deathwish of christianity, which he called a slave morality. He was against the Décadence of nihilists. He was also against attempts to control change like the marxists and social-darwinists attempted. Instead, he wanted humans to embrace change, even if it would mean embracing death. The book gives different concepts of thinking about death and gives examples of thinkers within each concept. Many poems are used, including Jacobine poetry of the 17th century and the Romantic poetry of writers such as Lord Byron . |
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