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Un-Civilizing Processes?
Excess and Transgression in German Society and Culture: Perspectives Debating with Norbert Elias
Series: - German Monitor, Volume: 66
- German Monitor, Volume: 66
Volume Editor:
The collapse of the supposedly âcivilizedâ German nation into the âbarbarismâ of Hitlerâs Third Reich has cast a long shadow over interpretations of German culture and society. In the remarkable work of Norbert Elias, himself a refugee from Nazi Germany, a deep concern with the distinctiveness of âthe Germansâ is linked with an ambitious attempt to work out more general relations between broad historical processes â patterns of state formation, changing social structures â and the character of the individual self, as evidenced in changing thresholds of shame and embarrassment. In critical engagement with Eliasâs notion of the âcivilizing processâ, the essays collected here explore moments of excess and transgression, moments when the very boundaries of âcivilizationâ are both constructed and challenged. Inter-disciplinary contributions â on topics ranging from medieval laughter, cursing and swearing, through to music, the bourgeois self, and aspects of modern violence â highlight the complexity of inter-relations between the individual imagination and creativity, on the one hand, and the brute facts of political power and social structural inequalities, on the other; and develop new insights into the changing patterns of culture and society in Germany from the Middle Ages to the present.
ââ¦.unique collection of essaysâ in: Germanic Studies Review, Vol. 31, No. 3
Mary FULBROOK: Introduction: The Character and Limits of the Civilizing Process
Sebastian COXON: Laughter and the Process of Civilization in Wolfram von Eschenbachâs Parzival
Geraldine HORAN: (Un-)Civilized Language: The Regulation of Cursing and Swearing in German through the Ages
Martin SWALES: Civilization, Un-Civilization, Transgression: On Goetheâs Faust
Susanne KORD: The Pre-Colonial Imagination: Race and Revolution in Literature of the Napoleonic Period
Mark HEWITSON: Violence and Civilization: Transgression in Modern Wars
Ernest SCHONFIELD: Civilization in the Dining Room: Table Manners in Thomas Mannâs Buddenbrooks
Maiken UMBACH: The Civilizing Process and the Construction of the Bourgeois Self: Music Chambers in Wilhelmine Germany
Stephanie BIRD: Norbert Elias, the Confusions of Törleà and the Ethics of Shamelessness
Mererid Puw DAVIES: Bodily Issues: The West German Anti-Authoritarian Movement and the Semiotics of Dirt
Mary FULBROOK: Changing States, Changing Selves: Generations in the Third Reich and the GDR
Sebastian COXON: Laughter and the Process of Civilization in Wolfram von Eschenbachâs Parzival
Geraldine HORAN: (Un-)Civilized Language: The Regulation of Cursing and Swearing in German through the Ages
Martin SWALES: Civilization, Un-Civilization, Transgression: On Goetheâs Faust
Susanne KORD: The Pre-Colonial Imagination: Race and Revolution in Literature of the Napoleonic Period
Mark HEWITSON: Violence and Civilization: Transgression in Modern Wars
Ernest SCHONFIELD: Civilization in the Dining Room: Table Manners in Thomas Mannâs Buddenbrooks
Maiken UMBACH: The Civilizing Process and the Construction of the Bourgeois Self: Music Chambers in Wilhelmine Germany
Stephanie BIRD: Norbert Elias, the Confusions of Törleà and the Ethics of Shamelessness
Mererid Puw DAVIES: Bodily Issues: The West German Anti-Authoritarian Movement and the Semiotics of Dirt
Mary FULBROOK: Changing States, Changing Selves: Generations in the Third Reich and the GDR