The Desert in Modern Literature and Philosophy: Wasteland Aesthetics

Aidan Tynan

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2020

The Desert in Modern Literature and Philosophy

Wasteland Aesthetics

Aidan Tynan

In the series Crosscurrents

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474443371

Overview
Contents

About this book

Shows how philosophers from Nietzsche to Deleuze have used the figure of the desert to theorise space and place

Uses the figure of the desert to provide an aesthetic theory of modernity
Rethinks and challenges key assumptions of ecocriticism
Offers readings of the most significant literary deserts using an innovative and rigorous theoretical framework
Provides an original account of the Anthropocene from a cultural perspective
Read an interview between Aiden Tynan and Crosscurrents series editor Christopher Watkin

Aidan Tynan provocatively rethinks some of the core assumptions of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. Showing the significance of deserts and wastelands in literature since the Romantics, he argues that the desert has served to articulate anxieties over the cultural significance of space in the Anthropocene.

From imperial travel writing to postmodernism, from the Old Testament to salvagepunk, the desert has been a terrain of desire over which the Western imagination of space and place has ranged. As our planetary ecological crisis heads in increasingly catastrophic directions, this critique of the figure of the desert in literature, philosophy and wider culture can help us map an environmental affect that finds itself both attracted to and repelled by arid, depopulated and barren landscapes of various kinds.

Philosophers crucial to understanding our contemporary environmental condition make extensive use of the desert as a conceptual topography, a place of thought. Nietzsche’s warning that ‘the desert grows’ has been taken up by Heidegger, Derrida and Deleuze in their critiques of modernity. Tynan engages this philosophical work through a range of 20th and 21st century art and literature, and provides new interpretations of the most significant literary deserts from T.S Eliot to Don DeLillo.

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Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Series Editor’s Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Desert Desire Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	6
2. Desert Immanence Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	52
3. Desert Refrains Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
4. Desert Islands Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	138
5. Desert Polemologies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Conclusion: Beyond the Carbon Imaginary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	228
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	248

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 264
Keywords: Philosophy

eBook

Published: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 9781474443371