The Egalitarian Sublime: A Process Philosophy

Description

We call sublime those things and experiences supposed to be the very best. But what if the best actually leads to inequality and exploitation? Williams critiques the sublime over its long history and in recent returns to sublime nature and technologies. Deploying a new critical method that draws on process philosophy, he shows how the sublime has always led to inequality. This holds true even where it underpins ideas of cosmopolitan enlightenment, and even when refined by Burke, Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Žižek. Against the unjust legacies of the traditional sublime, James Williams defends a new, anarchist sublime: multiple, self-destructive and temporary; opposed to any idea of highest value to be shared by all but always imposed on the powerless. Cover Title Copyright information Contents Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Microcritique and the Sublime Between historical objectivity and radical innovation Microhistory Method and the problem of exclusion Patterns of fragments Chapter 3: Nietzsche Against the Egalitarian Sublime Only for the few The sublime as effect Untimely, sublime Sublime individuals against cohesive communities Through the few, but for the many? Individuals and masses Chapter 4: The Return to the Sublime The search for value Nostalgic social sublime Diagrams of the technological sublime The environmental sublime Chapter 5: Sublime Miseries From high to low Kant: equality in universality Schopenhauer’s sublime consolations Žižek: a depressing lesson about horror and suffering The abject and egalitarian sublime Chapter 6: Defining the Egalitarian Sublime The sublime and egalitarian politics Unequal by definition Not after the sublime Chapter 7: Conclusion: The Sublime as Crisis Notes Bibliography Index