Death-Drive : Freudian Hauntings in Literature and Art

A new theory of aesthetics in which artworks have a death-drive of their own.

The Frontiers of Theory-Series Editor: Martin McQuillan

This series brings together internationally respected figures to comment on and re-describe the state of theory in the twenty-first century. It takes stock of an ever-expanding field of knowledge and opens up possible new modes of inquiry within it, identifying new theoretical pathways, innovative thinking and productive motifs.

Death-Drive: Freudian Hauntings in Literature and Art-Robert Rowland Smith

This is a rich and fascinating work. Smith provides a lucid, probing and astute overview of the death drive in Freud, but also leads the reader into strange and compelling new terrain. This is an important new contribution to a topic that remains controversial in psychoanalysis and culture more generally.''-Professor Nicholas Royle, University of Sussex

''Sinuously argued and vividly expressed, Death-Drive will appeal both to beginners and to seasoned readers of psychoanalysis and literature. Rarely has death been discussed with such vitality.''-Maud Ellmann, Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame

Robert Rowland Smith takes Freud''s work on the death-drive and compares it with other philosophies of death - Pascal, Heidegger and Derrida, in particular. He also applies it in a new way to literature and art - to Shakespeare, Rothko and Katharina Fritsch, among others. He asks whether artworks are dead or alive, if artistic creativity isn''t actually a form of destruction, and whether our ability to be seduced by fine words means we don''t put ourselves at risk of death. In doing so, he proposes a new theory of aesthetics in which artworks and literary texts have a death-drive of their own.