Disgust

<p><b>Examines this forceful emotion from philosophical literary and art historical perspectives.</b></p><p>Disgust (Ekel dégoût) is a state of high alert. It acutely says no to a variety of phenomena that seemingly threaten the integrity of the self if not its very existence. A counterpart to the feelings of appetite desire and love it allows at the same time for an acting out of hidden impulses and libidinal drives.</p><p>In Disgust Winfried Menninghaus provides a comprehensive account of the significance of this forceful emotion in philosophy aesthetics literature the arts psychoanalysis and theory of culture from the eighteenth century to the present. Topics addressed include the role of disgust as both a cognitive and moral organon in Kant and Nietzsche; the history of the imagination of the rotting corpse; the counter-cathexis of the disgusting in Romantic poetics and its modernist appeal ever since; the affinities of disgust and laughter and the analogies of vomiting and writing; the foundation of Freudian psychoanalysis in a theory of disgusting pleasures and practices; the association of disgusting otherness with truth and the trans-symbolic real in Bataille Sartre and Kristeva; Kafka's self-representation as an Angel of disgusting smells and acts concealed in a writerly stance of uncompromising purity; and recent debates on Abject Art.</p>