The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism

About this book

In this bold interdisciplinary work Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that asceticism has played a major role in shaping Western ideas of the body writing ethics and aesthetics. He suggests that we consider the ascetic as "the cultural element in culture " and presents a close analysis of works by Athanasius Augustine Matthias Grnewald Nietzsche Foucault and other thinkers as proof of the extent of asceticisms resources. Harpham demonstrates the usefulness of his findings by deriving from asceticism a "discourse of resistance " a code of interpretation ultimately more generous and humane than those currently available to us.