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What’s the matter with Antonin Artaud? Or, why the soul is a pile of shit
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Grundy, David (2014) What’s the matter with Antonin Artaud? Or, why the soul is a pile of shit. In: Jeschke, Lisa and May, Adrian, (eds.) Matters of Time : Material Temporalities in Twentieth-Century French Culture. Modern French Identities . New York: Peter Lang, pp. 163-184. ISBN 9783034317962 ; 9783035397857
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0656-9
Abstract
For Aristotle, while all human beings possess a soul, its distribution differs in each individual case – or perhaps more accurately, according to class distinctions. The soul here acts as that which both subsequently reinforces and retrospectively justifies what is perceived to be the natural state enshrined in exploitative class relation. Thus, it is the possession of the soul’s ‘deliberative function’ which distinguishes the aristocratic caste as fully human, against the animalism of women, slaves and labourers, for ‘the deliberative faculty of the soul is not present at all in the slave; in a female it is present but ineffective’,2 while ‘the mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts’.3 The soul, then, in its complete form, is not only that which distinguishes the aristocrats from the masses, but that which distinguishes the human as such, that which allows men and women to be used as beasts of burden, not fully accorded human rights because they are not considered fully human, because they are considered ← 163 | 164 → to be suited for and even to actively prefer ‘a life suitable to beasts’. To this, and to the Christian soul, Antonin Artaud says ‘SHIT’ – and in doing so not only proclaims ‘shit to the spirit’,4 but that the spirit itself is shit:
Item Type: | Book Item | ||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||
Series Name: | Modern French Identities | ||||
Publisher: | Peter Lang | ||||
Place of Publication: | New York | ||||
ISBN: | 9783034317962 ; 9783035397857 | ||||
Book Title: | Matters of Time : Material Temporalities in Twentieth-Century French Culture | ||||
Editor: | Jeschke, Lisa and May, Adrian | ||||
Official Date: | 2014 | ||||
Dates: |
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Page Range: | pp. 163-184 | ||||
DOI: | 10.3726/978-3-0353-0656-9 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||
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