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Hamlet and pure object revenge – the matter of life and death
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Watt, Gary (2024) Hamlet and pure object revenge – the matter of life and death. Polemos: journal of law, literature and culture . ISSN 2035-5262. (Submitted)
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Abstract
Why do we strike intrinsically inoffensive objects when they intrude upon our lives? Why, for example, do we kick the car when it breaks down, or slap the chair that pinches our finger against the table, or strike the open door that collides with our head? In this essay, I ask whether this phenomenon, which I call the performance of “pure object revenge”, might arise from an impulse to execute vindicatory, and in that sense vengeful, justice upon the offending object. My new explanation for the phenomenon is that we strike the offending object because it has no life but has briefly acted as if it were alive. It therefore reminds us in the brief moment of its offence that our bodies are also inanimate dust and will return to dust and in the meantime are only briefly animated. In short, my argument is that we strike the object because it is a memento mori. To test and support this, I offer a reading of the “closet scene” at the centre of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to illustrate the performative impulse to banish inanimate objects at the threshold of the living and the dead.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BL Religion K Law [LC] > K Law (General) K Law [Moys] > KA Jurisprudence P Language and Literature > PR English literature |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Polemos: journal of law, literature and culture | ||||
Publisher: | Walter de Gruyter GmbH | ||||
ISSN: | 2035-5262 | ||||
Official Date: | 21 March 2024 | ||||
Dates: |
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Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Submitted | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 25 March 2024 | ||||
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