Binding: Paperback
Description: Informed by a provocative exhibition at the Louvre curated by the author The Severed Head unpacks artistic representations of severed heads from the Paleolithic period to the present. Surveying paintings sculptures and drawings Julia Kristeva turns her famed critical eye to a study of the head as symbol and metaphor as religious object and physical fact further developing a critical theme in her work - - the power of horror - - and the potential for the face to provide an experience of the sacred. Kristeva considers the head as icon artifact and locus of thought seeking a keener understanding of the violence and desire that drives us to sever and in some cases keep such a potent object. Her study stretches all the way back to 6,000 B. C. E. with humans early decoration and worship of skulls and follows with the Medusa myth; the mandylion of Laon (a holy relic in which the face of a saint appears on a piece of cloth); the biblical story of John the Baptist and his counterpart Salome; tales of the guillotine; modern murder mysteries; and even the rhetoric surrounding the fight for and against capital punishment. Kristeva interprets these "capital visions" through the lens of psychoanalysis drawing infinite connections between their manifestation and sacred experience and very much affirming the possibility of the sacred even in an era of "faceless" interaction.
Title: The Severed Head Capital Visions
Author(s): Kristeva Julia
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Barcode: 9780231157216
Pages: 176 Pages, 18 Illus.
Language: English
Publication Date: 2/11/2014
Series: European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism
Category: Material Culture