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Elana Gomel

Bio: Elana Gomel is an academic researcher from Tel Aviv University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Chronotope & Narrative. The author has an hindex of 11, co-authored 30 publications receiving 283 citations.

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TL;DR: A brief overview of the poetics and politics of pestilence can be found in this article, where the authors focus on the narrative construction of the contagious body rather than on the precise epidemiology of the contagion.
Abstract: 1. And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways and pour out the vials of the wrath of Cod upon the earth. 2. And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image. Revelation 16 In the secular apocalyptic visions that have proliferated wildly in the last 200 years, the world has been destroyed by nuclear wars, alien invasions, climatic changes, social upheavals, meteor strikes, and technological shutdowns. These baroque scenarios are shaped by the eroticism of disaster. The apocalyptic desire that finds satisfaction in elaborating fictions of the End is double-edged. On the one hand, its ultimate object is some version of the crystalline New Jerusalem, an image of purity so absolute that it denies the organic messiness of life. [1] On the other hand, apocalyptic fictions typically linger on pain and suffering. The end result of apocalyptic purification often seems of less importance than the narrative pleasure derived from the bizarre and opulent tribulations of the bodies being burnt by fire and brimstone, tormented by scorpion stings, trodden like grapes in the winepress. In this interplay between the incorporeal purity of the ends and the violent corporeality of the means the apocalyptic body is born. It is a body whose mortal sickness is a precondition of ultimate health, whose grotesque and excessive sexuality issues in angelic sexlessness, and whose torture underpins a painless--and lifeless--millennium. The apocalyptic body is perverse, points out Tina Pippin, unstable and mutating from maleness to femaleness and back again, purified by the sadomasochistic "bloodletting on the cross," trembling in abject terror while awaiting an unearthly consummation (122). But most of all it is a suffering body, a text written in the script of stigmata, scars, wounds, and sores. Any apocalypse strikes the body politic like a disease, progressing from the first symptoms of a large-scale disaster through the crisis of the tribulation to the recovery of the millennium. But of all the Four Horsemen, the one whose ride begins most intimately, in the private travails of individual flesh, and ends in the devastation of the entire community, is the last one, Pestilence. The contagious body is the most characteristic modality of apocalyptic corporeality. At the same time, I will argue, it contains a counterapocalyptic potential, resisting the dangerous lure of Endism, the ideologically potent combination of "apocalyptic terror", a nd "millennial perfection" (Quinby 2). This essay, a brief sketch of the poetics and politics of the contagious body, does not attempt a comprehensive overview of the historical development of the trope of pestilence. Nor does it limit itself to a particular disease, along the lines of Susan Sontag's classic delineation of the poetics of TB and many subsequent attempts to develop a poetics of AIDS. Rather, my focus is on the general narrativity of contagion and on the way the plague-stricken body is manipulated within the overall plot of apocalyptic millennialism, which is a powerful ideological current in twentieth-century political history, embracing such diverse manifestations as religious fundamentalism, Nazism, and other forms of "radical desperation" (Quinby 4--5). Thus, I consider both real and imaginary diseases, focusing on the narrative construction of the contagious body rather than on the precise epidemiology of the contagion. All apocalyptic and millenarian ideologies ultimately converge on the utopian transformation of the body (and the body politic) through suffering. But pestilence offers a uniquely ambivalent modality of corporeal apocalypse. On the one hand, it may be appropriated to the standard plot of apocalyptic purification as a singularly atrocious technique of separating the damned from the saved. …

37 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

30 citations

Book
28 Oct 2010
TL;DR: The Garden of History: The Branching Paths of Contingency 5. Everyday Apocalypse: The Ethics and Aesthetics of the End of Time 6. Conclusion Bibliography Index as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: 1. Introduction: World Enough and Time 2. The Times Machines 3. Strangled by a Time Loop: Paradoxes of Determinism 4. The Garden of History: The Branching Paths of Contingency 5. Everyday Apocalypse: The Ethics and Aesthetics of the End of Time 6. Conclusion Bibliography Index.

24 citations

Book
18 Feb 2014
TL;DR: A King of Infinite Space as discussed by the authors is a King of infinite space, where the universe is composed of two stories: the City of Two Tales and the Ghost of Space 3. Embedding or the Pocket Universe 4. Wormholing Or the Darkness Within 5. Sidestepping or Dimensions of Divinity 6. Collapsing or Urban Black Holes
Abstract: Introduction I: Space Introduction II: Time 1. Layering Or the City of Two Tales 2. Flickering Or Ghosts of Space 3. Embedding Or the Pocket Universe 4. Wormholing Or the Darkness Within 5. Sidestepping Or Dimensions of Divinity 6. Collapsing Or Urban Black Holes Postscript: "A King of Infinite Space"

23 citations


Cited by
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TL;DR: In this paper, Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism are discussed. And the history of European ideas: Vol. 21, No. 5, pp. 721-722.

13,842 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The best ebooks about difference and repetition that you can get for free here by download this Difference And Repetition and save to your desktop are listed in this paper, under topic such as gilles deleuze difference and repetitions.
Abstract: The best ebooks about Difference And Repetition that you can get for free here by download this Difference And Repetition and save to your desktop. This ebooks is under topic such as gilles deleuze difference and repetition difference and repetition mariusj preparing to learn from difference and repetition protevi gilles deleuze difference and repetition difference and repetition: on guy debord's films difference and repetition wrmail difference and repetition uksfp difference and repetition pdf book library deleuzeâ€ÂTMs difference and repetition (phil 615) crn: 27134 gilles deleuzes difference and repetition gilles deleuzes deleuzeà ̄¿¢à ̄Â3⁄4ۈ ̄Â3⁄4ÂTMs difference and repetition by henry somers-hall repetition pdf difference and deleuze wordpress difference, repetition, and the n[on(e)-all]: the repetition and difference: a rhythmanalysis of pedagogic outline of gilles deleuze, différence et répétition from colonization to globalization: difference or repetition and difference: a rhythmanalysis of pedagogic reading on the move geneseo migrant center and national the difference and repetition of gabriel tarde repetition and refrain your new wiki! wikispaces difference and repetition 310 conclusion: the postulate difference and repetition in deleuzeâ€ÂTMs proustian sign and differences in the nonword repetition performance of which are the layers of difference and repetition? gilles deleuzes difference and repetition gilles deleuzes gilles deleuze's 'difference and repetition': a critical difference and repetition deleuze pdf kepbeenpdf difference and repetition pdf kepbeenpdfleswordpress difference and repetition european perspectives a series rhetorical analysis university academic success programs what difference does deleuze's difference make? difference and repetition wikipedia difference and repetition gilles deleuze google books deleuze, gilles | internet encyclopedia of philosophy

1,304 citations