Занимательная смерть. Развлечения эпохи постгуманизма

by Dina Khapaeva, Дмитрий Усков (Translator), Лариса Житкова (Translator)

Эта книга посвящена танатопатии — завороженности нашего общества смертью. Тридцать лет назад Хэллоуин не соперничал с Рождеством, «черный туризм» не был стремительно развива­ющейся индустрией, «шикарный труп» не диктовал стиль дешевой моды, «зеленые похороны» казались эксцентричным выбором одиночек, а вампиры, зомби, каннибалы и серийные убийцы не являлись любимыми героями публики от мала до велика. Став забавой, зрелище виртуальной насильственной смерти меняет наши представления о человеке, его месте среди других живых существ и о ценности человеческой жизни, равно как и о том, можно ли употреблять человека в пищу. В книге предлагается новый подход, впервые рассматривающий революцию в обрядах и практиках, связанных со смертью, и эволюцию изображения насилия в романах и кино как единый культурный процесс. Длительная история критики гуманизма и антропоцентризма французской теорией, движением борьбы за права животных, трансгуманизмом и постгуманизмом позволяет проследить этапы превращения антигуманизма в ходовой товар индустрии развлечений.

Genres: Nonfiction

328 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Dina Khapaeva joined the School of Modern Languages in 2012. She received a Ph.D. in Classical Studies from St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia. She studies Russian literature and culture, including the grand literary tradition and Soviet and post-Soviet fiction and film. Her research and teaching interests lie on the intersection of cultural studies, memory studies, medievalism, history of emotions, and death studies. Her most recent book project The Celebration of Death in Russia and America (forthcoming at the University of Michigan Press) compares the ways of engaging with death and representations of violent death in Russian and American popular culture.

In Spring 2016, Khapaeva lectured on Russian ideology and politics at École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris, France).

Reviews

[Ksenia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Look, I love reading about death, I'm a social science goth chick basically. So I was super excited to read this very dissapointing book. The basic idea is that during the past thirty or so years our society developed an obssession with death and violence, which is detrimental to our core values like humanism and democracy. Are you laughing yet? Because I am. This kind of rhetoric is 1) very questionable 2) clichèd as hell. It's not a cultural analysis of death in popilar culture, it's a crazy mix of every moral panic ever. The academic style and bibliographical abundance hide the core essence of the book, which is facebook complaints about pop culture. Videogames make you children violent and Harry Potter books are all about demons and murders. First they watch horror slasher movies, then they become gay or communist or whatever. Come on.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This for me was a wonderful and interesting read. The author Dina Khapaeva documents the scale and novelty of this cultural movement of death. Showing how specific cultural and historical conditions - French Theory, The Victorians, Mysticism, Animal Rights, Santa Muerte, Posthumanism and Transhumanism - have and still are shaping our cultural fascination with death.
This book has inspired me to read more outside my comfort zone. If I could give more than 5 stars, I would.

[Toki · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, Khapaeva discusses the cultural change in celebrating and commodifying death and death-based aesthetics, such as vampirism and Halloween. She compares reception of these topics in America and Russia, using references and media from both as supplements to her point. While I disagree with the notion of humanity being inherently death-denying, a lot of her points had merit. Her view on humanism and how nonhuman entities reject human exceptionalism was interesting, as is the idea that this led to dehumanization and desensitization of human death.

However, I quickly lost interest when she began analyzing Harry Potter and its impact. While I can't doubt its cultural impact, I believe Khapaeva did a poor job at communicating its relevancy. Particularly troubling was the demonization of mental illnesses — specifically, the labelling of Harry as a "deranged maniac" after explaining his psychotic symptoms. Khapaeva argues that the demonization of these psychotic symptoms in "wizard culture" in the series means that it can't serve as a therapeutic tool in reality, which completely misses the idea that children seeing a protagonist be famed as a hero while still struggling with psychotic symptoms could be comforting. On a smaller scale, the usage of the outdated "multiple personality disorder" instead of "dissociative identity disorder" was telling. Generally, I thought this portion delving into Harry Potter's mental state was unnecessary and in poor taste, especially because the series should have been brought up solely due to its themes of death and how it affects humanism and human exceptionalism.

The beginning part is strong, and still has important information that I enjoyed reading through, but the section about Harry Potter should have been shorter than it is. Most of the information there was irrelevant at best and damaging at worst.

[Andegret · Rating 2 out of 5]

Очень похоже на какую-нибудь дипломную работу, клише из рефератов и курсовых режут глаза. Содержание более-менее интересно, но все равно чувствуется поверхностность.