The Headless Republic: Sacrificial Violence In Modern French Thought

Book Description

In The Headless Republic, Jesse Goldhammer explores how the French revolutionaries retrieved a set of ideas about founding violence from the classical Romans and early Christians and incorporated it into postrevolutionary debates that echoed into the twentieth century. By linking sacrifice as expressed in revolutionary practices to modern French theory, Goldhammer shows how ancient ideas of violent political renewal made their way into the contemporary age.

Goldhammer elucidates the theoretical and practical significance of sacrificial violence during the Revolution, and then turns his attention to postrevolutionary intellectuals whose work is inspired by the founding sacrifices of the French Republic. Showing how Georges Bataille, Joseph de Maistre, and Georges Sorel adapted concepts of sacrifice to their own particular political agendas—whether reactionary or revolutionary—Goldhammer challenges conventional readings of these three thinkers as "bloodthirsty intellectuals." Instead, he argues, their work reveals the limits of violence as an agent of political change and attacks the forms of violence later adopted by fascist regimes. More broadly, Goldhammer makes the case for including ancient concepts of collective bloodshed in the modern lexicon of political violence.

Customer Reviews:

Bringing Violence to Law and Politics........2005-06-13

Law, writes Robert Cover, "takes place on a battlefield of pain and death." The power of violence, Cover saw,is jurisgenerative. Violence, in other words, has the power to found law. In a fascinating new book, "The Headless Republic," Jesse Goldhammer explores the French tradition of thinking about sacrificial violence and its role in the foundation of political and legal authority. Goldhammer traces the idea of violence as a pregnant and generative political impulse from its roots in the French revolution through the works of the social and political theorists Joseph de Maistre, George Sorel, and Georges Bataille. This book is not only well written, it will make you think about the importance and danger of violence in our world.

The Headless Bust: A Melancholy Meditation for the False Millennium

Average customer rating:

Dark humor and delightful drawings
Not for the weak of heart
vintage gorey, but not for starters
A Gorey Sequel
Edward Gorey (1925-2000) RIP

The Headless Bust: A Melancholy Meditation for the False Millennium
Edward Gorey
Manufacturer: Harcourt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0151005141

Amazon.com

With The Headless Bust, Edmund Gravel and the Bahum Bug from Gorey's "Dispirited and Distasteful" Christmas tale, The Haunted Tea-Cosy, have returned to usher in the New Year. The story, told in verse, takes up just after Edmund's riotous party. He and the Bug are whisked off to a faraway village for another round of strange and vaguely eerie encounters. Fans of Gorey's distinctive ink drawings, tending toward the well-dressed and slightly mad, will not be disappointed--they make for an engrossing book with or without the accompanying deliciously odd text. ("Reversing at a tango tea/ In Snogg's Casino-not-on-Sea/ L-- tripped and cried, 'I am afraid/ They tampered with the marmalade.'") There is also plenty to be had for aficionados of the mysterious little rituals, mentioned nonchalantly, that seem so logical to the inhabitants of Gorey's bizarre world--the Bandage Folder's Ball being a head-cocking highlight. The Headless Bust is perfect for a winter's read by the fireplace, just before drifting off into fruitcake-induced dreams. --Ali Davis

Book Description

As we wander off with Edward Gorey into the next millennium our reasons for being here are far from clear. Nevertheless, the master craftsmen is at his best . . Ere the last guest was fin'lly gone.Ça va, hélas, from bad to worse: Adieu to prose, alló to verse. The Bahhumbug with lack of tact. Now called attention to the fact, Which made it feel to Edmund Gravel. He was already to unravel

Customer Reviews:

Dark humor and delightful drawings.......2007-03-29

If you enjoy Edward Gorey's work, you'll enjoy this. Both drawings and text have been crafted with exquisite precision and wit.

Not for the weak of heart.......2004-01-17

The following facts should be made clear immediately. There is not, in spite of the title, a single bust in this book (to say nothing of headlessness). There is not even, I might go so far as to say, much of a plot. But what there is lives in superb Gorey glory. The best way to approach this book is to consider it a sequel to Gorey's "The Haunted Tea-Cosy" (which actually did include a cosy of spectral proportions). Our heroes, Mr. Edmund Gravel and the Bahhumbug have finished saying goodbye to the last of their guests for the evening. Ah, but a creature soon comes to spirit our protagonists, "from place to place, where there is shame, also disgrace". The story uses such delightful and little heard words as "druthers" and "aubergine" while telling the lightly lamentable tales of a host of people. Each situation is privy to a little four line poem in the style of a-b-a-b. The subtitle of this book was "A Melancholy Meditation on the False Millennium" and by the book's end both the Bahhumbug and Mr. Gravel sit, drink their tea, and think about the new Millennium (looks of horror clearly plastered on their faces). This being one of Gorey's later works, we can't criticize it too severely. Mr. Gorey had a style all his own and there is a plot here, buried as it may be. If you're partial to Fellini-esque tales of woe, you will like this book. If not, best that you pick up a copy of something entirely different (like "Betsy-Tacy" or "Goodnight Moon") and leave this book to those who would enjoy it better.

vintage gorey, but not for starters.......2001-09-09

If you're unacquainted with Gorey, don't start with this - start with Amphigorey. But if you've already got the EG bug, here's another must for the library. This sequel of sorts (in as much as anything can truly be linked to anything else by EG), is a delight that will get you snickering everytime you put marmalade on your aubergine.

A Gorey Sequel.......2000-08-01

In this sequel to "The Haunted Tea Cozy," the Bahhum Bug returns to Edmund Gravel and takes him on another journey to ponder over the fates and destinies of others. Upon their return to Gravel's home they calmly await the millennium. After all, will another day make a difference in the lives they just saw?

Edward Gorey (1925-2000) RIP.......2000-06-12

Edward Gorey died in the Hyannisport Hospital on April 18, 2000 from heart failure. On April 23, 2000, Charles Osgood on "Sunday Morning" (CBS) aired a final interview with Gorey and gave a short memorial to him. Gorey final interest featured finials, and his final stuffed creation was the figbash. Gorey's first work was THE UNSTRUNG HARP (1953) and THE HEADLESS BUST (1999) appears to be his terminal one unless he has left some manuscripts for posthumous publication. Let's hope that he did. He's gone, but he is now draped with the robe immortality and on his way to take his place in the Pantheon of Literature next to Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. A fitting poem for his mausoleum would be one by Walter Hamilton: "I never had a piece of toast, Particularly long and wide, But fell upon the sanded floor, And always on the buttered side."

Average customer rating:

The Hundred Headless Women
Max Ernst
Manufacturer: George Braziller
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0807610232

Average customer rating:

The Headless Ghost (Goosebumps)
R. L. Stine
Manufacturer: Scholastic Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0439669871

Book Description

They've got a real head start . . . . Everyone knows about Hill House. It's the biggest tourist attraction in town. That's because it's haunted. Haunted by the ghost of a thirteen-year-old boy. A boy with no head!Duane and Stephanie love Hill House. It's dark. And creepy. And totally scary.Still, they've never actually seen the ghost. Until the night they decide to go on a search. A search for his head . . . .

Headless: Stories (Little House on the Bowery)

Average customer rating:

Bedtime Stories for the Disturbed
The Return of the King
Running naked and wild outside of the box...
Colossal Waste of Time

Headless: Stories (Little House on the Bowery)
Benjamin Weissman
Manufacturer: Akashic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1888451491

Book Description

"Headless is fearless, fun, and sometimes filthy . . . an alphabet soup of -delight in language. Eat up."-Alice Sebold

"Brilliant. Wildly inventive, profane, and hilarious."-Bret Easton Ellis

The author of the acclaimed cult classic Dear Dead Person ("refreshing, nauseating, hilarious"-Kirkus) returns with this long-awaited collection of brilliantly written and outrageously imaginative short stories.

Benjamin Weissman is the author of Dear Dead Person (High Risk/Serpent's Tail, 1995). He is a contributing editor to Bomb Magazine and writes regularly for the contemporary art magazines Parkett and Artforum. A painter and a professor at Art Center College of Design and Otis College of the Arts, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews:

Bedtime Stories for the Disturbed.......2004-10-20

"Adolf Hitler was not known for his skiing ability."

So opens Headless by Benjamin Weissman and it sets the tone perfectly. In this short story collection about skiing, excrement, sex, and maiming, Weissman surprises you into laughing at horrible things again and again. These short short stories (the longest story is thirteen pages, and most are no more than two) read like Russell Edson if he wrote short stories. They are a study in dark comedy. They would fit in nicely with McSweeney's Online Concern.

(...)

Weissman's prose is dry and wry. By maintaining a matter of fact tone about killing your mother ("Bloodthirsty Man"), flooding the toilet with a too large bowel movement ("The Fecality of it All"),(...)Weissman turns dark non sequitors into compelling-and damn funny-fictions. And no matter how outrageous the claim ("At first I was horrified when they drew swastikas on their foreheads, but then I remembered that all of their markers are water-based and non-toxic so there would be no side effects." "My Two Sons"), the tone is always one of calm distance, confidence in the ordinariness of the situation.

I laughed out loud when I started reading the book in the bookstore (and there I was standing with a book that had a bunny with a "circus-style organ between [his] legs" on the cover calling attention to myself), and I laughed at home as I sped through the book in almost one sitting. If you were disappointed that you finished Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans and have nothing left to brighten your day, than mope no longer, because Headless is for you (and the serial killer inside you, or the twelve-year old, or Aunt Marney's parrot, which she still suspects you of eating.)

The Return of the King.......2004-05-14

One of the best readings I've been to took place in early March of this year at the venerable old City lights bookstore here in San Francisco, when Benjamin Weissman, who had not visited us for many years, took over the house and made it his own. He read two stories from his new book HEADLESS, each of them completely different but complementing the other with what one had felt to be the missing piece out of American fiction. Reading his new collection HEADLESS is like breathing pure oxygen at the top of some snowcrested mountain of madness. Every page is embedded with a jewel that will make you crazy. Perhaps this is what happened, without him knowing anything about it, to the earliest Amazon reviewer of this book. Weissman's best stories are as beautiful as the long poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, but it's a Rilke with a Chris Rock kind of postmodern irony and culture blasting. Try reading the opening lines of HEADLESS, you will already have discovered the seedbed of a classic act of love.

Running naked and wild outside of the box..........2004-05-13

This book is simply beautiful, ugly, and brilliant all rolled into one sublimely satisfying read that flat out gives new meaning to short story collections - "cult" or otherwise. This reading experience is what reading CAN be, but sadly so rarely is. Weissman's stories are definitely outside the box, sometimes FAR outside the box, but once you get there, they are some of the most beautifully constructed pieces of individual truth I've ever had the opportunity to read. Clearly not for the average, mainstream reader, or someone hoping for happy little Hollywood endings where the hero gets the girl, this collection of the bizarre and heartbreakingly beautiful has shot straight to the top of my list and I really don't see it being replaced anytime soon - if ever.

Colossal Waste of Time.......2004-05-11

I'm not sure how this book wound up on my Recommendations list, but OUCH. I took a chance on it due to the low price and glowing editorial reviews. I read the first few stories and was surprised by the lack of substance and intelligence, but I pressed on, assuming there had to be a few gems further on. No dice. Usually in a book as profane and perverted as this, there are at least a few stories worth reading for their erotic value, but this collection was devoid of even that.

I suppose it might appeal to folks who fancy themselves extreme nonconformists -- the stories certainly don't deliver on the the typical reader expectations of plot, character, or interest. I've certainly learned a lesson regarding the editorial reviews on this site -- caveat emptor, and don't believe everything you read.

Average customer rating:

Excellent Book About the Animal Kingdom

Headless Males Make Great Lovers: And Other Unusual Natural Histories
Marty Crump
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biology | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
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In Search of the Golden Frog

Speaking of Earth: Environmental Speeches that Moved the World

A Walk around the Pond: Insects in and over the Water

Secret Weapons: Defenses of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions, and Other Many-Legged Creatures

Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity: With a Photographic Guide to Insects of Eastern North America

ASIN: 0226122026

Book Description

The natural world is filled with diverse—not to mention quirky and odd—animal behaviors. Consider the male praying mantis that continues to mate after being beheaded; the spiders, insects, and birds that offer gifts of food in return for sex; the male hip-pocket frog that carries his own tadpoles; the baby spiders that dine on their mother; the beetle that craves excrement; or the starfish that sheds an arm or two to escape a predator's grasp.

Headless Males Make Great Lovers and Other Unusual Natural Histories celebrates this extraordinary world of animals with essays on curious creatures and their amazing behaviors. In five thematic chapters, Marty Crump—a tropical field biologist well known for her work with the reproductive behavior of amphibians—examines the bizarre conduct of animals as they mate, parent, feed, defend themselves, and communicate. Crump's enthusiasm for the unusual behaviors she describes—from sex change and free love in sponges to aphrodisiac concoctions in bats—is visible on every page, thanks to her skilled storytelling, which makes even sea slugs, dung beetles, ticks, and tapeworms fascinating and appealing. Steeped in biology, Headless Males Make Great Lovers points out that diverse and unrelated animals often share seemingly bizarre behaviors—evidence, Crump argues, that these natural histories, though outwardly weird, are successful ways of living.

Illustrated throughout, and filled with vignettes of personal and scientific interest, Headless Males Make Great Lovers will enchant the general reader with its tales of blood-squirting horned lizards and intestine-ejecting sea cucumbers—all in the service of a greater appreciation of the diversity of the natural histories of animals.

"A marvelous introduction to the whys and wherefores of animal behavior . . ."—Booklist

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Book About the Animal Kingdom.......2007-05-15

This is a book about some of the most unusual members of the animal kingdom. The cases related here are most bizarre, yet very real.

Male seahorses can get pregnant while some slugs are hermaphrodites and there really are succh things as blood sucking bats. Male deep sea anglerfish parasitically attach themselves to their females for life. Horned lizards are known to squirt blood from their eyes as a means of self-defense. Likewise, animals ranging from lizards to starfish sacrifice body parts to escape from predators and then they later regrow those same parts. Female preying mantises bite off the head of the male while the male is couplating and the headless male keeps right on with the impregnation.

This book is written in the form of short essays and with a whimsical writing style to boot. This is a good book.

Average customer rating:

Interesting and exciting! Keeps your attention all the way through!
Brilliant Then and Now
The Best Book I Have Ever Read!
A MUST READ!!
STUPID NOT

The Headless Cupid
Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Manufacturer: Yearling
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0440435072
Release Date: 1985-09-01

Book Description

Legend has it that a ghost cut the head off a wooden cupid on the stairway of the Stanley house. Has the ghost returned to strike again?

Customer Reviews:

Interesting and exciting! Keeps your attention all the way through!.......2007-08-25

David (11) and his 3 siblings Janie (6), Esther, and Blair (both 4) move into a big old house with their father and his new wife (their real mother has been dead for about a year). Then their stepmother Molly's daughter Amanda (12) is going to move in. She is very cold and bored-looking, but the interesting thing about her is that she studies witchcraft. She wears a costume and conducts ceremonies and other things. Soon Amanda offers to give witchcraft lessons to the Stanley kids. But strange things start happening in the house. Is it Amanda causing uproar or is it the ghost that haunted the old house a long time ago and cut off the head of a wooden cupid...?

The characters are interesting and funny, the plot interesting, and a very exciting mystery with lots of strange happenings. I have always loved witchcraft and magic so all the ceremonies are my favorite part!

Only one bad thing: Amanda sometimes uses her powers for bad. It is very mysterious and exciting, but Witchcraft is ONLY supposed to be used for good purposes.

I still recommend this book though! It's very good!

Brilliant Then and Now.......2007-04-03

I've read this book twice -- once when as an adolescent in the school library and recently as an adult when I found it in a bookstore. I bought it the moment I saw it. Snyder not only creates a moving, intelligent group of kids faced with real-life problems, but imaginatively works them into a compelling storyline about a ghost, a would-be witch, and a child who might be the one with the real "gift." Just as enchanting as it was in my childhood, this story continues to inspire my imagination as a fiction writer and reminds me to look beyond the wannabees to find those with real talents in life. (Hint: They are often the quietest and least expected.)

Thank you, Zilpha!

The Best Book I Have Ever Read!.......2006-07-19

I just finished reading the Headless Cupid. I think the best part of it was at the end when Blair told David about finding the cupid head. The only thing I did not like about the book was when the kids have the initiation and Blair finds the ring that Janie sacrifices in Amanda's closet. My favorite characters are Blair and Esther, because they are very funny. I recommend this book to everyone because even if you do not like the mystery geanre, like me, you will still enjoy it.

A MUST READ!!.......2006-02-22

This book is one of those books that you can't stop reading. One heck of a horror tale! A book for all ages and an interesting story to tell your friends about, even if they hate scary stories and suspense.

STUPID NOT.......2005-09-28

THIS BOOK WAS AWFUL IT WAS HORRIBLE BOOK AND WHOEVER WROTE IT SHOULD NOT SELL IT EVER JUST KIDDING IT WAS AN OK BOOK.

A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat: In Search of the Ancient Sports of Asia

Average customer rating:

A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat: In Search of the Ancient Sports of Asia
Emma Levine
Manufacturer: Andre Deutsch
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0233050418

Book Description

During a seven-year journey around India, Emma Levine heard about the wonderful game of buzkashi, a kind of anarchic rugby on horseback where teams of men wrestle and race to grab a headless goat and propel it towards goal. This sparked a desire to explore Asia's unique traditional sports. A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat is Emma Levine's absorbing account of her epic adventure, which took her from camel wrestling in Turkey through bull racing in India and traditional gymnastics in Iran. Illustrated with stunning photography, this book evocatively portrays sporting ways of life rarely seen in the western world, revealing what it is about sport that makes it so universally inspiring.

Headless Halloween (Goosebumps Series 2000, No 10)

Average customer rating:

Good
A good idea, but not a very good story
A good idea, but not a very good story
simply stunning

Headless Halloween (Goosebumps Series 2000, No 10)
R. L. Stine
Manufacturer: Apple
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 059076781X

Customer Reviews:

Good.......2005-01-01

Brandon Likes To Play pranks On People especially The Loser, Vinny. On Halloween, Brandon Ditched Vinny In An Old abandoned House. Suddenly They Hear Someone Screaming. Then, A Kid dies Trying To Jump On Raven's Ravine. Then The Kid Meets A Ghost. The Ghost says If He Wants To Be Alive He Must Have 3 Scared People

A good idea, but not a very good story.......1999-01-26

A kid dies trying to jump Raven's Ravine. Then some ghosts inform him that he must save three scared people if he wants to ever be alive again. I think the book was too slow.

A good idea, but not a very good story.......1999-01-26

A kid dies trying to jump Raven's Ravine. Then some ghosts inform him that he must save three scared people if he wants to ever be alive again. I think the book was too slow.

simply stunning.......1998-10-06

this book was great. i read it twice! i recomend this book to all ages.

Joe Sherlock, Kid Detective, Case #000004: The Headless Mummy (Joe Sherlock)

Average customer rating:

Joe Sherlock, Kid Detective, Case #000004: The Headless Mummy (Joe Sherlock)

Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0060761938
Release Date: 2007-01-30

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