Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty & Venus in Furs by Gilles Deleuze, ISBN-13: 978-0942299557

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Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty & Venus in Furs by Gilles Deleuze, ISBN-13: 978-0942299557

[PDF eBook eTextbook]

• Publisher: ‎ Zone Books; Reprint edition (March 19, 1991)
• Language: ‎ English
• 296 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 9780942299557
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0942299557

In his stunning essay, Coldness and Cruelty, Gilles Deleuze provides a rigorous and informed philosophical examination of the work of the late 19th-century German novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Deleuze’s essay, certainly the most profound study yet produced on the relations between sadism and masochism, seeks to develop and explain Masoch’s “peculiar way of ‘desexualizing’ love while at the same time sexualizing the entire history of humanity.” He shows that masochism is something far more subtle and complex than the enjoyment of pain, that masochism has nothing to do with sadism; their worlds do not communicate, just as the genius of those who created them – Masoch and Sade – lie stylistically, philosophically, and politically poles a part. Venus in Furs, the most famous of all of Masoch’s novels was written in 1870 and belongs to an unfinished cycle of works that Masoch entitled The Heritage of Cain. The cycle was to treat a series of themes including love, war, and death.

The present work is about love. Although the entire constellation of symbols that has come to characterize the masochistic syndrome can be found here – fetishes, whips, disguises, fur-clad women, contracts, humiliations, punishment, and always the volatile presence of a terrible coldness – these do not eclipse the singular power of Masoch’s eroticism.

Table of Contents:

Foreword 9

I The Language of Sade and Masoch 15

II The Role of Descriptions 25

III Are Sade and Masoch Complementary? 37

IV The Three Women in Masoch 4 7

V Father and Mother 57

VI The Art of Masoch 69

VII Humor, Irony and the Law 81

VIII From Contract to Ritual 91

IX Psychoanalysis and the Problem of Masochism 103

X The Death Instinct 111

XI Sadistic Superego and Masochistic Ego 123

VENUS IN FURS

Complete Text 143

Appendices:

A Childhood Memory and Reflections on the Novel 273

II Two Contracts of Masoch 277

III The Adventure with Ludwig II 281

Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII. He died in November 1995. Among his many works are The Logic of Sense, Difference and Repetition, and Nietzche and Philosophy, all published by Columbia University Press.

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