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Palgrave Macmillan

The Reign of Anti-logos

Performance in Postmodernity

  • Book
  • © 2020

Overview

Authors:
  1. David Hawkes

    1. Department of English, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA

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  • Offers a new way of understanding usury, idolatry and sodomy as the autonomous reproduction of signs
  • Offers an ethical critique of performative representation and applies it to twenty-first century finance
  • Lays the basis for a philosophical critique of modern materialism and identity politics by providing a wide range of historical precursors

Part of the book series: Palgrave Insights into Apocalypse Economics (PIAE)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Usury, Sodomy and Idolatry

    • David Hawkes
    Pages 1-14

  3. Performativity in Postmodernity

    • David Hawkes
    Pages 15-40

  4. The Commodification of Rhetoric in Classical Athens

    • David Hawkes
    Pages 41-70

  5. Witchcraft and Representation in Early Modern England

    • David Hawkes
    Pages 71-103

  6. Commodification and the Performative Sign in Eucharistic Ethics

    • David Hawkes
    Pages 105-129

  7. The Two Usuries: Performative Representation in the City Comedies

    • David Hawkes
    Pages 131-160

  8. Modernism, Inflation, and the Gold Standard

    • David Hawkes
    Pages 161-192

  9. Against Financial Derivatives: Toward an Ethics of Representation

    • David Hawkes
    Pages 193-223

  10. The Future-Sign: Representation in the Anglophone Yoruba Novel

    • David Hawkes
    Pages 225-257

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 259-275
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Keywords

About this book

The concept of ‘performativity’ has risen to prominence throughout the humanities.  The rise of financial derivatives reflects the power of the performative sign in the economic sphere.  As recent debates about gender identity show, the concept of performativity is also profoundly influential on people’s personal lives.  Although the autonomous power of representation has been studied in disciplines ranging from economics to poetics, however, it has not yet been evaluated in ethical terms. This book supplies that deficiency, providing an ethical critique of performative representation as it is manifested in semiotics, linguistics, philosophy, poetics, theology and economics.  It constructs a moral criticism of the performative sign in two ways: first, by identifying its rise to power as a single phenomenon manifested in various different areas; and second, by locating efficacious representation in its historical context, thus connecting it to idolatry, magic, usuryand similar performative signs.  The book concludes by suggesting that earlier ethical critiques of efficacious representation might be revived in our own postmodern era.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of English, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA

    David Hawkes

About the author

David Hawkes is a Professor in the Department of English, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA.  He is the author of seven books and has published more than 100 articles and reviews.  He reviews books regularly for the Times Literary Supplement and he has appeared on National Public Radio. Professor Hawkes has held visiting appointments in Turkey, India, Japan and China. He has received such awards as a year-long fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities at the Folger Shakespeare Library (2002-03), and the William Ringler Fellowship at the Huntington Library (2006).

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Reign of Anti-logos

  • Book Subtitle: Performance in Postmodernity

  • Authors: David Hawkes

  • Series Title: Palgrave Insights into Apocalypse Economics

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55940-3

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Economics and Finance, Economics and Finance (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-55939-7Published: 25 November 2020

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-55942-7Published: 25 November 2021

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-55940-3Published: 24 November 2020

  • Series ISSN: 2523-8108

  • Series E-ISSN: 2523-8116

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: X, 275

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Economic History, Ethics, Financial History

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