This book, in three extended essays, investigates various beliefs about civilization. John Laffey explores its history and its common usage, and has devoted the final chapter to a look at the attitudes of Sigmund Freud.
This book, in three extended essays,
investigates various beliefs about civilization. John Laffey
explores its history and its common usage, and has devoted the
final chapter to a look at the attitudes of Sigmund Freud.
The craft of the historian is to study the past and analyze it for present and future generations. Laffey certainly does this.
The academic community will recognize the merits of the work
in its scholarship and research materials.
The Montréal Gazette
In the three extended essays of Civilization and Its Discontented, John Laffey explores various notions of civilization and the uses to which they are put. Ranging from the appearance of the word in the late 18th century to the eve of the publication in 1930 of Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, the first essay focuses on its varying definitions, and its transformation into an item of cant by the late 19th century.
The second essay is concerned with those relegated to civilization's margins and the concluding essay provides a close reading of Freud's ambivalent relation to the idea of civilization and argues that he too very much participated in the discourse of marginalization and equation.
John F. Laffey, who received his Ph.D. from Cornell, is a professor of European History at Concordia University, Montr‚al. He has published widely in various journals and is currently at work on a new manuscript entitled Modernity, Modernism, Post-Modernism.
180 pages, index
Paperback ISBN: 1-895431-70-0 $16.99
Hardcover ISBN: 1-895431-71-9 $45.99
L.C. No. 93-070388