The Curse of the Wer.. - Site de Thomas - Free

A MANIFESTO FOR WEREWOLVES
are then encoded in the reproductive cells and can be transmitted to
offspring. 65 This work is of interest to cultural critics and social theorists
because, as the researchers have implied, ‘ethical and moral attitudes
and lifestyle choice may impact on our future genetic endowment’. 66
In such a context, the abdication of ethical responsibilities through a
reversion to nature or reference to an ungovernable ‘human nature’ is
no longer possible, because ethical choices may be central to the shape
that ‘nature’ takes, or to ‘what, at last, we want to become’. 67
The convergence in fantasy of feminist and environmentalist concerns
with a renewed emphasis on spirituality and ethics (via romanticism,
Jungian theory and New Age philosophy) is a potent combination
that poses many challenges to dominant representations of a dualistic
subjectivity, and suggests a number of ways in which subjectivity
might be rethought. But fantasy’s most significant contribution to
the theorization of selfhood is perhaps its frequent representation of
absence from, or transcendence of reasoning consciousness, a theme
that draws on the dynamics of Eastern religions such as Taoism
or Zen Buddhism as well as the traditions of romanticism. Fantasy
writing is frequently concerned to communicate such an experience,
characteristically undermining the centrality of the subject by evoking
worlds in which the individual is an integral component of a greater
whole, or positioned within a more panoramic or epic context. 68
Further, protagonists are often subjected to a spiritualized experience
whereby they lose a sense of the boundaries between themselves,
others and the natural world; in other words, the sense of self (as
conscious, reasoning subject) is shed through a sublime experience
of connectivity. When it is considered that a focus on subjectivity is
central to modern and postmodern thought (indeed, as Žižek argues,
the construction of ‘reality’ within modernity is orchestrated to bring
the subject into being 69 ) the decentring of or flight from subjectivity
in fantasy constitutes a radical or subversive move that undermines
the whole point of the Enlightenment project.
Indeed, the ‘radical’ or ‘subversive’ subjectivities of the cyborg and
the monster appear to pursue a rather conservative privileging of
the subject by comparison with fantasy’s approach — especially when
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