Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-tnzcf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-13T16:03:55.198Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cruelty, Horror, and the Will to Redemption

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Lynne S. Arnault
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Americans cherish the idea that good eventually triumphs over evil. After briefly arguing that a proper understanding of the moral harm of cruelty calls into question the credibility of popular American idioms of redemption, I argue that the epistemic dynamics of horror help account for the commanding grip of this rhetoric on the popular imagination, and I suggest that this idiom has morally problematic features that warrant the attention of feminists.

Information

Type
Special Cluster: Feminist Philosophy and the Problem of Evil
Information
Hypatia , Volume 18 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Indigenous Women in the Americas , Spring 2003, pp. 155 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Alter, Jonathan. 2001. Time to think about torture. Newsweek, 5 November, 45.Google ScholarPubMed
Amery, Jean. 1995. Torture. In Art from the ashes: A Holocaust anthology, ed. Langer, Lawrence L.New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Arnault, Lynne S. 1989. Talking ‘bout a revolution: Feminism, historicism, and liberal moral theory. In Logos X (Special Issue on Reason and Moral Judgment): 39–55.Google Scholar
Bar On, Bat‐Ami. 1991. Why terrorism is morally problematic. In Feminist ethics, ed. Card, Claudia. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan. 1987. The flight to objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and culture. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Bowler, John. 1970. Problems of suffering in religions of the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.2. Indirect quote from Lawrence L. Langer, The alarmed vision: Social suffering and Holocaust atrocity. Daedalus (Winter 1996): 46.Google Scholar
Brison, Susan J. 1997. Outliving oneself: Trauma, memory, and personal identity. In Feminists rethink the self, ed. Meyers, Diana Tietjens. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Brison, Susan J. 1999. The uses of narrative in the aftermath of violence. In On feminist ethics and politics, ed. Card, Claudia. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.Google Scholar
Card, Claudia. 1999. Groping through gray zones. In On feminist ethics and politics, ed. Card, Claudia. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.Google Scholar
Cook, John, ed. 1993. The book of positive quotations. Minneapolis: Fairview Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Katie. 2001. An inner city reality check. National Public Radio. Retrieved 25 October from the World Wide Web: http//www.npr.org/news/specials/response/essays/011025.daviscommentary.html.Google Scholar
Delbo, Charlotte. 1985. La mémoire et les jours. Paris: Berg International, 11. Quoted in Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust testimonies: The ruins of memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 5.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Andrea. 1997. Life and Death. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Freie, John F. 1998. Counterfeit community: The exploitation of our longings for connectedness. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Greenspan, Henry. 1992. Lives as texts: Symptoms as modes of recounting in the life histories of Holocaust survivors. In Storied lives: The cultural politics of self‐under‐standing, ed. Rosenwald, George C. and Ochberg, Richard L.New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hartsock, Hancy. 1985. Money, sex and power: Toward a feminist historical materialism. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Hatch, Orrin. 1995. Terrorism in the United States; the nature and extent of the threat and possible legislative responses. Committee on the Judiciary Hearings, United States Senate, 104th Congress, 1st session (April 27): 2. Quoted in Edward T. Linen‐thai, The unfinished bombing: Oklahoma City in American history (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 20.Google Scholar
Herman, Judith Lewis. 1992. Trauma and recovery. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Langer, Lawrence L. 1991. Holocaust testimonies: The ruins of memory. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Langer, Lawrence L. 1995a. Admitting the Holocaust: Collected essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Langer, Lawrence L. ed. 1995b. Art from the ashes: A Holocaust anthology. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Langer, Lawrence L. 1996. The alarmed vision: Social suffering and Holocaust atrocity. Daedalus (Winter): 46–65.Google ScholarPubMed
Langer, Lawrence L. 1998. Preempting the Holocaust. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Levi, Primo. 1989. The drowned and the saved. Trans. Rosenthal, Raymond. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Linenthal, Edward T. 2001. The unfinished bombing: Oklahoma City in American history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Catharine A. 2002. State of emergency: Who will declare war on terrorism against women? The Women's Review of Books XIX (6): 7–8.10.2307/4023952CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, William Ian. 1997. The Anatomy of Disgust. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, Robin. 1989. The demon lover: On the sexuality of terrorism. New York: W. W. Norton, 23–24 and 49–50. Quoted in Bat‐Ami Bar On, Why terrorism is morally problematic. In Feminist ethics, ed. Claudia Card. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1991), 110–11.Google Scholar
Nolan, Maureen. 2002. Fear walks with them to school. The Post-Standard, 23 June.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 1994. The therapy of desire: Theory and practice in Hellenistic ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 1995. Poetic justice: The literary imagination and public life. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. Upheavals of thought: The intelligence of emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511840715CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenbaum, Ron. 1995. Staring into the heart of the heart of darkness. The New York Times Magazine (4 June): 36–44, 50, 58, 61, 72.Google Scholar
Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Scheper‐Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Death without weeping: The violence of everyday life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Schulweis, Harold M. 1994. For those who can't believe. New York: HarperCollins, 157. Quoted in Alvin H. Rosenfeld, The Americanization of the Holocaust. In Thinking about the Holocaust: After half a century, ed. Alvin H. Rosenfeld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 146.Google Scholar
Sennett, Richard. 1970. The uses of disorder: Personal identity and city life. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Spelman, Elizabeth V. 1989. Anger and insubordination. In Women, knowledge, and reality, ed. Garry, Ann and Pearsall, Marilyn. Winchester, Mass.: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 51. Quoted in Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust testimonies: The ruins of memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 203.Google Scholar