1st Edition
Batman and the Shadows of Modernity A Critical Genealogy on Contemporary Hero in the Age of Nihilism
This book aims to study the Batman narrative or Bat-narrative from the point of view of its nodal relationship to modern narrative as such. To this end, it offers for the first time a new type of methodology adequate to the object, which delves both into materials scarcely studied in this context and well-known materials seen in a new light. This is a multidisciplinary work aimed at both the specialist and the global reader, bringing together comic studies, philosophical criticism and literary criticism in a debate on the fate of our current global civilization.
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: Batman and the Superhero Comics: A Contribution to the Hermeneutics of the Genre
The Object of the Analysis
On Superheroes and Ideologies
The Batman Canon and the Category of Genre
The Method of Analysis
Towards the Specificity of the Object
How is Knowledge Possible in the Case of Comic-book Hermeneutics?
Chapter 2: Gotham and the Soul of the Contemporary City
Batman: from the City to the Panel
Gotham City, the Crime and the Identity: “I Shall Become a Bat”
Elseworlds: Batman in Moscow
Chapter 3: Batman and “the Political”: Tonight, He is the Law
Constitutionalist State and State of Exception
Action and Inequality: Thomas Hobbes and the Founding of Modern State
Crisis, Power and Decisionism: Carl Schmitt and the Suspension of Law
Superheroes and American Exceptionalism
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s fascism!
Political Technologies of the Body: Reactionarism and its Methods
Punishment and Political Body. Utilitarianism and Power-knowledge
“Whodunit?”: Batman, Holmes, and the Hermeneutics of Detection
Induction and Hyperspecialization
Hyperspecialization and Discipline
Batman and the Panopticon: Surveillance and Punishment
Between Biopolitics and Sovereignty: The Superhero and Governance
Chapter 4: The Savior and Nihilism
About Nihilism
I. S. Turgenev: Fathers and Sons and the Generational Break
F. M. Dostoevsky: Nihilism as Split
F. Nietzsche: Nihilism as the Death of References
Modern Hero as a Terrorist
The Knight-errant vs. the Displacement of the Modern Episteme
From Dostoevsky to Batman
Avengers: Resentment and Reaction
Excursus: Batman Gothic (Variations on a Romantic Theme)
Chapter 5: On Villains and Supermen
The “Last Man” vs. the “Meaning/Sense of Earth”
The Supervillain Affair
In the Gallery of Mirrors
Joker: “This is my Card”
Madness and Otherness
Towards a Genealogy of Madness
From the Tragic to the Classical Experience of Madness
The Medicalization of Madness
The Doctor, the Vigilante, and the Asylum
Visions of Madness
Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew: Towards a Typology of the Underground
Dostoevsky’s Underground Man: The Great Resistance
The Dialectic of Vanity
The Dialectic of Determinism
The Most Advantageous Advantage
The Joker, the Camel and the Lion
“Let’s Put a Smile on that Face”: Towards a Philosophy of the Carnival
Chapter 6: Joker and the Carnival of Laughter
Joker and “Grotesque Realism”
The Polyphonic Novel
Discourse in the Comic
An Exercise in Polyphonic Reading in the Superheroic Comic-book (I): Arkham Asylum. A Serious House on Serious Earth
An Exercise in Polyphonic Reading in the Superheroic Comic-book (II): Luthor… You Are Driving Me Sane
Index
Biography
Rafael Carrión-Arias is professor of Philosophy and Literature at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). He is also a specialist in cinema and comics. He has been a visiting researcher at numerous internationally renowned research institutions (Stanford University, UCLA, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, University of Cape Town, Moscow Lomonosov University, Taras Shevchenko Universitet Kiev, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, etc.). He has collaborated with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences on the critical edition in German of the complete works of Marx and Engels (MEGA II) and has been a research associate at the Marc-Bloch Center (CNRS/Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). He has been a regular contributor to the M. Gorki Institute of International Literature of the Moscow Academy of Sciences. He has translated Nietzsche into Spanish.
