1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910476830603321

Autore

Hörnqvist Magnus

Titolo

The pleasure of punishment / / Magnus Hörnqvist

Pubbl/distr/stampa

2021

London : , : Routledge, , [2021]

ISBN

0-429-19674-1

Edizione

[First Edition.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (180 pages)

Collana

Routledge Advances in Criminology

Disciplina

303.372

Soggetti

Social Justice

Social control

Power (Social sciences)

Punishment - Moral and ethical aspects

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: Articulating the problematic of desire 1. The disappearance of pleasure? 2. The impossible flight from passion 3. The ambiguous desire for recognition 4. The paradox of tragic pleasure 5. Two paradigms of enjoyment 6. Ressentiment: moral elevation through punishment 7.Obscene enjoyment: between power and prohibition

Sommario/riassunto

Based on a reading of contemporary philosophical arguments, this book accounts for how punishment has provided audiences with pleasure in different historical contexts. Watching tragedies, contemplating hell, attending executions, or imagining prisons have generated pleasure, according to contemporary observers, in ancient Greece, in medieval Catholic Europe, in the early-modern absolutist states, and in the post-1968 Western world. The pleasure was often judged morally problematic, and raised questions about which desires were satisfied, and what the enjoyment was like. This book offers a research synthesis that ties together existing work on the pleasure of punishment. It considers how the shared joys of punishment gradually disappeared from the public view at a precise historic conjuncture, and explores whether arguments about the carnivalesque character of cruelty can provide support for the continued existence of penal



pleasure. Towards the end of this book, the reader will discover, if willing to go along and follow desire to places which are full of pain and suffering, that deeply entwined with the desire for punishment, there is also the desire for social justice. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, philosophy and all those interested in the pleasures of punishment.