0415257573.Routledge.Transgression.May.2003.pdf

TRANSGRESSION

‘TRANSGRESSION is an edge-work – a self-challenge to the intellectual, moral

and aesthetic categories that order disciplinary life in the arts and sciences. Jenks’

strategy is to tip the canonical order/disorder problem off its Durkheimian and

Hegelian legs into the vortex of excess, eroticism, violence, madness, serial crime

and carnival opened up by Bataille and the Surrealists. The result is a fast-moving

narrative that recovers the sociological signiﬁcance of Artaud, Rimbaud, Debord

and Bakhtin whose anti-modernity was the transgressive force that launched our

more established postmodernity.’

John O’Neill, York University, Canada

‘Now that the late twentieth-century infatuation with transgression as an end

itself has lost much of its power, it is time to explore the sources and weigh the

consequences of its disturbing appeal. Drawing on a wide range of evidence from

philosophical, literary, anthropological and sociological discourses, Chris Jenks

soberly measures their exuberance for transgression against the horrors of

contemporary instances of violent excess. Not since Stallybrass and White’s classic

The Politics and Poetics of Transgression has so much pressure been put on this

fascinating and troubling concept.’

Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley

Transgression is truly a key idea for our time. Society is created by constraints and

boundaries, but as our culture is increasingly subject to uncertainty and ﬂux we

ﬁnd it more and more difﬁcult to determine where those boundaries – whether

physical, sexual, natural or moral – lie. Our preoccupation with transgression is at

the same time a search for limits, which are afﬁrmed by the very act of crossing

them.

In this fast-moving study, Chris Jenks ranges widely over the history of ideas,

the major theorists and the signiﬁcant moments in the formation of the idea of

transgression. He looks at the definition of the social and its boundaries by

Durkheim, Douglas and Freud, at the German tradition of Hegel and Nietzsche,

and the increasing preoccupation with transgression itself in Baudelaire, Bataille

and Foucault. The second half of the book looks at transgression in action in the

East End myth of the Kray twins, in Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, the spectacle of

the Situationists and Bakhtin’s analysis of carnival. Finally Jenks extends his

treatment of transgression to its own extremity – the point where it intersects with

criminality in the crime committed for pleasure.

Chris Jenks is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

KEY IDEAS

S ERIES E DITOR : PETER HAMILTON, T HE O PEN U NIVERSITY , M ILTON K EYNES

Designed to complement the successful Key Sociologists , this series

covers the main concepts, issues, debates, and controversies in sociology

and the social sciences. The series aims to provide authoritative essays

on central topics of social science, such as community, power, work,

sexuality, inequality, benefits and ideology, class, family, etc. Books adopt

a strong individual ‘line’ constituting original essays rather than literary

surveys, and form lively and original treatments of their subject matter.

The books will be useful to students and teachers of sociology, political

science, economics, psychology, philosophy and geography.

Class

STEPHEN EDGELL

Old Age

JOHN VINCENT

Community

GERARD DELANTY

Postmodernity

BARRY SMART

Consumption

ROBERT BOCOCK

Racism – second edition

ROBERT MILES AND

MALCOLM BROWN

Citizenship

KEITH FAULKS

Risk

DEBORAH LUPTON

Culture

CHRIS JENKS

Sexuality

JEFFREY WEEKS

Globalization – second edition

MALCOLM WATERS

Social Capital

JOHN FIELD

Lifestyle

DAVID CHANEY

Transgression

CHRIS JENKS

Mass Media

PIERRE SORLIN

The Virtual

ROB SHIELDS

Moral Panics

KENNETH THOMPSON

TRANSGRESSION

Chris Jenks

First published 2003

by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,

or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including

photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or

retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-42286-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-42469-7 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0–415–25757–3 (hbk)

ISBN 0–415–25758–1 (pbk)

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