Abstract

BRASIL, Caroline Schneider  and  SOUSA, Edson Luiz André de. Reflexions on Discontent in our time: some faces of cruelty and notes on the utopic act. Rev.Mal-Estar Subj [online]. 2012, vol.12, n.3-4, pp. 683-702. ISSN 1518-6148.

This article aims to reflect on the faces and exercise of cruelty as emblematic forms of the human beings deal with their own Phantasm starting from the Freud's text "Civilization and its discontents" and from Nietzsche's work "On the genealogy of morality". In Freud, the main questions involving the relation between subject and culture are remarked, pointing out the irreparable antagonism between pulsional demands and interdictions imposed by the culture as a necessary condition for civilization. Nietzsche approaches guilt feelings as a concept built from a highly defined parameter of a certain type of morality. The moral concept of guilt or bad conscience is rooted in the material concept of debt - this is important for an understanding of how the human "modus operandis" is formed in areas where cruelty finds its territory. The field of utopia emerges as a possible openness of senses and gives visibility for the "blindness of desire", which never ceases to make us repeat ancient forms of cruelty. Art is taken as a metaphor of utopia capable of creating other possible images since all creative act is an act of utopia.

Keywords : Contemporaneity; Discontent; Genealogy of morality; Cruelty; Utopia.

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