Description
In Sin Sick, Joshua Pederson draws on the latest research about identifying and treating the pain of perpetration to advance and deploy a literary theory of moral injury that addresses fictional representations of the mental anguish of those who have injured or killed others. Pederson's work foregrounds moral injury, a recent psychological concept distinct from trauma that is used to describe the psychic wounds suffered by those who breach their own deeply held ethical principles.
Complementing writings on trauma theory that posit the textual manifestation of trauma as absence, Sin Sick argues that moral injury appears in literature in a variety of forms of excess. Pederson closely reads works by Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment), Camus (The Fall), and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Brian Turner's Here, Bullet; Kevin Powers' The Yellow Birds; Phil Klay's Redeployment; and Roy Scranton's War Porn), contending that recognizing and understanding the suffering of perpetrators, without condoning their crimes, enriches the experience of reading--and of being human.
Author: Joshua Pederson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 06/15/2021
Pages: 204
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.63d
ISBN13: 9781501755873
ISBN10: 1501755870
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | Ethics & Moral Philosophy
- Literary Criticism | Semiotics & Theory
- Psychology | Psychopathology | Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
About the Author
Joshua Pederson is Associate Professor of Humanities at Boston University and author of The Forsaken Son. Follow him on Twitter @joshua_pederson.