The Anatomy of Disgust

William Ian Miller

$51.95

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Harvard Uni.Press Academi
01 October 1998

Ethics & moral philosophy; Cultural studies; Sociology & anthropology; Anthropology; Psychology

William Miller embarks on an alluring journey into the world of disgust, showing how it brings order and meaning to our lives even as it horrifies and revolts us. Our notion of the self, intimately dependent as it is on our response to the excretions and secretions of our bodies, depends on it. Cultural identities have frequent recourse to its boundary-policing powers. Love depends on overcoming it, while the pleasure of sex comes in large measure from the titillating violation of disgust prohibitions. Imagine aesthetics without disgust for tastelessness and vulgarity; imagine morality without disgust for evil, hypocrisy, stupidity, and cruelty.

Miller details our anxious relation to basic life processes: eating, excreting, fornicating, decaying, and dying. But disgust pushes beyond the flesh to vivify the larger social order with the idiom it commandeers from the sights, smells, tastes, feels, and sounds of fleshly physicality. Disgust and contempt, Miller argues, play crucial political roles in creating and maintaining social hierarchy. Democracy depends less on respect for persons than on an equal distribution of contempt. Disgust, however, signals dangerous division. The high's belief that the low actually smell bad, or are sources of pollution, seriously threatens democracy.

Miller argues that disgust is deeply grounded in our ambivalence to life: it distresses us that the fair is so fragile, so easily reduced to foulness, and that the foul may seem more than passing fair in certain slants of light. When we are disgusted, we are attempting to set bounds, to keep chaos at bay. Of course we fail. But, as Miller points out, our failure is hardly an occasion for despair, for disgust also helps to animate the world, and to make it a dangerous, magical, and exciting place.

By: William Ian Miller
Imprint: Harvard Uni.Press Academi
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 149mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 562g
ISBN: 9780674031555
ISBN 10: 0674031555
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 01 October 1998
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

William Ian Miller is Professor of Law at the University of Michigan.

Reviews for The Anatomy of Disgust

It's hard to believe that an analysis of disgust could lead us into a greater understanding of the fundaments of human society, but that is certainly the case in Miller's entertaining discourse. He take us on a journey to the essence of disgust as a reaction to the world around us, showing how it can be used socially and politically. Miller argues that we help to define the world and ourselves through the use of disgust, and that morality and aesthetics would mean nothing without it. Convincing and enthralling throughout, this work shows us how human sensibility is truly based on primitive human senses. (Kirkus UK)