CRUEL THEORY | SUBLIME PRACTICE
CRUEL THEORY | SUBLIME PRACTICE: TOWARDS A REVALUATION OF BUDDHISM
GLENN WALLIS, TOM PEPPER, MATHIAS STEINGASS
Cruel Theory | Sublime Practice consists of three parts. Each part addresses both theoretical and practical dimensions of Buddhism. Topics include the formation of an autonomous subject in the face of Buddhism’s concealment of its ideological force; the possibility of a practice that thus serves as a theory or science of ideology; the reconstitution of practice as an organon of authoritative structures, including controlling social-conceptual representations; and the perception of Buddhism as the subject of a historical process.
6×9” | B&W | 214 pp
ISBN 978-8792633231
CATEGORY
Philosophy
EDITION
Standard paperback 2013 | $25
NOTE
Essays
REVIEWS
This is, perhaps ironically, a book more true to dharma than any other I have read in ages. It's alternately scathing, funny, and deeply destabilizing but consistently heretical. Egged on by the ghosts of Artaud and EM Cioran, it’s a devastating and necessary corrective to the hybrid secular Buddhism which predominates in the US and Europe today. Huge props to Matthias Steinglass for teasing out how this Buddhism implicitly mimics the most fundamental tenets of Christian salvation. I’m calling 2013 the Year Punk Broke Buddhism. — BLURRY ZEBRA, Amazon