Publisher's Synopsis
Anxiety is an affective phenomenon that can protect us from danger and be a danger in itself. But when is it justified? When does it stop functioning as an effective and reasonable signal to prevent imminent threats and become an invasive projection of our own ghosts? This book shows through an exhaustive phenomenological analysis how anxiety produces an alteration of the dimensions of embodiment, time consciousness and fantasy. Starting from Bakhtin's polyphonic methodology and relying on the voices of thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Husserl, Freud, Blumenberg, Heidegger, Sartre, Adorno, Derrida and Lévinas, Stefano Micali elaborates new categories to understand anxiety and offers a phenomenological analysis of its essential features. Micali explores new perspectives on the complex relationship between anxiety, fear and trauma, while bringing art history and cultural anthropology, psychopathology and theology, literature and political philosophy into dialogue.
