Abstract

Cultural criticism has been too obsessed with the rage for order to be able to grasp the import of Peckham's search for "some human activity, which serves to break up orientations, to weaken and frustrate the tyrannous drive to order, to prepare the individual to observe what the orientation tells him is irrelevant, but what may every be relevant." The techniques of poetry, music, painting, and architecture are carefully and lucidly analyzed to demonstrate how precisely those techniques violate the profound demand of the mind for order. This book is destined to force a sharp turn in critical cultural studies because it addresses the rage for chaos in traditional "high culture," not just in popular culture. - Publisher.