Batman and the Shadows of Modernity

Rafael Carrión-Arias is professor of Philosophy and Literature at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). He is also a specialist in cinema and comics. He has been a visiting researcher at numerous internationally renowned research institutions (Stanford University, UCLA, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, University of Cape Town, Moscow Lomonosov University, Taras Shevchenko Universitet Kiev, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, etc.). He has collaborated with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences on the critical edition in German of the complete works of Marx and Engels (MEGA II) and has been a research associate at the Marc-Bloch Center (CNRS/Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). He has been a regular contributor to the M. Gorki Institute of International Literature of the Moscow Academy of Sciences. He has translated Nietzsche into Spanish.

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1: Batman and the Superhero Comics: A Contribution to the Hermeneutics of the Genre

The Object of the Analysis

On Superheroes and Ideologies

The Batman Canon and the Category of Genre

The Method of Analysis

Towards the Specificity of the Object

How is Knowledge Possible in the Case of Comic-book Hermeneutics?

Chapter 2: Gotham and the Soul of the Contemporary City

Batman: from the City to the Panel

Gotham City, the Crime and the Identity: “I Shall Become a Bat”

Elseworlds: Batman in Moscow

Chapter 3: Batman and “the Political”: Tonight, He is the Law

Constitutionalist State and State of Exception

Action and Inequality: Thomas Hobbes and the Founding of Modern State

Crisis, Power and Decisionism: Carl Schmitt and the Suspension of Law

Superheroes and American Exceptionalism

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s fascism!

Political Technologies of the Body: Reactionarism and its Methods

Punishment and Political Body. Utilitarianism and Power-knowledge

“Whodunit?”: Batman, Holmes, and the Hermeneutics of Detection

Induction and Hyperspecialization

Hyperspecialization and Discipline

Batman and the Panopticon: Surveillance and Punishment

Between Biopolitics and Sovereignty: The Superhero and Governance

Chapter 4: The Savior and Nihilism

About Nihilism

I. S. Turgenev: Fathers and Sons and the Generational Break

F. M. Dostoevsky: Nihilism as Split

F. Nietzsche: Nihilism as the Death of References

Modern Hero as a Terrorist

The Knight-errant vs. the Displacement of the Modern Episteme

From Dostoevsky to Batman

Avengers: Resentment and Reaction

Excursus: Batman Gothic (Variations on a Romantic Theme)

Chapter 5: On Villains and Supermen

The “Last Man” vs. the “Meaning/Sense of Earth”

The Supervillain Affair

In the Gallery of Mirrors

Joker: “This is my Card”

Madness and Otherness

Towards a Genealogy of Madness

From the Tragic to the Classical Experience of Madness

The Medicalization of Madness

The Doctor, the Vigilante, and the Asylum

Visions of Madness

Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew: Towards a Typology of the Underground

Dostoevsky’s Underground Man: The Great Resistance

The Dialectic of Vanity

The Dialectic of Determinism

The Most Advantageous Advantage

The Joker, the Camel and the Lion

“Let’s Put a Smile on that Face”: Towards a Philosophy of the Carnival

Chapter 6: Joker and the Carnival of Laughter

Joker and “Grotesque Realism”

The Polyphonic Novel

Discourse in the Comic

An Exercise in Polyphonic Reading in the Superheroic Comic-book (I): Arkham Asylum. A Serious House on Serious Earth

An Exercise in Polyphonic Reading in the Superheroic Comic-book (II): Luthor… You Are Driving Me Sane

Index