{"product_id":"power-of-gentleness-9780823279609","title":"Power of Gentleness","description":"\u003cp\u003eKey moments of our lives, especially at  the beginning and end, are marked by gentleness—but the simplicity of  that concept is misleading. Gentleness is an active passivity that may  become an extraordinary force of resistance within ethics and politics.  In this powerful rethinking by a renowned philosopher and psychoanalyst,  whose untimely death captured worldwide attention, gentleness becomes a  series of embodied paradoxes: power that is also soft, nobility that is  also humble, sweetness that is also intelligent, subtlety that is  nevertheless striking, fragility that has the potential to subvert the  status quo.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Greek and Christian myth, in the philosophical and  religious traditions of China and India, and across Western literature  and art, gentleness occurs in moments of tenderness such as birth, care,  and mutual love, but also where least expected, amid danger,  humiliation, and cruelty. Gentleness, Dufourmantelle shows, is marked  above all by our early human connections to the physical world,  uncovered and rediscovered primarily through the senses, with all the  ambivalences that entails.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eToday, we are most familiar with a  gentleness sold to us in the diluted form of mawkishness. This is how we  try to evade its subtlety—no longer by fighting it, but by enfeebling  it. In the name of our highest values—happiness, truth, security—we  enforce “gentle” safeguards against hurt and are persuaded to  participate in our era’s three divinities: efficiency, speed, and  profitability. But in doing so we seal ourselves off from the  life-affirming gamble that a true gentleness affords.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTrue  gentleness entails an ethic of desire. Against a society that crushes  human beings “gently” through consumerist logic and the illusion of  total transparency, Dufourmantelle celebrates the uncompromising  gentleness discovered by Gandhi and other revolutionaries. At the same  time, within the despair confided by her patients, she traces the force  of resistance and intangible magic that gentleness offers in the lived  experience of ordinary women and men who fully embrace the risk of  living.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis work received the French Voices Award for  excellence in publication and translation. French Voices is a program  created and funded by the French Embassy in the United States and FACE  (French American Cultural Exchange).\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Anne Dufourmantelle","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42959839068278,"sku":"9780823279609","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/1374\/6550\/files\/CoreSourceHub_3cd00a3d-7e1a-4add-b801-c2770103a831.jpg?v=1778361975","url":"https:\/\/ingramacademic.com\/products\/power-of-gentleness-9780823279609","provider":"Ingram Academic \u0026 Professional","version":"1.0","type":"link"}