Book cover for Violent Faculties by Charlene Elsby

Violent Faculties

2024 Released
2-3 Hours
Audiobook Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
CLASH BooksISBN 9781960988492

A philosophy professor tests the limits of the soul and body by performing dehumanizing experiments on unwilling subjects, after the department is closed due to budget cuts.

Violent Faculties follows a philosophy professor influenced by Sade and Bataille. She is ejected by university administrators aiming to impose business strategies in the interest of profit over knowledge.

She designs a series of experiments to demonstrate the value of philosophy as a discipline, not because of its potential for financial benefit, but because of its relevance to life and death. The corpses proliferate as her experiments yield theoretical results and ethical conundrums.

She questions why it is wrong to kill humans, what is it about them that makes their lives sacred, and then attempts to find it in their bodies, their words, their thoughts, and their souls—seeking foundational truths with a knife in her home office.

Charlene Elsby

Charlene Elsby is a philosophy doctor and former professor whose books include Hexis, The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty, and Violent Faculties. Her short stories, essays and interviews have appeared in Southwest Review, Wanted, Bustle Books, The Chicago Review of Books, The Millions, and the LA Review of Books.

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