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.
Genre: Horror
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.
Genre: Horror
Praise for this book
"I've never read anything quite like Charlene Elsby's Violent Faculties and I suspect I never will again. Part tenure application, part manifesto of sadistic feminism, Elsby's story of a professor pushed to rational excess by administrative powers-that-be reads like an overview of Western philosophy as written by your brilliant and bloodthirsty best friend who happens to be a malignant narcissist. Elsby's voice is daring, original, and wholly uncompromising. Violent Faculties is a work of true transgressive transcendence." - Paula D Ashe
"Elsby's commentary is razor-sharp, her brutality, unflinching. Violent Faculties has earned a place in my top reads of the year." - Brian McAuley
"Fierce, clever, and wholly unapologetic, Charlene Elsby's Violent Faculties will mash your brain into mush." - Ronald Malfi
"Fusing philosophy and horror, with a sinister dose of torture porn, Charlene Elsby's Violent Faculties is a masterful tale of human misery and the macabre, a story that transcends its innermost psychosocial experiments and becomes a cautionary tale by way of academic study. Elsby is at the peak of her powers, and this book is her calling card. I can't wait to see what sadistic experiments she has in store for us next." - Michael J Seidlinger
"One of my favorite contemporary writers... Elsby's voice winds its way into your head and smashes about like a trapped heron." - B R Yeager
"Elsby's commentary is razor-sharp, her brutality, unflinching. Violent Faculties has earned a place in my top reads of the year." - Brian McAuley
"Fierce, clever, and wholly unapologetic, Charlene Elsby's Violent Faculties will mash your brain into mush." - Ronald Malfi
"Fusing philosophy and horror, with a sinister dose of torture porn, Charlene Elsby's Violent Faculties is a masterful tale of human misery and the macabre, a story that transcends its innermost psychosocial experiments and becomes a cautionary tale by way of academic study. Elsby is at the peak of her powers, and this book is her calling card. I can't wait to see what sadistic experiments she has in store for us next." - Michael J Seidlinger
"One of my favorite contemporary writers... Elsby's voice winds its way into your head and smashes about like a trapped heron." - B R Yeager
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