Philosophy: aesthetics Books

Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Barcodes are about as ordinary as an object can be. Billions of them are scanned each day and they impact everything from how we shop to how we travel to how the global economy is managed. But few people likely give them more than a second thought. In a way, the barcode's ordinariness is the ultimate symbol of its success. However, behind the mundanity of the barcode lies an important history. Barcodes bridged the gap between physical objects and digital databases and paved the way for the contemporary Internet of Things, the idea to connect all devices to the web. They were highly controversial at points, protested by consumer groups and labor unions, and used as a symbol of dystopian capitalism and surveillance in science fiction and art installations. This book tells the story of the barcode's complicated history and examines how an object so crucial to so many parts of ourTrade ReviewJordan Frith’s engaging storytelling and analysis makes Barcode a page-turner. He transforms the technical into the human, bringing lively cultural, political, and social analysis to something most of us overlook every day. But beware: After reading this book, you’ll want to talk about barcodes all the time. * Torie Bosch, Editor, First Opinion, STAT *Table of Contents1. The little black lines that changed the world 2. How we almost ended up with a bullseye barcode 3. An early bridge between the digital and the physical 4. Consumer protests, labor rights, and automation 5. President Bush and the barcode 6. Barcodes and the Bible 7. The cultural imaginary of the barcode 8. The long and winding road of the QR Code 9. Barcodes and fifty years of misplaced eulogies Notes Index

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Book SynopsisFrom mobile phones to consoles, tablets and PCs, we are now a generation of gamers. The PlayStation Dreamworld is – to borrow a phrase from Slavoj Zizek – the pervert's guide to videogames. It argues that we can only understand the world of videogames via Lacanian dream analysis. It also argues that the Left needs to work inside this dreamspace – a powerful arena for constructing our desires – or else the dreamworld will fall entirely into the hands of dominant and reactionary forces. While cyberspace is increasingly dominated by corporate organization, gaming, at its most subversive, can nevertheless produce radical forms of enjoyment which threaten the capitalist norms that are created and endlessly repeated in our daily relationships with mobile phones, videogames, computers and other forms of technological entertainment. Far from being a book solely for dedicated gamers, this book dissects the structure of our relationships to all technological entertainment at a time when entertainment has become ubiquitous. We can no longer escape our fantasies but rather live inside their digital reality.Trade Review“The universe of video games and the action they involve us in render perfectly the illusions and antagonisms of our ideological predicament - the popularity of post-apocalyptic games tells it all. But perhaps even more important is the type of subjectivity a gamer has to adopt when immersed into a game: a mixture of extreme engagement and loss of reality, a universe of immortality where actions are indefinitely repeatable. So it is not that we can understand the impact of these games only through the analysis of our social reality - it's also the other way round: to understand how our societies work you have to know video games And Alfie Bown does this at such a high level that he produces an instant classic, a book that everyone who seeks to find a way in our confused social life will have to read. The Playstation Dreamworld is unputdownable, once you start reading it you will get addicted to it... as in a good video game!” Slavoj Žižek “If you ever asked yourself what Freud and Lacan would think if they had a chance to play video games, Alfie Bown gives you the answer. As a passionate gamer and a playful philosopher, he succeeds in showing not only why video-games matter but why they might carry subversive potential. This exciting psychoanalysis of video games shows why Pokémon GO and other games were only the beginning of a brave new world."Srećko Horvat From mobile phones to consoles to tablet, we are now a generation of gamers. This book dissects the structure of our relationships to all forms of technological entertainment at a time when digital enjoyment has become ubiquitous.Alfie Bown is Assistant Professor of Literature at HSMC, Hong Kong and co-editor of the Hong Kong Review of Books. "A significant contribution to the debate around virtual reality" TLSTable of Contents Contents Acknowledgements Note on the Games Tutorial: The Pokémon Generation Level 1. From Farming Simulation to Dystopic Wasteland: Gaming and Capitalism Work and Play - Cultures of Distraction - Pastoral Dystopia, Apocalyptic Utopia – No Alternative Level 2. Dreamwork: Cyborgs on the Analyst’s Couch Japanese Dreams, American Texts – The Dreamworld - Repetitions and the Dromena – Immersion and Westworld Level 3. Retro Gaming: The Politics of Former and Future Pleasures 90s Rational Gaming – Virtual/Reality - Subject, Object, Enjoyment - Jouissance in the Arcades Bonus Features: How to be a Subversive Gamer Game Index Endnotes

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Book SynopsisThroughout modernity there has been a clear divide between art and commerce. Objects could either be consumed as commerce or contemplated as art. Today, as museums are facing increasing financial pressure and as stores have become inventive locations for new modes of display, this clear divide has begun to dissolve. There is one place that represents a key stage in this evolution: 10 Corso Como. It was founded in Milan, at that very address, by fashion editor Carla Sozzani and has since expanded to Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, and New York. The name “concept store”, which has now spread across our globalized world, was originally coined to describe this new form. This book is the first philosophical inquiry into this new form of store and it sheds new light on how categories that have governed our modern lives, such as commerce, art, fashion, and museum, are being redefined today.Trade Review“Coccia and Grau's insightful account of 10 Corso Como presents a model where multiple disciplines do not just sit side by side but blend together holistically under one roof. This is a compelling case study of a transitional and ever-shifting space that is wholly in tune with the rhythm and pace of our time.”Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London “Is some of the future of the art museum to be found in the intimate experience that comes in 10 Corso Como, the ultimate, curated ‘concept store’? Coccia and Grau have found food for museum thought in a retail temple of fashion and living.”Michael Govan, CEO and Director, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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Book SynopsisNietzsche and Irish Modernism demonstrates how the ideas of the controversial German philosopher played a crucial role in the emergence and evolution of a distinctly Irish brand of modernist culture. Making an essential new contribution to the history of modernism, the book traces the circulation of these ideas through the writings of George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, and James Joyce, as well as through minor works of literature, magazine articles, newspaper debates, public lectures, and private correspondence. These materials reveal a response to Nietzsche that created abiding tensions between Irish cultural production and reigning religious and nationalist orthodoxies, during an anxious period of Home Rule agitation, world war, revolution, civil war, and state building. With its wealth of detail, the book greatly enriches our understanding of modernist culture as a site of convergence between art and politics, indigenous concerns and foreign perspectives.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Nietzsche, Ireland, Modernism1 Shaw: ‘An English (or Irish) Nietzsche’ 2 Yeats: ‘Proud hard gift-giving joyousness’ 3 Joyce: ‘James Overman’ 4 War: ‘The duel between Nietzsche and civilisation’ 5 Postwar: ‘The Forerunner’ Index

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Book SynopsisYou didn't choose to live this life, in this body, in these conditions-this delicate and difficult life. Yet when you consider that your existence is fleeting, an inspired sense of urgency can spring forth. Say you often hike with a friend. One day, they propose that you skydive instead. You're wavering, and they insist:?Come?on. You only live once! And soon you're flying through the air. Why embrace a life you did not choose?In?This Beauty, philosopher Nick Riggle explores the beauty of being alive by investigating the things we say to inspire ourselves and each other: seize the day, treat yourself, you only live once. These clichés are at best vague, at worst stupid. They imply that you should do something wild with your life because your life is precious, a little like saying you should go swimming with your grandfather's watch because it is irreplaceable.Drawing on insights from aesthetics and his experiences as a professional skater and new father, he develops the thought that beauty-the beauty of this day, this body, this moment, these people-can make life worth embracing, worth engaging with and amplifying as beautiful. Insightful and deeply humane, This Beauty is a searching inquiry into the mystery of life's beauty and a call to create and share it.

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Drones are in the newspaper, on the TV screen, swarming through the networks, and soon, we're told, they'll be delivering our shopping. But what are drones? The word encompasses everything from toys to weapons. And yet, as broadly defined as they are, the word “drone” fills many of us with a sense of technological dread. Adam Rothstein cuts through the mystery, the unknown, and the political posturing, and talks about what drones really are: what technologies are out there, and what’s coming next; how drones are talked about, and how they are represented in popular culture. It turns out that drones are not as scary as they appear—but they are more complicated than you might expect. Drones reveal the strange relationships that humans are forming with their new technologies. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewAdam Rothstein’s primer on drones covers such themes … as the representation of drones in science fiction and popular culture. The technological aspects are covered in detail, and there is interesting discussion of the way in which our understanding of technology is grounded in historical narratives. As Rothstein writes, the attempt to draw a boundary between one technology and another often ignores the fact that new technologies are not quite as new as we think. * Times Literary Supplement (reviewed by Christopher Coker) *Readers interested in technology and/or warfare will very much enjoy reading Drone… Adam Rothstein did an admirable job, writing about every aspect of drones in detailed and organized fashion… [T]hose keenly interested in the subject will gobble this up. -- George Erdosh * San Francisco Book Review *[Rothstein's] book is a rich collection of vignettes about how to imagine and comprehend the drone ... [Drone] really excels in tackling the multiple meanings, symbols, and narratives attached to drones, all of which provide a bird’s eye view (drone’s eye view?) of the terrain of contemporary debate ... for those beginning a research project, or just the curious, this small book packs a big punch. -- Ian G. R. Shaw, University of Glasgow * Antipode *Adam Rothstein's Drone presents this iconic figure of contemporary warfare-the disconcertingly alluring autonomous airborne machine-through the lens of a different kind of history. Privacy and tracking algorithms run side by side with the ethics of self-guided munitions, activist political programs butt heads with emerging corporate business strategies, and all of it is tied back to the earliest experiments in driverless vehicles, quaint ancestors of today's over-mythologized UAVs. In the end, Rothstein's book is an exploration of technical agency: Where did drones come from-and what do they want? * Geoff Manaugh, Editor of Landscape Futures: Instruments, Devices and Architectural Inventions and Author of the website BLDGBLOG *This lucid, visionary work is as close as one can get to science fiction without the baggage of science and/or fiction. Adam Rothstein's Drone will be a wonderful cultural artifact in twenty years. It will be like a broken pomegranate of contemporary speculations and anxieties. * Bruce Sterling, Author of The Zenith Angle and Professor of Internet Studies and Science Fiction at the European Graduate School, Switzerland *Portland writer and artist Adam Rothstein’s contribution to Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series digs into the history and meaning of autonomous aircraft—the ways they work, the tasks they perform, where they come from, and how the way we talk about them reflects the priorities and anxieties of our age. -- Ben Waterhouse * Oregon Humanities *Adam Rothstein’s Drone test[s] the water on what this technology might yet prove to be as it is successively explored and its limits and possibilities (military and civilian) discovered. What shall drones be? -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: Four Technology Stories Chapter Two: The Military Drone Chapter Three: The Commercial Drone (or the hole where it ought to be) Chapter Four: Blinking Lights Chapter Five: Software and Hardware Chapter Six: The Non-Drone Chapter Seven: What the Drone is For Chapter Eight: The Drone in Discourse Chapter Nine: Drone Fiction Chapter Ten: Ourselves and the Drone Chapter Eleven: Aesthetics of the Drone Chapter Twelve: The Drone as Meme List of Images Bibliography Notes

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Book SynopsisOur world is saturated with images. Overwhelmed by this proliferation of visual stimuli, our gaze becomes increasingly bored and distracted. Do we ever really read and engage with images? Can they ever provide the sense of meaningfulness we crave? French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas confronted and subverted these questions. A superficial reading of his works might indicate an ambivalence if not a wholesale critique of the visual, whose mode of signification remains, for him, objectified, finite and flat. Yet an enigmatic statement - 'Ethics is an optics' - recurred throughout his work. Hagi Kenaan takes this mysterious idea as the starting point for a strikingly original philosophical argument on the place of visuality in Levinas' ethics. The Ethics of Visuality analyses Levinas' philosophy of the human face in order to show how his vision of 'Otherness'(alterity and transcendence) can open up for us a new and surprising kind of optics that is so needed for an ethical living in the contemporary world. Where other critical approaches have largely undermined Levinas' ambivalence towards the visual, The Ethics of Visuality uncovers the relevance of Levinas' bias against the visual to developing a radical philosophy/theory of visual meaning in which the aesthetic is always already intertwined with the ethical.Trade ReviewAn excellent book. The questions it asks are most acute and they renew the analysis of the question of the Face in Levinas's philosophy, which is quite an achievement. Dr Hagi Kenaan is not content with explaining the main lines of Levinas's thought on the Face, he proposes a fine phenomenological approach of what it means "to see" in general and what it means to see a Face in particular, while giving concrete examples which is a very good pedagogical approach too. His knowledge of the different phenomenological philosophers is excellent and he refers to them in a most appropriate way. His analysis of the act of speaking (dibour) and of its subtle and necessary link to the Face, is also very well done. I also want to underline Dr Hagi Kenaan's qualities of explanations and rational deductions in his book. This is a fine and clever book. Professor Catherine Chalier, Professor of Philosophy, University of Paris X- Nanterre Kenaan's brilliant study reveals what Levinas' 'ethical turn' has to teach us about the ethical potential of the visual. His study offers nothing less than a guide for restoring us to an ethics of vision in our postmodern world. It is an urgent, compelling and, ultimately, hopeful work. Martin Berger, Professor and Chair, History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California at Santa Cruz. The Ethics of Visuality is an extraordinary achievement. The author offers a brilliant meditation not only on Levinas' thought but also through it, engaging and going beyond it, culminating in profound insights. It is a must-read for anyone seriously interested not only in visuality but also in the very condition of what it means to speak with responsibility about appearance. Lewis R. Gordon, Professor of Philosophy, African American Studies and Judaic Studies at the University of Connecticut at Storrs and author of Disciplinary Decadence.Table of ContentsContents Preface: The Rule of the Frontal Ethics is an Optics: Preliminary Remarks Face 1: The Gleam of Infinity Face 2: How a Face Looks Face 3: Face and Object Face 4: Why A Face, All of a Sudden Face 5: Vision, Gaze, Other Face 6: Face and Resistance Face 7: Outside Talk 1The Face of Language Talk 2Expression Talk 3The First Word Talk 4Saying and Betraying Talk 5Word, Window, Screen Talk 6Listening to a Big Bird Talk 7The Open References

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Book SynopsisAgainst those who consider architecture to be a wholly optimistic activity, this book shows how the history of modern architecture is inextricably tied to ideas of failure and ruin. By means of an original reading of the earliest origins of modernism, the Architecture of Failure exposes the ways in which failure has been suppressed, ignored and denied in the way we design our cities. It examines the 19th century fantasy architecture of the iron and glass exhibition palaces, strange, unprecedented, dream-like structures, almost all now lost, existing only as melancholy archive fragments; it traces the cultural legacy of these buildings through the heroics of the early 20th century, post-war radicals and recent developments, discussing related themes in art, literature, politics and philosophy. Critiquing the capitalist symbolism of the self-styled contemporary avant-garde, the book outlines a new history of contemporary architecture, and attempts to recover a radical approach to understanding what we build. Douglas Murphy blogs at http://www.youyouidiot.blogspot.com/

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Book SynopsisCan capital be seen? Cartographies of the Absolute surveys the disparate answers to this question offered by artists, film-makers, writers and theorists over the past few decades. It zones in on the crises of representation that have accompanied the enduring crisis of capitalism, foregrounding the production of new visions and artefacts that wrestle with the vastness, invisibility and complexity of the abstractions that rule our lives.

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Book SynopsisIn Praise of Disobedience draws on works from a single miraculous year in which Oscar Wilde published the larger part of his greatest works in prose - the year he came into maturity as an artist. Before the end of 1891, he had written the first of his phenomenally successful plays and met the young man who would win his heart, beginning the love affair that would lead to imprisonment and public infamy. In a witty introduction, playwright, novelist and Wilde scholar Neil Bartlett explains what made this point in the writer's life central to his genius and why Wilde remains a provocative and radical figure to this day. Included here are the entirety of Wilde's foray into political philosophy, The Soul of Man Under Socialism; the complete essay collection Intentions; selections from The Picture of Dorian Gray as well as its paradoxical and scandalous preface; and some of Wilde's greatest fictions for children. Each selection is accompanied by stimulating and enlightening annotations. A delight for fans of Oscar Wilde, In Praise of Disobedience will revitalize an often misunderstood legacy.Trade ReviewWilde offers us an important reminder of virtues we as a society may have for a time lost: the need to strive for utopias; the inevitability of socialism if our world is to survive; the need to reinvigorate humanity's spirit of rebelliousness and disobedience, and to challenge, not accept, the injustices and inequalities we see all around us. The world needs Oscar Wilde and his daring, beautiful ideas today more than ever. -- Hans Rollman * PopMatters *

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Book SynopsisAs we face the compounded crises of late capitalism, environmental catastrophe and technological transformation, who are the thinkers and the ideas who will allow us to understand the world we live in? McKenzie Wark surveys three areas at the cutting edge of current critical thinking: design, environment, technology and introduces us to the thinking of nineteen major writers. Each chapter is a concise account of an individual thinker, providing useful context and connections to the work of the others. The authors include: Sianne Ngai, Kodwo Eshun, Lisa Nakamura, Hito Steyerl, Yves Citton, Randy Martin, Jackie Wang, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Achille Mbembe, Deborah Danowich and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Eyal Weizman, Cory Doctorow, Benjamin Bratton, Tiziana Terranova, Keller Easterling, Jussi Parikka.Wark argues that we are too often told that expertise is obtained by specialisation. Sensoria connects the themes and arguments across intellectual silos. They explore the edges of disciplines to show how we might know the world: through the study of culture, the different notions of how we create such things, and the impact that the machines that we devise have had upon us. The book is a vital and timely introduction to the future both as a warning but also as a road map on how we might find our way out of the current crisis.Trade ReviewA provocative and compelling exploration of our digital world as it crashes towards ecological disaster. Counter-intuitive, insightful, and imaginative, Capital is Dead is a timely reminder that there are things worse than capitalism - and we may just be living through them -- Nick Snricek, co-author of Inventing the Future * [in praise of Capital is Dead] *a playbook for the Anthropocene, a set of moves and strategies extracted from an unexpected canon of texts formed by a mash-up of the Soviet avant-garde and the Californian high-tech imaginary. * Radical Philosophy [in praise of Molecular Red] *A very imaginative, historically smart, politically generative thesis . that I think we urgently need. -- Donna Haraway, author of A Cyborg Manifesto * [in praise of Molecular Red] *A wonderful book . informative and moving . a great recovery of an instructive life and literary effort. The book makes the case for a kind of political vision and action we need to recognize and enact. A true pleasure to read. -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy * [in praise of Molecular Red] *Wark is a fine aphorist ... Playful, angry, depressed, celebratory, this is a book for anyone not convinced that there is no alternative to the way we live now. -- Observer * [In Praise of The Beach Beneath the Streets] *McKenzie Wark opens her introduction to Sensoria by asking, 'What is the point of scholarship?' Wark's answer is that scholarship 'is about the common task of knowing the world'. This seems a sound definition as well as a worthwhile project for humanity in the twenty-first century. -- J.J. Charlesworth * ArtReview *

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Book SynopsisShiny Things combines an interest in visual art with a broad attention to popular culture – the wideness of its range is striking. It is more than just an expansion of subject matter, which many of today’s innovative books also have – it considers how a specific physical property manifests itself in both art and culture at large, and contributes to an analysis of and polemics about the world. It is accessibly written but with a careful application of contemporary theory. Interesting, informative, and entertaining, this will appeal to progressive thinkers looking for new ways of presenting ideas. This is scholarship that challenges stale thought and interacts with philosophical ideas in real time, with a versatility that can often be lacking in traditional academic scholarship. Using art, especially contemporary art, as its recurrent point of reference, the authors argue that shininess has moved from a time when rarity gave shiny things a direct meaning of power and transcendence. Shininess today is pervasive; its attraction is a foundation of consumer culture with its attendant effects on our architecture, our conceptions of the body, and our production of spectacle. Power and the sacred as readings of the shiny have given way to readings of superficiality, irony and anxiety, while somehow shininess has maintained its qualities of fascination, newness and cleanliness. Examines the meanings and functions of shininess in art and in culture more generally: its contradictions of both preciousness and superficiality, and its complexities of representation; the way shininess itself is physically and metaphorically present in the construction of major conceptual categories such as hygiene, utopias, the sublime and camp; and the way the affects of shininess, rooted in its inherent disorienting excess, produce irony, anxiety, pleasure, kitsch, and fetishism. All of these large ideas are embodied in the instantly noticeable, sometimes precious and sometimes cheap physical presence of shiny things, those things that catch our eye and divert our attention. Shininess, then, is a compelling subject that instantly attracts and fascinates people. The book engages primarily with visual art, although it makes frequent use of material culture, as well as advertising, film, literature, and other areas of popular and political culture. The art world, however, is a place where many of the affects of shininess come into clearest focus, where the polemical semiotics of shine are most evident and consciously explored. Artists as diverse as Anish Kapoor (whose popular Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago is a repeating example in the book), Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Koons, Carolee Schneemann, Audrey Flack, Fra Angelico and Gerard ter Borch centre the book in an art discourse that opens up to automobiles, Richard Nixon and Liberace. Will be relevant to academics, scholars and students with an interest in contemporary theory and material and popular cultures. Potential interest across the humanities: philosophy, gender studies, perhaps public relations, advertising and marketing. It will also appeal to more general readers with an interest in popular and material cultures, art and aesthetics. It is written in a genuinely accessible style, and its ideas and theory are embodied through examples and narratives. Will be of interest to readers of Oliver Sacks, James Gleick, George Lakoff, James Elkins or Rebecca Solnit. Trade Review"Shiny Things is a smart, accessible, and often humorous, examination of the various meanings of shininess across multiple facets of culture, with a particular emphasis on the visual arts. It stands as an exemplary investigation of the meaning of an overlooked, but pervasive facet of material culture.” -- David Klamen, Dean of the School of the Arts at Indiana University Northwest

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Book SynopsisThe Origin of German Tragic Drama is Walter Benjamin's most sustained and original work. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Benjamin also comments on the engravings of Durer and the theatre of Calderon and Shakespeare. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history. Georg Lukacs, an opponent of Benjamin's aesthetics, singled out The Origin of German Tragic Drama as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century.Trade ReviewHe drew, from the obscure disdained German baroque, elements of the modern sensibility: the taste for allegory, surrealist shock effects, discontinuous utterance, a sense of historical catastrophe. -- Susan SontagIf the killing of Lorca was Fascism's first great crime against literature, Benjamin's death was undoubtedly the second. * The Listener *Walter Benjamin is the most important German aesthetician and literary critic of this century. -- George Steiner

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Book SynopsisThe unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with 'accounts' of personal 'experience'. Can a Girl Online use these platforms not only to escape meatspace oppressions, but as spaces for survival, creativity and resistance?Told via the arresting personal narrative of one woman negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona, Girl Online is written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, taking in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism.Trade ReviewEsoteric in one breath and widely relatable in another, threaded with sly humour and enlivened with breaths of personal reflection. -- Ruth McKee * Irish Times *Joanna Walsh is fast becoming one of our most important writers -- Deborah LevyWalsh's writing has intellectual rigour and bags of formal bravery... boldly intellectual work -- Financial TimesHer stories reveal a psychological landscape lightly spooked by loneliness, jealousy and alienation -- Heidi Julavits, New York TimesThis is theory as user manual for every girl who has misplaced her body, for all who have ever attempted the looking glass life of writing a self onto screen. Walsh does not betray these early desires of screen life even as she elucidates the stark disappointments of its actualization. -- Anne Boyer, author of The UndyingA brilliant, timely act of feminist resistance. Joanna Walsh wields language as deliberately as a surgeon her knife. She doesn't miss a trick, or an opportunity for (s)wordplay. Here as ever she is "good to think" with, a formidable and original theorist for and beyond our online era. -- Lauren Elkin, author of FlâneuseSkilfully captures the fragmentary nature of online existence, the slippery nature of our online selves and their endless interpretations, and both the connections and the alienation that come with it. This is a deep and yet beautifully light meditation on what the internet is doing to our brains. -- Juliet Jacques, author of TransThe internet is all about girls - and is an impossible place to be one. Girl Online writes its way through that dilemma with critical insight and creative moxie. It's a really good book for anyone who has ever tried to have a gender - especially on the internet. -- McKenzie Wark, author of Capital is DeadNeither a mirror nor a lamp, the screen offers no specular high or illuminating epiphany. Yet, it provides a set of immaterialities for the switch up of identity and personhood, imaginary spaces from which to prompt far-reaching reflection and the timed fantasy of emancipation. Joanna Walsh delivers a new batch of historical screen memories in a constant remix of desire and memory, erasure and fear. The text rotates into literary and theoretical analyses, tech labs and artistic sites, propelled by touching autobiographemes that explode and mutate according to a digital logic that holds subjectivity to a new standard of captivity. Taking off from AI Alice Through the Looking Glass, Walsh calls up crucial works of Derrida, Chantal Ackermann, Luce Irigaray, Kathy Acker, and other innovators of shredded identity, jamming on the theoretical fine print of our internet contracts and reversible selfhood. -- Avital Ronell, author of StupidityIn this profound and moving account of what it's like to be a girl online, Joanna Walsh guides readers through unwritten terms and conditions women face when they're on the internet, how they're forced to commodify themselves, and effectively pay for the space they take up 'with accounts of personal experience.' * Business Insider *In this book of essays in alternative forms, including programming language, tweets, and lyric prose, Joanna Walsh explores what it means to be a woman on this thing called the internet. Expect some philosophizing on tech, identity, selfies, and social media. * Nylon *Joins a growing genre of writing, including fiction and nonfiction, that attempts to articulate the way it feels to be online. -- Eliza Goodpasture * 3:AM Magazine *In a series of meditations and 'thought experiments' exploring motherhood, blogs, women's writing, and the meaning of work both on and off the screen, Walsh examines the relationship between looking and being looked at, watching and being watched, that is inherent to both the internet and femininity. -- Rhian Sasseen * The Paris Review *Any woman who's ever dealt with reply guys gone feral, dogpiling, doxxing, or dick pics in her DMs knows one thing: It's hard to be a woman on the internet. In Girl Online, Joanna Walsh explores our relationship to the web - what we sacrifice to have an internet presence, how our identities change online, and what we receive in return. -- K.W. Colyard * Bustle *Walsh's philosophy is funny and thoughtful, and here, she presents the feminist resistance for the extremely online girls (or should we say gworls?) -- Anna Cafolla * The Face *An explorative work about what it is to be a woman, on and off the internet. -- Sophie Grenham * The Times *Girl Online sits generously, generatively, generically in the questioning, querying, "wondering" modes of the writing it examines. -- Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou * The Arts Desk *A deeply playful romp through the theory and politics of creating an online persona and of logging on...[Walsh offers] a new understanding of how girlhood is performed online. -- Claire Thomson * Lunate *Walsh delivers playful and lived-in observations about the online world. -- Anandi Mishra * ArtReview *Using a variety of styles ranging from programming language to tweets to a blog, [Walsh] brilliantly captures the realities and unrealities of online existence. * Manhattan Book Review *In Girl Online, Walsh dissects a more quotidian experience of being an on-screen woman: that of being female and online, relying on the internet for work and for professional advancement, trying to figure out what kind of image to project for maximal success...Above all else, Girl Online and My Life as a Godard Movie ably, bravely explore yet another kind of split: that between theory and practice when it comes to female self-empowerment. -- Philippa Snow * The New Republic *Experimental on a formal level, mixing registers, styles and source material. Walsh splices life-writing with TV criticism, speculative vignettes, exegeses of algorithmic logic, reconsiderations of recent literary history and many quotations from other writers. -- Megan Marz * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisIn this innovative anthology, Angela Lord presents a unique series of commentaries on art, aesthetics and colour by three of western culture’s greatest intellects. Her comparative study of the works of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Rudolf Steiner illustrates how each of these towering thinkers employed an individual and groundbreaking approach. Yet, remarkably, there are common threads that weave through their collective works that have previously been overlooked. By selecting and extracting specific quotations and arranging them in particular sequences, Lord throws light on texts that have often been restricted to theological and academic study. Through this exposure, she reveals their relevance to the Arts today, showing how their content can stimulate an enhanced awareness of truth, beauty and knowledge in our lives. Art Aesthetics and Colour also offers us the opportunity to reinterpret the works of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas in the light of Rudolf Steiner’s contemporary spiritual-scientific insights. In addition to the extensive quotations from the three historical figures, Lord provides brief biographies, an introduction, notes and a bibliography. The book is well-illustrated throughout and includes colour plates.Table of ContentsIntroduction – Chapter One, Biographies – Chapter Two, Art – Chapter Three, Aesthetics – Chapter Four, Colour – Bibliography

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Book SynopsisNarcissism is the defining pathology of the twenty-first century, but what if it is not self-obsession that defines us but a need for self-transformation? Narcissus in Bloom is a short history of the self-portrait, beginning with Renaissance painters like Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt and Caravaggio, through to photographers and celebrities like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, Lee Friedlander and Herve Guibert. Analysing the ways that so many artists have regarded their own image, how might the age of the selfie be considered as a time of transformation rather than stasis? By returning to the original tale of Narcissus, and the flower from which he takes his name, this book offers an alternative reading of narcissism from within the midst of a moralising subgenre of books that argue our self-obsession will be the death of us. That may be so. But what will we become after we have taken the watery track, and rid ourselves of the cloistered self-image given to us by late capitalism?Trade ReviewNarcissus in Bloom is a real achievement ... it marks a return to a now lost tradition: big-picture cultural theorising that speaks to and illuminates present-day anxieties in unexpected ways, spoken in the vernacular of contemporary popular culture, of the likes of Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall and more. "Relating one's emotional self to those around us is at the very heart of Colquhoun's queer critical and political project. Narcissus in Bloom is ambitious, moving, inspirational and loving... a purposeful and universal work driven by the author's passion for photography.""Rather than see the selfie as a sign of self-absorption, this engrossing volume understands the selfie as expressing a longing for a kind of self-transformation. Elegantly and stylishly written, this book is the best kind of cultural criticism, sweeping away the worn- out cliches of the familiar for the freshness and wonder of the truly new.”"A fascinating alternative genealogy of our modern obsession with the photographic self-image. You'll never look at a selfie the same way again."

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Book SynopsisThis provocative book is a tractate-a treatise-on beauty in Japanese art, written in the manner of a zuihitsu, a free-ranging assortment of ideas that "follow the brush" wherever it leads. Donald Richie looks at how perceptual values in Japan were drawn from raw nature and then modified by elegant expressions of class and taste. He explains aesthetic concepts like wabi, sabi, aware, and yugen, and ponders their relevance in art and cinema today. Donald Richie is the foremost explorer of Japanese culture in English, and this work is the culmination of sixty years of observing and writing from his home in Tokyo.

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Book SynopsisExaminations of Francis Ponge's texts on Jean Fautrier's “Hostage Paintings,” Jack Whitten's Memorial Paintings, and Banksy's auction stunt Love is in the Bin.This book contains three case studies on very different artists, analyzing their work through their respective historical contexts: the writer Francis Ponge (1899-1988) and his seminal text on Jean Fautrier's “Hostage Paintings” from 1943; visual artist Jack Whitten's (1939-2018) Memorial Paintings and Banksy's notorious auction stunt Love is in the Bin from 2018. Examining all three artistic propositions from a value-theoretical point of view, Graw finds Ponge's text on Fautrier to be “doubly materialist” insofar as it (seemingly) reveals its own material conditions while simultaneously grasping the specific materiality of Fautrier's paintings; suggests that the indications of value in Whitten's painting to be more indirect; and reveals Banksy's value reflections to have a very different generational thrust. Gaw shows that Ponge's text is full of value-reflexive insights but that Ponge himself is an ambivalent figure. She finds that the dedication of Whitten's paintings inscribes them in a system of exchange. And, finally, the deliberate aesthetic meagerness of Banksy's Love Is in the Bin points to an emptiness at the heart of value. Institut für Kunstkritik series

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Book SynopsisThis book opens with the emergence and development of the discipline of aesthetics in western countries, specifically the history of Western Music Aesthetics, to study and delve into the development of Chinese Music Aesthetics. The book provides a clear timeline throughout the writing — from the history of Chinese Music Aesthetics, to the construction of a theoretical framework, and the intersections and conversations between Western and Chinese Music Aesthetics. This academic piece is fundamentally consistent with the developing field of Chinese philosophical and literary research.This book also discusses important music aesthetic categories of Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, and metaphysics, and uses critical thinking to analyse the relationship between these categories and relevant schools of thought, reflecting the author's academic vision and thought process.

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Book Synopsis“If this book of shocking intelligence and moral hope is read widely and above all well, word for word, it will help the world.” —Peter Schjeldahl An expanded edition of Hickey’s controversial and exquisitely written apologia for beauty—championed by artists, reviled by art critics, and as powerful as ever 30 years on The 30th anniversary cloth edition brings back into print Dragon’s four essays on beauty and commingles them with newly discovered essays by the MacArthur Foundation “genius.” Art by Caravaggio, Bellini, Velázquez, Raphael, Warhol and Mapplethorpe is complemented by Hickey’s tributes to Dolly Parton and Richard Pryor, outing of John Rechy’s gay novel Numbers, essays on the art of writing and witty analysis of paintings by Ed Ruscha. An afterword by Hickey’s friend and Dragon’s editor queers the brash, heterosexual gambler as it situates the creation of Dragon squarely within the AIDS plague. At the time, the book made beauty visible under the looming presence of death and bodily decay. Today, Hickey’s prescient diagnosis of the “therapeutic institution” resonates even louder and artists respond by harnessing beauty as a source of meaning and of joy. Dave Hickey (1938–2021) was one of the preeminent arts and cultural writers of the turn of the 21st century. A MacArthur "Genius" Fellow known as the "beauty guy" in the popular press, Hickey opened A Clean, Well-Lighted Place gallery in Austin, Texas, in the 1960s, before becoming executive editor at Art in America magazine. In the 1970s, he was a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, where he coined and helped create the "Outlaw country" music movement. By the 1990s, Hickey had made a home in Las Vegas, from where he regularly traveled to speak with audiences worldwide.Trade ReviewDave Hickey was a genius. Not because of what he did for me but because of the way he was, the way he felt and the wonderful way he worded things, he was beyond compare. I liked him, I loved him and yes, I had a crush on him too. Long live the memory and the words of Dave Hickey. -- Dolly PartonWhen Dave Hickey died last fall at the age of eighty-two, he left behind a singular contribution to the history of art writing, along with a badly bruised reputation, both routinely called 'iconoclastic' for lack of anything more precise. The magazines he’d published in since the 1960s hardly took notice. The perfunctory obituaries that did appear treated him as a kind of Hunter S. Thompson of the contemporary art world, ensconced as he was in Las Vegas at the height of his fame. But alongside the bluster of 'the bad boy of art criticism' was a neon Walter Pater of the Southwest who almost single-handedly remade the practice of art writing with his first two collections, The Invisible Dragon and Air Guitar. -- Jarrett Earnest * New York Review of Books *If the book of shocking intelligence and moral hope is read widely and above all well, word for word, it will help the world. -- Peter Schjeldahl * "Author of Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018" *Dave Hickey's prose transports are like an eye attached to a butterfly attached to a rocketship—which is to say, lucidity uncannily yoked to both a deft lightness of touch and sheer gangbusters propulsion: the down-to-earth, time and again, taking off and taking flight. The generosity of the man's verve—the suppleness of its profusions—can get to be downright ravishing. On top of which, the guy's really funny. -- Lawrence Weschler * Author of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees *

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Book SynopsisAwarded the 1986 Johnsonian Prize in Philosophy. This work on colour features a chapter, 'Further Thoughts: 1993', in which the author revisits the dispute between colour objectivists and subjectivists from the perspective of the ecology, genetics, and evolution of colour vision.Trade ReviewMuch the best philosophically orientated book about colour that has been written. . . . It has none of the philosophical crudity which mars scientific accounts of colour, and none of the scientific ignorance which makes so many philosophical accounts of colour worthless or worse. . . . Time and again I found myself unexpectedly convinced at a point whose opposite I had believed. I have in mind particularly the later sections on ‘Other colours, other minds’, language foci, and ‘boundaries and indeterminacy’. It is annoying, but also exhilarating, to be relieved of some stubborn and treasured opinions. --Jonathan Westphal, Mind

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Book SynopsisProvides a workable notion of the kinds of skills and capacities that are central for those who work in the arts.Trade ReviewIn a way reminiscent of Einstein, Goodman leads us to the very edge of relativism, only then to step back and to suggest certain criteria of fairness and rightness. More so than any other commentator, he has provided a workable notion of the kinds of skills and capacities that are central for anyone who works in the arts. --Howard Gardner, Harvard University

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Book SynopsisA collection of inspiring essays by the photographer Robert Adams, who advocates the meaningfulness of art in a disillusioned societyTrade Review“Robert Adams’s photo practice reoriented landscape photography to the effects of man on the environment. In the essays collected in Art Can Help he shares his responses to other photographers’ work. . . . About Terri Weifenbach’s picture of a bumblebee in flight: ‘What does the photographer help us find? First of all, astonishment.’”—William Meyers, Wall Street Journal (Holiday Gift Book selection)

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Book SynopsisFrom its use in literary theory, film criticism and the discourse of games design, Salomé Voegelin expands possible world theory' to think the worlding of sound in music, in art and in the everyday. The modal logic of possible worlds, articulated principally via David K. Lewis and developed through Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological life-worlds, creates a view on the invisible slices of the world and reflects on how to make them count, politically and aesthetically. How to make them thinkable and accessible as the possibility of the everyday and of art: to reach a new materialist understanding from the invisible and to develop an ear for the as yet inaudible. This revised edition continues Voegelin's exploration of the sonic possibility of the world into the sonic possibility and impossibility of the body. Listening to work by Áine O'Dwyer, Hannah Silva and Jocy de Oliveira, it considers sonic possible worlds' radical power to rethink normative constructions and to fabulate a difTrade ReviewSalomé Voegelin is a brilliant and subtle thinker about sound and music, so Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound, Revised Edition is a deeply explored and essential study of the necessity of listening, of openly absorbing what sound tells us of our shared world, listening which gives us access to the fluid nature of relationships and connections, to the interactive web of the world and our participation in it through awareness of this 'complex continuity' and of ourselves inextricably enmeshed within it. Salomé Voegelin generously maps many ways of practicing listening to sonic worlds and of sharing access to the ever-expanding “possible world” of sound-life, then goes further, leaping beyond our physical and conceptual limits, diving into sound we cannot hear but which affects us, becoming part of our apprehensible world and of our learning how to live within it. * Annea Lockwood, Composer and Professor Emeritus, Vassar College, USA *The first edition of this book opened up new ways of thinking about sound and listening, which seemed provocative at the time, engaging with “possible world theory,” speculating on what and how sound means without referring it to the visual, and proposing a continuum of hearing between sound art and music. In this highly anticipated and essential new edition, Voegelin thinks about bodies and presents with rigor and extraordinary clarity the way sound may open us up to the plural possibility of bodily existence. Effortlessly interlacing phenomenology, feminist and queer theories, and weaving together sound thought and practice, while remaining precise yet accessible, the author invites us to listen to our own and each other’s bodies, enjoy their transforming, hybrid and even monstrous capacities, and discover the emancipatory force of their soundings. * Mikhail Karikis, film director and Professor, MIMA School of Art & Design, Teesside University, UK *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Landscape as Sonic Possible World 2. Into the World of the Work: The Possibility of Sound Art 3. Sonic Materialism: the Sound of Stones 4. Hearing the Continuum of Sound 5. Listening to the Inaudible: the Sound of Unicorns 6. Possible and Impossible Bodies Notes Bibliography List of works Index

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Book SynopsisElizabeth Grosz argues that art—especially architecture, music, and painting—is born from the disruptive forces of sexual selection. She approaches art as a form of erotic expression connecting sensory richness with primal desire, and finds that the meaning of art comes from the intensities and sensations it inspires.Trade ReviewThis wonderful and short book... continues her recent quest of recasting Darwinian biology within a Deleuzean and Nietzschean understanding of sexual difference. -- Arun Saldanha * Environment and Planning *Beautifully written. The sentences unfold and caress you like a plume of exhaled smoke, giving the book’s emphasis on sexual attraction and the eroticism of sensation a physical force. * Comparative Literature Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments1. Chaos. Cosmos, Territory, Architecture2. Vibration. Animal, Sex, Music3. Sensation. The Earth, a People, ArtBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"What Noë shows is how that essential act of ‘making’ art is more than just an act of pleasure. . . . What it really encompasses is a radical act of inquiry into our entanglement."---Adam Frank, Big Think"[A]rt is at the heart of philosophy and the fusion of the two with a range of subjects can help us better understand what makes us human. . . .Alva Noe has introduced his thesis that is bound to generate enough debate on the antidote supplied by art and philosophy that “makes us what we are”, a state where the people, surrounded by music, art, sculpture, poetry become creative enough to break out of the codified social organisation into a more liberated and an inspirationally fulfilling life infused with the aesthetic."---Shelley Walia, The Hindu

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"One of The Atlantic's Best Books of 2018"

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsPreface to the Second Edition xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 3 The Idea of Modernity Modern Dwarfs on the Shoulders of Ancient Giants 13 The Problem of Time: Three Eras of Western History 19 It Is We Who Are the Ancients 23 Comparing the Moderns to the Ancients 26 From Modern to Gothic to Romantic to Modern 35 The Two Modernities 41 Baudelaire and the Paradoxes of Aesthetic Modernity 46 Modernity, the Death of God, and Utopia 58 Literary and Other Modernisms 68 Comparing the Moderns to the Contemporaries 86 The Idea of the Avant-Garde From Modernity to the Avant-Garde 95 The "Avant-Garde" Metaphor in the Renaissance: A Rhetorical Figure 97 The Romantic "Avant-Garde": From Politics to the Politics of Culture 100 Some Mid-Nineteenth-Century Writers and the Avant-Garde 108 Two Avant-Gardes: Attractions and Repulsions 112 Avant-Garde and Aesthetic Extremism 116 The Crisis of Avant-Garde's Concept in the 1960s 120 Avant-Garde, Dehumanization, and the End of Ideology 125 Avant-Garde and Postmodernism 132 Intellectualism, Anarchism, and Stasis 144 The Idea of Decadence Versions of Decadence 151 From "Decadence" to "Style of Decadence" 157 The Decadent Euphoria 171 Nietzsche on "Decadence" and "Modernity" 178 The Concept of Decadence in Marxist Criticism 195 Il Decadentismo 211 Kitsch Kitsch and Modernity 225 Kitsch, Camp, and High Art 229 Etymology, Contexts of Usage, and the "Law of Aesthetic Inadequacy" 232 Kitsch and Romanticism 237 Bad Taste, Ideology, and Hedonism 240 Some Stylistic Considerations 249 Kitsch and Cultural Industrialization 255 The "Kitsch-Man" 259 On Postmodernism (1986) A New Face of Modernity 265 Epistemology and Hermeneutics: From Modernity to Postmodernity 269 The Silence of the Avant-Garde 275 The Novelty of the Past: The View from Architecture 279 Critiques of Postmodernism 288 Literary Postmodernism: The Shaping of a Corpus 296 Postmodernist Devices and Their Significance 302 Notes 313 Selected Critical Bibliography 365 Index 387

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Book SynopsisAn accessible introduction to Badiou's key ideas In this short and accessible book, the French philosopher Alain Badiou provides readers with a unique introduction to his system of thought, summed up in the trilogy of Being and Event, Logics of Worlds, and The Immanence of Truths. Taking the form of an interview and two talks and keeping in mind a broad audience without any prior knowledge of his work, the book touches upon the central concepts and major preoccupations of Badiou's philosophy: fundamental ontology, mathematics, politics, poetry, and love. Well-chosen examples illuminate his thinking in regards to being and universality, worlds and singularity, and the infinite and the absolute, among other topics. A veritable tour de force of pedagogical clarity, this new student-friendly work is perhaps the single best general introduction to the work of this prolific and committed thinker. If, for Badiou, the task of philosophy consists in thinking through the truths of our time, the texts collected in this small volume could not be timelier.Trade Review"Badiou by Badiou synthesizes Badiou's key ideas with a personal touch, inviting readers into his presentation of what philosophy is and his highly original way of philosophizing. Badiou is brilliant at making anyone want to engage with philosophical questions."—Emily Apter, author of Unexceptional Politics"This book captures the latest developments in Alain Badiou's thought, while providing an excellent introduction for new readers. Badiou by Badiou, his most legible work, is a riveting tour of the domains of art, love, politics, and science."—Héctor Hoyos, author of Things with a History"Badiou proves himself again to be, like Socrates, a corrupter of the youth. With this clear entry point into his metaphysical project, Badiou demonstrates the dangerously transformative character of philosophy."—Jodi Dean, author of Comrade"As the 21st century shapes up to be all about ends, Badiou challenges us to think ab novo. This latest installment of his firebrand philosophy will ignite youth even among those who think its time has passed."—Joan Copjec, author of Imagine There's No WomanTable of ContentsPart One: Event, Truths, Subject Part Two: Philosophy Between Mathematics and Poetry Part Three: Ontology and Mathematics

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Book SynopsisOriginally delivered as the prestigious Mellon Lectures on the Fine Arts in 1995, After the End of Art remains a classic of art criticism and philosophy, and continues to generate heated debate for contending that art ended in the 1960s. Arthur Danto, one of the best-known art critics of his time, presents radical insights into art's irrevocable deTrade ReviewWinner of the 1998 Eugene M. Kayden National University Press Book Prize, University of Colorado at Boulder "If you are seriously attentive to contemporary art, you are already aware of Danto and his general positions, and owe it to yourself to read this book. If you are not, but are genuinely curious, you would do well to follow him... Throughout it is clear and direct; at best, it is brilliantly crystalline... I know of no more useful single book on art today."--Michael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun "Is Danto gloomy about the end of art? Not in the slightest... Danto is nothing if not cheered by the prospect of an art world in which everything is permitted."--Roger Copeland, Wilson Quarterly "... the need for critical works such as this one--learned, discerning and refreshingly open-minded--is perhaps greater than ever."--Publishers Weekly "In this, Dr. Danto's best book yet, he helps us make sense of the times we are living in."--Richard Dorment, The Art Newspaper "Required reading for anyone seriously interested in late-modern and contemporary art."--Library Journal "Danto was and remains the high priest of pluralism, and arch-critic of the view that art has a distinctive essence... The chapters in this book are a challenging read, but a good one, because they take us to the heart of a living and profoundly interesting contemporary debate."--A.C. Grayling, Financial Times "Danto makes a lively and stimulating case [about the end of art]... The source ... of all ths mental labor is Andy Warhol, or more precisely his Brillo box sculpture... The utter banality of the piece sent 600 years of art history crashing to the ground in ruins."--Boston Book ReviewTable of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Foreword to the Princeton Classics Edition xi Preface xvii Acknowledgments xxi CHAPTER ONE Introduction: Modern, Postmodern, and Contemporary 3 CHAPTER TWO Three Decades after the End of Art 21 CHAPTER THREE Master Narratives and Critical Principles 41 CHAPTER FOUR Modernism and the Critique of Pure Art: The Historical Vision of Clement Greenberg 61 CHAPTER FIVE From Aesthetics to Art Criticism 81 CHAPTER SIX Painting and the Pale of History: The Passing of the Pure 101 CHAPTER SEVEN Pop Art and Past Futures 117 CHAPTER EIGHT Painting, Politics, and Post-Hisotrical Art 135 CHAPTER NINE The Historical Museum of Monochrome Art 153 CHAPTER TEN Museums and the Thirsting Millions 175 CHAPTER ELEVEN Modalities of History: Possibility and Comedy 193 Index 221

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Book SynopsisObject Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. What is silence? In a series of short meditations, novelist and playwright John Biguenet considers silence as a servant of power, as a lie, as a punishment, as the voice of God, as a terrorist’s final weapon, as a luxury good, as the reason for torture—in short, as an object we both do and do not recognize. Concluding with the prospects for its future in a world burgeoning with noise, Biguenet asks whether we should desire or fear silence—or if it is even ours to choose. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.Trade ReviewWhen I realized I was making notes on memorable passages in Silence several times a page, I knew I’d found the book I’ve been needing to read. John Biguenet’s extended meditation on silence is provocative, witty, moving, and truly golden. * Valerie Martin, Orange Prize-winning novelist and author, most recently, of The Ghost of the Mary Celeste *One virtue of silence is that it enables us to contemplate a work like John Biguenet’s ever-fascinating new book. One virtue of his book—one of many—is that it does not go overboard in treating silence as a virtue. * Garret Keizer, author of The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want *Taking us from the ancient world to Houston's Rothko Chapel to outer space, John Biguenet gives us a surprisingly boisterous tour of silence, stillness, and calm. Biguenet takes a space that looks at first glance like it is empty, as if it were, actually, defined by its emptiness, and he fills it with his erudition, his wisdom, his warmth, and his wit. We are lucky to spend this time rapt at his feet, to take all of this in. * Jessa Crispin, editor-in-chief Booklust and author of The Dead Ladies Project *What makes [Silence] stand out is the way this silence retreats, fails to materialize as such. The book unfolds as a failed or botched detective story: the search for silence, for a state that defies the human. Written in the form of a memoir or notes to and from one self to others… [Silence] ends as [Biguenet] leafs through a National Geographic, reads an article on noise pollution at sea and its catastrophic effects on the social life of whales. ‘What is the future of silence,’ he asks? ‘More lonely whales,’ he fears. It’s enough to make you never want to speak again. -- Julian Yates * Los Angeles Review of Books *Biguenet examines how we define silence, how we seek silence, how we sell silence, and how silence relates to things such as reading, the stage, secrets, and even dolls. He talks about how true silence is virtually unachievable in the modern world and how people become disoriented in pure silence. ... At the end of Silence, Biguenet contemplates the future. As he writes amidst noise and commotion, the "hum" of the modern world as he describes it, he read a National Geographic article about whales and how passing ships disrupt their ability to communicate with one another. Their ‘silence’ is broken. Thus, we are left to consider how silence or lack thereof impacts not only us but the entire ecosystem around us. It's a poignant reminder that in the modern world, with its hectic pace and ever present noise, sometimes what we most need is the one thing we can't seem to get. * Frank Valish, Under the Radar *Object Lessons’ describes themselves as ‘short, beautiful books,’ and to that, I'll say, amen. … [I]t is in this simplicity that we find insight and even beauty. … Silence by John Biguenet … explores whether it's possible — or indeed if we would want — to experience true ‘silence.’ … If you read enough ‘Object Lessons’ books, you'll fill your head with plenty of trivia to amaze and annoy your friends and loved ones — caution recommended on pontificating on the objects surrounding you. More importantly, though, in the tradition of McPhee's Oranges, they inspire us to take a second look at parts of the everyday that we've taken for granted. These are not so much lessons about the objects themselves, but opportunities for self-reflection and storytelling. They remind us that we are surrounded by a wondrous world, as long as we care to look. * Chicago Tribune *Biguenet goes on to deal with our responses to tragedy, terror and crime, the relationship of children with toys and pets, Freud's views on the uncanny, gender roles in asking of questions and giving of advice … and many other facets as he shows how silence is an integral part of our lives, even in ways we could have never imagined. * Business Standard, India *We inevitably fall into a sense of wonder in the first pages of the book. * T24 *Table of ContentsI What Is Silence? II Selling Silence Seeking Silence Silence Versus Solitude Voluntary Silences III The Representation of Silence Silent Reading Silence on Stage The Unspeakable IV The Silenced Moment The Silence of Dolls Silencing Silence and Secrets V The Future of Silence

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Book SynopsisEd Simon is editor of Belt Magazine and emeritus staff writer at The Millions. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Paris Review Daily, The Public Domain Review, The Hedgehog Review, JSTOR Daily, McSweeney's, Jacobin, The New Republic, Religion Dispatches, Killing the Buddha, and The Washington Post, among dozens of others. He is the author of over a dozen books, including Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology.

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Book SynopsisExplores abstraction as a keyword in aesthetic modernism and in critical thinking since Marx

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Book SynopsisThere is no end of talk and of wondering about ''art'' and ''the arts.'' This book examines a number of questions about the arts (broadly defined to include all of the arts). Some of these questions come from philosophy. Examples include: What makes something art? Can anything be art? Do we experience real emotions from the arts? Why do we seek out and even cherish sorrow and fear from art when we go out of our way to avoid these very emotions in real life? How do we decide what is good art? Do aesthetic judgments have any objective truth value? Why do we devalue fakes even if we -- indeed, even the experts--- can''t tell them apart from originals? Does fiction enhance our empathy and understanding of others? Is art-making therapeutic? Others are common sense questions that laypersons wonder about. Examples include: Does learning to play music raise a child''s IQ? Is modern art something my kid could do? Is talent a matter of nature or nurture? This book examines puzzles about the arts wherever their provenance - as long as there is empirical research using the methods of social science (interviews, experimentation, data collection, statistical analysis) that can shed light on these questions. The examined research reveals how ordinary people think about these questions, and why they think the way they do - an inquiry referred to as intuitive aesthetics. The book shows how psychological research on the arts has shed light on and often offered surprising answers to such questions.Trade ReviewThis shift from philosophical analysis to a robust empirical approach of experiment and observation is the starting point of this book, which is a fascinating account of social scientists' investigations of art through interviews, experiments, data collection, and statistical analysis. Winner touches on a variety of topics ranging from music and emotion, fiction and empathy, the Mozart effect, and perfect fakes and forgeries, to Hockney's theory of optical aids, effort bias, artistic prodigies, deliberate practice and talent, and our curious enjoyment of negative emotions. Recommended for all readers. * Choice *In this thoughtful, judicious, and fascinating book, you'll find our best current answers to all the questions that thinking people ask about art, including what it is, what makes it great, whether it is universal, why we make and enjoy it, and whether it is good for us. How Art Works will be the place to look for knowledge on how art works for years to come. * Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works and Enlightenment Now *Never have the links between the world of the arts and the sciences of the mind been so carefully and fruitfully drawn as they are in Winner's new book. * David Olson, University Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto *Table of ContentsTable of Contents Acknowledgments I. INTRODUCTION 1. Perennial Questions 2. Can This Be Art? II. ART AND EMOTION 3. Wordless Sounds: Hearing Emotion in Music 4. Feeling Like Crying: Emotions in the Music Listener 5. Color and Form: Emotional Connotations of Visual Art 6. Emotions in the Art Museum: Why Don't We Feel Like Crying? 7. Drawn to Pain: The Paradoxical Enjoyment of Negative Emotion in Art III. ART AND JUDGMENT 8. Is It Good-Or Just Familiar? 9. Too Easy to Be Good? The Effort Bias 10. Identical! What's Wrong with a Perfect Fake? 11. "But My Kid Could Have Done That!" IV. WHAT ART DOES - AND DOES NOT - DO FOR US 12. Silver Bullets: Does Art Make Us Smarter? 13. The Lives of Others: Fiction and Empathy 14. Does Making Art Improve Well-Being? V. MAKING ART 15. Who Makes Art and Why? VI. CONCLUSION 16. How Art Works Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisWhat is wrong with discriminating on the basis of personal appearance? Andrew Mason considers this question in three contents: employment decisions; the choice of friends or romantic partners; and the everyday practice of judging and commenting upon people's looks.Table of Contents1: Introduction Part One What Makes Discrimination Wrong? 2: Non-contingent wrongness 3: Contingent wrongness PART II Contexts of Appearance Discrimination 4: Appearance, race, and employment 5: Appearance as a reaction qualification 6: Appearance and personal relationships 7: Everyday lookism Part Three Responding to Appearance Discrimination 8: Prevention 9: Compensation and beyond Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAesthetics has long been the preserve of philosophy, art history, and the creative arts but, more recently, the fields of psychology and neuroscience have entered the discussion, and the field of neuroaesthetics has been born.In Brain, Beauty, and Art, leading scholars in this nascent field reflect on the promise of neuroaesthetics to enrich our understanding of this universal yet diverse facet of human experience. The volume consists of essays from foundational researchers whose empirical work launched the field. Each essay is anchored to an original, peer-reviewed paper from the short history of this new and burgeoning subdiscipline of cognitive neuroscience. Authors of each essay were asked three questions: 1) What motivated the original paper? 2) What were the main findings or theoretical claims made? and, 3) How do those findings or claims fit with the current state and anticipated near future of neuroaesthetics? Together, these essays establish the territory and current boundaries of neuroaesthetics and identify its most promising future directions. Topics include models of neuroaesthetics, and discussions of beauty, art, dance, music, literature, and architecture. Brain, Beauty, and Art will inform and stimulate anyone with an abiding interest in why it is that, across time and culture, we respond to beauty, engage with art, and are affected by music and architecture.Trade ReviewFor anyone wishing to learn about the basic constructs and findings of the new field of experimental neuroaesthetics, this is a must-read book and one destined to advance the field. Each chapter is a gem-a brief and highly readable commentary on a pioneering article in which the author(s) of the article explain their motivating hypotheses and reflect on where the field was then, where it is going, and where it should be going. * Ellen Winner, Professor Emerita, Boston College, and author of How Art Works: A Psychological Exploration (OUP, 2019) and An Uneasy Guest in the Schoolhouse: Art Education from Colonial Times to a Promising Future (OUP, 2022) *A landmark publication for a burgeoning, new discipline, Brain, Beauty, and Art offers much of interest for the scholar, scientist, and general reader on a subject of enduring fascination to us all. Edited by pioneers in the field of neuroaesthetics, this comprehensive volume brings together the most important and consequential research while also providing a compelling account of why the love of beauty in all of the forms is an essential part of what it means to be human. * Daniel H Weiss, President and CEO, The Metropolitan Museum of Art *Dr. Chatterjee is a pioneer in neuroaesthetics - not only because of his enduring and cutting-edge body of academic research, but also because of his ability to bring together experts from disparate fields, build on their own findings and insights, and weave a cohesive and compelling narrative on the field. His latest book, Brain, Beauty, and Art, offers the world's most comprehensive view on this burgeoning field, including what it is, how it affects human behavior, and why it matters. After reading his book, I'm sure you'll agree it matters now more than ever! * Pauline Brown, Former Chair of LVMH North America & Author of Aesthetic Intelligence *Table of ContentsForeword. Where have we been and where are now? A Chatterjee, E Cardlillo Frameworks 1. An early framework for a cognitive neuroscience of visual aesthetics. A Chatterjee 2. Bringing it all together: neurological and neuroimaging evidence of the neural underpinnings of visual aesthetic. M Nadal, CJ Cela-Conde 3. But, what actually happens when we engage with art? M Pelowski, H Leder 4. Naturalizing aesthetics. Steven Brown 5. Moving towards emotions in the aesthetic experience. C Di Dio and V Gallese 6. The aesthetic triad. O Vartanian and A Chatterjee 7. How neuroimaging is transforming our understanding of aesthetic taste. M Skov 8. The cognitive neuroscience of aesthetic experience. M Nadal and M Pearce Beauty 9. Facial beauty and the medial orbitofrontal cortex. JP O'Doherty, RJ. Dolan 10. Beautiful people in the brain of the beholder. A Chatterjee 11. The mark of villainy: the connection between appearance and perceived morality. F Hartung 12. A quest for beauty. T Jacobsen 13. Scene preferences, aesthetic appeal and curiosity: revisiting the neurobiology of the infovore. EA Vessel, X Yue, I Biederman 14. Kinds of beauty and the prefrontal cortex. T Pegors 15. Expertise and aesthetic liking. M Skov & U Kirk 16. Social meaning brings beauty: neural response to the beauty of abstract Chinese characters. X He and W Zhang Art 17. The contributions of emotion and reward to aesthetic judgment of visual art. O Vartanian 18. Embodiment and the aesthetic experience of images. V Gallese, D Freedberg, M Alessandra Umiltà 19. The role of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortices in aesthetic valuation. E Munar & CJ Cela-Conde 20. The role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in aesthetic appreciation. M Nadal, Z Cattaneo, and CJ Cela-Conde 21. Is artistic composition in abstract art detected automatically? C Menzel, G Kovács, GU Hayn-Leichsenring, C Redies 22. The contribution of visual area V5 to the perception of implied motion in art and its appreciation. M Nadal and Z Cattaneo 23. Art Is Its own reward. S Lacey, K Sathian 24. Imaging the subjective. EA Vessel, GG Starr 25. Cultural neuroaesthetics of delicate sadness induced by Noh masks. N Osaka 26. Towards a computational understanding of neuroaesthetics. K Iigaya and JP O'Doherty 27. Artists, artworks, aesthetics, cognition. WP Seeley 28. Aesthetic liking is not only driven by object properties, but also by your expectations. M Skov, U Kirk 29. Finding mutual interest between neuroscience and aesthetics: a brush with reality? AJ Parker 30. What can we learn about art from people with neurological disease? A Chatterjee Music 31. Chills, Bets, And Dopamine: a journey Into music reward. L Ferreri, J Riba, R Zatorre, A Rodriguez-Fornells 32. Why does music evoke strong emotions? Testing the endogenous opioid hypothesis. DJ Levitin and LA Fleming 33. Music in all its beauty: adopting the naturalistic paradigm to uncover brain processes during the aesthetic musical experience. E Brattico and V Alluri 34. Investigating musical emotions in people with unilateral brain damage. AM Belfi, A Pralus, C Hirel, D Tranel, B Tillmann*, A Caclin* Language and Literature 35. The neurocognitive poetics model of literary reading 10 years after. AM Jacobs 36. The power of poetry. E Wassiliwizky, W Menninghaus 37. Pictograph portrays what it is: neural response to the beauty of concrete Chinese characters. X He and W Zhang Dance 38. Movement, synchronization, and partnering in dance. S Brown 39. Dance, expertise and sensorimotor aesthetics. B Calvo-Merino 40. An eye for the impossible: exploring the attraction of physically impressive dance movements. ES Cross 41. The mind, the brain and the moving body: dance as a topic in cognitive neuroscience. B Blaesing, B Calvo-Merino 42. Training effects on affective perception of body movements. LP Kirsch, ES Cross Architecture 43. The neuroaesthetics of architecture. O Vartanian 44. Architectural styles as subordinate scene categories. DB Walther 45. Architectural affordances: linking action, perception, and cognition. Z Djebbara, K Gramann 46. Architectural design and the mind. A Coburn Afterword. Where are we now and where are we going? A Chatterjee, E Cardlillo

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Book SynopsisMurray Smith presents an original approach to understanding film. He brings the arts, humanities, and sciences together to illuminate artistic creation and aesthetic experience. His 'third culture' approach roots itself in an appreciation of scientific innovation and how this has shaped the moving media.Trade Review[A] fascinating insider's tour of a third research culture at a crossroads of the humanities and natural sciences...No matter where its seeds fall and germinate, the book is a landmark development in the growing relation between aesthetic philosophy, moving image studies, and cognitive-scientific theories of cinema and other arts. * Trevor Ponech, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *What Smith is calling for...[is] a truer form interdisciplinarity - not the humanities-only kind that might bring together, say, philosophy and film theory, but the much broader sort interdisciplinarity that bridges the gap between the two cultures by bringing together neuroscience and film theory, or evolutionary science and film history, or ecological ideas of niche construction and ideas of cinematic empathy... [a work of] magisterial authority. * David Andrews, Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture *Murray Smith's Film, Art, and the Third Culture: A Naturalized Aesthetics of Film is a powerful intellectual force whose impact will be difficult to reckon due to the depth of its analysis and breadth of its scope...[one of] the most influential publication[s] of the new century so far...a work which is truly revolutionary in insight, method, and scope. * Rafe McGregor, Four by Three *[Smith's] book offers a thorough and nuanced theoretical account of emotions in relation to film art, and then develops this into an eloquent, convincing and deeply satisfying critical and metacritical exploration, which one feels could not have been got to without the help of the science...[Smith] pulls off the rare feat of demonstrating that a naturalistically informed approach can indeed make us not only better theorists, but better appreciators and interpreters. * James Zborowski, Screen *Murray Smith's latest book just might be the shiniest example of what C.P. Snow hoped for when he first urged scientists and humanists to work together...Smith's ability to provide a naturalistic explanation of [a wide range of cognitive and emotional] capacities, all the while keeping his discussion in line with philosophically interesting issues, is outstanding, but what marks this book as a breakthrough is its author's success in unveiling the relevance of these capacities in one's experience of art...[Smith] exemplifies how scientific approaches to art can go hand in hand with art criticism...[he] is to be congratulated for the massive amount of information he has put together, and for the clear, engaging way of presenting them and explaining them. All things considered, [Smith]'s book is an enjoyable read, intellectually stimulating, (meta)philosophically intriguing, aesthetically rewarding, and scientifically exemplary. * Iris Vidmar, Philosophy in Review *...every now and again our community produces excellent research which brings some of the most recent experimental information directly to bear on the questions that we care most about: how we experience art, what sets aesthetic experience apart from other kinds of experience, why art matters to us. Smith's [Film, Art, and the Third Culture is a highly valuable contribution] not just to these concerns, but also to the metaphilosophy of aesthetics, that is to say, to how we as philosophers should think about the relations between...different approaches, and exactly which elements of our psychology can be fruitful to specific debates in philosophical aesthetics. * Elisabeth Schellekens, Estetika *Smith [has] given us arich and interesting [work] about the relationships between aesthetics and the sciences of mind. [Smith] addresses the relations among experiential, psychological, and neuroscientific understandings of a wide range of aesthetically relevant phenomena, particularly as they occur in film...[making a] valuable contribution to a project that remains fledgling: that of taking seriously the relevance of the sciences to our conceptions and explanations of experiential phenomena in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. * Sherri Irvin, Estetika *Smith's writing demonstrates considerable skill in its integration of informed scientific explanation, philosophical review, and application of a wide range of film examples — from classical and contemorary Hollywood as well as from European and Asian art cinema — with surprisingly productive comparisons such as between Ozu Yasujiro's The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice (1952) and the works of Stan Brakhage. I cannot tell film theorists what to read, and even if could, why would they listen to a philosopher? But I want film theorists to pick up this book because it offers them new and rich resources for reflecting on their practices and has just the right tone to solicit the reader's collaboration. Film, Art, and the Third Culture initiates a dialogue between natural scientists, philosophers, and film theorists, one that I very much hope will continue. * Katherine Thomson-Jones, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I - Building the Third Culture 1: Aesthetics Naturalized 2: Triangulating Aesthetic Experience 3: The Engine of Reason and the Pit of Naturalism 4: Papaya, Pomegranates, and Green Tea Part II - Science and Sentiment 5: Who's Afraid of Charles Darwin? 6: What Difference Does it Make? 7: Empathy, Expansionism, and the Extended Mind 8: Feeling Prufish Conclusion: The Art and Science of Emotion

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Book SynopsisRodowick takes after the theories of Hannah Arendt and argues that thinking is an art we practice with and for each other in our communities. In An Education in Judgment, philosopher D. N. Rodowick makes the definitive case for a philosophical humanistic education aimed at the cultivation of a life guided by both self-reflection and interpersonal exchange. Such a life is an education in judgment, the moral capacity to draw conclusions alone and with others, and letting one's own judgments be answerable to the potentially contrasting judgments of others. Thinking, for Rodowick, is an art we practice with and learn from each other on a daily basis. In taking this approach, Rodowick follows the lead of Hannah Arendt, who made judgment the cornerstone of her conception of community. What is important for Rodowick, as for Arendt, is the cultivation of free relations, in which we allow our judgments to be affected and transformed by those of others, creating an ever-widening fabric ofTrade Review"In An Education in Judgment: Hannah Arendt and the Humanities, D.N. Rodowick draws on Hannah Arendt’s writings on judgment to make the case for a philosophy of the humanities grounded in self-reflection and interpersonal exchange. This innovative and plausible thesis of an education in judgment as the unifying element of the humanities will likely trigger fruitful debate." * LSE Review of Books *“Arendt’s reflections on judgment, thinking, moral action, and political courage show that she was not a system builder and was not interested in offering axioms by which to rearrange the world. Yet in following her train of thought, we experience the illuminating force of her insights.” * New York Review of Books *“A fresh look at Arendt’s philosophy on thinking and judgment [applied] to the current ‘crisis’ in the humanities.” * Choice *“The question of the value of education and research in the humanities is a perennial topic of academic debate . . . Few thinkers have done more to bring clarity to these debates than [Rodowick]." * The Review of Politics *"Convincing and illuminating. [Rodowick's] defense of the political importance of an education in the humanities is a beautifully written and insightful attestation to the lasting political relevance and remarkable fecundity of Hannah Arendt’s legacy." * Theory and Research in Education *"Rodowick seeks to show that Arendt’s analysis of judgment is not only a highly original but also a plausible reading of Kant, which goes against the dominant view in scholarship that Arendt committed quite a radical interpretative violence on Kant’s writings. This is not simply a question about the 'correct' interpretation of Kant but about the connections between thinking, which is an activity done in solitude and is essentially a dialogue of the 'two-in-one' within the self; judgment, which involves 'visiting' in our imagination the standpoints from which others see the world; and deliberation and action in the public sphere, which is done with others. . . . What emerges from this reading is a broader project Arendt was engaged with: the attempt to offer an alternative potential relationship between philosophy and politics." * German Studies Review *“In this elegantly crafted book, Rodowick offers a powerful defense of humanistic education. These pages resound both with Rodowick’s own voice and with the voice of his constant interlocutor, Hannah Arendt, as he works out, in spirited agreement and thoughtful disagreement with her, a philosophically rich account (which is also a model) of the conversations on which the human faculty of judgment depends.” * Patchen Markell, Cornell University *“An Education in Judgment is a challenging and substantial contribution to Arendt scholarship and a major new work of critical self-reflection on the humanities by one of the field’s leading proponents. Rodowick offers an illuminating reexamination of a cluster of texts written in the last decade of Arendt’s life, illustrating their interconnectedness, probing their difficulties, and arguing for their compelling contemporary relevance.” * Thomas Bartscherer, Bard College *“For readers familiar with now longstanding laments about the ‘crisis of the humanities’, An Education in Judgment is a breath of fresh air. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's evocative writings on aesthetics and politics, Rodowick brilliantly charts a new way forward on well-travelled terrain. The fate of the humanities lies not in shoring up what is left of the canon but in developing wholly quotidian practices of critical thinking and judging. Rooted in the ordinary capacities of all citizens, the humanities become a world-building activity that takes account of plurality and different perspectives on a common world. Recognizing with Arendt the crucial importance of publicity, this book breaks free of narrow academic debates and offers a public vision of the humanities as an imaginative space for creating a new genre of the human, not as telos but as open-ended future.” * Linda M. G. Zerilli, University of Chicago *Table of ContentsPreface I The Art of Thinking II Judgment and Culture III Culture and Curation IV The World-Observer V Politics and Philosophy, or Restoring a Common World VI An as Yet Undetermined Animal Acknowledgments Index

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Book SynopsisMusing in Florence in June of 1858, Nathaniel Hawthorne said of himself, I am sensible that a process is going onand has been, ever since I came to Italythat puts me in a state to see pictures with less toil, and more pleasure, and makes me more fastidious, yet more sensible of beauty where I saw none before.This is a book devoted to the reflective analysis of the enterprise in which many of us, like Hawthorne, find ourselves engaged: the cultivation of our taste. Charles Wegener writes for and from the standpoint of thoughtful amateurs, those who, loving the beautiful and the sublime, wish to become more fully the sort of person to whom these goods reliably disclose themselves. Here traditional aesthetic analysis is redirected to a search for the norms that tell us how we use our intelligence, our imagination, and our senses in becoming more fastidious, yet more sensible, exploring such concepts as disinterestedness, catholicity, communicability, austerity, objectivity, and authority.

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Book SynopsisAn argument that Modernism is a cognitive phenomenon rather than a cultural one.At the beginning of the twentieth century, poetry, music, and painting all underwent a sea change. Poetry abandoned rhyme and meter; music ceased to be tonally centered; and painting no longer aimed at faithful representation. These artistic developments have been attributed to cultural factors ranging from the Industrial Revolution and the technical innovation of photography to Freudian psychoanalysis. In this book, Samuel Jay Keyser argues that the stylistic innovations of Western modernism reflect not a cultural shift but a cognitive one. Behind modernism is the same cognitive phenomenon that led to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century: the brain coming up against its natural limitations. Keyser argues that the transformation in poetry, music, and painting (the so-called sister arts) is the result of the abandonment of a natural aesthetic based on a set of rules shared be

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Book SynopsisExplores the late medieval concepts of absence and void, with a special focus on the materiality of emptiness in later medieval manuscripts. Trade Review“With a Midas-like touch, Elina Gertsman has a gift for turning her every subject into scholarly gold. The Absent Image is no exception.”—Brigitte Buettner Studies in Iconography“Gertsman makes a convincing argument, and at times shows a wonderful novelistic sensibility in describing the micro-dramas on display.”—Times Literary Supplement“Elina Gertsman’s The Absent Image is a rarefied treat for connoisseurs – a kind of apophatic art history. She explores a phenomenon that is seldom studied: the voids, gaps and empty frames that manuscript artists used to represent the unrepresentable.”—Barbara Newman London Review of Books“The book is amusing and thought-provoking in the best sense, and the lavish illustrations create much food for thought, not out of nothing but from a wealth of varied examples.”—Thomas Rainer CAA.Reviews“Gertsman’s book is absolutely brilliant, a paragon of scholarship to be held up as a model to students and colleagues alike.”—Lauren Mancia Medieval Review“This is an intellectually ambitious, rigorously argued, and erudite book that explores visual strategies and their theoretical underpinnings of ‘empty spaces’ in medieval manuscripts. A must-read for scholars of medieval and northern Renaissance art and intellectual history.”—Nino Zchomelidse,author of Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity in Medieval Southern Italy“This is one of the most original books I have read—original in its conception and subject, in the materials studied and illustrated, in the numerous questions posed, and in its compelling conclusions. It is a potentially paradigm-shifting work that will affect how we perceive illustrated manuscripts and that should finally put to rest for art historians the ‘intentional fallacy’ long rejected by literary historians.”—Richard K. Emmerson,author of Apocalypse Illuminated: The Visual Exegesis of Revelation in Medieval Illustrated Manuscripts

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Book SynopsisThis edited collection sets forth a new understanding of aesthetic-moral judgment organized around three key concepts: pleasure, reflection, and accountability. The overarching theme is that art is not merely a representation or expression like any other, but that it promotes shared moral understanding and helps us engage in meaning-making. This volume offers an alternative to brain-centric and realist approaches to aesthetics. It features original essays from a number of leading philosophers of art, aesthetics, ethics, and perception, including Elizabeth Burns Coleman, Garrett Cullity, Cynthia A. Freeland, Ivan Gaskell, Paul Guyer, Jane Kneller, Keith Lehrer, Mohan Matthen, Jennifer A. McMahon, Bence Nanay, Nancy Sherman, and Robert Sinnerbrink.Part I of the book analyses the elements of aesthetic experiencepleasure, preference, and imaginationwith the individual conceived as part of a particular cultural context and network of other minds. The chaptTable of ContentsIntroduction: From Pleasures to Principles Jennifer A. McMahonPart I: Aesthetic Elements: Pleasure, Preference, and Imagination1. New Prospects for Aesthetic Hedonism Mohan Matthen2. From Colour to Meaning in Contemporary Art Cynthia A. Freeland3. Against Aesthetic Judgments Bence Nanay4. Imagination Jennifer A. McMahonPart II: Aesthetic Experience: Critique, Expression, and Reflection5. Art, Exemplars and Consensus Keith Lehrer6. Objectivity and Shared Experience: Art and Morality Garrett Cullity7. Dancers and Soldiers Sharing the Dance Floor: Emotional Expression in Dance Nancy Sherman8. Twofoldness, Threefoldness and Aesthetic Pluralism Paul GuyerPart III: Aesthetic Judgment: Dissonance, Difference, and Diversity9. Aesthetic Judgment and the Transcultural Apprehension of Material Things Ivan Gaskell10. Cross-Cultural Aesthetics and Etiquette Elizabeth Burns Coleman11. Emotional Engagement and Moral Evaluation: Exploring Cinematic Ethics Robert Sinnerbrink12. Aesthetics and Communication Jane Kneller

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Book SynopsisThis book brings together philosophers, literary theorists, and art historians to argue for the philosophical significance of Michael Fried’s art history and criticism. Fried’s analyses of absorption and theatricality throw new light on problems in aesthetics, as well as questions surrounding authenticity, scepticism, modernity, and politics.Trade Review"This exemplary collection brings together philosophers, art historians, and literary scholars to shed light on the vast range of work by Michael Fried, and the relevance of Fried's work to philosophy . . . [It] opens an authentic, valuable dialogue between art and philosophy. Summing Up: Essential." – CHOICE Reviews"This is a superb set of essays on the writing of Michael Fried . . . Every essay is lucid, scholarly, meticulously crafted, detailed and acute in a way worthy of Fried's virtuoso and philosophically subtle approach to the history of art." – Notre Dame Philosophical ReviewsTable of ContentsIntroduction: Michael Fried and PhilosophyMathew Abbott1. Modernism and the Discovery of FinitudeMathew Abbott 2. "When I raise my arm": Michael Fried’s Theory of ActionWalter Benn Michaels3. Why Does Photography Matter as Art Now, as Never Before? On Fried and IntentionRobert Pippin4. Schiller, Schopenhauer, FriedDavid Wellbery5. Deep Relationality and the Hinge-like Structure of History: Michael Fried’s PhotographsStephen Mulhall6. Becoming MediumStephen Melville7. Formulism and the Appearance of NatureRichard Moran8. Michael Fried, Theatricality, and the Threat of SkepticismPaul J. Gudel9. Michael Fried’s IntentionalityRex Butler10. On the (So-Called) Problem of Detail: Michael Fried, Roland Barthes, and Roger Scruton on Photography and IntentionalityDiarmuid Costello11. The Aesthetics of AbsorbtionMagdalena Ostas12. Grace and Equality, Fried and Rancière (and Kant)Knox Peden13. Diderot’s Conception of Aesthetic Subjectivity and the Possibility of ArtAndrew Kern14. The Promise of the Present: Michael Fried’s Poetry NowJennifer Ashton15. Constantin Constantius Goes to the TheaterMichael Fried

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Book SynopsisEngineering has always been a part of human life but has only recently become the subject matter of systematic philosophical inquiry. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering presents the state-of-the-art of this field and lays a foundation for shaping future conversations within it. With a broad scholarly scope and 55 chapters contributed by both established experts and fresh voices in the field, the Handbook provides valuable insights into this dynamic and fast-growing field. The volume focuses on central issues and debates, established themes, and new developments in: Foundational perspectives Engineering reasoning Ontology Engineering design processes Engineering activities and methods Values in engineering Responsibilities in engineering practice Reimagining engineering Trade Review"This is an amazing collection! Not only is it the first book of its kind, defining the territory of the new and rapidly developing field of philosophy of engineering, it contains chapters by a truly international and multidisciplinary group of scholars. The compilation is rich and exciting, and very timely."Deborah G. Johnson, Anne Shirley Carter Olsson Professor of Applied Ethics Emeritus, University of Virginia"Neelke Doorn and Diane Michelfelder have curated an impressive body of works that turn the clarifying and critical lens of philosophy upon engineering. This volume begins to reveal the depths of an essential human enterprise, one that philosophers for too long treated as a superficial craft rather than what it is: a creative endeavor of social imagination in action."Shannon Vallor, Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh"Traditional philosophy of technology largely ignores engineers and engineering, but The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering takes engineers, their methods, their responsibilities, and their future seriously with a world-class collection of spot-on papers sure to stimulate your reflection. Beg, borrow, or steal this volume and start treating the humans and human activity of engineering in a philosophically serious way, today."David E. Goldberg, Professor Emeritus, University of IllinoisTable of ContentsIntroduction I: Foundational Perspectives 1. What Is Engineering? 2. A Brief History of Engineering 3. Western Philosophical Approaches and Engineering 4. Eastern Philosophical Approaches and Engineering 5. What Is Engineering Science? 6. Scientific Methodology in the Engineering Sciences II: Engineering Reasoning 7. Engineering Design and the Quest for Optimality 8. Prescriptive Engineering Knowledge 9. Engineering as Art and the Art of Engineering 10. Creativity and Discovery in Engineering 11. Uncertainty 12. Scenarios 13. Systems Engineering as Engineering Philosophy 14. Assessing Provenance and Bias in Big Data III: Ontology 15. Artifacts 16. Engineering Objects 17. Use Plans 18. Function in Engineering 19. Emergence in Engineering 20. Towards an Ontology of Innovation: On the New, the Political-Economic Dimension and the Intrinsic Risks Involved in Innovation Processes IV: Engineering Design Processes 21. Engineering Design 22. Values and Design 23. Design Methods and Validation 24. Human-Centred Design and its Inherent Ethical Qualities 25. Sustainable Design 26. Maintenance V: Engineering Activities and Methods 27. Measurement 28. Models in Engineering and Design 29. Scale Modeling 30. Computer Simulations 31. Experimentation 32. On Verification and Validation in Engineering VI: Values in Engineering 33. Values in Risk and Safety Assessment 34. Engineering and Sustainability: Control and Care in Unfoldings of Modernity 35. The Role of Resilience in Engineering 36. Trust in Engineering 37. Aesthetics 38. Health 39. Philosophy of Security Engineering VII: Responsibilities in Engineering Practice 40. Ethical Considerations in Engineering 41. Autonomy in Engineering 42. Standards in Engineering 43. Professional Codes of Ethics 44. Responsibilities to the Public—Professional Engineering Societies 45. Engineering as a Political Practice 46. Global Engineering Ethics 47. Engineering Practice and Engineering Policy: The Narrative Form of Engineering Policy Advice VIII: Reimagining Engineering 48. Feminist Engineering and Gender 49. Socially Responsible Engineering 50. Engineering and Social Justice 51. Engineering and Environmental Justice 52. Beyond Traditional Engineering: Green, Humanitarian, Social Justice, and Omnium Approaches 53. Engineering and Contemporary Continental Philosophy of Technology 54. Engineering Practice from the Perspective of Methodical Constructivism and Culturalism 55. Reimagining the Future of Engineering

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Book SynopsisWhat stands behind the propensity to remember victims of mass atrocities by their personal names? Grounded in ethnographic and archival research with Last Address and Memorial, one of the oldest independent archives of Soviet political repressions in Moscow and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the book examines a version of archival activism that is centred on various practices of documentation and commemoration of many dead victims of historical violence in Russia to understand what kind of historicity is produced when a single name is added to an endless list. What do acts of accumulation of names of the dead affirm when they are concretised in monuments and performance events? The key premise is that multimodal inscriptions of names of the dead entail a political, aesthetic and conceptual movement between singularity and multitude that honours each dead name yet conveys the scale of a mass atrocity without reducing it to a number. Drawing on anthropo

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