Philosophy: aesthetics Books

Book SynopsisWhat is art''s relationship to play? Those interested in this question tend to look to modern philosophy for answers, but, as this book shows, the question was already debated in antiquity by luminaries like Plato and Aristotle. Over the course of eight chapters, this book contextualizes those debates, and demonstrates their significance for theoretical problems today. Topics include the ancient child psychology at the root of the ancient Greek word for ''play'' (paidia), the numerous toys that have survived from antiquity, and the meaning of play''s conceptual opposite, the ''serious'' (spoudaios).What emerges is a concept of play markedly different from the one we have inherited from modernity. Play is not a certain set of activities which unleashes a certain feeling of pleasure; it is rather a certain feeling of pleasure that unleashes the activities we think of as ''play''. As such, it offers a new set of theoretical challenges.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1. The Pais of Paizō: children, intoxication, and play in ancient psycho-physiology; 2. Why Plato needs play; 3. Plato's play and the tragic paradox; 4. What do pleasure-objects do? An inquiry into toys; 5. Aristotle's demotion of play; 6. Play vs. mimesis in Aristotle's aesthetics; 7. Serious play as goal-oriented play; 8. The value of serious things before and after death; Conclusions: toward a pleasure-model of play; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisThe Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice investigates the widely debated, deeply flawed yet influential concept of the uncanny through the lens of feminist theory and contemporary art practice. Not merely a subversive strategy but a cipher of the fraught but fertile dialogue between feminism and psychoanalysis, the uncanny makes an ideal vehicle for an arrangement marked by ambivalence and acts as a constant reminder that feminism and psychoanalysis are never quite at home with one another.The Feminist Uncanny begins by charting the uncanniness of femininity in foundational psychoanalytic texts by Ernst Jentsch, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and Mladen Dolar, and contextually introduces a range of feminist responses and appropriations by Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Sarah Kofman, among others. The book also offers thematically organised interpretations of famous artworks and practices informed by feminism, including Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, Faith RinTrade ReviewA powerful feminist critique of not only the home, but a number of borders and boundaries. -- Oxford Art JournalThe Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice provides a much needed remedy of the Freudian uncanny for a feminist art history. Kokoli’s intertextual coupling of ‘woman’ and the ‘unhomely’ unhinges the uncanny from castration and propagates it in a novel series of ‘domestic’ spheres in work by women artists and collectives. Whether in the postal art of Feministo or the paraconceptualism of Susan Hiller, Kokoli’s feminist uncanny transforms homelessness into a home which is strange, subversive and revels in its ambivalence. The Feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice is set to become a core curriculum text. -- Maria Walsh, Senior Lecturer in Art History and Theory, University of the Arts London, UKThis book is an essential reading for anyone interested in the productive yet troubling collaboration and contradictions between feminism and the theoretical apparatus of psychoanalysis. Kokoli proposes the feminist uncanny as the site of this critical encounter, exploring the multiple definitions of the concept and offering new readings of prominent feminist artworks as well as less well known projects. -- Mo Throp, Researcher and PhD Supervisor, University of the Arts London, UKIn The Feminist Uncanny, Alexandra Kokoli brings the psychoanalytic and political registers of domestic space into tension through a new dialogue of the uncanny with feminist artistic practices. Offering the reader deeper insights into the unsettling nature inherent in such practices of resistance and liberation, Kokoli makes an important original contribution to contemporary feminist scholarship. -- August Jordan Davis, Senior Research Fellow, University of Southampton, UKIn this fascinating book, Alexandra Kokoli pursues the thread of the ‘uncanny’, taking it from Freud through interlocking and mutually interrogating layers of theory, to reveal its potential in feminist fine art. The heterogeneous range of art work engaged with enables Kokoli to expose and examine the broader, subversive significance of the ‘feminist uncanny’, opening up an innovative, unsettling and rewarding approach to feminist fine art practices. -- Sue Tate, Research Fellow, University of the West of England and Freelance Art Historian, UKAlexandra Kokoli’s The Feminist Uncanny is a smart and engaging re-evaluation of the long-standing troubled relationship between feminism and psychoanalysis, and its complex manifestation in feminist art practice. Kokoli not only offers a series of deft analyses of the diverse provocations made by this genealogy but, focusing on the marginal yet powerful spaces of femininity within culture, rethinks the feminist calling card that the ‘personal is political’. -- Joanne Morra, Reader in Art History and Theory, University of the Arts London, UKTable of ContentsTOC Introduction: Why Witches? Part 1 (‘Theory’) Chapter 1: The Uncanny Feminine Chapter 2: The Feminist Uncanny Part 2 (‘Practice’) Chapter 3: ‘Moving Sideways’ and Other Dead Metaphors: Susan Hiller’s Paraconceptualism Chapter 4: Squats and Evictions: The Uncanny as Unhomely Chapter 5: Dinner Parties: Eating Out, Coming Together Chapter 6: Legions (‘For we are many’) Chapter 7: Family Albums: World Making as Compensation Postscript A: The Academic One Postscript B: The Melancholic One Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisMario Slugan is Postdoctoral Associate Fellow in the Department of Film and Television Studies and the Department of German Studies at the University of Warwick, UK researching film philosophy and film history. He is the author of Montage as Perceptual Experience: Berlin Alexanderplatz from Döblin to Fassbinder (2017) and the managing editor of an open-access peer-reviewed academic journal Apparatus: Film, Media and Digital Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Institutional Context 2. Film Theory 3.Assessment of Theory 4. Analytic and Cognitivist Debates 5. Interpretation and Filmmaking 6. Philosophy of Art Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Trade ReviewThe originality of Hainge’s work is in its philosophical method...He systematically unpacks noise to reveal its complexity, and its materiality in the virtual and actual worlds. Traversing many rich and wide-ranging topics, his book moves beyond the potential traps of falling into truisms, offering a highly nuanced reading of noise in all its materializations. -- Sally MacArthur, University of Western Sydney, Australia * Musicology Australia *Across eight chapters, Hainge runs through an irregular but illuminating sequence of cultural situations and texts in which noise proves determining […]Hainge's study responds to the institutional unmooring of cultural studies with recourse to 'ontology'. What makes his book a more interesting study than many of the other 'ontologies' currently on offer is that, rather than promulgating a return to (low-grade phantasy) objects, Hainge focuses on the anti-object par excellence, the nothing that is noise. Now that's a noise we can all feel, if not in the way Slade intended. -- Justin Clemens * Cultural Studies Review *In the decade since, a stunning range of new offerings from a variety of publishers has become readily available, and sound studies is a far more expansive discipline. This fact is nowhere more evident than in Bloomsbury Academic’s excellent sound studies catalog ... the scholarship here shows how adept the cultural study of sound can be at unearthing the thorny political and social tensions that define contemporary culture. -- Nicholas C. Laudadio, University of North Carolina Wilmington * Journal of Popular Music Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction SECTION 1. Chapter 1. The (not so) Noisy Elephants in the Room. Chapter 2. Noisea. Chapter 3. Noise, Horror, Death. SECTION 2. Chapter 4. On the Difficulties of Attending to Noise. Chapter 5. On the Difficulties of Listening to Noise. SECTION 3. Chapter 6. On Noise and Film. Planet, Rabbit, Lynch. Chapter 7. On Noise and Photography. Forest, Fuzz, Ruff. Chapter 8. On Noise and Music. Concrete (reprise), Woolly Mammoth. Conclusion

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Book SynopsisExamines the aesthetic event of education. This title takes a broader view of aesthetics and argues that teaching and learning are themselves aesthetic performances. It focuses on several questions: What are the possibilities and limitations of building analogies between teachers and artists, education and specific aesthetic forms? And, more.Trade Review"In this book Tyson Lewis provides a penetrating analysis of the work of Jacques Ranciere as it pertains to the theory and practice of education. The book is an engaging, compelling, highly original and much needed intervention in current discussions about education, politics and democracy." - Gert Biesta, University of Stirling, UKTable of ContentsTable of Contents; Introduction:; The Aesthetics of Education; Chapter One:; From Stultification to Emancipation: Althusser avec Ranciere; Chapter Two:; Aesthetic Forms: Teaching, Theatre, and Democracy; Chapter Three:; The Beautiful and the Sublime in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed; Intermission:; Equality, Freedom, and Emancipation: A Case for Pedagogical Dramaturgy; Chapter Four:; The Aesthetics of Curiosity; Chapter Five:; The Knowledge of Ignorance; Chapter Six:; The Future of the Image in Critical Pedagogy; Chapter Seven:; Freire's Last Laugh; Conclusion:; Death and Democracy in Education: Freire's Easter.

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Trade ReviewResonances offers a conceptually diverse yet simultaneously minutely detailed investigation of noise that draws a line between popular music, cultural and sound studies. … [Reverberations and Resonances] are a significant achievement, a comprehensive collection of thinking to date about where noise fits into our cultural lives, pointing forward towards a fertile development of the field. -- Adam Behr, University of Edinburgh, UK * Popular Music *From overviews of specific artists--Lou Reed, Einsturzende Neubaten, Diamanda Galas, Filthy Turd--to theorizing about the sonics of feminism, computer sounds, turntablism, and composition, this timely book resituates noise not as Jacques Attali’s societal 'herald of change' but as a vital and everyday part of the new media landscape. It’s a great addition to any serious sound scholar’s library. * Gina Arnold, Adjunct Professor of Rhetoric at University of San Francisco and author of Route 666: On The Road To Nirvana * The collection itself is a diverse mix...Resonances is fairly highbrow. The book’s language is intensively scholarly, and its appeal mostly academic. -- Guy Crucianelli * Pop Matters! *The value of this anthology lies in its attempt to be as complete as possible, and its inclusion of perspectives that often go unconsidered. -- Aurelio Cianciotta * Neural (Bloomsbury translation) *In the decade since, a stunning range of new offerings from a variety of publishers has become readily available, and sound studies is a far more expansive discipline. This fact is nowhere more evident than in Bloomsbury Academic’s excellent sound studies catalog ... the scholarship here shows how adept the cultural study of sound can be at unearthing the thorny political and social tensions that define contemporary culture. -- Nicholas C. Laudadio, University of North Carolina Wilmington * Journal of Popular Music Studies *Resonances carries its readers from the ideas of Theodor Adorno to 'Hi-Fi Wives,' Russian punk and 60s rock. If you want to know what Iannis Xenakis, Eric Clapton, and the 'Filthy Turd aesthetic' have in common, this is the book for you! Handsomely illustrated and extensively documented, Resonances is a must-read volume for modernists and postmodern cultural critics alike. -- Michael Saffle * Endorsement *'That’s not music, it’s noise!' The contributors to this book ask us to think again. They reveal that noise can prove as stimulating a part of sonic organization as melody and harmony—the distorted rock guitar being one example among many. These engrossing essays cover a remarkable variety of musical practices, exploring noise as both accident and deliberate design, and building theories about noise that set the agenda for future debate. -- Derek B. Scott, author of Sounds of the Metropolis (2008) and Musical Style and Social Meaning (2010).This collection is a massive achievement in laying the groundwork for a new way of thinking about things musical. Its scope is large - Hendrix, Xenakis, deafness, production aesthetics, pleasure, Russian punk - and essays impress in both their attention to detail and the breadth of their conceptual scope as we move from questions of aesthetics to detailed close reading. It is a study which succeeds as both music scholarship and cultural contextualization, particularly in relation to artists in other media (Ballard, Artaud) and key scholars (Attali, Adorno, Benjamin). And although it is hard to photograph noise, the book's photos find some excellent visual analogues. -- Allan F Moore, Professor of Popular Music, University of Surrey, author of Rock: the Primary Text and Song MeansTable of Contentspart one Noise, Rock and Psychedelia 1 ‘Kick Out the Jams’: Creative Anarchy and Noise in 1960s Rock Sheila Whiteley 2 Recasting Noise: The Lives and Times of Metal Machine Music Nicola Spelman 3 Shoegaze as the Third Wave: Affective Psychedelic Noise, 1965–1991 Benjamin Halligan 4 To Be Played at Maximum Volume: Rock Music as a Disabling (Deafening) Culture George McKay part two Punk Noise: Prehistories and Continuums 5 Sounds Incorporated: Dissonant Sorties into Popular Culture Stephen Mallinder 6 Stairwells of Abjection and Screaming Bodies: Einstürzende Neubauten’s Artaudian Noise Music Jennifer Shryane 7 Make a Joyous Noise: The Pentecostal Nature of American Noise Music Seb Roberts 8 Roars of Discontent: Noise and Disaffection in Two Cases of Russian Punk Yngvar B. Steinholt 9 Noise from Nowhere: Exploring ‘Noisyland’s’ Dark, Noisy and Experimental Music Michael Goddard Archive: Indestructible Energy: Seeing Noise Julie R. Kane part three Noise, Composition and Improvisation 10 Xenakian Sound Synthesis: Its Aesthetics and Influence on ‘Extreme’ Computer Music Christopher Haworth 11 Sound Barriers: The Framing Functions of Noise and Silence Alexis Paterson 12 Listening Aside: An Aesthetics of Distraction in Contemporary Musi David Cecchetto and eldritch Priest 13 Using Noise Techniques to Destabilize Composition and Improvisation Eric Lyon 14 Noise as Mediation: Adorno and the Turntablism of Philip Jeck Erich Hertz part four Approaching Noise Musics 15 Noise as Music: Is There a Historical Continuum? From Historical Roots to Industrial Music Joseph Tham 16 Noise as Material Impact: New Uses of Sound in Noiserelated Movements Rafael Sarpa 17 Into the Full: Strawson, Wyschnegradsky and Acoustic Space in Noise Musics J.-P. Caron 18 Gossips, Sirens, Hi-Fi Wives: Feminizing the Threat of Noise Marie Thompson 19 Beyond Auditive Unpleasantness: An Exploration of Noise in the Work of Filthy Turd James Mooney and Daniel Wilson Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisRe-Enchantment of the World advances a critique of consumer capitalism that draws on Freud and Marx to construct an utterly contemporary analysis of our time. The book explores the cognitive, affective, social and economic effects of the 'proletarianization' of the consumer in late capitalism.Trade ReviewExpounding and developing the work of his think tank and pressure group, Ars Industrialis, this book offers a close-up of Stiegler's philosophy in its engagement with our contemporary world. Exposing the toxic short-termism of our runaway economics, Stiegler offers us an alternative: the repurposing of technologies of control and consumption towards an economy of contribution. His analyses ring profoundly true, and his urgency is unparalleled: this is a project we cannot afford to ignore. * Martin Crowley, Reader in Modern French Thought and Culture, Queens' College, University of Cambridge, UK *Stiegler offers penetrating philosophical analyses of our contemporary information society and of the industrial model of consumer capitalism that underpins it. He writes with an urgency and vision that challenges us to reclaim our freedom and knowledge and to recreate a world that would not be subordinated to the exigencies of consumption, production and limitless growth. Stiegler tells us that there can be another way and that there are futures which can be different from the present we have now. His insight and originality make him one of the most important and indispensable philosophers living and writing today. * Ian James, Lecturer in French, Downing College, University of Cambridge, UK *The interventions brought together in The Re-Enchantment of the World work superbly as a point of entry into the increasingly important philosophy of Bernard Stiegler. It is also a major work in its own right, the most strident example of current French philosophy's return to political activism. Stiegler argues that consumer capitalism is deleteriously eroding the processes of sublimation that gives rise to desire, leading to emotional exhaustion, social atomism, apathy and a lethal short-termism. Ars Industrialis offers not just a critique, but a remedy for this demise. By harnessing technology to generate meaningful participation, to create an 'economy of contribution' rather than emotional exploitation, we can invent ourselves a future in which there is an alternative to immiserating acquiescence. * Dr Gerald Moore, Director, MA in Culture and Difference, Lecturer in French, School of Modern Languages & Cultures, Durham University, UK *This small volume functions well as an introduction to [Stiegler's] thought over the last decade -- Christian Lotz * Marx & Philosophy Review of Books *Table of ContentsIntroduction: What is to be done? Manifesto of ... Ars Industrialis Part I: Refounding Society 1. The Industrial Age as Service Capitalism 2. The Consumer Discharged of his Existence 3. Hyperindustrial Service Societies as the Destruction of Individuation by Controlling Adoption Procedures 4. Re-Enchanting the World in the Face of the Unhappy Destiny of Consumption 5. 'R' Technologies and the New Apparatuses of Spirit 6. Overcoming the Capitalism of Drives and Fighting Against its Becoming-Barbaric 7. Startled, We Begin Again Differently (!) / The Sudden Surge: a Nw Beginning 8. Grammatization and Individuation - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 9. The Revolution of Capitalism 10. A European Way of Life 11. The Plan that Enchants Me Part II: Investing in the Augmentation of the Value of the 'Human Spirit' Against the Reign of Ignorance 12. From the Informatization of Society to "Information Society" 13. From the "Information Society" to the "Society of Knowledge" - or, On the Possibility of the Re-Enchantment of the World 14. Companies, Public Power, and Industrial Populism 15. Changing the Industrial Paradigm 16. Information Society, Disenchantment, De-Motivation and Control of Knowledge 17. The Re-Instrumentation of Knowledge, the Future of Hyperindustrial Society 18. Knowledge and Information 19. Knowledge and Memory, or Reign of Ignorance? 20. The Risk of Disindividuation as the Growth of Ignorance Rather Than Knowledge 21. Cognitive Saturation and Knowledge Management 22. Instruments of Knowledge and the Criteria of Selection That They Produce 23. Being and Becoming in Technoscience 24. The Crisis of Education 25. Practical Consequences Motion adopted by Ars Industrial on the eve of the Tunis summit Bibliography Index

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