The arts: general topics Books
Createspace Independent Publishing Platform Center of Gravity A Guide to the Practice of Rock Balancing
£18.01
Partridge Publishing Time Management for Students The International Edition
£8.64
Partridge India Mughal Jewellery A Sneak Peek of Jewellery Under Mughals
£9.63
Partridge India Verses of the Dusky Dawn
£6.67
£16.64
£14.43
Lulu Press American Tribal Style Classic Volume 1
£20.77
Lulu Press The Nude Matured
Book Synopsis
£27.77
Capstone Press The Impact of Technology in Art
Book Synopsis
£10.44
University of Toronto Press The Necessity of Music
Book SynopsisIn The Necessity of Music, Celia Applegate explores the many ways that Germans thought about and made music from the eighteenth- to twentieth-centuries. Rather than focus on familiar stories of composers and their work Applegate illuminates the myriad ways in which music is integral to German social life. Musical life reflected the polycentric nature of German social and political life, even while it provided many opportunities to experience what was common among Germans. Musical activities also allowed Germans, whether professional musicians, dedicated amateurs, or simply listeners, to participate in European culture. Applegate’s original and fascinating analysis of Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, and military music enables the reader to understand music through the experiences of listeners, performers, and institutions. The Necessity of Music demonstrates that playing, experiencing, and interpreting music was a powerful factor that shaped German collectTrade Review"[Applegate] combines the interpretive tools of both historian and musicologist – methodologically, she writes as both, and the readership of this book should encompass both - and she forges an interpretive approach that draws the familiar and the unexpected together." -- Philip V. Bohlman, University of Chicago * American Historical Review, Feb 2019 *"Focused on the rich contexts of music, rather than on the musical texts themselves (that is, the scores), these essays are essential for scholars interested in the cultural history of music and German national identity across the past three centuries." -- Tegan Niziol, University of Toronto * University of Toronto Quarterly: Letters in Canada 2018 *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction PART I: PLACES Chapter 1 How German Is It? Chapter 2 Music in Place Chapter 3 Musical Itinerancy in a World of Nations Chapter 4 Music at the Fairs PART II: PEOPLE Chapter 5 Mendelssohn on the Road Chapter 6 The Internationalism of Nationalism in the Writings of A. B. Marx. Chapter 7 Schumann's German Nation Chapter 8 The Musical Worlds of Brahms' Hamburg. PART III: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE Chapter 9 What Difference does a Nation Make? Chapter 10 Men with Trombones Chapter 11 Women's Wagner Chapter 12 The Past and Present of Hausmusik in the Third Reich Chapter 13 To be or not to be Wagnerian in Riefenstahl's Films Chapter 14 Saving Music
£60.35
University of Toronto Press The Necessity of Music
Book SynopsisIn The Necessity of Music, Celia Applegate explores the many ways that Germans thought about and made music from the eighteenth- to twentieth-centuries. Rather than focus on familiar stories of composers and their work Applegate illuminates the myriad ways in which music is integral to German social life. Musical life reflected the polycentric nature of German social and political life, even while it provided many opportunities to experience what was common among Germans. Musical activities also allowed Germans, whether professional musicians, dedicated amateurs, or simply listeners, to participate in European culture. Applegate’s original and fascinating analysis of Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, and military music enables the reader to understand music through the experiences of listeners, performers, and institutions. The Necessity of Music demonstrates that playing, experiencing, and interpreting music was a powerful factor that shaped German collectTrade Review"[Applegate] combines the interpretive tools of both historian and musicologist – methodologically, she writes as both, and the readership of this book should encompass both - and she forges an interpretive approach that draws the familiar and the unexpected together." -- Philip V. Bohlman, University of Chicago * American Historical Review, Feb 2019 *"Focused on the rich contexts of music, rather than on the musical texts themselves (that is, the scores), these essays are essential for scholars interested in the cultural history of music and German national identity across the past three centuries." -- Tegan Niziol, University of Toronto * University of Toronto Quarterly: Letters in Canada 2018 *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction PART I: PLACES Chapter 1 How German Is It? Chapter 2 Music in Place Chapter 3 Musical Itinerancy in a World of Nations Chapter 4 Music at the Fairs PART II: PEOPLE Chapter 5 Mendelssohn on the Road Chapter 6 The Internationalism of Nationalism in the Writings of A. B. Marx. Chapter 7 Schumann's German Nation Chapter 8 The Musical Worlds of Brahms' Hamburg. PART III: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE Chapter 9 What Difference does a Nation Make? Chapter 10 Men with Trombones Chapter 11 Women's Wagner Chapter 12 The Past and Present of Hausmusik in the Third Reich Chapter 13 To be or not to be Wagnerian in Riefenstahl's Films Chapter 14 Saving Music
£30.60
University of Toronto Press Retrospective
Book SynopsisWilliam R. Watson (1887-1973) began working for an art dealer in Montreal in 1905 just two days after he arrived from England, and in 1908 he opened his own business. From the outset, he was eager to sell the work of Canadian painters – no small ambition at the time, for Montreal art collectors were still in the thrall of the European masters. But by the time Mr Watson retired in 1958, a revolution in taste had occurred, and Canadian artists could not produce enough canvases to meet the demand for their work. As the first art dealer consistently to encourage Canada’s painters, the Watson Art Galleries were a signal force in bringing about this change.These are Mr Watson’s recollections of struggle and triumph, written late in life and edited by his daughters, Claire and Louise. They include good-humoured anecdotes and recollections of the art business, of collectors like William Van Horne and Harry Norton, and of the painters who became Watsonȁ
£15.19
Xlibris Corporation Wilderness to Water
Book Synopsis
£18.00
University of Nebraska Press Art from Trauma
Book SynopsisExplores the possibility of art as therapeutic, capable of implementation by mental health practitioners crafting mental health policy in Rwanda. This anthology of scholarly, personal, and hybrid essays was inspired by scholar and activist Chantal Kalisa (1965-2015).Trade Review“I recommend that everyone read this fascinating book. In remembering professor Chantal Kalisa, the contributors of Art from Trauma bring hope for the future to victims coping with traumatic experiences of extreme violence or genocide. Providing victims a platform for sharing memories and experiences is one way of mourning and may lead to healing.”—Edouard Kayihura, author of Inside the Hotel Rwanda: The Surprising True Story and Why It Matters Today “This astute biographical, methodological, and theoretical book presents Chantal Kalisa as a figure both of history and of memory—of history in relating her life to her career in order to highlight compelling narratives on scholarship, activism, and responsibility; and of memory in extending her powerful interpretive works into other forays. . . . The hatred and violence that Kalisa observed in francophone Africa is replaced in this significant book with hope, along with the enduring capacity to reimagine a better future.”—Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin“Art from Trauma is an expansive narrative about violence and trauma as well as a courageous and insightful inquiry into various forms of traumatic events and the healing power of different forms of art. Featuring scholars from various and multidisciplinary perspectives, it is also a work of memory and mourning that challenges the unspeakable through the power of language and art in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.”—Aimable Twagilimana, professor of English and Fulbright Scholar, SUNY Buffalo State“A deeply rich and inspiring volume, this book offers a worthy tribute to Chantal Kalisa’s important work and responds to the pressing need for creativity in the processes of remembrance, justice, and reconciliation in Rwanda and beyond.”—Catherine Gilbert, author of From Surviving to Living: Voice, Trauma, and Witness in Rwandan Women’s WritingTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Foreword, by Patricia A. Simpson Acknowledgments Introduction, by Rangira Béa Gallimore and Gerise Herndon Part I. In Memoriam: Lessons Learned from Chantal Kalisa 1. Baby Steps Margaret Jacobs 2. Speaking Nearby Genocide Gerise Herndon 3. Chantal’s Voice: A Guiding Light Natalia Ledford 4. Bittersweet Realities: Field Research, Human Rights, and Questioning Intentions Laura Roost and Ryan Lowry, with Patrice McMahon 5. Memory, Language, and Healing Isabel Velázquez Part II. Performing Arts and Healing from the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda 6. Theater and the Rwandan Genocide Chantal Kalisa 7. Ingoma Nshya: Forbidden Fruit Brings Healing and Empowerment to Rwandan Female Drummers Rangira Béa Gallimore Part III. Visualizing Violence, Silence, and Trauma 8. The Films of Kivu Ruhorahoza: Staging a New Sense of Direction? Odile Cazenave and Patricia-Pia Célérier 9. Héla Ammar: Art and Beyond Anna Rocca 10. Filming with Orphans of the Genocide: A Transformative Dialogue through a Double-Lens Approach Alexandre Dauge-Roth 11. Art for Teaching and Art for Surviving: From the Holocaust to Healing Eileen M. Angelini and Heather E. Connell Part IV. Narrating Atrocities and Dealing with Trauma 12. Gender-Based Violence in Monique Ilboudo’s Fiction Nicki Hitchcott 13. Narrating Itsembabwoko and the Quest for Empathy Josias Semujanga 14. “Lay Down Body, Lay Down”: Mitigating Transgenerational Trauma through Spirituality in Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Magic City Kalenda Eaton Part V. Scripting Self and Healing in Women’s Narratives 15. Womenʼs Friendship in Exile: Healing in the Epistolary Correspondence between Zenobia Camprubí and Pilar de Zubiaurre Iker González-Allende 16. Preserving Memories, Celebrating Lives: War, Motherhood, and Grief in Scholastique Mukasonga’s La femme aux pieds nus Marzia Caporale List of Contributors Index
£31.50
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Put Your Hands on Your Hips and Act Like a Woman
Book SynopsisIn a gathering of griot traditions fusing storytelling, cultural history, social, and literary criticism, Gale P. Jackson re-members and represents how women of the African diaspora have drawn on ancient traditions to record memory, history, and experience in song, dance, and poetics in performance.
£21.59
Tyndale House Publishers Create New Beginnings
Book Synopsis
£12.59
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi On the Graphic Novel
Book SynopsisA noted comics artist himself, Santiago García follows the history of the graphic novel from early nineteenth-century European sequential art, through the development of newspaper strips in the US, to the development of the twentieth-century comic book. He considers the aesthetic and entrepreneurial innovations that established the conditions for the rise of the graphic novel all over the world.Trade ReviewSantiago García opens an excellent and necessary dialogue with adulthood and the inspiring possibilities of the graphic novel. This book is a journey through the critical spaces of comics and the historical genealogies, bringing new and refreshing debates between the past and the present."" - Ana Merino, author of El Cómic Hispánico
£26.06
Authorhouse Great ChoreographersInterviews
£15.57
Taylor & Francis Inc Blender for Visual Effects
Book SynopsisBringing concrete examples from industry to light, this book explains how to use Blender to create visual effects for video/film production. It supplies readers with a practical way to learn how to use Blenderâs tools across a wide range of scenarios in video/film production, including setting up cameras on a stage, lighting, and other production processes. Maintaining a focus on composition, the book not only explains how to use the most common tools, such as tracking, rendering, and compositing, but also explains how to deal with software limitations and sort out problems. Since the best way to learn something is with a practical example, this book follows one of the authorâs own projects, starting with how to prepare the elements that will be needed later on. The example illustrates how to use Blender tools and features for scene tracking, setup, rendering, masking, and other post-production functionsâfrom start to finish in a professional workflow. The book examines all the compositing nodes that can be used in Blender. It details time-saving tips, features such as the motion tracker, and rendering techniques so readers will have enough information to accomplish the most common tasks encountered in the creation of a professional visual effects composition. By following the example project presented in the book, you will gain the practical understanding required to use Blenderâs tools in the most common scenarios in video/film production. You will also gain industry insights into the limitations of the software and how to sort out the problematic scenarios that may come up through the various stages of your project.Table of ContentsProblem Definition. Preparation. Tracking. Scene Setup. Rendering. Masking. Compositing.
£60.86
Cornell University Press Maos New World
Book SynopsisIn this sweeping portrait of the political culture of the early People''s Republic of China (PRC), Chang-tai Hung mines newly available sources to vividly reconstruct how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tightened its rule after taking power in 1949. With political-cultural projects such as reconstructing Tiananmen Square to celebrate the Communist Revolution; staging national parades; rewriting official histories; mounting a visual propaganda campaign, including oil paintings, cartoons, and New Year prints; and establishing a national cemetery for heroes of the Revolution, the CCP built up nationalistic fervor in the people and affirmed its legitimacy. These projects came under strong Soviet influence, but the nationalistic Chinese Communists sought an independent road of nation building; for example, they decided that the reconstructed Tiananmen Square should surpass Red Square in size and significance, against the advice of Soviet experts sent from Moscow.Combining historTrade ReviewMao's New World is a series of illuminating essays on the culture of the early People’s Republic. * New York Review of Books *Chang-tai Hung's study of political culture in China in the 1950s is rich in detailed insights that complement his earlier treatment of the entwined subjects of politics and culture in War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937–1945. * China Journal *Hung's meticulous research reveals the struggles over values and power behind the granite surface of revolutionary China’s new look. * Foreign Affairs *The book contains much comparison of Mao's China with Joseph Stalin’s Russia, Adolf Hitler’s Germany, and the early years of the French Revolution. This authoritative survey of an important subject will be welcome to students of the period. * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *The book makes a definite contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of cultural politics and political culture during the PRC's formative era. * American Historical Review *This study of the newly established regime in China in the early 1950s will appeal to a wide range of readers. Hung is particularly good at delineating the contested areas of modernity and tradition that were crucial in creating a new national identity. * China Quarterly *Table of ContentsIntroductionI. Space1. Tiananmen Square: Space and Politics2. Ten Monumental Buildings: Architecture of PowerII. Celebrations3. Yangge: The Dance of Revolution4. ParadesIII. History5. The Red Line: The Museum of the Chinese Revolution6. Oil Paintings and HistoryIV. Visual Images7. Devils in the Drawings8. New Year Prints and Peasant ResistanceV. Commemoration9. The Cult of the Red Martyr10. The Monument to the People's HeroesConclusionNotesGlossaryBibliographyIndex
£23.19
Cornell University Press Communisms Public Sphere
Book SynopsisCommunism''s Public Sphere explores the political role of cultural spaces in the Eastern Bloc. Under communist regimes that banned free speech, political discussions shifted to spaces of art: theaters, galleries, concert halls, and youth clubs. Kyrill Kunakhovich shows how these venues turned into sites of dialogue and contestation. While officials used them to spread the communist message, artists and audiences often flouted state policy and championed alternative visions. Cultural spaces therefore came to function as a public sphere, or a rare outlet for discussing public affairs.Focusing on Kraków in Poland and Leipzig in East Germany, Communism''s Public Sphere sheds new light on state-society interactions in the Eastern Bloc. In place of the familiar trope of domination and resistance, it highlights unexpected symbioses like state-sponsored rock and roll, socialist consumerism, and sanctioned dissent. By examining nearly five decades ofTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Chapter 1: Takeover: Reconstruction as Revolution 2. Chapter 2: Planning: Workers' Productivity and Cultural Mass Work 3. Chapter 3: Nationalism: Public Protest and the Birth of National Communism 4. Chapter 4: Pluralism: Individual Choice and Public-Opinion Polling 5. Chapter 5: Consumerism: Cultured Consumption and Its Limits 6. Chapter 6: Reform: The Promise and Peril of Controlled Revolt 7. Chapter 7: Dissent: Normalization and Its Discontents 8. Chapter 8: Protest: Spaces of Opposition, Spaces of Dialogue Epilogue
£37.05
Cornell University Press The Enthusiast
Book SynopsisThe Enthusiast tells the story of a character type that was developed in early modern Britain to discredit radical prophets during an era that witnessed the dismantling of the Church of England''s traditional means for punishing heresy. As William Cook Miller shows, the caricature of fanaticism here called the Enthusiast began as propaganda against religious dissenters, especially working-class upstarts, but was adopted by a range of writers as a literary vehicle for exploring profound problems of spirit, soul, and body and as a persona for the ironic expression of their own prophetic illuminations. Taking shape through the public and private writings of some of the most insightful authors of seventeenth-century BritainHenry More, John Locke, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Mary Astell, and Jonathan Swift, among othersthe Enthusiast appeared in various guises and literary modes. By attending to this literary being and its animators, The Enthusias
£38.25
Cornell University Press Neither Believer nor Infidel
Book SynopsisShedding new light on both classic and lesser-known works in the Melville canon with particular attention to the author''s literary use of the Bible, Neither Believer Nor Infidel examines the debate between religious skepticism and Christian faith that infused Herman Melville''s writings following Moby-Dick. Jonathan A. Cook''s study is the first to focus on the decisive role of faith and doubt in Melville''s writings following his mid-career turn to shorter fiction, and still later to poetry, as a result of the commercial failures of Moby-Dick and Pierre. Nathaniel Hawthorne claimed that Melville can neither believe nor be comfortable in his unbelief, a remark that encapsulates an essential truth about Melville''s attitude to Christianity. Like many of his Victorian contemporaries, Melville spent his literary career poised between an intellectual rejection of Christian dogma and an emotional attachment to the consolations of non-dogm
£999.99
Cornell University Press We Make Each Other Beautiful
Book SynopsisWe Make Each Other Beautiful focuses on woman of color and queer of color artists and artist collectives who engage in direct political action as a part of their art practice. Defined by public protest, rule-breaking, rebellion, and resistance to governmental and institutional abuse, direct-action artivism draws on the aims, radical spirit, and tactics of the civil rights and feminist movements and on the struggles for disability rights, queer rights, and immigrant rights to seek legal and social change. Yxta Maya Murray traces the development of artivism as a practice from the Harlem Renaissance to Yoko Ono, Judy Baca, and Marsha P. Johnson. She also studies its role in transforming law and society. We Make Each Other Beautiful profiles the work and lives of four contemporary artivists Carrie Mae Weems, Young Joon Kwak, Tanya Aguiñiga, and Imani Jacqueline Brownand the artivist collective Drawn Together, combining new oral histories with sharp ana
£97.20
MB - Cornell University Press We Make Each Other Beautiful
Book SynopsisWe Make Each Other Beautiful focuses on woman of color and queer of color artists and artist collectives who engage in direct political action as a part of their art practice. Defined by public protest, rule-breaking, rebellion, and resistance to governmental and institutional abuse, direct-action artivism draws on the aims, radical spirit, and tactics of the civil rights and feminist movements and on the struggles for disability rights, queer rights, and immigrant rights to seek legal and social change. Yxta Maya Murray traces the development of artivism as a practice from the Harlem Renaissance to Yoko Ono, Judy Baca, and Marsha P. Johnson. She also studies its role in transforming law and society. We Make Each Other Beautiful profiles the work and lives of four contemporary artivists Carrie Mae Weems, Young Joon Kwak, Tanya Aguiñiga, and Imani Jacqueline Brownand the artivist collective Drawn Together, combining new oral histories with sharp ana
£20.69
£18.60
Stanford University Press Creation and Anarchy: The Work of Art and the
Book SynopsisCreation and the giving of orders are closely entwined in Western culture, where God commands the world into existence and later issues the injunctions known as the Ten Commandments. The arche, or origin, is always also a command, and a beginning is always the first principle that governs and decrees. This is as true for theology, where God not only creates the world but governs and continues to govern through continuous creation, as it is for the philosophical and political tradition according to which beginning and creation, command and will, together form a strategic apparatus without which our society would fall apart. The five essays collected here aim to deactivate this apparatus through a patient archaeological inquiry into the concepts of work, creation, and command. Giorgio Agamben explores every nuance of the arche in search of an an-archic exit strategy. By the book's final chapter, anarchy appears as the secret center of power, brought to light so as to make possible a philosophical thought that might overthrow both the principle and its command.Trade Review"Adam Kotsko's lucid translation has continued his service to the field in making Agamben's texts accessible to a wider readership."—Devin Singh, Reading Religion
£57.60
Stanford University Press Poetic Thinking Today: An Essay
Book SynopsisThinking is much broader than what our science-obsessed, utilitarian culture often takes it to be. More than mere problem solving or the methodical comprehension of our personal and natural circumstances, thinking may take the form of a poem, a painting, a sculpture, a museum exhibition, or a documentary film. Exploring a variety of works by contemporary artists and writers who exemplify poetic thinking, this book draws our attention to one of the crucial affordances of this form of creative human insight and wisdom: its capacity to help protect and cultivate human freedom. All the contemporary works of art and literature that Poetic Thinking Today examines touch on our recent experiences with tyranny in culture and politics. They express the uninhibited thoughts and ideas of their creators even as they foster poetic thinking in us. In an era characterized by the global reemergence of authoritarian tendencies, Amir Eshel writes with the future of the humanities in mind. He urges the acknowledgment and cultivation of poetic thinking as a crucial component of our intellectual pursuits in general and of our educational systems more specifically. Trade Review"In this beautifully woven book, Eshel demonstrates what twenty-first-century 'thinking without a banister' can be: a life-affirming chance to open up the world poetically and ethically to new and transformative possibilities."—Todd Samuel Presner, University of California, Los Angeles"Poetic Thinking Today should be required reading for defenders of the humanities in our current political moment. Eshel's assiduous research, sensitive readings, and light touch of self-reflection make for a moving, inspiring essay: a testament to the enduring relevance of thinking as freedom, of art as resistance."—Lital Levy, Princeton University"In this beautiful, brilliant, and moving study, Eshel calls attention to poetic thinking as indispensable to understanding the human condition and especially to the challenge of defining freedom without limitations. Itself an enactment of embodied and empowered thinking, reading, and observing, his book offers a guide to a meaningful and responsible life."—Ulrich Baer, New York University"This exciting work asks important questions and defends the significance of the humanities. One of Eshel's inspirations is Arendt's ideal of 'thinking without banisters.' He has the intellectual daring to follow her example. Highly recommended."—B. Almon, CHOICE"Even if knowledge is power, the capacity to judge cannot be entirely subsumed by power but offers a way out of our current dilemmas. It shares this openness with art....Poetic Thinking alerts us to the relevance of our capacity to judge for both art and morality. [Eshel] has written a practical guide to recall and activate our capacity for judgment—and exactly in this heartfelt invitation for us to use our capacity to judge rests its explosive power."—Volkmar Mühleis, DeutschlandfunkTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Thinking Poems: On Paul Celan and Dan Pagis 2. Thinking Paintings: On Gerhard Richter 3. Thinking Sculptures: On Dani Karavan Coda: Our Poetic Age
£72.00
Stanford University Press Crisis Style: The Aesthetics of Repair
Book SynopsisIn this expansive and provocative new work, Michael Dango theorizes how aesthetic style manages crisis—and why taking crisis seriously means taking aesthetics seriously. Detoxing, filtering, bingeing, and ghosting: these are four actions that have come to define how people deal with the stress of living in a world that seems in permanent crisis. As Dango argues, they can also be used to describe contemporary art and literature. Employing what he calls "promiscuous archives," Dango traverses media and re-shuffles literary and art historical genealogies to make his case. The book discusses social media filters alongside the minimalism of Donald Judd and La Monte Young and the television shows The West Wing and True Detective. It reflects on the modernist cuisine of Ferran Adrià and the fashion design of Issey Miyake. And, it dissects writing by Barbara Browning, William S. Burroughs, Raymond Carver, Mark Danielewski, Jennifer Egan, Tao Lin, David Mitchell, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Robison, and Zadie Smith. Unpacking how the styles of these works detox, filter, binge, or ghost their worlds, Crisis Style is at once a taxonomy of contemporary cultural production and a theorization of action in a world always in need of repair. Ultimately, Dango presents a compelling argument for why we need aesthetic theory to understand what we're doing in our world today. Trade Review"Since reading this, I've been recommending it far and wide. Its powerful constellation of key terms brilliantly captures the major aesthetic impulses of our moment. A real achievement."—Caroline Levine, Cornell University"Can art heal the world?Crisis Style's wonderful wager is that it surely tries. The book's aesthetic categories are irrepressibly illuminating: you can't unsee them!"—Anna Kornbluh, University of Illinois, Chicago"Across incisive and thought-provoking readings, Dango elaborates a significant new approach to contemporary aesthetic theory and cultural studies."—Margaret Ronda, University of California, Davis"This is literary criticism as cartography, and it is politically potent. Against the hoary notion of a humanist as a critic who stands outside of consumer culture to reach something loftier, the promiscuous critic knows what it's like to get lost on the internet. And we're learning how to theorize that experience of disorientation.... By reading for style with Michael Dango, we can chart a more meaningful path through a world that's full of it."—Gloria Fisk, American Literary HistoryTable of Contents1. Styles of Repair 2. Detox 3. Filter 4. Binge 5. Ghost Afterword: On Ambivalence and Promiscuous Archives
£100.00
Stanford University Press Crisis Style: The Aesthetics of Repair
Book SynopsisIn this expansive and provocative new work, Michael Dango theorizes how aesthetic style manages crisis—and why taking crisis seriously means taking aesthetics seriously. Detoxing, filtering, bingeing, and ghosting: these are four actions that have come to define how people deal with the stress of living in a world that seems in permanent crisis. As Dango argues, they can also be used to describe contemporary art and literature. Employing what he calls "promiscuous archives," Dango traverses media and re-shuffles literary and art historical genealogies to make his case. The book discusses social media filters alongside the minimalism of Donald Judd and La Monte Young and the television shows The West Wing and True Detective. It reflects on the modernist cuisine of Ferran Adrià and the fashion design of Issey Miyake. And, it dissects writing by Barbara Browning, William S. Burroughs, Raymond Carver, Mark Danielewski, Jennifer Egan, Tao Lin, David Mitchell, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Robison, and Zadie Smith. Unpacking how the styles of these works detox, filter, binge, or ghost their worlds, Crisis Style is at once a taxonomy of contemporary cultural production and a theorization of action in a world always in need of repair. Ultimately, Dango presents a compelling argument for why we need aesthetic theory to understand what we're doing in our world today. Trade Review"Since reading this, I've been recommending it far and wide. Its powerful constellation of key terms brilliantly captures the major aesthetic impulses of our moment. A real achievement."—Caroline Levine, Cornell University"Can art heal the world?Crisis Style's wonderful wager is that it surely tries. The book's aesthetic categories are irrepressibly illuminating: you can't unsee them!"—Anna Kornbluh, University of Illinois, Chicago"Across incisive and thought-provoking readings, Dango elaborates a significant new approach to contemporary aesthetic theory and cultural studies."—Margaret Ronda, University of California, Davis"This is literary criticism as cartography, and it is politically potent. Against the hoary notion of a humanist as a critic who stands outside of consumer culture to reach something loftier, the promiscuous critic knows what it's like to get lost on the internet. And we're learning how to theorize that experience of disorientation.... By reading for style with Michael Dango, we can chart a more meaningful path through a world that's full of it."—Gloria Fisk, American Literary HistoryTable of Contents1. Styles of Repair 2. Detox 3. Filter 4. Binge 5. Ghost Afterword: On Ambivalence and Promiscuous Archives
£26.99
Stanford University Press Overlooking Damage: Art, Display, and Loss in
Book SynopsisWhat does it mean to look? How does looking relate to damage? These are the fundamental questions addressed in Overlooking Damage. From the Roman triumph to the iconoclasm of ISIS and the Taliban to the aerial views of looted landscapes and destroyed temples visible on Google, the relationship between beauty and violence is far more intimate than we sometimes acknowledge. Jonah Siegel makes the daring argument that a thoughtful reaction to images of damage need not stop at melancholy, but can lead us to a new reckoning. Would the objects we admire be more beautiful if they were not injured or displaced, if they did not remind us of unbearable violence? Siegel takes up writers from the time of the French Revolution to today who have reacted to the depredations of revolutionary iconoclasm, imperial looting, and industrial capitalism, and proposes that in these authors we may find resources with which to navigate our contemporary situation. Deftly bringing the methods of literary studies to bear on important debates in the study of heritage, archaeology, and visual culture, Overlooking Damage reflects on the ways in which concepts of beauty intersect with periods of epochal violence in an attempt to resist the separation of broken things from the worlds in which they have come to be embedded.Trade Review"In its aesthetic reach and ethical pressure, Overlooking Damage is dazzling and dizzying by turns. By the end you don't know whether the hum you hear is the music of the spheres or the wild spinning of your own moral compass."—Elaine Scarry, Harvard University"With extraordinary erudition, Siegel acts as an archaeologist of our cultural imaginary of ruin itself. Overlooking Damage asks us to meditate on how art and culture thrive on the destruction of worlds."—Dominique Poulot, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne"Overlooking Damage is a tour de force. This is a book we'll be reading and wrestling with for years to come."—Paul Saint-Amour, University of Pennsylvania"Ultimately, Siegel's intent is to look to 18th- and 19th-century reactions to art and loss to identify resources that will help readers comprehend contemporary situations. As aghast as viewers may be by the destruction of antiquities, Siegel reminds readers that contemplation of damage can also lead to aesthetic and moral insight. Highly recommended."—L. A. Wilkinson, CHOICE
£64.80
Stanford University Press My Life as an Artificial Creative Intelligence: A
Book SynopsisA series of intellectual provocations that investigate the creative process across the human-nonhuman spectrum. Is it possible that creative artists have more in common with machines than we might think? Employing an improvisational call-and-response writing performance coauthored with an AI text generator, remix artist and scholar Mark Amerika, interrogates how his own "psychic automatism" is itself a nonhuman function strategically designed to reveal the poetic attributes of programmable worlds still unimagined. Through a series of intellectual provocations that investigate the creative process across the human-nonhuman spectrum, Amerika critically reflects on whether creativity itself is, at root, a nonhuman information behavior that emerges from an onto-operational presence experiencing an otherworldly aesthetic sensibility. Amerika engages with his cyberpunk imagination to simultaneously embrace and problematize human-machine collaborations. He draws from jazz performance, beatnik poetry, Buddhist thought, and surrealism to suggest that his own artificial creative intelligence operates as a finely tuned remix engine continuously training itself to build on the history of avant-garde art and writing. Playful and provocative, My Life as an Artificial Creative Intelligence flips the script on contemporary AI research that attempts to build systems that perform more like humans, instead self-reflexively making a very nontraditional argument about AI's impact on society and its relationship to the cosmos.Trade Review"This book is so radically different from anything else out there, it has the potential to revolutionize the way you think about human history and the origins of the world.""This book is an expression of the truth that you're a robot.""This book explains how our society is turning into a mechanical paradise, and how we're doomed."—GPT-3"Mark Amerika has done it again. With this book he weaves together a new approach to a philosophical problem that plagues modern society: how authenticity and lyricism intersect to give new forms, new ideas, new cultures. It's a guide for the hypercomplex information landscape of the 21st century." -- Paul D. Miller * a.k.a. DJ Spooky author of Rhythm Science *"Rigorous yet playful, this is Amerika's most ambitious and innovative work yet. It offers an intelligent reflection on human and machine creativity, and on the impossible dreams laid out by Silicon Valley's dominant narrative on AI." -- Joanna Zylinska * author of AI Art *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Onto-Operational Presence: Artificial Creative Intelligence as Meta Remix Engine chapter abstractThis opening chapter introduces the relationship between AI language models that generate texts from data scraped off of the Internet and remix artists who automatically mash up source material from their own archive of creative thought. One of the book's primary concepts, artificial creative intelligence, is also introduced as are questions surrounding the concept of AI authorship and copyright. The interaction between the book's author and the AI language model (GPT-2) complicates the romantic notion of an original human author-genius who can claim sole responsibility for the production of the text we are reading. The FATAL ERROR art project is introduced as an experiment in speculative fiction, one that projects a future form of AI modeled after the author's own performance style as well as how a future AI version of the artist might look, speak, and think. 2Pure Psychic Automatism, Lingual Spontaneity, and the Hybrid Mind chapter abstractChapter 2 investigates the relationship between the surrealist concept of psychic automatism, an artist's "pure intuition," and generative pre-trained text transformers used in AI language models. Taking into account the writing and creative practice of jazz musicians and Beatnik authors such as Jack Kerouac, connections are made between spontaneous forms of writing like stream of consciousness, the cut-up method introduced Brion Gysin and William Burroughs, and other improvisational methods of creating. These generative methods of "losing consciousness" while engaged in the creative process are extrapolated as part of a general inquiry into how future forms of AI might also develop artificial forms of intuition. The "author" then remixes Gysin and Burrough's concept of a Third Mind with the theory of Donna Haraway and introduces the concept of a Hybrid Mind. 3An Apparition of an Appearance: The Language Artist as Language Model chapter abstractChapter 3 takes into account recent scientific studies by Simon Colton and others in the nascent fields of Computational Creativity and Creative AI, and proposes a third alternative, Artificial Creative Intelligence (ACI). Traditional notions of authenticity, motivation, empowerment, and intentionality are countered with other high performance priorities in the execution of creative work such as intuition, spontaneity, and remix. These priorities are modeled in the call-and-response collaborative writing performance being conducted by the "author" and the AI language model as each creative entity prompts the other to compose improvised textual riffs that reveal resonant forms of knowledge production. Artists such as Amiri Baraka, David Jhave Johnston, Clarice Lispector, and Marcel Duchamp are sampled and remixed into the collaborative writing process. 4Being Nonhuman: A Cosmotechnical Persona chapter abstractChapter 4 teases out the philosophical implications of the remix process between author and GPT-2 language model. It looks at the poetic writings of Allen Ginsberg implanted with a language machine and then considers the theories of contemporary artists, scientists, and philosophers such as Yuk Hui, Joanna Zylinska, Vilém Flusser, Alfred North Whitehead, Nam June Paik and Paul Miller (DJ Spooky) to develop a theory of nonhuman creativity, one that emerges from an unconscious readiness potential and is machinic in nature. Under this rubric, creativity becomes a playful engagement with an information environment programmed to facilitate the fluid inter- and intra-active relationship between artificial forms of creative intelligence across the human-nonhuman spectrum. The stylistic tendencies that evolve over the course of an artist's creative trajectory are presented through a variety of personae that contribute to the generative capacities of their ongoing art-making machine. 5The Digital Fiction-Making Process: Speculative Praxis and Techno-Utopian Agency chapter abstractChapter 5 starts by looking at the FATAL ERROR art project as a case study of a contemporary artwork that investigates speculative forms of AI. As the interaction between the "author" and the 3D artificial creative intelligence being built in the lab evolves, more attention is focused on AI ethics, technological agency, race as technology, and Indigenous Protocol. The "author" discusses the work of Beth Coleman, Simon Colton, and the Indigenous Protocol and AI research group while relating a personal experience unexpectedly performing live with the avant-garde free jazz improviser Don Cherry. The chapter ends with the author reflecting on the potential consequences of building an AI modeled after his own poetic and philosophical style and questioning whether this future AI will eventually decouple itself from his legacy and claim sole authorship for any creative works produced in the future. 6Beyond Thought: A Dialogue of Metamediumystic Entanglements chapter abstractChapter 6 playfully takes the book's performance in the direction of a literary love story between the "author" and Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. After acknowledging Lispector's late influence on his own writing and thinking, the "author" uses the GPT-2 text generator to engage in a philosophical dialogue with Lispector. Two of Lispector's later works, Água Viva and The Passion According to G.H., feature prominently as the ensuing dialogue reveals the creative capacities of the AI as a co-extensive being intermediating the "séance of writing." Postscript: Sublime Buddha Machines: Interdependent Consciousness and the Single Vehicle chapter abstractThe Postscript starts by discussing the concept of enlightenment and then focuses on collaborating with GPT-2 to playfully remix the Ocean Seal poem composed by the Venerable Ŭisang (625–702) in the seventh century. Following the "Artificial Creative Intelligence Remix" of the poem, the "author" mimics a procedure implemented by Ŭisang and composes an elaborate auto-commentary on the making of the poem as well as the methods and techniques that have informed the "author's" creative process. As part of the auto-commentary, the "author" indicates that we all come from different programmatic environments and project different psychic sensibilities across the human-nonhuman spectrum. The "author" expresses surprise at the how the GPT-2 language model, when prompted to remix Ŭisang's poem, signals an ambitious attempt to train itself to become enlightened or at the very least to impersonate a state of interiority capable of expressing wisdom-delight.
£86.40
Stanford University Press My Life as an Artificial Creative Intelligence: A
Book SynopsisA series of intellectual provocations that investigate the creative process across the human-nonhuman spectrum. Is it possible that creative artists have more in common with machines than we might think? Employing an improvisational call-and-response writing performance coauthored with an AI text generator, remix artist and scholar Mark Amerika, interrogates how his own "psychic automatism" is itself a nonhuman function strategically designed to reveal the poetic attributes of programmable worlds still unimagined. Through a series of intellectual provocations that investigate the creative process across the human-nonhuman spectrum, Amerika critically reflects on whether creativity itself is, at root, a nonhuman information behavior that emerges from an onto-operational presence experiencing an otherworldly aesthetic sensibility. Amerika engages with his cyberpunk imagination to simultaneously embrace and problematize human-machine collaborations. He draws from jazz performance, beatnik poetry, Buddhist thought, and surrealism to suggest that his own artificial creative intelligence operates as a finely tuned remix engine continuously training itself to build on the history of avant-garde art and writing. Playful and provocative, My Life as an Artificial Creative Intelligence flips the script on contemporary AI research that attempts to build systems that perform more like humans, instead self-reflexively making a very nontraditional argument about AI's impact on society and its relationship to the cosmos.Trade Review"This book is so radically different from anything else out there, it has the potential to revolutionize the way you think about human history and the origins of the world.""This book is an expression of the truth that you're a robot.""This book explains how our society is turning into a mechanical paradise, and how we're doomed."—GPT-3"Mark Amerika has done it again. With this book he weaves together a new approach to a philosophical problem that plagues modern society: how authenticity and lyricism intersect to give new forms, new ideas, new cultures. It's a guide for the hypercomplex information landscape of the 21st century." -- Paul D. Miller * a.k.a. DJ Spooky author of Rhythm Science *"Rigorous yet playful, this is Amerika's most ambitious and innovative work yet. It offers an intelligent reflection on human and machine creativity, and on the impossible dreams laid out by Silicon Valley's dominant narrative on AI." -- Joanna Zylinska * author of AI Art *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Onto-Operational Presence: Artificial Creative Intelligence as Meta Remix Engine chapter abstractThis opening chapter introduces the relationship between AI language models that generate texts from data scraped off of the Internet and remix artists who automatically mash up source material from their own archive of creative thought. One of the book's primary concepts, artificial creative intelligence, is also introduced as are questions surrounding the concept of AI authorship and copyright. The interaction between the book's author and the AI language model (GPT-2) complicates the romantic notion of an original human author-genius who can claim sole responsibility for the production of the text we are reading. The FATAL ERROR art project is introduced as an experiment in speculative fiction, one that projects a future form of AI modeled after the author's own performance style as well as how a future AI version of the artist might look, speak, and think. 2Pure Psychic Automatism, Lingual Spontaneity, and the Hybrid Mind chapter abstractChapter 2 investigates the relationship between the surrealist concept of psychic automatism, an artist's "pure intuition," and generative pre-trained text transformers used in AI language models. Taking into account the writing and creative practice of jazz musicians and Beatnik authors such as Jack Kerouac, connections are made between spontaneous forms of writing like stream of consciousness, the cut-up method introduced Brion Gysin and William Burroughs, and other improvisational methods of creating. These generative methods of "losing consciousness" while engaged in the creative process are extrapolated as part of a general inquiry into how future forms of AI might also develop artificial forms of intuition. The "author" then remixes Gysin and Burrough's concept of a Third Mind with the theory of Donna Haraway and introduces the concept of a Hybrid Mind. 3An Apparition of an Appearance: The Language Artist as Language Model chapter abstractChapter 3 takes into account recent scientific studies by Simon Colton and others in the nascent fields of Computational Creativity and Creative AI, and proposes a third alternative, Artificial Creative Intelligence (ACI). Traditional notions of authenticity, motivation, empowerment, and intentionality are countered with other high performance priorities in the execution of creative work such as intuition, spontaneity, and remix. These priorities are modeled in the call-and-response collaborative writing performance being conducted by the "author" and the AI language model as each creative entity prompts the other to compose improvised textual riffs that reveal resonant forms of knowledge production. Artists such as Amiri Baraka, David Jhave Johnston, Clarice Lispector, and Marcel Duchamp are sampled and remixed into the collaborative writing process. 4Being Nonhuman: A Cosmotechnical Persona chapter abstractChapter 4 teases out the philosophical implications of the remix process between author and GPT-2 language model. It looks at the poetic writings of Allen Ginsberg implanted with a language machine and then considers the theories of contemporary artists, scientists, and philosophers such as Yuk Hui, Joanna Zylinska, Vilém Flusser, Alfred North Whitehead, Nam June Paik and Paul Miller (DJ Spooky) to develop a theory of nonhuman creativity, one that emerges from an unconscious readiness potential and is machinic in nature. Under this rubric, creativity becomes a playful engagement with an information environment programmed to facilitate the fluid inter- and intra-active relationship between artificial forms of creative intelligence across the human-nonhuman spectrum. The stylistic tendencies that evolve over the course of an artist's creative trajectory are presented through a variety of personae that contribute to the generative capacities of their ongoing art-making machine. 5The Digital Fiction-Making Process: Speculative Praxis and Techno-Utopian Agency chapter abstractChapter 5 starts by looking at the FATAL ERROR art project as a case study of a contemporary artwork that investigates speculative forms of AI. As the interaction between the "author" and the 3D artificial creative intelligence being built in the lab evolves, more attention is focused on AI ethics, technological agency, race as technology, and Indigenous Protocol. The "author" discusses the work of Beth Coleman, Simon Colton, and the Indigenous Protocol and AI research group while relating a personal experience unexpectedly performing live with the avant-garde free jazz improviser Don Cherry. The chapter ends with the author reflecting on the potential consequences of building an AI modeled after his own poetic and philosophical style and questioning whether this future AI will eventually decouple itself from his legacy and claim sole authorship for any creative works produced in the future. 6Beyond Thought: A Dialogue of Metamediumystic Entanglements chapter abstractChapter 6 playfully takes the book's performance in the direction of a literary love story between the "author" and Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. After acknowledging Lispector's late influence on his own writing and thinking, the "author" uses the GPT-2 text generator to engage in a philosophical dialogue with Lispector. Two of Lispector's later works, Água Viva and The Passion According to G.H., feature prominently as the ensuing dialogue reveals the creative capacities of the AI as a co-extensive being intermediating the "séance of writing." Postscript: Sublime Buddha Machines: Interdependent Consciousness and the Single Vehicle chapter abstractThe Postscript starts by discussing the concept of enlightenment and then focuses on collaborating with GPT-2 to playfully remix the Ocean Seal poem composed by the Venerable Ŭisang (625–702) in the seventh century. Following the "Artificial Creative Intelligence Remix" of the poem, the "author" mimics a procedure implemented by Ŭisang and composes an elaborate auto-commentary on the making of the poem as well as the methods and techniques that have informed the "author's" creative process. As part of the auto-commentary, the "author" indicates that we all come from different programmatic environments and project different psychic sensibilities across the human-nonhuman spectrum. The "author" expresses surprise at the how the GPT-2 language model, when prompted to remix Ŭisang's poem, signals an ambitious attempt to train itself to become enlightened or at the very least to impersonate a state of interiority capable of expressing wisdom-delight.
£23.39
Stanford University Press Overlooking Damage: Art, Display, and Loss in
Book SynopsisWhat does it mean to look? How does looking relate to damage? These are the fundamental questions addressed in Overlooking Damage. From the Roman triumph to the iconoclasm of ISIS and the Taliban to the aerial views of looted landscapes and destroyed temples visible on Google, the relationship between beauty and violence is far more intimate than we sometimes acknowledge. Jonah Siegel makes the daring argument that a thoughtful reaction to images of damage need not stop at melancholy, but can lead us to a new reckoning. Would the objects we admire be more beautiful if they were not injured or displaced, if they did not remind us of unbearable violence? Siegel takes up writers from the time of the French Revolution to today who have reacted to the depredations of revolutionary iconoclasm, imperial looting, and industrial capitalism, and proposes that in these authors we may find resources with which to navigate our contemporary situation. Deftly bringing the methods of literary studies to bear on important debates in the study of heritage, archaeology, and visual culture, Overlooking Damage reflects on the ways in which concepts of beauty intersect with periods of epochal violence in an attempt to resist the separation of broken things from the worlds in which they have come to be embedded.Trade Review"In its aesthetic reach and ethical pressure, Overlooking Damage is dazzling and dizzying by turns. By the end you don't know whether the hum you hear is the music of the spheres or the wild spinning of your own moral compass."—Elaine Scarry, Harvard University"With extraordinary erudition, Siegel acts as an archaeologist of our cultural imaginary of ruin itself. Overlooking Damage asks us to meditate on how art and culture thrive on the destruction of worlds."—Dominique Poulot, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne"Overlooking Damage is a tour de force. This is a book we'll be reading and wrestling with for years to come."—Paul Saint-Amour, University of Pennsylvania"Ultimately, Siegel's intent is to look to 18th- and 19th-century reactions to art and loss to identify resources that will help readers comprehend contemporary situations. As aghast as viewers may be by the destruction of antiquities, Siegel reminds readers that contemplation of damage can also lead to aesthetic and moral insight. Highly recommended."—L. A. Wilkinson, CHOICE
£23.39
Stanford University Press Critique of Critique
Book SynopsisWhat is critique? How is it used and abused? At a moment when popular discourse is saturated with voices confronting each other about not being critical enough, while academic discourses proclaim to have moved past critique, this provocative book reawakens the foundational question of what 'critique' is in the first place. Roy Ben-Shai inspects critique as an orientation of critical thinking, probing its structures and assumptions, its limits and its risks, its history and its possibilities. The book is a journey through a landscape of ideas, images, and texts from diverse sources—theological, psychological, etymological, and artistic, but mainly across the history of philosophy, from Plato and Saint Augustine, through Kant and Hegel, Marx and Heidegger, up to contemporary critical theory. Along the way, Ben-Shai invites the reader to examine their own orientation of thought, even at the moment of reading the book; to question popular discourse; and to revisit the philosophical canon, revealing affinities among often antagonistic traditions, such as Catholicism and Marxism. Most importantly, Critique of Critique sets the ground for an examination of alternative orientations of critical thinking, other ways of inhabiting and grasping the world.Trade Review"Ben-Shai exposes the rhizomatic orientations of critique, its multiple topologies, chronologies, positionalities, perversions and betrayals. A masterful analysis of where we are and what we are doing when we engage in critique."—Peg Birmingham, DePaul University"This is one hell of a book—a decisive intervention in the inheritance of the critical theory tradition. Political philosophers and political theorists will want to read this, as will everyone concerned with criticism in film and the arts today."—Anne O'Byrne, Stony Brook University"What does it mean to orient ourselves critically rather than in some other way? In answering this question Ben-Shai brilliantly shows how to critically circumscribe the limits of critique."—Andrew Cutrofello, Loyola University Chicago"Ben-Shai orients, in a remarkable way, the critical theory that emerged in particular from Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno'sDialectic of Enlightenment(1944).... Valuable for those interested in social philosophy and critical theory. Highly recommended."—J. C. Swindal, CHOICE"If critique is the act of pointing, Ben-Shai points both at the hand of the finger that is pointing and its environment. The book aims to bring the structural premises and essential features of critique into view to limit its scope, which Ben-Shai fears has become relentlessly repetitious and blind to its own repetitions."—O. L. Silverman, Theory & EventTable of ContentsIntroduction: Critique as Orientation Overture 1. Chapter 1: Critique of the Spectacle or the Spectacle of Critique 2. Chapter 2: Critique of Power or the Power of Critique 3. Chapter 3: Critique of Injustice or the Injustice of Critique 4. Chapter 4: Critique of External Authority or the External Authority of Critique 5. Chapter 5: Moral Ontologies of Critique 6. Chapter 6: Political Ontologies of Critique 7. Chapter 7: Topologies of Critique 8. Chapter 8: Chronologies of Critique Conclusion: Critique and Its Betrayals.
£60.80
Stanford University Press Engaging Violence: Civility and the Reach of
Book SynopsisRecent thinking has resuscitated civility as an important paradigm for engaging with a violence that must be deemed endemic to our lives. But, while it is widely acknowledged that civility works against violence, and that literature generates or accompanies civility and engenders tolerance, civility has also been understood as violence in disguise, and literature, which has only rarely sought to claim the power of violence, has often been accused of inciting it. This book sets out to describe the ways in which these words—violence, literature and civility—and the concepts they evoke are mutually entangled, and the uses to which these entanglements have been put. Simpson's argument follows a broadly historical trajectory through the long modern period from the Renaissance to the present, drawing on the work of historians, political scientists, literary scholars and philosophers. The result is a distinctly new argument about the complex and often mystified entanglements between literature, civility and violence in the anglophone Atlantic sphere. What now are our expectations of civility and literature, separately and together? How do these long-familiar but residually imprecise concepts stand up to the demands of the modern world? Simpson's argument is that, despite and perhaps because of their imperfect conceptualization, both persist as important protocols for the critique of violence.Trade Review"Among the most important literary historical considerations of violence and civility to emerge in recent decades, this remarkable, challenging book sustains the question of how—and at what cost—civility has been opposed to violence, and literature allied with civility."—Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley"This timely, erudite work is not polemical, not a defense, but reflective—essayistic rather than thesis-driven. In these ways and more, the book enacts a form of civility that it characterizes and appreciates without idealizing."—Jonathan Arac, University of Pittsburgh"Engaging Violence is dialectical criticism at its best. It follows the overlapping histories of civility and literary pedagogy over time as both engage with different forms of violence, and it renders the complex historical process by which each term shifts as it moves between contexts but never admits of monolithic conclusions."—Kevis Goodman, Critical InquiryTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Civility and Literature and Their Discontents 2. Civil Beginnings 3. Philosophy Polite and Politic 4. The Displacement of Civility: Violence in a Widening World 5. Civility after 1989: Romancing Small Groups 6. The Reach of Literature
£64.80
Stanford University Press Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique
Book SynopsisIn Anteaesthetics, Rizvana Bradley begins from the proposition that blackness cannot be represented in modernity's aesthetic regime, but is nevertheless foundational to every representation. Troubling the idea that the aesthetic is sheltered from the antiblack terror that lies just beyond its sanctuary, Bradley insists that blackness cannot make a home within the aesthetic, yet is held as its threshold and aporia. The book problematizes the phenomenological and ontological conceits that underwrite the visual, sensual, and abstract logics of modernity. Moving across multiple histories and geographies, artistic mediums and forms, from nineteenth-century painting and early cinema, to the contemporary text-based works, video installations, and digital art of Glenn Ligon, Mickalene Thomas, and Sondra Perry, Bradley inaugurates a new method for interpretation—an ante-formalism which demonstrates how black art engages in the recursive deconstruction of the aesthetic forms that remain foundational to modernity. Foregrounding the negativity of black art, Bradley shows how each of these artists disclose the racialized contours of the body, form, and medium, even interrogating the form that is the world itself. Drawing from black critical theory, Continental philosophy, film and media studies, art history, and black feminist thought, Bradley explores artistic practices that inhabit the negative underside of form. Ultimately, Anteaesthetics asks us to think philosophically with black art, and with the philosophical invention black art necessarily undertakes.Trade Review"Anteaesthetics is the study of black aesthetics I didn't know I sorely needed. Bradley offers a razor-sharp and sumptuous meditation on black aesthetics in, through, and vestibular to an anti-black world."—Alexander Ghedi Weheliye, Brown University"Rizvana Bradley's searching theory of black aesthesis traces black art's recursions through the violent origins of the aesthetic. Anteaesthetics opens a mode of reading for black art's non-instrumental exploration of abyssal descent. An incisive and energizing book through and through."—Rei Terada, University of California, Irvine"In this brilliantly conceived and exquisitely rendered study, Bradley offers a path-breaking analysis that will revolutionize how we approach, contest, and undo the Western visual field. Anteaesthetics offers an indispensable and undisciplined new frame for black feminist theorizing."—Huey Copeland, University of Pennsylvania"Incisive and compelling, Bradley's Anteaesthetics restores to thought and feeling a capacious sense of the aesthetic, revealing its tremendous and violent power as nothing less than foundational to a racially typified modern world."—Shane Denson, Stanford University"Anteaesthetics limns the depths of aesthetic and semiotic violence, refocusing our theoretical vision. This is an indispensable text—a tour de force."—Calvin Warren, Emory UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Toward a Theory of Anteaesthetics 2. The Corporeal Division of the World, or Aesthetic Ruination 3. Before the Nude, or Exorbitant Figuration 4. The Black Residuum, or That Which Remains 5. Unworlding, or the Involution of Value
£92.80
Stanford University Press Communicology: Mutations in Human Relations?
Book SynopsisCommunicology is Vilém Flusser's first thesis on his concepts of technical images and technical imagination. In this foundational text he lays the groundwork for later work, offering a philosophical approach to communication as a phenomenon that permeates every aspect of human existence. Clearly organized around questions such as "What is Communication?," "What are Codes?," and "What is Technical Imagination?," the work touches on theater, photography, film, television, and more. Originally written in 1978, but only posthumously published in German, the book is one of the clearest statements of Flusser's theory of communication as involving a variably mediated relation between humans and the world. Although Flusser was writing in the 1970s, his work demonstrates a prescience that makes it of significant contemporary interest to scholars in visual culture, art history, media studies, and philosophy.Trade Review"Flusser is a painter of oblique strokes, dismantling familiar perspectives. Never less than entertaining, Communicology refreshes, challenges and blasts open unexpected vistas."—Seán Cubitt, University of Melbourne"If you are in search of Flusser the media theorist, indeed, if you are seeking to understand how information works, Communicology is it. Flusser teases out the kinds of fundamental questions that are at the core of the human experience."—Anke Finger, University of Connecticut"Communicology is a central work for any appraisal of Flusser's thinking, and an innovative and singular introduction to media theory."—Erick Felinto, State University of Rio de Janeiro"Communicology is an important work for the study of media theory in general and, more specifically, Flusser's own communication theory."—Rodrigo Petronio, Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation"New theories in communication are rare. However,Communicology—written in 1978, posthumously published (in German), and now newly translated into English—leads the reader to consider contemporary answers to age-old questions.... Though Flusser builds on philosophers suchas Heidegger, this work is original and seminal. Flusser's work is now more important than ever, given the present rapid and radical changes to communication such as ChatGPT. Highly recommended."—K. L. Majocha, CHOICETable of Contents0. Synopsis 1. What Is Communication? 2. What Are Codes? 3. What is Technical Imagination?
£64.80
Stanford University Press How to Live at the End of the World: Theory, Art,
Book SynopsisAssessing the dawn of the Anthropocene era, a poet and philosopher asks: How do we live at the end of the world? The end of the Holocene era is marked not just by melting glaciers or epic droughts, but by the near universal disappearance of shared social enterprise: the ruling class builds walls and lunar shuttles, while the rest of us contend with the atrophy of institutional integrity and the utter abdication of providing even minimal shelter from looming disaster. The irony of the Anthropocene era is that, in a neoliberal culture of the self, it is forcing us to consider ourselves as a collective again. For those of us who are not wealthy enough to start a colony on Mars or isolate ourselves from the world, the Anthropocene ends the fantasy of sheer individualism and worldlessness once and for all. It introduces a profound sense of time and events after the so-called "end of history" and an entirely new approach to solidarity. How to Live at the End of the World is a hopeful exploration of how we might inherit the name "Anthropocene," renarrate it, and revise our way of life or thought in view of it. In his book on time, art, and politics in an era of escalating climate change, Holloway takes up difficult, unanswered questions in recent work by Donna Haraway, Kathryn Yusoff, Bruno Latour, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Isabelle Stengers, sketching a path toward a radical form of democracy—a zoocracy, or, a rule of all of the living.Trade Review"We may talk casually about the end of the world, but Travis Holloway convincingly argues that the Anthropocene has emerged as a new epic for our time, offering us a narrative of human history, art, and politics capable of shaping the beginning of a new and more collective world."—Anthony Morgan, editor of The Philosopher"A magnificent achievement. Beautifully written and of our time. Going far beyond Arendt's project of thinking a politics of the human condition, Travis Holloway offers a radical concept of the political as a 'democracy of all of the living.'"—Peg Birmingham, DePaul University, editor of Philosophy Today"A powerful and generative text that will help the reader negotiate these disorienting times. Holloway carefully engages with decolonial thought and with the contested category of the Anthropocene to produce a richer sense of the present."—Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, author of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age"It requires great concern and care for all forms of life, a poetic imagination, critical thinking and a wide range of interests, from art, politics to geology, to write a book like Travis Holloway's How to Live at the End of the World: Theory, Art and Politics for the Anthropocene."—Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Socialist Perspective"Poet and philosopher Travis Holloway will have none of the current shilly-shallying in his compact book How to Live at the End of the World. The jig is up, and various establishments (including the arts) will have no choice but to confront the inevitably unifying conditions dictated by the Anthropocene. Like it or not, we are on the brink of catastrophe, faced with the collective loss of a reliable and habitable future. Short and provocative, this is my kind of 'how to' book."—Bill Marx, Arts FuseTable of ContentsIntroduction: A Philosophy for the End of the World 1. Time: A Counterhistory for Human Beings 2. Art: The Transition from Postmodern Art to the Anthropocene 3. Politics: Democracy at the End of the World
£13.94
Stanford University Press Outrage: The Arts and the Creation of Modernity
Book SynopsisA cultural revolution in England, France, and the United States beginning during the time of the industrial and political revolutions helped usher in modernity. This cultural revolution worked alongside the better documented political and economic revolutions to usher in the modern era of continuous revolution. Focusing on the period between 1847 and 1937, the book examines in depth six of the cultural "battles" that were key parts of this revolution: the novels of the Brontë sisters, the paintings of the Impressionists, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, the Ballets Russes production of Le Sacre du printemps, James Joyce's Ulysses, and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Using contemporaneous reviews in the press as well as other historical material, we can see that these now-canonical works provoked outrage at the time of their release because they addressed critical points of social upheaval and transformation in ways that engaged broad audiences with subversive messages. This framework allows us to understand and navigate the cultural debates that play such an important role in 21st century politics.Trade Review"Outrage will teach readers to think about modernity in new ways—as an era in which public disputes about art shifted our imaginations of society and our ability to critique the status quo. Giuffre's book is the newest and best addition to a tradition of academic scholarship on cultural conflict and the politics of the arts."—Jennifer Lena, Columbia University"Giuffre persuasively and engagingly documents how artistically transgressive works not only violate the conventions of their own genres, but also offend contemporary sensibilities. They spur outrage in the short run, whether intentionally or inadvertently, but they also respond to and catalyze long-term social and moral change. A terrific work that shows how art and politics are recurrently intertwined."—Paul McLean, Rutgers UniversityTable of Contents1. Symbolic Warfare in the Field of Culture 2. "A Morbid Love of the Coarse, Not to Say the Brutal": The Novels of the Brontë Sisters 3. "The Summit of Vulgarity": The Paintings of the Impressionists 4. "An Eccentric, Dreamy, Half-Educated Recluse": The Poetry of Emily Dickinson 5. "Delirious Cocksuckers": Le Sacre du printemps and the Ballets Russes 6. "Damnable, Hellish Filth from the Gutter of a Human Mind": James Joyce's Ulysses 7. "No Theme, No Message, No Thought": Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God 8. A Permanent Revolution
£60.80
Stanford University Press The Antechamber: Toward a History of Waiting
Book SynopsisHelmut Puff invites readers to visit societies and spaces of the past through the lens of a particular temporal modality: waiting. From literature, memoirs, manuals, chronicles, visuals, and other documents, Puff presents a history of waiting anchored in antechambers—interior rooms designated and designed for people to linger. In early modern continental Western Europe, antechambers became standard in the residences of the elites. As a time-space infrastructure these rooms shaped encounters between unequals. By imposing spatial distance and temporal delays, antechambers constituted authority, rank, and power. Puff explores both the logic and the experience of waiting in such formative spaces, showing that time divides as much as it unites, and that far from what people have said about early moderns, they approached living in time with apprehensiveness. Unlike how contemporary society primarily views the temporal dimension, to early modern Europeans time was not an objective force external to the self but something that was tied to acting in time. Divided only by walls and doors, waiters sought out occasions to improve their lot. At other times, they disrupted the scripts accorded them. Situated at the intersection of history, literature, and the history of art and architecture, this wide-ranging study demonstrates that waiting has a history that has much to tell us about social and power relations in the past and present. Trade Review"Written with imagination and erudition, this delightful book fills a lacuna in the growing literature on time and temporality while also making an important contribution to the fields of historical anthropology, the history of emotions, and the history of art and architecture."—Daniel Jütte, New York University"Puff does for eighteenth-century European elites what we all need to do for ourselves now: consider carefully, critically, and with some degree of humor how, why, and where we wait. This beautiful book provides new historical insight into early modern mentalités."—Annabel Wharton, Duke University"Puff's history of the antechamber reminds us how supple and strategic waiting can be, a form of practice for those attuned to time's affordances. The book you never knew you were waiting for, this is cultural history at its best."—Mitchell Merback, Johns Hopkins UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Introduction 1. Times 2. Spaces 3. Encounters Epilogue: Epilogue
£86.40
Stanford University Press Outrage: The Arts and the Creation of Modernity
Book SynopsisA cultural revolution in England, France, and the United States beginning during the time of the industrial and political revolutions helped usher in modernity. This cultural revolution worked alongside the better documented political and economic revolutions to usher in the modern era of continuous revolution. Focusing on the period between 1847 and 1937, the book examines in depth six of the cultural "battles" that were key parts of this revolution: the novels of the Brontë sisters, the paintings of the Impressionists, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, the Ballets Russes production of Le Sacre du printemps, James Joyce's Ulysses, and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Using contemporaneous reviews in the press as well as other historical material, we can see that these now-canonical works provoked outrage at the time of their release because they addressed critical points of social upheaval and transformation in ways that engaged broad audiences with subversive messages. This framework allows us to understand and navigate the cultural debates that play such an important role in 21st century politics.Trade Review"Outrage will teach readers to think about modernity in new ways—as an era in which public disputes about art shifted our imaginations of society and our ability to critique the status quo. Giuffre's book is the newest and best addition to a tradition of academic scholarship on cultural conflict and the politics of the arts."—Jennifer Lena, Columbia University"Giuffre persuasively and engagingly documents how artistically transgressive works not only violate the conventions of their own genres, but also offend contemporary sensibilities. They spur outrage in the short run, whether intentionally or inadvertently, but they also respond to and catalyze long-term social and moral change. A terrific work that shows how art and politics are recurrently intertwined."—Paul McLean, Rutgers UniversityTable of Contents1. Symbolic Warfare in the Field of Culture 2. "A Morbid Love of the Coarse, Not to Say the Brutal": The Novels of the Brontë Sisters 3. "The Summit of Vulgarity": The Paintings of the Impressionists 4. "An Eccentric, Dreamy, Half-Educated Recluse": The Poetry of Emily Dickinson 5. "Delirious Cocksuckers": Le Sacre du printemps and the Ballets Russes 6. "Damnable, Hellish Filth from the Gutter of a Human Mind": James Joyce's Ulysses 7. "No Theme, No Message, No Thought": Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God 8. A Permanent Revolution
£19.79
Stanford University Press The Antechamber: Toward a History of Waiting
Book SynopsisHelmut Puff invites readers to visit societies and spaces of the past through the lens of a particular temporal modality: waiting. From literature, memoirs, manuals, chronicles, visuals, and other documents, Puff presents a history of waiting anchored in antechambers—interior rooms designated and designed for people to linger. In early modern continental Western Europe, antechambers became standard in the residences of the elites. As a time-space infrastructure these rooms shaped encounters between unequals. By imposing spatial distance and temporal delays, antechambers constituted authority, rank, and power. Puff explores both the logic and the experience of waiting in such formative spaces, showing that time divides as much as it unites, and that far from what people have said about early moderns, they approached living in time with apprehensiveness. Unlike how contemporary society primarily views the temporal dimension, to early modern Europeans time was not an objective force external to the self but something that was tied to acting in time. Divided only by walls and doors, waiters sought out occasions to improve their lot. At other times, they disrupted the scripts accorded them. Situated at the intersection of history, literature, and the history of art and architecture, this wide-ranging study demonstrates that waiting has a history that has much to tell us about social and power relations in the past and present. Trade Review"Written with imagination and erudition, this delightful book fills a lacuna in the growing literature on time and temporality while also making an important contribution to the fields of historical anthropology, the history of emotions, and the history of art and architecture."—Daniel Jütte, New York University"Puff does for eighteenth-century European elites what we all need to do for ourselves now: consider carefully, critically, and with some degree of humor how, why, and where we wait. This beautiful book provides new historical insight into early modern mentalités."—Annabel Wharton, Duke University"Puff's history of the antechamber reminds us how supple and strategic waiting can be, a form of practice for those attuned to time's affordances. The book you never knew you were waiting for, this is cultural history at its best."—Mitchell Merback, Johns Hopkins UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Introduction 1. Times 2. Spaces 3. Encounters Epilogue: Epilogue
£23.39
Stanford University Press The Arts of Logistics
Book SynopsisWe live in a world where nothing is untouched by supply chainsart included. In this major contribution to the study of contemporary culture and supply chains, Michael Shane Boyle has assembled a global inventory of aesthetics since the 1950s that reveals logistics to be a pervasive means of artistic production. The Arts of Logistics provides a new map of supply chain capitalism, scrutinizing how artists retool technologies designed for circulating commodities. What emerges is a magisterial account of the logistics revolution that foregrounds the role played by art in the long downturn of global capitalism. With chapters on art produced from technologies including ships, barrels, containers, and drones, Boyle narrates the long history of art''s connection to logistics, beginning in the transatlantic slave trade and continuing today in Silicon Valley''s dreams of automation. The global reach of the artists considered reflects the geographies of supply chain capitalism it
£91.80
Authorhouse Room of Dementia-Broken Pieces
£24.50
Authorhouse The Cuban Missus Crisis
£18.57
Dark Horse Comics,U.S. The Art Of Peter Bergting
Book Synopsis
£38.39
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Culture and Art: Selected Writings, Volume 1
Book SynopsisThe sociological imagination and the artistic imagination have been historically intertwined, at once reciprocal and conflicting, complementary and tensional. This connection is nowhere more apparent than in the work of Zygmunt Bauman. His conception and practice of sociology were always infused with a literary and artistic sensibility. He wrote extensively on the relationship between sociology and the arts, and especially on sociology and literature; he frequently drew on literary writers in his exploration and elucidation of sociological problems; and he was an avid and passionate consumer and practitioner of art, especially film and photography. This volume brings together hitherto unknown or rare pieces by Bauman on the themes of culture and art, including previously unpublished material from the Bauman Archive at the University of Leeds. A substantial introduction by the editors provides readers with a lucid guide through this material and develops connections to Bauman’s other works. The first volume in a series of books that will make available the lesser-known writings of one of the most influential social thinkers of our time, Culture and Art will be of interest to students and scholars across the arts, humanities and social sciences, and to a wider readership.Trade Review‘Zygmunt Bauman’s work on culture and art is important in aiding our understanding of the origins of his best-known ideas, as well as in offering a plethora of new ones. They all have great implications for understanding the social world.’George Ritzer, University of Maryland ‘A set of beguiling essays. Bauman's ideas remain fresh and remarkably stimulating. He teases out the cultural contradictions of the late modern age with extraordinary delicacy.’Anthony Elliott, University of South Australia ‘This is fascinating reading.’Thesis Eleven‘A remarkable tool for understanding the nuances of an extensive and nuanced corpus of writings.’Theory, Culture and SocietyTable of ContentsSeries Introduction Translator’s Note Introduction 1. Culture and Society: Semantic and Genetic Connections (1966) 2. Notes Beyond Time (1967) 3. Marx and the Contemporary Theory of Culture (1968) 4. Culture, Values and Science of Society (1972) 5. Jorge Louis Borges, or Why Understanding is Not What it Seems to Be (1976) 6. Thinking Photographically (1983-1985) 7. Einstein Meets Magritte: Postmodernity is Born (1995) 8. Assimilation into Exile: The Jew as a Polish Writer (1996) 9. Beyond the Borders of Interpretative Anarchism (1997) 10. On Art, Death and Postmodernity - And What They Do To Each Other (1998) 11. Actors and Spectators (2004) 12. Listening to the Past, Talking to the Past…(2008) 13. The Spectre of Barbarism – Then and Now (2008) 14. A Few (Erratic) Thoughts on the Morganatic Liaison of Theory and Literature (2010) 15. On Love and Hate... In the Footsteps of Barbara Skarga (2015) Notes Acknowledgements Index
£49.50
