Description
Book SynopsisDrawing on Whitman and Adorno, Morton Schoolman proposes aesthetic education through film as a way to redress the political violence inflicted on difference society constructs as its racialized, gendered, Semitic, and sexualized other.
Trade Review“In a political climate marked by right-wing celebrations of misogyny, xenophobia, oligarchy, racism, militarism, and extractive capitalism, you might be skeptical of a book about ‘the reconciliation image.’ But Morton Schoolman, in a startling and effective admixture of Whitman's democratic ethos, Adorno's defense of a specifically aesthetic kind of critical reason, and contemporary films, contends that now is the time for new thinking about ‘reconciliation.’ This is an original, creative, provocative, rewarding, and timely book.” -- Jane Bennett, author of * Influx and Efflux: Writing Up with Walt Whitman *
“Morton Schoolman is an accomplished, erudite, and wonderfully playful reader of both Whitman and Adorno. His insightful account of a ‘democratic enlightenment’ through encounters with images opens spaces for politics that we wouldn’t otherwise see. I didn’t want to put this provocative book down!” -- Lori Jo Marso, author of * Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: Past as Prologue 1
Part I. The Reconciliation Image in Whitman
1.
Democratic Vistas: Democratic Enlightenment and Reconciliation 47
2. Whitman's Discovery: Aesthetic Education through the Visual Image 79
First Bridge.
Thinking with Adorno
against Adorno 119
Part II. The Reconciliation Image in Adorno
3. Aesthetic Reason and Reflexivity, Twin Economies and Democratic Effects 145
4. Aesthetic Analogues: Art and Film 166
Second Bridge: The Reconciliation Image versus the Narrative Structure of Film 199
Part III. The Reconciliation Image in Film
5.
The Help: Entangled in a Becoming 231
6.
Gentlemen's Agreement: Beyond Tolerance 249
7. The Reconciliation Image in Film as Universal Art Form 273
Notes 281
Bibliography 301
Index 309
