Description
Book SynopsisCutting across literature, film, art, and philosophy, Art of the Ordinary is a trailblazing, cross-disciplinary engagement with the ordinary and the everyday. Because, writes Richard Deming, the ordinary is always at hand, it is, in fact, too familiar for us to perceive it and become fully aware of it. The ordinary he argues, is what most needs to be discovered and yet is something that can never be approached, since to do so is to immediately change it.
Art of the Ordinary explores how philosophical questions can be revealed in surprising placesas in a stand-up comic's routine, for instance, or a Brillo box, or a Hollywood movie. From negotiations with the primary materials of culture and community, ways of reading self and other are made available, deepening one's ability to respond to ethical, social, and political dilemmas. Deming picks out key figures, such as the philosophers Stanley Cavell, Arthur Danto, and Richard Wollheim; poet John Ashbery; artist Andy
Trade Review
A trailblazing, cross-disciplinary engagement with the ordinary and the everyday.
* Critics at Large *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: In Respect of the Ordinary
1. Leading an Ordinary Life: Philosophy and the Ordinary
2. Something Completely Different: Steven Wright, Comedy, and the Uncanny Ordinary
3. How to Dwell: John Ashbery and the Poetics of the Ordinary
4. Artful Things: Looking at Warhol, Looking at the Everyday
