In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MIMETIC SADISM IN THE FICTION OF YUKIO MISHIMA Jerry Piven New York University Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) was one ofthe mostenigmatic authors of the 20th century. Novelist, playwright, actor, exhibiionist —his novels are rife with homoerotic and violent imagery, while his fanatical and nihilistic philosophy calls for a return to a Samurai ethos. Mishima thus attained infamy in Japan and in the West, as his shocking novels inspired hordes (...) ofyoung Japanese into a cult ofMishima worship, while critics who acknowledge his genius are still nervous about his sadistic homosexuality and his suicide. Mishima's works are suffused with erotic bloodshed and misogyny, and Mishima finally ended his life by ritually disemboweling himself. I will make the case that Mishima was incessantly plagued by torturous mimetic frustrations, and that his final act of spilling his blood and intestines can be interpreted as the result of mimetic hatred against his rivals. I also argue that Mishima was fundamentally schizoidal; in Girardian terms, a man whose hypocrisy for the sakeofdesire rendered him an exhibitionistic maskdisguisingmimetic rage and fear. Having previously written about Mishima from a psychoanalytic perspective, I believe that a Girardian approach would often yield drastically different interpretations of identical biographical and literary materials. ' 1I initially wrote on Mishima for several diagnostic assignments at my psychoanalytic institute, the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP). After considering the psychoanalytic and Girardian approaches, I expanded these original essays using identical material to determine whetherthe interpretations orconclusions would differ; I was struck by the way the same details could provide both remarkable congruences and vast divergences ofperspective. Read side by side, one can find compatible conclusions, but one also finds perceptions ofthe same details that would be difficultto conceive or articulate 70Jeremy Piven Mimesis, misogyny, and maculacy Kimitake Hiraoka was a frail, sickly child before he became the muscular and exhibitionistic novelist Yukio Mishima. His brutal and helpless childhood inaugurated his mimetic complexes: his need to escape the suffocating and diseased environment of his grandmother, his rivalry with her, and his mimetic ideal ofbeauty and muscular invulnerability. Mishima was an unhealthy youth, taken from the arms of his mother before he was two months old, and confined to the sickroom of his grandmother for the first twelve years ofhis life. Under the auspices ofhis tyrannical and ostensively psychotic grandmother, Mishima lived in the dark, could play only female friends (becausetheywere deemed harmless), and could eat only gentle foods. He thus lived an imprisoned life away from his parents, amid the excrescences of his sick and hysterical grandmother until adolescence, when his father "reclaimed him." Mishima later rebelled against this sickly nature, sculpting himself into a statuesque ideal of masculine beauty. He became obsessed with martial arts and the eroticism ofhis own engraved body. His fiction and philosophy were permeated by misogyny, glorification ofGrecian male sexuality and aesthetics, and the repudiation ofanything weak or feminine. He finally killed himselfbefore age could wither his masculine beauty. Mishima's fiction prominently features protagonists who mirror his sickly youth. The autobiographical Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no Kokuhaku) describes the homoerotic development ofthis frail child. Such fraiIcharacters inMishima'sfiction arealwaysdrawneroticallytobeautiful males as both mimetic rivals and models. The narrator of Confessions describes his sexual attraction to a sewage collector, a "ladler of excrement"(8). Thehandsomemanwith "ruddycheeks" and "shiningeyes" fascinates the narrator, and he is filled with desire lookingathistightjeans. using psychoanalytic perspectives andjargon. Two ofthe original essays will be published inthePsychoanalyticReview in comingmonths: "PhallicNarcissism, Anal Sadism, and Oral Discord: The Case ofYukio Mishima (part I)," and "Narcissistic Revenge and Suicide: The Case ofYukio Mishima (part H)." I am currently translating these articles for publication in Japan. I included a brief discussion of Mishima in the introduction to Psychological Undercurrents ofHistory (Piven and Lawton, eds.), to explore the complex methodological and psychological dynamics of the field of psychohistory. A commentary on Mishima's traumaticchildhood entitled "The Pathology ofGenius," will appearin aforthcomingedition ofTapestry: TheJournalofHistoricalMotivations andtheSocialFabric, and afinal article, "Voyeurism and Rage in The Sailor Who Fellfrom Grace with the Sea," will appear in Psychological Undercurrents ofHistory, Volume II (2002). Mimetic Sadism in the Fiction ofYukio Mishima71 The narrator thus emerges into a burgeoning homosexuality, but he also fantasizes about dying dramatically. His... (shrink)

In two recent articles, Nicholas Dixon has argued that the intent to hurt and injure opponents which is essential to mixed martial arts makes the sport intrinsically immoral. Although bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism also involves the intentional infliction of pain and injury, Dixon argues that it is morally permissible in many cases. In this paper, I examine the principle underlying Dixon's differentiation of MMA and BDSM. I argue that, when properly elaborated, that principle does not in fact condemn (...) MMA as intrinsically immoral, but rather implies that the attitudes and actions of most autonomously consenting amateur MMA fighters and some autonomously consenting professionals are prima facie morally permissible. (shrink)

The viscerally Freudian elements of Adorno's use of the concept of mimesis interweave with readings of Kafka in which certain thoughts about childhood play an important role. The first section of this article links biological mimicry with critical theory and art: both mimic what they criticize, while also conserving a repressed and childlike mimetic relationship with otherness and sexual difference. Adorno criticizes both the civilized repression of the mimetic impulse and its subsequently distorted return, a dialectic neglected by direct appeals (...) to mimesis. Good art tries to extricate itself from these distortions. Conversely, the second section of this article explores Adorno's suggestion that fascistic psychology is a refuge for a twisted mimesis of mimesis, which gratifies the worst side of repressed nature while ideologically appealing to the best. Anti-Semitic humour shows how the fascist mimics his own aggressive fantasy of natural law, while secretly envying the closeness to nature he thinks he detects in other races. The final section uses Freud's theories on sympathetic and sadistic comedy to unpack Adorno's readings of Kafka and Mörike. Adorno's critical recuperation of mimetically childlike moments of ridiculousness in art clarifies his differentiation of the varieties of mimesis, as well as countering the gloomy stereotype of the humourless intellectual. But the black side of Adorno's use of laughter dialectically maintains his commitment to painfully remembering the victims of history. (shrink)

(2010). The Theatrical Satanism of Self-Awareness Itself. Angelaki: Vol. 15, shadows of cruelty sadism, masochism and the philosophical muse – part two, pp. 29-43.

What if Immanuel Kant floated down from his transcendental heights, straight through Alice’s rabbit hole, and into the fabulous world of Lewis Carroll? For Ben-Ami Scharfstein this is a wonderfully instructive scenario and the perfect way to begin this wide-ranging collection of decades of startlingly synthesized thought. Combining a deep knowledge of psychology, cultural anthropology, art history, and the history of religions—not to mention philosophy—he demonstrates again and again the unpredictability of writing and thought and how they can teach us (...) about our experiences. Scharfstein begins with essays on the nature of philosophy itself, moving from an autobiographical account of the trials of being a comparativist to philosophy’s function in the outside world to the fear of death in Kant and Hume. From there he explores an impressive array of art: from China and Japan to India and the West; from an essay on sadistic and masochistic body art to one on the epistemology of the deaf and the blind. He then returns to philosophy, writing on Machiavelli and political ruthlessness, then on the ineffable, and closes with a review of Walter Kaufmann’s multivolume look at the essence of humanity, _Discovering the Mind_. Altogether, these essays are a testament to adventurous thought, the kind that leaps to the furthest reaches of the possible. (shrink)

English summary: The relationship of art to physical violence in European cultural history has always been intricate. Aestheticised violence in the fine arts, on the stage or in literature has often been discredited, but at the same time - not least because of the contiguity of violence and sexuality - it is received with pleasure. In a survey of literary examples from antiquity, the Renaissance and modernity, the author begins by elucidating the development in Europe of the troubled relationship between (...) aesthetics and violence. This relationship is then examined from a psychoanaltical angle in two exemplary studies of music. The dual perspective continues with the analyses of contemporary cultural producers (a theatre director, a photographic artist and a film director) together with those of cultural scientists (from theatre studies, art history, and film and media studies). In this way, the actual process of aesthetisizing violence, on the one hand, and theoretical reflections on it, on the other, become clear.German description: Das Verhaltnis der Kunste zur physischen Gewalt ist in der europaischen Kulturgeschichte immer schon ein intrikates gewesen. Asthetisierte Gewalt in der Kunst, auf der Buhne oder in der Literatur wurde zwar oft diskreditiert, zugleich aber - auch wegen der Nahe von Gewalt und Sexualitat - mit Genuss rezipiert. An den Beispielen der Literatur der Antike, der Renaissance und der Moderne zeigt der Band die europaische Entwicklung des ambivalenten Verhaltnisses von Asthetik und Gewalt auf. Aus psychoanalytischer, kulturwissenschaftlicher und medienwissenschaftlicher Perspektive verdeutlichen die Beitrager sowohl konkrete Verfahren des Asthetisierens von Gewalt als auch ihre theoretische Reflexion. Erganzt durch Analysen aus dem Kulturbetrieb - u.a. von Daniel Rademacher, Wilfred H.G. Neuse und Thomas Sieben - bietet der Band so einen umfassenden Einblick in die Beziehung zwischen Kunst und Gewalt. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When an Arab Laughs in Toledo: Cervantes’s Interpellation of Early Modern Spanish OrientalismE. C. Graf (bio)My purpose has been to place in the plaza of our republic a game table which everyone can approach to entertain themselves without fear of being harmed by the rods; by which I mean without harm to spirit or body, because honest and agreeable exercises are always more likely to do good than harm.—Miguel (...) de Cervantes Saavedra, Prologue to Novelas ejemplares [my translation]We are engaged in a technical enterprise at the species scale.—Jacques Lacan, “L’agressivité en psychanalyse” [my translation]While I was all intent on watching him, he looked at me, and with his hands he spread his chest and said: “See how I split myself!”!—Dante Alighieri, Inferno 28.28–30 Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Sandro Botticelli, The Virgin and Child (c. 1490). Courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; ©1999 President and Fellows of Harvard College. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2.Salvador Dalí, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening (1941). Courtesy of Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; ©1999 Artists' Rights Society (ARS), New York.For much of this century, Hispanists have labored in an effort to elevate Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) to the coveted status of the “first modern novel.” Today this kind of criticism may strike our postmodern sensibilities as a rather traditional enterprise, the kind more interested in establishing an elite hierarchy of literary tastes than in saying anything new about an author or text. For many, the study of literature is still an aesthetic beauty pageant in which “great books” like Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1767) or Marie de la Vergne de La Fayette’s La princesse de Clèves (1678) are paraded across the stage in a contest to seduce the Western intelligentsia. 1 The postmodern student of literature may not have much concern for this age-old territorial contest, but she might be interested to learn that the fallout from Hispanism’s quest for the “first modern novel” has involved so much attention to, indeed complication of, Don Quixote, that the book now resembles more a postmodern text than an early modern one. At the turn of the century, we have been left with what Jorge Luis Borges would recognize as an “aleph”: an infinite ideological labyrinth that reflects and/or cannibalizes all forms, thereby escaping all attempts [End Page 68] to describe it. 2 Whatever we currently mean by “Cervantes” (an author, a collection of texts, an ideological construction, and so forth) carries with it an impressive range of critical responses. Cervantes has been labeled converso (Castro, Canavaggio), Christian humanist (Castro, Bataillon, Forcione, Herrero, Vilanova), disillusioned secularist (Lukács, Cascardi), precapitalist (Johnson), anti-essentialist (Wilson), anti-Eusebian (Presberg), Menippean (Bakhtin), feminist (El Saffar, Rabin, Cruz), sadist (Nabokov), ethnocentric imperialist (Mariscal), medieval (Gorfkle), homophobic (Martín), non-organicist Aristotelian (Read), and either discursively or actually homosexual (Combet, Rossi, Smith, Arrabal). This list is nowhere near complete, but the reader will grasp the robust effects of the plurality of perspectives on Cervantes.Each of these interpretations is valid to varying degrees within various contexts, but at present I am interested in reading Cervantes as the author of a multicultural manifesto on behalf of the Moriscos of Southern Spain. 3 Within the contexts of French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and Palestinian postcolonial literary critic Edward Said, materialist, postcolonial, and multicultural critiques of various forms of power and their ideologies can be seen as the fundamental propositions of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. 4 Cervantes’s ultimate orientation may perhaps be inescapably Eurocentric, but his responses to the European experience of the rise and expansion of an ethnocentric militaristic nation state are relatively centrifugal when compared to the attitudes of many of his contemporaries.In surveying some of the antihegemonic details of Cervantes’s novel, I am also interested in dispelling the popular myth of Don Quixote. Especially in the English-speaking world, and particularly in the United States, Don Quixote remains captive to a... (shrink)

This paper examines a general political problem of how to balance the need for concentrated power in the hands of the state—which is needed for effective governance—against the egalitarian desire to equalize power. It distinguishes between ‘positive’ political power appropriately wielded by the state, and ‘negative’ power that individuals may use to protect their own activities and interests from excessive or illegitimate state action and argue for institutions and practices designed to equalize power by ‘leveling up’ the powerless to match (...) the strong. (shrink)

This new Encyclopedia of Postmodernism is structured with biographical entries on all the key contributors to the postmodernism debate, including Mikhail Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieum, Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas and Wittgenstein. Providing an all-encompassing and welcome addition to the field, the Encyclopedia contains entries on foundational concepts of postmodernism which have revolutionized thinking in every intellectual discipline. This new Encyclopedia is the first to provide comprehensive A-Z coverage of the key individuals and concepts of postmodernism. The 300+ entries include: * African (...) American studies * Roland Barthes * binary opposition * Buddhism * comparative literature * cyberculture * death of God * Gilles Deleuze * desire * digital culture * end of history * globalization * grand narrative * improvisation * jouissance * logocentrism * metalanguage * sadism * theatre arts * trope * visuality * Cornell West * and much more. Fully cross-referenced and indexed, with suggestionsfor further reading. (shrink)

This paper argues that the central notion of truth content in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory is to be understood through the way that art provides a mimesis of false consciousness. The paper is divided into three main parts: in the first part, I examine Adorno’s distinction between discursive truth and aesthetic truth. The latter rests on a theory of non-objectifying synthesis. The second part of the paper shows how art can be understood as a form of mimesis, thus distinguishing it from (...) the ontology of representation. I argue that while there are many forms of mimesis, Adorno gives specific significance to the way in which modern art imitates social rationality. In the final section, I argue that art can be true by imitating ‘false consciousness’ and thus transforming it. I explain Adorno’s notion of false consciousness through four features: there is a rigid bifurcation of enjoyment from work, there is a sadistic enjoyment of violence, there is a lack of cognitive tension between intuition and concept, and there is a false projection of one’s own desires onto others. (shrink)

Up to now, China's painting has not completely shaken off the influence of the spirit of European philosophy or a fundamental change in the way of viewing. The spirit of the unity of subject and object in ancient China philosophy influenced the formation and development of China's paintings. Since China Art Institute introduced figurative expressionism, a new art, into the contemporary art education system of China, it has shown its unique value in professional theory and practical skills. It not only (...) provides new opportunities for reforming contemporary art education in China but also adds a new development direction for contemporary oil painting art in China. This article attempts to reveal the existence and artistic concept of violence in contemporary Chinese oil painting through the description and analysis of painting images and artists' emotional expression, combined with interviews with artists. Based on the development of contemporary Chinese society, the rise of new literary and artistic trends, and the influence of western painting, this paper analyses the historical causes of violence in contemporary Chinese oil painting, and examines the value of contemporary Chinese oil painting in terms of aesthetics and sociology. Therefore, establishing cultural core values is still the indispensable spiritual power of contemporary artists' artistic creation. (shrink)

This book examines fundamental questions about funding for the arts: why should governments provide funding for the arts? What do the arts contribute to daily life? Do artists and their publics have a social responsibility? Challenging questionable assumptions about the state, the arts and a democratic society, Lambert Zuidervaart presents a vigorous case for government funding, based on crucial contributions the arts make to civil society. He argues that the arts contribute to democratic communication and a social economy, fostering the (...) critical and creative dialogue that a democratic society needs. Informed by the author's experience leading a non-profit arts organisation as well as his expertise in the arts, humanities and social sciences, this book proposes an entirely new conception of the public role of art with wide-ranging implications for education, politics and cultural policy. (shrink)

This essay brings psychoanalytic theory on trauma together with film and television criticism on rape narrative in an analysis of Michael Coel’s 2020 series I May Destroy You. Beyond the limited carceral framework of the police procedural, which dislocates the act of violence from the survivor’s history and context, Coel’s polyvalent, looping narrative metabolizes rape television’s forms and genres in order to stage and restage both trauma and genre again and anew. Contesting common conceptions of vulnerability and susceptibility that prefigure (...) a violent breach of autonomy, Coel’s series and her interviews about it invite an ethics of looking that embraces a curiosity in the unknowable and untreatable kernel of subjective experience and defies and resists a policing of the survivor’s thoughts and emotions. By emphasizing and exploring what psychoanalysis calls the “afterwardness” of trauma, Coel foregrounds her main character’s subjectivity prior to her victimization, widens the sphere of consequence beyond the victim and criminal justice system to the survivor’s larger community, and entreats that community to preserve a space for her to look and look again at everything, without judgment. (shrink)

In ‘Is Art Modern? Kristeller’s “Modern System of the Arts” Reconsidered’ (BJA, 49.1 (2009), pp. 1-24), James I. Porter sets out to discredit Kristeller’s ‘modern system of the arts’ on the curious assumption that if Kristeller is right, one is somehow prohibited from investigating the ancients’ understanding of aesthetics. Unfortunately, Porter's paper misrepresents Kristeller's central aim, misses the real shortcomings of Kristeller's essay, and often obscures substantive issues behind simplistic dichotomies. Because the unwary reader might be taken in by some (...) of Porter's exaggerations and omissions, I will identify a few of these before addressing the issue of continuity and discontinuity in the concept of art, particularly with respect to the ancient world. (shrink)

When, in 1735, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten added a new discipline to the philosophical system, he not only founded modern aesthetics but also contributed to shaping the modern concept of art or 'fine art'. In The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment, Stefanie Buchenau offers a rich analysis and reconstruction of the origins of this new discipline in its wider context of German Enlightenment philosophy. Present-day scholars commonly regard Baumgarten's views as an imperfect prefiguration of Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics, but (...) Buchenau argues that Baumgarten defended a consistent and original project which must be viewed in the context of the modern debate on the art of invention. Her book offers new perspectives on Kantian aesthetics and beauty in art and science. (shrink)

Metaphors abound in both the arts and in science. Due to the traditional division between these enterprises as one concerned with aesthetic values and the other with epistemic values there has unfortunately been very little work on the relation between metaphors in the arts and sciences. In this paper, we aim to remedy this omission by defending a continuity thesis regarding the function of metaphor across both domains, that is, metaphors fulfill any of the same functions in science as they (...) do in the arts. Importantly, this involves the claim that metaphors in arts as well as science have both epistemic and aesthetic functions. (shrink)

Since early modern times, art has paralleled religion in its response to technology as illustrated by Ruskin’s thoughts on the colour purple. Heidegger also turned to art, especially the poetry of Hölderlin, as an alternative to technology. Against the background of Benjamin’s essay on ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproducibility’, the question is asked whether the thoroughly technicized art of film can become a focus for such creative counter-technological thinking. A positive answer is developed with reference (...) to Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Nostalgia. (shrink)

Life Is Short--Art Is Shorter is not just the first anthology to gather both mini-essays and short-short stories; readers, writers, and teachers will get will get an anthology; a course's worth of writing exercises; a rally for compression, concision, and velocity in an increasingly digital, post-religious age; and a meditation on the brevity of human existence. 1. We are mortal beings. 2. There is no god. 3. We live in a digital culture. 4. Art is related to the body and (...) to the culture. 5. Art should reflect these things. 6. Brevity rules. The book's 40 contributors include Donald Barthelme, Kate Chopin, Lydia Davis, Annie Dillard, Jonathan Safran Foer, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Jamaica Kincaid, Wayne Koestenbaum, Anne Lamott, Daphne Merkin, Rick Moody, Dinty W. Moore, George Orwell, Jayne Anne Phillips, George Saunders, Lauren Slater, James Tate, and Paul Theroux. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Videogames and Interactive FictionGrant TavinorIIn the third-person crime simulator Grand Theft Auto 3, the fictional performing of all sorts of criminal nuisance is a possibility. (Squeamish readers, or those that are adamant videogames are playing a decisive role in the moral degeneration of modern society might want to turn away now!) Here is one possibility for players of the game: while driving around in the rundown red-light district of (...) Portland Island, try stopping beside one of the women dressed in leather dresses and knee-high stockings who say things like "Have you ever been down south?" The fictional woman will bend down to the car window and eventually hop in. Now drive to a secluded area, stop the car, and wait. What happens? The car begins to rock up and down, slowly at first, and then more quickly, squeaking all the while. As it does, your health meter increases and the cash meter decreases. Eventually, after the car has stopped rocking, the prostitute exits and walks away. This is all obviously of questionable taste. But the really horrible part is that it is possible to mug the prostitute and take back your money!Though I am reluctant to tell you this, the first time I discovered the trick, I felt a sort of sadistic joy at my reprehensible behavior. Friends in the room at the time thought the whole incident hilarious; except for one who thought it extremely revolting. Perhaps now though, I feel guilty for what I did to the prostitute. (Hence my reluctance to let you know of my sinister fictional activities!) Of course, this episode raises a host of ethical questions; I will not attempt to answer them here. What I am interested in is the possibility of fictional interaction itself. The important point is that this fictive episode seems to show that it is possible in the case of videogames to feel guilty or ashamed for what one [End Page 24] does in a fictional world. But how is this possible? What does interacting with a videogame amount to that it allows for this intimate (and dubious) emotional connection?There is a wide and impressive literature in the analytic philosophy of the arts concerning the nature of fiction and the practice that surrounds it; this literature gives us an ideal theoretical basis from which to explore the topic of videogames. But also, videogames will allow us to return our attention to the theory, perhaps perceiving areas in which it can be improved, so as to become more generally applicable. I begin this paper by setting out some initial descriptive examples of the ways in which videogames are interactive fictions. After discussing an ambiguity in the notion of what it is to interact with a fiction, I deal with two prominent aspects of that interaction; that focused on fictive props, and the apparent interaction players have with fictional worlds. Next, I argue that the interactive nature of videogames alters the character of our interest in them. Rather than a focus on interpretive and sympathetic engagement with narratives, videogames involve their appreciators in an active engagement with the problem spaces or kinetic narratives of gameplay. Finally, I argue that because action and emotion are close cognitive bedfellows, and because emotion plays an important role in the psychology of fictive practice, that the emotions experienced by videogame players will be distinctive to that fictive form.IIVideogames provide their players with a variety of opportunities for interactive engagement. The last ten years have seen significant development in the extent of the fictive interactivity of videogames, especially with the advent of the "next generation" consoles such as Playstation 2 and X-Box, and the burgeoning genre of PC gaming. With the intention of providing some descriptive substance for the following theoretical discussions, in this section I present some examples of the ways in which modern videogames are interactive fictions, and how they differ to more traditional fictive forms in this respect.Many videogames involve exploring an environment. In Grand Theft Auto 3, the player, in the guise of a criminal protagonist, is able to explore the streets of Liberty City. Completing the objectives of the... (shrink)

Psychological trauma is ubiquitous, an often hidden yet influential factor in care across clinical specialties. Interdisciplinary health professions education is mobilizing to address the importance of trauma-sensitive care. Given their attention to complex human realities, the health humanities are well-poised to shape healthcare learners’ responses to trauma. Indeed, many such arts and humanities curricula propose narrative exercises to strengthen empathy, self-reflection, and sensitive communication. Trauma, however, is often unwordable, fragmentary, and physically encoded, incompatible with storying methods. This article presents a (...) recent innovation, the Art is Patient seminar series, which focuses on aesthetic exercises to help learners access and share non-verbal, embodied, and relational responses to art. Based in an art museum context, it provides successive experiences of approaching, witnessing, and engaging with visual art as an analogue to developing trauma-sensitive relationships. Reflections on the process locate the seminar vis-à-vis health humanities practices, aesthetics, and trauma-informed approaches. (shrink)

This article analyses the topic of presence in modern and contemporary religious art by means of the work of two artists. Graham Sutherland’s Christ in Glory (1951-1962) will be compared to the Buddhism-inspired works of Antony Gormley. Sutherlands Christ in Glory is intended to show Christ’s presence to the involved observer: the invisible Christ can become present through interaction with Christ in Glory in the same way that Christ becomes present through prayer. Viewed in connection with other works by Gormley, (...) Land, Sea, and Air II (1982) is intended to show presence to the viewer, the body as presence. This concerns an attitude of quiet concentration and awareness in connection with the ‘elemental’ world. Theologically speaking, the difference between Christ in Glory and Gormley’s works is as follows: the Christian tradition views the human being as a creation of God. He or she lives in his or her presence only in dependence on God. For Gormley, it has to do with a presence without God the creator. The human being is present as body and awareness in a world in which everything is uncertain. There is an unmistakable difference in their views of presence, but that does not mean, as we will see, that Gormley’s work cannot be fruitful for the Christian religion. Gormley’s Sound II in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral points the involved observer to the importance of the renewal of life after baptism through meditation as an important part of Christian spirituality. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 253—278. A Sense of French Politics Politics itself is not the exercise of power or struggle for power. Politics is first of all the configuration of a space as political, the framing of a specific sphere of experience, the setting of objects posed as "common" and of subjects to whom the capacity is recognized to designate these objects and discuss about them.(1) On April 14, 2011, France implemented its controversial ban of the niqab and burqa , commonly (...) referred to as the Islamic veil, in public places. On the coattails of the 2004 prohibition of religious artifacts, including the less concealing hijab or Islamic headscarves, in schools, the veil ban sparked equal outrage across both political and theological spectra, and many on both sides of the debate were quick to inquire about enforcement. As Steven Erlanger reports, “The police do not have the authority under the law to remove full veils, only to fine or require citizenship lessons for those who violate the new law.”(2) While the legal and social implications of this interdiction are ripe for study, the reprisals for breaking the law, notably compulsory citizenship classes, illuminate the strategic governmentality underlying the French government's targeting of the Muslim community, particularly those elements it considers affiliated with fundamentalist factions and/or terrorist organizations, if only through fashion—an integral component of French citizenship. Indeed, in allowing the (fashion) police to mandate instructional courses in citizenship for offenders, France implies that any Muslim choosing to wear the niqab or burqa , perhaps even for those who are already citizens, must not be aware of the subtle nuances of dress indicative of the French citizenry within public space. Furthermore, the degree of instruction requisite to citizenship, which clearly can and must be updated as the state sees fit, cements the imagined relation between citizens and states within the discourses on the veil ban. As Sharma contends, “Concepts of citizenship are the ideological glue that bonds the nation to the state. Citizenship provides the legal framework through which the state performs its role as ruler for the nation.”(3) Speaking for/as the state, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared in a 2009 presentation before members of the government and other citizens that the burqa “is not welcome on the territory of France.”(4) Although there is nothing unique, especially recently, about a nation-state taking extreme measures to guard itself against what it deems to be threats to its sovereignty, the way in which the ongoing discourses on hijab have (d)evolved, which coincide with recent pronouncements by governmental leaders in Germany, Britain, and France that policies of multiculturalism have “failed,”(5) points toward nationalist reterritorializations, which is also to say physical and ideological re-appropriations, of public space within democratic milieux, which remain predicated upon the mediation of spaces. As Panagia deduces from Rancière, “Democracy […] is not an institutional form of government […], but an appearance whose visibilities and audibilites arise out of the dissonant blur of the everyday.”(6) Ultimately, the veil ban represents a calculated move to regulate the every day, which is to say the micropolitics of, that which is visible and invisible within French society, which makes it nothing short of a struggle to manage (the sensation of) bodies. Re-situating the political within the context of sense, Rancière argues that the fundamental essence of politics lies within the distinction between consensus and dissensus , and whereas most consider politics proper as fundamentally concerned with the fluid operations of the state— consensus , Rancière actually locates the political within events that disrupt the normative sensory order of things— dissensus . He explains, “Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time.”(7) This reformulation of politics centers on agency and, albeit perhaps unintended, representationality and offers a useful formulation for spatializing the discourses surrounding the Islamic veil, which are mired within seemingly senseless policies and practices of objectification. Instituting a normative “regime of visibility,” the French veil ban encapsulates the political economy of agency, now both mediated and representational, under the rule of nationalist governmentalities in increasingly transnational contexts.(8) Adjudicating presence within public space signals a concern with the sensory aspects of agency itself—what Rancière terms the “distribution of the sensible,” which is “a matrix that defines a set of relations between sense and sense: that is, between a form of sensory experience and an interpretation which makes sense of it.”(9) To be concerned with sense is to focus upon the body, and this somatic repositioning of the (fashionable) citizen within the territory of the state augurs the resurgence of nationalist bio-politics within Europe, since, as Hage explicates, “Nationalism, before being an explicit practice or a mode of classification, is a state of the body. It is a way of imagining one's position within the nation and what one can aspire to as a national.”(10) The French government's attempt to make (bodily) sense of public space for its citizens by and through policies aimed against a burqa-clad Muslim minority, which might only apply to “less then 400 to fewer than 2,000” women(11), reveals the necessary, yet mercurial, transmutation of public space into national space through bio-political strategies of sense-making, which, as Hage observes, denotes that “nationalists perceive themselves as spatial managers.”(12) At the center of this concern over public space is the equally contentious dimension of governing female Islamic identity, which has become one of the main critiques levied against Islam from outsiders who view the veil in its various forms as a clear sign of the religion's actual and symbolic violence against women, even if such critiques remain ensconced within nationalist discourses. As Halim and Meyers argue, “Although Western news media may focus their coverage of Muslim women on the debate over whether and the extent to which the veil may by oppressive to the women who wear it, they have exhibited little interest in the physical oppression of violence against women in Islamic countries.”(13) While it falls outside of the scope of this analysis to arbitrate all of the dimensions of this debate, understanding some of the issues related to female identity and hijab within public space are crucial to this study. As these topics are extraordinarily complex, even and perhaps especially within the Muslim community, it is necessary to provide some context concerning the value, purpose, and meaning of the Islamic veil, which has a rich and arduous history. The Art of the Veil At present, there are only two countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, that require women to wear hijab , which is a decidedly problematic term and concept whose locus is itself caught within a struggle of sensation. Noting the strategic reterritorialization of the term, Berger explains: The choice of the name, hijab , now widely adopted to designate the “Islamic veil,” it itself interesting, although the semantic shift it operates is not directly commented upon by its users. Although the design (both the cut and the symbolic function) of the hijab and the Iranian chador are indeed the same, as opposed, for instance, to the traditional Algerian haik , the word hijab has come to replace the term chador popularized by the Iranian revolution, as a properly Arabic (hence Koranic) designation. This discursive shift points to the successful reclaiming of the national revolution in Iran by a transnational pan-Islamic movement, whose language of reference can only be Koranic Arabic.(14) While the hijab is certainly a point of contention within various countries dealing with immigrant Islamic populations (of which France has the largest in Europe as part of its colonial legacy in Algeria), it is clear that the veil is a historically contextualized artifact of Muslim identity with a variety of manifestations, even as forces outside of and within Islam seek to codify its actual and symbolic value. Ultimately, the varieties of hijab , including the full-faced burqa and niqab , are complex assemblages of meaning that speak to the multitudinous flows of Islamic identities over time and space. As Gökariksel and McLarney observe, “Wearing a certain style of veil may simultaneously be a disciplinary practice crucial to the cultivation of piety (Mahmood 2005; Gokariksel 2009) and a gendered performance of social distinction in terms of class, taste, and urbanity (White 1999; Navaro-Yashin 2002; Gokariksel and Secor 2009) or of ethnicity and race (Dwyer 1999).”(15) The ideological marketplace from which the varieties of hijab ebb and flow serves both as a reflection of the ever-present materiality and dynamic functionality of spiritual economies, which are derivative of the equally ubiquitous flows of transnational capital driving agency and representationality within our historical moment. Keeping these dual, yet deeply interconnected, capital ecologies as the site of exploration for how the veil is represented within public space, one might begin to sense what lurks behind such veiled agendas. Examining the symbolic and representational nature of the Islamic “veil” in its various forms, this project situates the decidedly political contestations of public space at stake in the French ban alongside recent condemnations of multiculturalism as calculated efforts to re-distribute the sensible so as to valorize national identity within increasingly transnational and globalized socio-economic spaces, which collapse exchange values between distinct, yet interwoven, economies of (cultural/material/spiritual) capital. As the discourses on the veil rely upon representational imag(in)ings, it seems fitting to explore the political economy and art of the veil through the phenomenon of street art, which, much like hijab , is a complex assemblage of meaning of sensation mired in representationality and capital exchange. As street artists have taken up hijab in various forms, the movement offers a lens with which to situate critical responses to the veil debate across both spiritual and material economies. Situating this street art both aesthetically and historically, Lewisohn explains, “'Street art' is a sub-genre of graffiti writing and owes much to its predecessor. Though there is a good deal of crossover between the genres, they are distinct and separate in their own right.”(16) Evolving out of the graffiti explosion of the late 1970's and 1980's, street art broke the unspoken rules of the artistic underground by challenging and re-examining one's sensory experience of art in public space by experimenting with both content and form in ways that harken back to the Situationist International, which as a collective challenged one's experience of urban space through various media and experiential phenomena. Again, Lewisohn observes, “It's important to note street art's break with the tradition of the tag, and its focus on visual symbols that embrace a much wider range of media than graffiti writers would use.”(17) From stencils to prints and murals to one-liners, street artists developed a reputation for critical social and political commentary, and while it is certainly the case that not all street art is intentionally political, in challenging the normative “regime of visibility,” as Rancière puts it, of public space, street artists—even if unconsciously—call into question the common sensory experience of the politics underlying the formation of (nationalist) space.(18) Indeed, Rancière refers to the partisan sensory managers as “police,” who ultimately forge “the rules governing the circulation of appearances, of their visibility and audibility, and the proper distribution of bodies therein.”(19) As such, one can sense that street art's relationship with the police is tenous for a variety of reasons. Writing about his own experience as a street artist, Shepard Fairey observes, “With street art, there's no committee deciding whether I can put my work up on the street, there's no censorship, and I have total freedom of expression, and that concept of freedom is expressed just by using the street as a medium.”(20) As Fairey and other street artists demonstrate, the medium, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, is the most glaring aspect of street art's message, and even as it now finds itself in galleries and usurped by private collectors, the ethos of the movement remains relavent to politics as it is, first and foremost, concerned with the configuration and experience of space. Just as examining the punishments for breaking the veil ban can map the terrain of French politics, a representational genealogy of street artist's deployment of hijab and female Muslim identity can assist in mining the depths of public space as a site of bio-political control and contestation in light of recent events in France and the rising tide of anti-multiculturalist rhetoric across Europe, even though the Islamic presence there is radically heterogenous. Using the work of Shepard Fairey, Princess Hijab, br1, and Banksy, this paper sets out to answer a number of key questions concerning the deployment of hijab, and female Islamic identity in particular, within street art as a movement now integral to and critical of the economies of exchange underlying global capitalism, which as a force of influence cannot be underestimated as a driver in the resurgence of nationalist biopolitical governmentalities. Although there exists a litany of artists to choose from, the aforementioned quartet of designers integrate hijab into their work in a seminal and critical fashion, and all have been working with the veil in some way prior to the French ban, which grants some additional context to their usage of it as a symbol in regards to the breakdown of multiculturalism across Europe, even if unconsciously. Although each artist depicts various amalgamations of hijab in their respective corpus, they share common tropes that raise significant questions concerning the veil debate, namely: what are the conditions of possibility for hijab to become a marker of Islamic identity within public space? How can we make sense of the representational topologies within street art's utilization of the hijab and female Islamic identity in light of the French ban? How might these aesthetic imag(in)ings simultaneously inhabit and combat normative discourses concerning hijab , multiculturalism, female Islamic identity, and public space? With these considerations as a backdrop, it is first necessary to outline more fully the hijab as a representative marker of female Islamic identity. The (Veiled) Writing on the Wall

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Historians of economic thought have long recognized the possibility that the "science" of economics owes more to cultural influences than we are usually prepare to admit. Econ Art offers the first detailed study of this contradiction, highlighting the cultural and aesthetic influences of surrealism, cubism and abstract art on both economic theory and method in the twentieth century.Arguing that economics has developed more as an art form than as a science, the author looks not only at what economists have produced (...) but how they have produced it, uncovering the cultural preconceptions which have shaped economic theory and method in the last one hundred years. At a time of increasing dissatisfaction with the discipline and the practice of economics, Szostak argues that the time is now ripe —- and right —- to embarrass the profession into a whole-sale reconsideration of what economics is for, how it should be done and what might make it better and more useful to the academy and to the world at large. (shrink)

This article presents the problem of a person skilled in the field of synthetic biology. The person skilled in the art is one of the notions which have to be revisited due to the multidisciplinary nature of synthetic biology which involves numerous fields. The article studies this problem from the perspectives of Iraqi and Malaysian patent laws. First, it conceptualizes synthetic biology and person skilled in the art. The Iraqi and Malaysian attitudes regarding person skilled in the art are then (...) addressed. Afterwards, the paper points out the multidisciplinary nature of synthetic biology. In its last part, it discusses the person skilled in synthetic biology and how patent offices and courts deal with this point. Finally, the authors submit that the use of a team of skilled persons to substitute for a single technician would render the obviousness test a subjective assessment dependent on the inventor. The level of non-obviousness would differ in similar cases simply because of the number of inventors. Consequently, the suggestion of having a hypothetical team instead of one person is irrelevant because skills that are attributed to the skilled notional person are not real skills. Thus, replacing him is easy, but the replacement would be fruitless because the skills attributed to a person or a team will be similar. (shrink)

This book covers the field of and points to the intersections between politics, art and philosophy. Its hero, the late Sir Roger Scruton had a longstanding interest in all fields, acquiring professional knowledge in both the practice and theory of politics, art and philosophy. The claim of the book is, therefore, that contrary to a superficial prejudice, it is possible to address the philosophical issues of art and politics in the same oeuvre, as the example of this Cambridge-educated analytical philosopher (...) proves. Accordingly, the book has a bold thesis on the general, theoretical level, mapping the connections between politics, art and philosophy. However, it also has a pioneering commitment on the level of the particular, offering the first full-length study into the philosophical legacy of Roger Scruton, probably the most important British conservative philosopher of the late 20th and the first decades of the 21st century. It also allows reader to look into the philosopher’s fascination with Central European art and culture. Finally, it also provides a daring analysis of the late Scruton’s metaphysical inspirations, connecting the arts, and especially music, with religion and the bonds of love. (shrink)

Contains full reports on the meetings in 1990 (held Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) and features recent interviews, essays and artworks by all twenty panalists, who include artists, spiritual leaders, economists and scientists.

This is a multicultural philosophy of art applied to common American and European experience and discussed in relation to Taoist, Buddhist, Hindu, Native American, and African traditions.

In "Off Track" art and philosophy are the inspiration to look differently at daily life and organizations. The book is a plea to approach the complexity of the current world with new metaphors. The author calls this "hinking around". She sees that in "square worlds" there is a need for tools to approach entrenched patterns and systems differently and to get thought processes moving. Sarai van de Boel challenges the reader to look at one's own systems from the inside with (...) a philosophical approach. In eight chapters there are eight "tracks" to follow, but it is also possible to go off the rails. More than fifty works of art by well-known and lesser-known artists and designers play a role in these traces. The author questions the essence of their works and asks philosophical questions about phenomena they evoke. With Marlene Dumas, Marinus Boezem, L.A. Raeven, Ed Atkins, Wong Ping, Kazumasa Nagai, Remy Jungerman, Otto Piene, Eiko Ishioka, Campana brothers, Ann Demeulemeester and Kara Walker. The book ends with the Art & Philosophy Strategy, a theoretical framework for the use of art and philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The View from Pȏle NordSartre, Beauvoir, and Girard on Mimesis, Embodiment, and DesireMartha J. Reineke (bio)Simone Beauvoir's novel She Came to Stay immerses readers in a 1930s Parisian social scene, thanks in part to the character Françoise. Eavesdropping with Françoise on a man and woman seated at a table in the Pȏle Nord café, readers of the novel hear the woman confide, "I've never been able to follow the (...) rules of flirting. I have a morbid horror of being touched."1 As Françoise invites us to turn our gaze toward another couple seated nearby, we observe a possible instance of the very discomfort to which the first woman has attested. A hapless female looks "uncertainly at a man's huge (grosse) hand that has just pounced on hers (s'abattre sur)."2 Of these two scenes from She Came to Stay, Jean-Paul Sartre memorializes only the second.3 As described by Sartre in Being and Nothingness, a man and a woman on their first date are seated at a table. The man "takes" (prend) the hand of a woman and holds it between "his warm hands" (les mains chaudes) while the woman makes her hand inert, even as she "permits herself to enjoy his desire."4 Thanks to the pervasive influence of Being and Nothingness on the philosophical canon, the disquieting scene Françoise describes in She Came to Stay largely has been forgotten. Sartre sets the [End Page 1] terms for the unfortunate woman's ongoing life: She is a paradigm of "bad faith." Two decades later, her immortality is secured by René Girard: The woman is a prime exemplar of coquetry, a "fundamental" concept in the development of Girard's theory of mimetic desire.5In the wake of today's #metoo headlines, we may find ourselves eager to weigh in anew on the scene at Pȏle Nord. Are we witnesses to flirtation? Seduction? Unwanted sexual attention? Debates about coercion and guile, predators and prey, are unlikely to be productive; after all, Girard has advised that participants in such debates flounder in a problematic victimology.6 Nevertheless, Sartre and Girard's fascination with the mise en scène at Pȏle Nord warrants reexamination on other grounds. Sartre's discussion of the young woman beset by bad faith in Being and Nothingness is one of several instances in which Sartre is shown exerting a significant influence on Girard. Focusing closely on these occurrences, we can identify features of Sartrian existentialism that contribute constructively to the development of Girard's thought. So also can we uncover a problematic view of the body in mimetic theory. Girard shares with Sartre a profound ambivalence toward embodiment. An alternative perspective visible in Beauvoir's writing could enhance the treatment of the body and eroticism in mimetic theory.Girard's early work attests to Sartre's influence. Writing in Evolution of Desire, Cynthia Haven introduces the topic of Sartre's impact on Girard by recounting Parisian intellectuals' responses to tensions between Camus and Sartre: "Everyone took one side or the other." Girard's friends reported that Girard "was on the Sartre side."7 In an interview with Rebecca Adams, Girard states that "I was influenced by Sartre and Camus, like other people of my generation, especially by Sartre."8 Girard acknowledges Sartre's influence in several other contexts. In a 2007 interview with Pierpaolo Antonello, Girard recalls his early philosophical interests: "… From Sartre I went to Merleau-Ponty and all the authors related to phenomenology, which fascinated me and for a while I wanted to write in the phenomenological style."9 Commenting in the 2008 preface to La Conversion de l'art, Girard states that he is struck by the Sartrian "tone" of his own writing.10 Scholarly explorations of the specifics of the influence of Sartre on Girard have cataloged the most important Sartrian concepts: a lack of being, the in-itself/for-itself (en-soi/pour-soi); the "projet"; patterns of desire (e.g., masochism and sadism), and bad faith.11 These themes are discussed in what follows, with special attention to Girard and Sartre's perspectives on human... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Painting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern ArtMatthew ZiffPainting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art, by David W. Galenson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001, 272 pp., $29.95.The relationship between the market value of paintings and the chronological point in an artist's working life when the paintings were produced is the driving mechanism for exploring creativity and innovation in David W. Galenson's book "Painting (...) Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art. The working thesis of this book is that Modern artists have worked creatively and innovatively in one of two distinctly different manners. The terminology Galenson uses to describe these distinct ways of working are "finders" and "seekers." Finders are artists like Pablo Picasso, who at age 26, make startling and important innovations with little advance indication that such a burst is about to take place. Seekers are artists like Paul Cezanne, whospend their entire working lives engaged in the pursuit of a singular approach or achievement. The differences between these methodologies are carefully presented through the details of the working lives of a variety of Modern artists. French nineteenth century and early twentieth-century artists and mid-twentieth-century American artists are used as the source data for these comparisons.Early in the book Galenson presents lists of chronological events within the lives of artists and market valuation of their work within this chronology. The dramatic clarity of the relationships presented in this data sets the stage for the detailed information that follows. Factors that in some cases only partly, and in others nearly completely, explain an artist's way of working are offered through biographic information, information about the aesthetic and cultural milieu, and about the economic and educational structures that are predominant during the relevant time in the life of the artist.The relationship between the aesthetic and cultural milieu surrounding an artist and the capacity or inclination of an artist to be innovative is an important aspect of the book's analysis. The scope of the book is limited to Modern artists because of the shift that took place at the outset of Modern art, during the mid 1860s, that brought a strong emphasis on innovation and change for their own sake as an important characteristic within a work of art. This emphasis "created incentives for painters to produce new approaches to art" (p. 111). Prior to the time of Modern art, innovation and change were often unnecessary for an artist to be successful. Modern art introduced the demand that innovation and change be necessary ingredients in art, and therefore the search for innovation became a significant element within the work of many artists. The manner in which this search took place, as presented through the data at hand, reveals how individual artists viewed the need for innovation and change within their own [End Page 123] work. Paul Cezanne, for example, was aware of the impact that his painting was having on the art world, but he insisted that he was not yet finished with discoveries that would reveal the truest expression of his beliefs about aesthetic expression.In the American movement, "Abstract Expressionism," Galenson finds a useful counter example to the art scene in Paris. In the United States, especially during the 1940s and 1950s — the peak years of creative output by Abstract Expressionist artists — the demand for their work was quite low. There were few economically viable outlets for the work of de Kooning, Pollack, Rothko, and the others of this group. Consequently there is a shift in the chronological point at which these artists achieve market value success. Nearly all of these artists receivedrecognition at an older age than the French artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.The thesis of the book, that there are two fundamentally different ways of working to produce works of art, is directly applicable to, and useful in, exploring issues of teaching and learning in design education. As a teacher of interior architecture I was interested to follow the details that Galenson presented in support of his analysis of the careers of numerous Modern artists. The methodological differences between seeking and... (shrink)

This article analyses the recent controversy over single and lesbian women’s right to access reproductive technology. It focuses on the McBain case in relation to the Sex Discrimination Act. As well, it attempts to bring voices that have been ignored into the debate, and reflect on the values that they express.

Is there progress in art? The question is one which most people would answer vehemently in the negative without giving it much thought. And yet, how is one to account for changes in artistic style? And what is one to think about modern art, which still seems baffling to many in comparison with traditional figurative art? Suzi Gablik's challenging argument is that art, like science, has a history, order and structure which can be called progressive. Progress, however, is not a (...) question of moral or esthetic improvement but involves a cognitive 'growth' of artistic styles and is related to transformations in modes of thinking. The model used for the argument is based on principles of developmental psychology advanced by the famous and revolutionary Swiss experimental psychologist Jean Piaget. By demonstrating the way in which art is linked with the acquisition of stages of development: increasingly complex perceptual and logical structures lead to mental organizations which are increasingly dominated by scientific, rationalistic and conceptual modes of thinking in contrast to earlier more mystical ones. In this light, an attempt is made to explain the shift in art from figurative or iconic representation, where the image resembles the object to which it refers, towards non-representational art which is abstract and conceptual in organization. Three sections of illustrations demonstrate, through revealing juxtapositions, the course of artistic development from ancient and medieval times, through the Renaissance, to contemporary art. -- from dust jacket. (shrink)

The impact of aesthetics is increasing again. For today's scholars, aesthetic theories are a significant companion and contribution in studying and ana-lysing cultural phenomena and production. Today's scene of aesthetics is more global than what it is in most disciplines, as it does not just include scholars from all over the world, but also keeps on applying philosophical traditions globally.

This is a systematic study of the conceptual framework used by critics and scholars in their discussions of influence in art and literature. Göran Hermerén explores the key questions raised in scholarly debate on the topic: What is meant by "influence"? What methods can be used to settle disagreements about influence? What reasons could be used to support or reject statements about artistic and literary influence? The book is based on descriptive analyses in which the author has tried to make (...) explicit what is said or implied in a number of quotations from scholarly writings on art and literature. Throughout, the emphasis is on clarifying the assumptions on which the use of the concept of influence is based, thus describing the limitations and merits of this kind of comparative research for critics and scholars. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This article critically examines current ways of justifying a place for the arts in general education and develops an alternative position. First, justifications relying on the positive non-artistic outcomes of art education are represented and problems exposed. Next, I discuss and criticise the position of John White, who takes the arts to promote self-knowledge, ethical contemplation and social cohesion. Then I develop a new account of artistic value based on the concept of fulfilment.

This article critically examines current ways of justifying a place for the arts in general education and develops an alternative position. First, justifications relying on the positive non-artistic outcomes of art education are represented and problems exposed. Next, I discuss and criticise the position of John White, who takes the arts to promote self-knowledge, ethical contemplation and social cohesion. Then I develop a new account of artistic value based on the concept of fulfilment.

In this article, I bring together the archive of institutional activism of Niara Sudarkasa in the U.S. and the posthumous impact of activist and public administrator Marielle Franco. The 1970s historical sources show Sudarkasa’s institutional solidarity with students and faculty in the creation of one of the first Africana Studies departments in the U.S. Reading them, I articulate an ethos for the curation ‘715 Haven Street: Art Looks Back,’ a public digital art gallery comprised of art and history found in (...) the DAAS Papers (Department of Afroamerican and African Studies) housed in the Bentley Library’s digital and physical archives. The analysis of the primary sources is guided by an engagement with the ‘Marielle Effect,’ generating a historical parameter for Abolitionist solidarity between American, Brazilian, Latin American, African American, Diasporic, and ally scholarly communities. The discussion of these parameters is embedded in my discussion of the concept of pacification, a phenomenon of colonial and post-colonial policing that survives through the perpetuation of an extra-judicial policing impetus articulated along race, identity, legality, and sexual legitimacy of subjects. (shrink)

Fires burn around the world. Systemic discrimination persists, precarity is increasing, and the modern democratic project faces challenges from all sides. Art writing helps us to understand art which in turn helps us to understand such crises. But art writing itself is in crisis. Newspapers and magazines offer fewer channels than ever for independent art criticism, persistent institutional biases exclude the positions of many, and a proliferation of platforms presents opportunities and challenges in equal measure. This volume presents contributions from (...) a broad range of authors who address the social and political dimensions of art and art writing in the contemporary context, and the ways in which new writing and publishing practices promote critical engagement among readerships as never before"-- Publisher's website. (shrink)

Art and Authority explores the sources, nature, and limits of artistic freedom. K. E. Gover draws upon real-world cases and controversies in contemporary visual art to offer a better understanding of artistic authorship and authority. Each chapter focuses on a case of dispute over the rights of an artist with respect to his or her artwork.

Is there progress in art? The question is one which most people would answer vehemently in the negative without giving it much thought. And yet, how is one to account for changes in artistic style? And what is one to think about modern art, which still seems baffling to many in comparison with traditional figurative art? Suzi Gablik's challenging argument is that art, like science, has a history, order and structure which can be called progressive. Progress, however, is not a (...) question of moral or esthetic improvement but involves a cognitive 'growth' of artistic styles and is related to transformations in modes of thinking. The model used for the argument is based on principles of developmental psychology advanced by the famous and revolutionary Swiss experimental psychologist Jean Piaget. By demonstrating the way in which art is linked with the acquisition of stages of development: increasingly complex perceptual and logical structures lead to mental organizations which are increasingly dominated by scientific, rationalistic and conceptual modes of thinking in contrast to earlier more mystical ones. In this light, an attempt is made to explain the shift in art from figurative or iconic representation, where the image resembles the object to which it refers, towards non-representational art which is abstract and conceptual in organization. Three sections of illustrations demonstrate, through revealing juxtapositions, the course of artistic development from ancient and medieval times, through the Renaissance, to contemporary art. -- from dust jacket. (shrink)

The Art Experience: An Introduction to Philosophy and the Arts takes readers on an engaging and accessible journey that explores a series of fundamental questions about the nature of art and aesthetic value. Three of these questions serve as the major sections for the book's 12 chapters: What makes something a work of art? How should we experience art in order to get the most out of it? And once we understand art, how should we evaluate whether it is good (...) or bad? Philosophical theory is illustrated with concrete examples: the paintings of Frida Kahlo, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the masks of the Nso people, and many others. Classic questions are balanced with cutting-edge challenges, such as Linda Nochlin's work on the exclusion of women from the artistic canon. The Art Experience presupposes no prior knowledge of philosophy or art, and it will be of interest to any reader seeking an accessible and engaging introduction to this field. Along the way, readers learn how philosophical theories can affect our real-world experiences with painting, music, theater, and many more art forms. Key Features Accessible for any college student and assumes no knowledge of philosophy, art theory, or any artistic medium Organizes topics conceptually, rather than historically, allowing students to more easily grasp the core issues themselves rather than tracing their historical evolution Offers readers a large number of contemporary examples and a consistent focus on the way theory can affect people's real-world experiences with art Explores questions about bias - for example, whether the artistic canon has excluded some groups unfairly and whether definitions of art are Western-biased. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that any account of how artworks lie must acknowledge (I) that artworks can lie at different levels of their content—what I call ‘surface’ and ‘deep’—and (II) that, for an artwork to lie at a given level, a norm of truthful communication such as Grice’s Maxim of Quality must apply to it. A corollary is that it’s harder than you might think for artworks to lie: Quality is not automatically ‘switched on’ during our engagement with art. (...) However, I show how a work’s curation and genre-membership can ‘switch on’ Quality, allowing artworks to lie at different levels. (shrink)

This article offers a detailed textual reexamination of the ‘family resemblance’ passages to reconsider their implications for understanding art. The reassessment takes into account their broader context in the Philosophical Investigations, including the rule following considerations, and draws on a realist interpretive framework associated principally with the work of Cavell, Diamond, McDowell, and Putnam. Wittgensteinian “realism with a human face” helps us discern that the primary issue is not whether certain concepts are definable, posing a stark opposition between essentialism and (...) its denial about kinds such as language or games. What is at issue is keeping uses of language in view in their variety and their broader life contexts. Focus on rules suggests more broadly that norms and values inhere in practices and play a constitutive role in determining the entities integral to those practices. From this perspective, a Wittgensteinian framework explains art as locally overlapping practices, each with their own constitutive norms and values for the works integral to them. What makes something art has normative force specific to a practice. This recognizes the historically contingent nature of art practices in a way that relational definitions or disjunctive ‘cluster’ explanations do not. (shrink)

Much debated in the curriculum content of cultural studies, the subject of intentionality and interpretation has not been given as much attention in terms of teaching and learning in higher education (HE). Various modernist and postmodernist approaches differ considerably, and these inevitably inform lecturers’ notions, whether consciously or unconsciously. Of particular concern is how such ideas influence teaching, learning, and assessment in creative disciplines such as art, design, music, and creative writing. In this paper approaches to intentionality and interpretation in (...) a fine art studio practice (FASP) curriculum and the effects of imbalance in this relationship on students’ learning experiences .. (shrink)