Charlotte Bank
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266748
- eISBN:
- 9780191938146
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266748.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter examines artworks by young Syrian artists produced during the first decade of the twenty–first–century. Seeking to distance themselves from what they perceived as outdated aesthetics, ...
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This chapter examines artworks by young Syrian artists produced during the first decade of the twenty–first–century. Seeking to distance themselves from what they perceived as outdated aesthetics, seen in the work of their teachers in the art school and the work exhibited at the official, state–sponsored artistic events, the young generation of artists began experimenting with artistic techniques and media that were new to the country, also searching for new ways to interact with society and advocate for social and eventually political change in the country. They addressed a wide range of issues related to the contemporary Syrian society and made a critique of the social and political status quo. Critical examinations of gender norms presented an important aspect of their critical art production, as they regarded the issues of gender as an important part of their wider project of re–thinking art as a means for social and political change.Less
This chapter examines artworks by young Syrian artists produced during the first decade of the twenty–first–century. Seeking to distance themselves from what they perceived as outdated aesthetics, seen in the work of their teachers in the art school and the work exhibited at the official, state–sponsored artistic events, the young generation of artists began experimenting with artistic techniques and media that were new to the country, also searching for new ways to interact with society and advocate for social and eventually political change in the country. They addressed a wide range of issues related to the contemporary Syrian society and made a critique of the social and political status quo. Critical examinations of gender norms presented an important aspect of their critical art production, as they regarded the issues of gender as an important part of their wider project of re–thinking art as a means for social and political change.
Holiday Powers (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266748
- eISBN:
- 9780191938146
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266748.003.0008
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter proposes a feminist reading of Franco–Algerian multimedia artist Zineb Sedira’s video and installation work from the early 2000s to today in order to consider the potential for global ...
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This chapter proposes a feminist reading of Franco–Algerian multimedia artist Zineb Sedira’s video and installation work from the early 2000s to today in order to consider the potential for global feminist art histories that are intersectional and relational through the ways in which Sedira focuses on memory. Memory and its transmission across generations is treated in three distinct but overlapping ways: memory within the context of Sedira’s only family, using Sedira’s personal story as a means of reckoning with larger histories and the construction of the gendered subject within them; collective memory in the context of post–colonial Algeria; and memory as held by the land itself, read especially through the lens of ecofeminism. In Sedira’s work, the gendered subject is constructed through women’s stories told from inside the perspective of family, that is, women considering their roles as daughters, mothers, and wives, told against and overlaid on top of the history of colonialism.Less
This chapter proposes a feminist reading of Franco–Algerian multimedia artist Zineb Sedira’s video and installation work from the early 2000s to today in order to consider the potential for global feminist art histories that are intersectional and relational through the ways in which Sedira focuses on memory. Memory and its transmission across generations is treated in three distinct but overlapping ways: memory within the context of Sedira’s only family, using Sedira’s personal story as a means of reckoning with larger histories and the construction of the gendered subject within them; collective memory in the context of post–colonial Algeria; and memory as held by the land itself, read especially through the lens of ecofeminism. In Sedira’s work, the gendered subject is constructed through women’s stories told from inside the perspective of family, that is, women considering their roles as daughters, mothers, and wives, told against and overlaid on top of the history of colonialism.
Mary Kelly
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266748
- eISBN:
- 9780191938146
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266748.003.0013
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Diana Al–Hadid was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1981 and she currently lives and practices her art in Brooklyn, New York. This interview with Al–Hadid is an engagement with just one voice from the Syrian ...
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Diana Al–Hadid was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1981 and she currently lives and practices her art in Brooklyn, New York. This interview with Al–Hadid is an engagement with just one voice from the Syrian diaspora. The text explores the artist’s methods and strategies in art making for the purpose of recording new primary sources in the History of Art, which can be used to generate different ways of understanding Al–Hadid’s sculptures. The various themes discussed in the interview including: the artist’s engagements with materials and materiality; the formal qualities in her art; historical and art historical influences such as the Islamic Golden Age and Old Master painting; her attention to the original and editions; and the three broad spheres of typologies which are located in her oeuvre. In addition, Al–Hadid reveals her various processes of making which lead to the location of the first artistic mark on a new work of art.Less
Diana Al–Hadid was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1981 and she currently lives and practices her art in Brooklyn, New York. This interview with Al–Hadid is an engagement with just one voice from the Syrian diaspora. The text explores the artist’s methods and strategies in art making for the purpose of recording new primary sources in the History of Art, which can be used to generate different ways of understanding Al–Hadid’s sculptures. The various themes discussed in the interview including: the artist’s engagements with materials and materiality; the formal qualities in her art; historical and art historical influences such as the Islamic Golden Age and Old Master painting; her attention to the original and editions; and the three broad spheres of typologies which are located in her oeuvre. In addition, Al–Hadid reveals her various processes of making which lead to the location of the first artistic mark on a new work of art.
Ernest Hartmann
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199751778
- eISBN:
- 9780199863419
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199751778.003.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Clinical Psychology
This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to put together various studies on dreaming into one coherent theory. It then presents the study's main conclusions, which ...
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This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to put together various studies on dreaming into one coherent theory. It then presents the study's main conclusions, which give in outline form the Contemporary Theory of Dreaming. These are that dreaming is a form of mental functioning; dreaming is hyper-connective; the connections made are not random; the form or “language” of dreams is mainly picture-metaphor; the making of broad connections guided by emotion has an adaptive function conceptualized as “weaving in” new material—taking new experiences and gradually connecting them, integrating them, into existing memory systems; and that the entire focused waking-to-dreaming continuum has an adaptive function.Less
This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to put together various studies on dreaming into one coherent theory. It then presents the study's main conclusions, which give in outline form the Contemporary Theory of Dreaming. These are that dreaming is a form of mental functioning; dreaming is hyper-connective; the connections made are not random; the form or “language” of dreams is mainly picture-metaphor; the making of broad connections guided by emotion has an adaptive function conceptualized as “weaving in” new material—taking new experiences and gradually connecting them, integrating them, into existing memory systems; and that the entire focused waking-to-dreaming continuum has an adaptive function.
Stuart Murray
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781789621648
- eISBN:
- 9781800341159
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789621648.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
Disability and the Posthuman is the first study to analyse cultural representations and deployments of disability as they interact with posthumanist theories of technology and embodiment. Working ...
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Disability and the Posthuman is the first study to analyse cultural representations and deployments of disability as they interact with posthumanist theories of technology and embodiment. Working across a wide range of texts, many new to critical enquiry, in contemporary writing, film and cultural practice from North America, Europe, the Middle East and Japan, it covers a diverse range of topics, including: contemporary cultural theory and aesthetics; design, engineering and gender; the visualisation of prosthetic technologies in the representation of war and conflict; and depictions of work, time and sleep. While noting the potential limitations of posthumanist assessments of the technologized body, the study argues that there are exciting, productive possibilities and subversive potentials in the dialogue between disability and posthumanism as they generate dissident crossings of cultural spaces. Such intersections cover both fictional/imagined and material/grounded examples of disability and look to a future in which the development of technology and complex embodiment of disability presence align to produce sustainable yet radical creative and critical voices.Less
Disability and the Posthuman is the first study to analyse cultural representations and deployments of disability as they interact with posthumanist theories of technology and embodiment. Working across a wide range of texts, many new to critical enquiry, in contemporary writing, film and cultural practice from North America, Europe, the Middle East and Japan, it covers a diverse range of topics, including: contemporary cultural theory and aesthetics; design, engineering and gender; the visualisation of prosthetic technologies in the representation of war and conflict; and depictions of work, time and sleep. While noting the potential limitations of posthumanist assessments of the technologized body, the study argues that there are exciting, productive possibilities and subversive potentials in the dialogue between disability and posthumanism as they generate dissident crossings of cultural spaces. Such intersections cover both fictional/imagined and material/grounded examples of disability and look to a future in which the development of technology and complex embodiment of disability presence align to produce sustainable yet radical creative and critical voices.
Nuno Barradas Jorge
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474444538
- eISBN:
- 9781474481106
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474444538.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This is the first English-language study of internationally acclaimed Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, examining the cultural, production and exhibition contexts of his feature films, shorts and ...
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This is the first English-language study of internationally acclaimed Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, examining the cultural, production and exhibition contexts of his feature films, shorts and video installations. It situates Costa’s filmmaking within the contexts of Portuguese, European and global art film, looking into his working practices alongside the impact of digital video, forms of collaborative authorship, and the intricate dialogue between modes of production and aesthetics.
Considering the exhibition, circulation and reception of Costa’s creative output in settings such as film festivals, the art gallery circuit and the home video market, ReFocus: The Films of Pedro Costa provides an essential critical analysis of this major filmmaker – as well as of the multifaceted production and consumption practices that surround contemporary art cinema.Less
This is the first English-language study of internationally acclaimed Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, examining the cultural, production and exhibition contexts of his feature films, shorts and video installations. It situates Costa’s filmmaking within the contexts of Portuguese, European and global art film, looking into his working practices alongside the impact of digital video, forms of collaborative authorship, and the intricate dialogue between modes of production and aesthetics.
Considering the exhibition, circulation and reception of Costa’s creative output in settings such as film festivals, the art gallery circuit and the home video market, ReFocus: The Films of Pedro Costa provides an essential critical analysis of this major filmmaker – as well as of the multifaceted production and consumption practices that surround contemporary art cinema.
Jonathan Ervine
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620511
- eISBN:
- 9781789629811
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620511.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This timely study sheds new light on debates about humour and multiculturalism in France, and is the first monograph about multiculturalism and humour in France to be published in either English or ...
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This timely study sheds new light on debates about humour and multiculturalism in France, and is the first monograph about multiculturalism and humour in France to be published in either English or French that analyses both debates about Charlie Hebdo and stand-up comedy. It will examine humour, freedom of expression and social cohesion in France at a crucial time in France’s recent history following the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015. It will evaluate the state of French society and attitudes to humour in France in the aftermath of the events of January 2015. This book will argue that debates surrounding Charlie Hebdo, although significant, only provide part of the picture when it comes to understanding humour and multiculturalism in France. This monograph will fill significant gaps in French and international media coverage and academic writing, which has generally failed to adequately examine the broader picture that emerges when one examines career trajectories of notable contemporary French comedians. By addressing this failing, this book provides a more complete picture of humour, multiculturalism and Republican values in France. By focusing primarily on contemporary comedians in France, this book will explore competing uses of French Republican discourse in debates about humour, offensiveness and freedom of expression. Ultimately, this work will argue that studying humour and multiculturalism in France in often reveals a sense of national unease within the Republic at a time of considerable turmoil.Less
This timely study sheds new light on debates about humour and multiculturalism in France, and is the first monograph about multiculturalism and humour in France to be published in either English or French that analyses both debates about Charlie Hebdo and stand-up comedy. It will examine humour, freedom of expression and social cohesion in France at a crucial time in France’s recent history following the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015. It will evaluate the state of French society and attitudes to humour in France in the aftermath of the events of January 2015. This book will argue that debates surrounding Charlie Hebdo, although significant, only provide part of the picture when it comes to understanding humour and multiculturalism in France. This monograph will fill significant gaps in French and international media coverage and academic writing, which has generally failed to adequately examine the broader picture that emerges when one examines career trajectories of notable contemporary French comedians. By addressing this failing, this book provides a more complete picture of humour, multiculturalism and Republican values in France. By focusing primarily on contemporary comedians in France, this book will explore competing uses of French Republican discourse in debates about humour, offensiveness and freedom of expression. Ultimately, this work will argue that studying humour and multiculturalism in France in often reveals a sense of national unease within the Republic at a time of considerable turmoil.
Jenny Lin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526132604
- eISBN:
- 9781526139047
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526132604.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Shanghai, long known as mainland China’s most cosmopolitan metropolis, has recently re-emerged as a global capital. Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai ...
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Shanghai, long known as mainland China’s most cosmopolitan metropolis, has recently re-emerged as a global capital. Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai offers the first in-depth examination of turn of the twenty-first century Shanghai-based art and design – from state-sponsored exhibitions to fashionable cultural complexes to cutting edge films and installations. This book offers a counter-touristic view of one of the world’s fastest developing megacities that penetrates the contradictions and buried layers of specific locales and artifacts of visual culture. Informed by years of in-situ research including interviews with artists and designers, the book looks beyond contemporary art’s global hype to reveal persistent socio-political tensions accompanying Shanghai’s explosive transitions from semi-colonial capitalism to Maoist socialism to Communist Party-sponsored capitalism. Analyses of exemplary design projects such as Xintiandi and Shanghai Tang, and artworks by Liu Jianhua, Yang Fudong, Gu Wenda and more reveal how Shanghai’s global aesthetics construct glamorizing artifices that mask historically-rooted cross-cultural conflicts between vying notions of foreign-influenced modernity versus anti-colonialist nationalism, and the city’s repressed socialist past versus consumerist present. The book focuses on Shanghai-based art and design from the 1990s-2000s, the decades of the city’s most rapid post-socialist development, while also attending to pivotal Republican and Mao Era examples. Challenging the “East-meets-West” clichés that characterize discussions of urban Shanghai and contemporary Chinese art, this book illuminates critical issues facing today’s artists, architects, and designers, and provides an essential field guide for students of art, design, art history, urban studies, and Chinese culture.Less
Shanghai, long known as mainland China’s most cosmopolitan metropolis, has recently re-emerged as a global capital. Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture, and the fashioning of global Shanghai offers the first in-depth examination of turn of the twenty-first century Shanghai-based art and design – from state-sponsored exhibitions to fashionable cultural complexes to cutting edge films and installations. This book offers a counter-touristic view of one of the world’s fastest developing megacities that penetrates the contradictions and buried layers of specific locales and artifacts of visual culture. Informed by years of in-situ research including interviews with artists and designers, the book looks beyond contemporary art’s global hype to reveal persistent socio-political tensions accompanying Shanghai’s explosive transitions from semi-colonial capitalism to Maoist socialism to Communist Party-sponsored capitalism. Analyses of exemplary design projects such as Xintiandi and Shanghai Tang, and artworks by Liu Jianhua, Yang Fudong, Gu Wenda and more reveal how Shanghai’s global aesthetics construct glamorizing artifices that mask historically-rooted cross-cultural conflicts between vying notions of foreign-influenced modernity versus anti-colonialist nationalism, and the city’s repressed socialist past versus consumerist present. The book focuses on Shanghai-based art and design from the 1990s-2000s, the decades of the city’s most rapid post-socialist development, while also attending to pivotal Republican and Mao Era examples. Challenging the “East-meets-West” clichés that characterize discussions of urban Shanghai and contemporary Chinese art, this book illuminates critical issues facing today’s artists, architects, and designers, and provides an essential field guide for students of art, design, art history, urban studies, and Chinese culture.
Lucy Collins
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381878
- eISBN:
- 9781781382271
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381878.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This book examines the intersection of private and public spheres through the representation of memory in contemporary poetry by Irish women. It explores how memory shapes creativity in the work of ...
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This book examines the intersection of private and public spheres through the representation of memory in contemporary poetry by Irish women. It explores how memory shapes creativity in the work of well-known poets such as Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Medbh McGuckian as well as in that of an exciting group of younger poets. Literary memory highlights the relationship between poet and reader, as well as the larger critical contexts that support or challenge the production of creative work. This book analyses, for the first time, the complex responses to the past recorded by contemporary women poets in Ireland and the implications these have for the concept of a national tradition.Less
This book examines the intersection of private and public spheres through the representation of memory in contemporary poetry by Irish women. It explores how memory shapes creativity in the work of well-known poets such as Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Medbh McGuckian as well as in that of an exciting group of younger poets. Literary memory highlights the relationship between poet and reader, as well as the larger critical contexts that support or challenge the production of creative work. This book analyses, for the first time, the complex responses to the past recorded by contemporary women poets in Ireland and the implications these have for the concept of a national tradition.
Benjamin Noys
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638635
- eISBN:
- 9780748671915
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638635.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This book aims to rehabilitate a thinking of negativity within and against the usual forms of contemporary Continental Theory. It identifies and presents an analysis of the dominant tone of ...
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This book aims to rehabilitate a thinking of negativity within and against the usual forms of contemporary Continental Theory. It identifies and presents an analysis of the dominant tone of ‘affirmationism’ in contemporary theory: the insistence on starting from the affirmation of metaphysical ontologies, the inventive potential of the subject, the necessity for the production of novelty, and a concomitant suspicion of the negative and negativity. Despite all the conflicts and ‘wars’ of contemporary theory, this tone remains an unstated point of unification. Although it was often developed to resist the corrosive effects of contemporary capitalism, this work argues that affirmationism remains bound to its ideological coordinates in its emphasis on production, creativity, and invention. Critically reconstructing this ‘affirmationism’ through the work of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, Antonio Negri, and Alain Badiou, the book also recovers from their work a disavowed thinking of negativity. Dependent on negativity, despite their claims to affirmation, this dependence allows a critique of the reliance on affirmation. Also, this negativity is turned against this affirmative tone to develop a more sharply-focused political analysis of theory, and to suggest the possible politics emerging from a relational thinking of negativity.Less
This book aims to rehabilitate a thinking of negativity within and against the usual forms of contemporary Continental Theory. It identifies and presents an analysis of the dominant tone of ‘affirmationism’ in contemporary theory: the insistence on starting from the affirmation of metaphysical ontologies, the inventive potential of the subject, the necessity for the production of novelty, and a concomitant suspicion of the negative and negativity. Despite all the conflicts and ‘wars’ of contemporary theory, this tone remains an unstated point of unification. Although it was often developed to resist the corrosive effects of contemporary capitalism, this work argues that affirmationism remains bound to its ideological coordinates in its emphasis on production, creativity, and invention. Critically reconstructing this ‘affirmationism’ through the work of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, Antonio Negri, and Alain Badiou, the book also recovers from their work a disavowed thinking of negativity. Dependent on negativity, despite their claims to affirmation, this dependence allows a critique of the reliance on affirmation. Also, this negativity is turned against this affirmative tone to develop a more sharply-focused political analysis of theory, and to suggest the possible politics emerging from a relational thinking of negativity.
Danielle Sands
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474439039
- eISBN:
- 9781474476881
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474439039.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Reading contemporary fiction and philosophy alongside each other, Animal Writingproposes a thinking of and with animals which brings together critical and affective approaches. Aspiring to a critical ...
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Reading contemporary fiction and philosophy alongside each other, Animal Writingproposes a thinking of and with animals which brings together critical and affective approaches. Aspiring to a critical distancing from the sometimes claustrophobic proximity of empathy – currently the prevailing mode in Animal Studies – this book interrogates the claims made of empathy without exchanging it for the kind of abstract, disembodied reason which has long disavowed the ethical status of nonhuman life. This book is particularly interested in the stories that we tell, and are told, by beings at the edges of animal life, insects, and the possibility that the indifference, even disgust, that these creatures evoke might form the basis for an ethics which is not bounded by empathy. Across five interdisciplinary chapters, it asks: is it possible to read, write and think non-anthropocentrically? How might we develop approaches to nonhuman life which are affectively and critically informed? It contends that reframing the human in relation to the elements of itself which it denounces as inhuman can inform a renewed attentiveness to nonhuman life.Less
Reading contemporary fiction and philosophy alongside each other, Animal Writingproposes a thinking of and with animals which brings together critical and affective approaches. Aspiring to a critical distancing from the sometimes claustrophobic proximity of empathy – currently the prevailing mode in Animal Studies – this book interrogates the claims made of empathy without exchanging it for the kind of abstract, disembodied reason which has long disavowed the ethical status of nonhuman life. This book is particularly interested in the stories that we tell, and are told, by beings at the edges of animal life, insects, and the possibility that the indifference, even disgust, that these creatures evoke might form the basis for an ethics which is not bounded by empathy. Across five interdisciplinary chapters, it asks: is it possible to read, write and think non-anthropocentrically? How might we develop approaches to nonhuman life which are affectively and critically informed? It contends that reframing the human in relation to the elements of itself which it denounces as inhuman can inform a renewed attentiveness to nonhuman life.
Douglas Morrey
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846318610
- eISBN:
- 9781846318047
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318610.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Michel Houellebecq is perhaps the single most successful and controversial of all contemporary novelists writing in French. Houellebecq has become a global publishing phenomenon: since the success of ...
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Michel Houellebecq is perhaps the single most successful and controversial of all contemporary novelists writing in French. Houellebecq has become a global publishing phenomenon: since the success of Les Particules élémentaires (1998), his books have been translated worldwide, three film adaptations of his work have been produced, and the author has been the subject of million-euro publishing deals and of successive media scandals in France. If Houellebecq is unique in contemporary French writing, it is thanks not only to his extraordinary success, but to the unparalleled scope of his narrative ambition. In the work which most forcefully marked his breakthrough to the mainstream – Les Particules élémentaires – Houellebecq made a significant appeal to the science-fiction genre in order undergird his critique of contemporary society. For Houellebecq presents humanity – at least modern, western humanity – as in a terminal state of decadence and decline and ripe for replacement by its post-human successor. His novels narrate a metaphysical mutation or paradigm shift through which humanity as we know it ceases to be the over-riding value or focus of our world when it comes into conflict with a competitor in the form of a post-human or neo-human species.It is the aim of this book to appraise the global significance of Houellebecq's novelistic visions while at the same time situating them within the context of French literature, culture and society.Less
Michel Houellebecq is perhaps the single most successful and controversial of all contemporary novelists writing in French. Houellebecq has become a global publishing phenomenon: since the success of Les Particules élémentaires (1998), his books have been translated worldwide, three film adaptations of his work have been produced, and the author has been the subject of million-euro publishing deals and of successive media scandals in France. If Houellebecq is unique in contemporary French writing, it is thanks not only to his extraordinary success, but to the unparalleled scope of his narrative ambition. In the work which most forcefully marked his breakthrough to the mainstream – Les Particules élémentaires – Houellebecq made a significant appeal to the science-fiction genre in order undergird his critique of contemporary society. For Houellebecq presents humanity – at least modern, western humanity – as in a terminal state of decadence and decline and ripe for replacement by its post-human successor. His novels narrate a metaphysical mutation or paradigm shift through which humanity as we know it ceases to be the over-riding value or focus of our world when it comes into conflict with a competitor in the form of a post-human or neo-human species.It is the aim of this book to appraise the global significance of Houellebecq's novelistic visions while at the same time situating them within the context of French literature, culture and society.
Jorge Duany (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781683400905
- eISBN:
- 9781683401193
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9781683400905.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This book delves into several defining moments of Cuba’s artistic evolution from a multidisciplinary perspective, including art history, architecture, photography, history, literary criticism, and ...
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This book delves into several defining moments of Cuba’s artistic evolution from a multidisciplinary perspective, including art history, architecture, photography, history, literary criticism, and cultural studies. Situating Cuban art within a wider social and historical context, fifteen prominent scholars and collectors scrutinize the enduring links between Cuban art and cultural identity. Covering the main periods in Cuban art (the colonial, republican, and postrevolutionary phases, as well as the contemporary diaspora), the contributors identify both the constant and changing elements and symbols in the visual representation of Cuba’s national identity. The essays collected in this volume provide insightful information and interpretation on the historical trajectory of Cuban and Cuban-American art. From colonial engravers to contemporary photographers, several generations of Cuban artists have been fascinated—perhaps even obsessed—with picturing Cuba’s landscapes, architecture, people, and customs. Each generation of artists focused on various tropes of Cuban identity, whether it was the tropical environment, the lights and colors of the island, certain human types, the fusion of European and African traditions, or the uprootedness produced by exile and resettlement in another country. Even when artists shed the attempt to represent their subject matter realistically, they sought to contribute to a longstanding national tradition in dialogue with a broader international scenario. The cumulative result of more than three centuries of Cuban art is a kaleidoscopic view of the island’s nature, population, culture, and history.Less
This book delves into several defining moments of Cuba’s artistic evolution from a multidisciplinary perspective, including art history, architecture, photography, history, literary criticism, and cultural studies. Situating Cuban art within a wider social and historical context, fifteen prominent scholars and collectors scrutinize the enduring links between Cuban art and cultural identity. Covering the main periods in Cuban art (the colonial, republican, and postrevolutionary phases, as well as the contemporary diaspora), the contributors identify both the constant and changing elements and symbols in the visual representation of Cuba’s national identity. The essays collected in this volume provide insightful information and interpretation on the historical trajectory of Cuban and Cuban-American art. From colonial engravers to contemporary photographers, several generations of Cuban artists have been fascinated—perhaps even obsessed—with picturing Cuba’s landscapes, architecture, people, and customs. Each generation of artists focused on various tropes of Cuban identity, whether it was the tropical environment, the lights and colors of the island, certain human types, the fusion of European and African traditions, or the uprootedness produced by exile and resettlement in another country. Even when artists shed the attempt to represent their subject matter realistically, they sought to contribute to a longstanding national tradition in dialogue with a broader international scenario. The cumulative result of more than three centuries of Cuban art is a kaleidoscopic view of the island’s nature, population, culture, and history.
Mary Youssef
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474415415
- eISBN:
- 9781474449755
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474415415.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
This book examines questions of identity, nationalism, and marginalization in the contemporary Egyptian novel from a postcolonial lens. Under colonial rule, the Egyptian novel invoked a sovereign ...
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This book examines questions of identity, nationalism, and marginalization in the contemporary Egyptian novel from a postcolonial lens. Under colonial rule, the Egyptian novel invoked a sovereign nation-state by basking in its perceived unity. After independence, the novel professed disenchantment with state practices and unequal class and gender relations, without disrupting the nation’s imagined racial and ethno-religious homogeneity. This book identifies a trend in the twenty-first-century Egyptian novel that shatters this singular view, with the rise of a new consciousness that presents Egypt as fundamentally heterogeneous. Through a robust analysis of “new-consciousness” novels by authors like Idris ᶜAli, Bahaᵓ Tahir, Miral al-Tahawi, and Yusuf Zaydan, the author argues that this new consciousness does not only respond to predominant discourses of difference and practices of differentiation along the axes of race, ethno-religion, class, and gender by bringing the experiences of Nubian, Amazigh, Bedouin, Coptic, Jewish, and women minorities to the fore of Egypt’s literary imaginary, but also heralds the cacophony of voices that collectively cried for social justice from Tahrir Square in Egypt’s 2011-uprising.
This study responds to the changing iconographic, semiotic, and formal features of the Egyptian novel. It fulfills the critical task of identifying an emergent novelistic genre and develops historically reflexive methodologies that interpret new-consciousness novels and their mediatory role in formalizing and articulating their historical moment. By adopting this context-specific approach to studying novelistic evolution, this book locates some of the strands that have been missing from the complex whole of Egypt’s culture and literary history.Less
This book examines questions of identity, nationalism, and marginalization in the contemporary Egyptian novel from a postcolonial lens. Under colonial rule, the Egyptian novel invoked a sovereign nation-state by basking in its perceived unity. After independence, the novel professed disenchantment with state practices and unequal class and gender relations, without disrupting the nation’s imagined racial and ethno-religious homogeneity. This book identifies a trend in the twenty-first-century Egyptian novel that shatters this singular view, with the rise of a new consciousness that presents Egypt as fundamentally heterogeneous. Through a robust analysis of “new-consciousness” novels by authors like Idris ᶜAli, Bahaᵓ Tahir, Miral al-Tahawi, and Yusuf Zaydan, the author argues that this new consciousness does not only respond to predominant discourses of difference and practices of differentiation along the axes of race, ethno-religion, class, and gender by bringing the experiences of Nubian, Amazigh, Bedouin, Coptic, Jewish, and women minorities to the fore of Egypt’s literary imaginary, but also heralds the cacophony of voices that collectively cried for social justice from Tahrir Square in Egypt’s 2011-uprising.
This study responds to the changing iconographic, semiotic, and formal features of the Egyptian novel. It fulfills the critical task of identifying an emergent novelistic genre and develops historically reflexive methodologies that interpret new-consciousness novels and their mediatory role in formalizing and articulating their historical moment. By adopting this context-specific approach to studying novelistic evolution, this book locates some of the strands that have been missing from the complex whole of Egypt’s culture and literary history.
Lucas Hollister
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781786942180
- eISBN:
- 9781789623642
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786942180.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Beyond Return examines how popular literary forms have been politicized or could be productively repoliticized in the literary period that we have called the contemporary (roughly: since 1980). In ...
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Beyond Return examines how popular literary forms have been politicized or could be productively repoliticized in the literary period that we have called the contemporary (roughly: since 1980). In the aftermath of the efflorescence of experimental literature and theory that characterized the Trente Glorieuses (1945-75), ‘contemporary’ French literature is often said to embrace more traditional or readable novelistic forms. This rejection of the radical aesthetics of mid-century French literature, this rehabilitation of fictional forms that have been called sub-literary, regressive, or outdated, has been given a name: the ‘return to the story.’ Beyond Return proposes new perspectives on the cultural politics of such fictions. Examining adventure novels, radical noir, postmodernist mysteries, war novels, and dystopian fictions, this book shows how authors like Jean Echenoz, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Jean Rouaud, and Antoine Volodine develop radically dissimilar notions of the aesthetics of ‘return,’ and thus redraw in different manners the boundaries of the contemporary, the French, and the literary. In the process, Beyond Return argues for the need to move beyond the nostalgic, anti-modernist rhetoric of the ‘return to the story’ in order to appreciate the potentialities of innovative contemporary genre fictions.Less
Beyond Return examines how popular literary forms have been politicized or could be productively repoliticized in the literary period that we have called the contemporary (roughly: since 1980). In the aftermath of the efflorescence of experimental literature and theory that characterized the Trente Glorieuses (1945-75), ‘contemporary’ French literature is often said to embrace more traditional or readable novelistic forms. This rejection of the radical aesthetics of mid-century French literature, this rehabilitation of fictional forms that have been called sub-literary, regressive, or outdated, has been given a name: the ‘return to the story.’ Beyond Return proposes new perspectives on the cultural politics of such fictions. Examining adventure novels, radical noir, postmodernist mysteries, war novels, and dystopian fictions, this book shows how authors like Jean Echenoz, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Jean Rouaud, and Antoine Volodine develop radically dissimilar notions of the aesthetics of ‘return,’ and thus redraw in different manners the boundaries of the contemporary, the French, and the literary. In the process, Beyond Return argues for the need to move beyond the nostalgic, anti-modernist rhetoric of the ‘return to the story’ in order to appreciate the potentialities of innovative contemporary genre fictions.
Michael F. Leruth
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036498
- eISBN:
- 9780262339926
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036498.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
This book introduces readers to the iconoclastic work of the French media artist Fred Forest. A pioneer in the fields of video art in the 1960s and internet art in the 1990s, and cofounder of the ...
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This book introduces readers to the iconoclastic work of the French media artist Fred Forest. A pioneer in the fields of video art in the 1960s and internet art in the 1990s, and cofounder of the Sociological Art Collective (1974) and the Aesthetics of Communication International Group (1983), Forest is best known as an ironic media hijacker and tinkerer of unconventional interfaces and alternative platforms for interactive communication that are accessible to the general public outside the exclusive precincts of the art world. He has also made headlines as an outspoken critic of the French contemporary art establishment, most famously by suing the Centre Pompidou in 1994 over its opaque acquisitions practices. This book surveys Forest’s work from the late 1960s to the present with particular emphasis on his prankster modus operandi, his advocacy of an existentially relevant form of counter-contemporary art―or “invisible system-art”―based on the principle of metacommunication (i.e., tasked with exploring the “immanent realities” of the virtual territory in which modern electronic communication takes place), his innovative “social” and “relational” use of a wide range of media from newspapers to Second Life, his attention-grabbing public interventions, and the unusual utopian dimension of his work. Never a hot commodity in the art world, Forest’s work has nonetheless garnered the attention and appreciation of a wide range of prominent intellectuals, critics, curators, technology innovators, and fellow artists including Marshall McLuhan, Edgar Morin, Vilém Flusser, Abraham Moles, Jean Duvignaud, Paul Virilio, Pierre Lévy, Pierre Restany, Frank Popper, Harald Szeeman, Robert C. Morgan, Vinton Cerf, Roy Ascott, and Eduardo Kac.Less
This book introduces readers to the iconoclastic work of the French media artist Fred Forest. A pioneer in the fields of video art in the 1960s and internet art in the 1990s, and cofounder of the Sociological Art Collective (1974) and the Aesthetics of Communication International Group (1983), Forest is best known as an ironic media hijacker and tinkerer of unconventional interfaces and alternative platforms for interactive communication that are accessible to the general public outside the exclusive precincts of the art world. He has also made headlines as an outspoken critic of the French contemporary art establishment, most famously by suing the Centre Pompidou in 1994 over its opaque acquisitions practices. This book surveys Forest’s work from the late 1960s to the present with particular emphasis on his prankster modus operandi, his advocacy of an existentially relevant form of counter-contemporary art―or “invisible system-art”―based on the principle of metacommunication (i.e., tasked with exploring the “immanent realities” of the virtual territory in which modern electronic communication takes place), his innovative “social” and “relational” use of a wide range of media from newspapers to Second Life, his attention-grabbing public interventions, and the unusual utopian dimension of his work. Never a hot commodity in the art world, Forest’s work has nonetheless garnered the attention and appreciation of a wide range of prominent intellectuals, critics, curators, technology innovators, and fellow artists including Marshall McLuhan, Edgar Morin, Vilém Flusser, Abraham Moles, Jean Duvignaud, Paul Virilio, Pierre Lévy, Pierre Restany, Frank Popper, Harald Szeeman, Robert C. Morgan, Vinton Cerf, Roy Ascott, and Eduardo Kac.
Amy Johnson Frykholm
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- July 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195159837
- eISBN:
- 9780199835614
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195159837.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter describes the way that readers use the Left Behind series to “read” and understand contemporary culture and the signs of the end of the world. Drawing on a wide range of beliefs and ...
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This chapter describes the way that readers use the Left Behind series to “read” and understand contemporary culture and the signs of the end of the world. Drawing on a wide range of beliefs and expectations about how the world will end, readers examine culture for signals that their understanding of the world is true. This chapter focuses specifically on technology and consumer culture as significant elements within end-times reasoning. When taken together, these cultural readings suggest that evangelical dispensationalism is taking on increasingly world-engaged forms and dispensing with its more escapist elements.Less
This chapter describes the way that readers use the Left Behind series to “read” and understand contemporary culture and the signs of the end of the world. Drawing on a wide range of beliefs and expectations about how the world will end, readers examine culture for signals that their understanding of the world is true. This chapter focuses specifically on technology and consumer culture as significant elements within end-times reasoning. When taken together, these cultural readings suggest that evangelical dispensationalism is taking on increasingly world-engaged forms and dispensing with its more escapist elements.
Patrick Crowley and Shirley Jordan (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620658
- eISBN:
- 9781789623918
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620658.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The chapters in this book respond to important questions about the formal properties of French literary texts and the agency of form. A central feature of twentieth- and twenty-first century French ...
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The chapters in this book respond to important questions about the formal properties of French literary texts and the agency of form. A central feature of twentieth- and twenty-first century French and Francophone writing has been the exploration of how cultural forms (literary, philosophical and visual) create distinctive semiotic environments and at the same time engage with external realities. The aim of this volume is to explore how the formal properties of a range of texts inflect our reading of them and, through that exploration, to renew the engagement with form that has been a key feature of French cultural production and of analysis in French studies.Less
The chapters in this book respond to important questions about the formal properties of French literary texts and the agency of form. A central feature of twentieth- and twenty-first century French and Francophone writing has been the exploration of how cultural forms (literary, philosophical and visual) create distinctive semiotic environments and at the same time engage with external realities. The aim of this volume is to explore how the formal properties of a range of texts inflect our reading of them and, through that exploration, to renew the engagement with form that has been a key feature of French cultural production and of analysis in French studies.
Rebecca M. Bodenheimer
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781628462395
- eISBN:
- 9781626746886
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462395.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
Derived from the nationalist writings of José Martí, the concept of Cubanidad (Cubanness) has always imagined a unified hybrid nation where racial difference is nonexistent and nationality trumps all ...
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Derived from the nationalist writings of José Martí, the concept of Cubanidad (Cubanness) has always imagined a unified hybrid nation where racial difference is nonexistent and nationality trumps all other axes of identity. Scholars have critiqued this celebration of racial mixture, highlighting a gap between the claim of racial harmony and the realities of inequality faced by Afro-Cubans since Independence in 1898. This book argues that it is not only the recognition of racial difference that threatens to divide the nation, but that popular regional sentiment further contests the hegemonic nationalist discourse. Given that music is a prominent symbol of Cubanidad, musical practices play an important role in constructing regional and local, as well as national, identities, and the book thus suggests that regional identity exerts a significant influence on the aesthetic choices Cuban musicians make. Through the examination of several genres, the book explores the various ways that race and the politics of place are entangled in contemporary Cuban music-making. It argues that racialized discourses that circulate about different cities affect both the formation of local identity and musical performance. Thus, the musical practices discussed—including rumba, timba, eastern Cuban folklore, and son—are examples of the intersections between regional identity formation, racialized notions of place, and music-making.Less
Derived from the nationalist writings of José Martí, the concept of Cubanidad (Cubanness) has always imagined a unified hybrid nation where racial difference is nonexistent and nationality trumps all other axes of identity. Scholars have critiqued this celebration of racial mixture, highlighting a gap between the claim of racial harmony and the realities of inequality faced by Afro-Cubans since Independence in 1898. This book argues that it is not only the recognition of racial difference that threatens to divide the nation, but that popular regional sentiment further contests the hegemonic nationalist discourse. Given that music is a prominent symbol of Cubanidad, musical practices play an important role in constructing regional and local, as well as national, identities, and the book thus suggests that regional identity exerts a significant influence on the aesthetic choices Cuban musicians make. Through the examination of several genres, the book explores the various ways that race and the politics of place are entangled in contemporary Cuban music-making. It argues that racialized discourses that circulate about different cities affect both the formation of local identity and musical performance. Thus, the musical practices discussed—including rumba, timba, eastern Cuban folklore, and son—are examples of the intersections between regional identity formation, racialized notions of place, and music-making.
Jan Bryant
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474456944
- eISBN:
- 9781474476867
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474456944.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
What strategies are visual artists and filmmakers using to criticise the social and economic conditions shaping our particular historical moment? This question is answered by considering the methods ...
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What strategies are visual artists and filmmakers using to criticise the social and economic conditions shaping our particular historical moment? This question is answered by considering the methods and political implications of artists or filmmakers working in a contemporary western art context today. Leading into extended analyses of works by Frances Barrett, Claire Denis, Angela Brennan, and Alex Monteith, the book considers two forces that have informed contemporary artmaking: the economic conditions that began changing social realities from the 1970s forward; and the current tendency of the political aesthetic to move away from direct political content or didacticism to a concern for the sensate effects of materials. This is framed by Jacques Rancière’s ‘distribution of the sensible’ and Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism. As historical ground for understanding the contemporary condition, Artmaking in the Age of Global Economics pays particular attention to the divisions that opened up between progressive writers, theorists and artists in the late 20th century. Suggesting an alternative approach to understanding art’s historical antecedents, it avoids received art-historical narratives or canonical figures, refuting both the autonomy of art as well as the separation of artist from the work they produce. It locates, instead, contemporary art in a worldly context of responsibility that opens up to an ethics of practice. [211]Less
What strategies are visual artists and filmmakers using to criticise the social and economic conditions shaping our particular historical moment? This question is answered by considering the methods and political implications of artists or filmmakers working in a contemporary western art context today. Leading into extended analyses of works by Frances Barrett, Claire Denis, Angela Brennan, and Alex Monteith, the book considers two forces that have informed contemporary artmaking: the economic conditions that began changing social realities from the 1970s forward; and the current tendency of the political aesthetic to move away from direct political content or didacticism to a concern for the sensate effects of materials. This is framed by Jacques Rancière’s ‘distribution of the sensible’ and Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism. As historical ground for understanding the contemporary condition, Artmaking in the Age of Global Economics pays particular attention to the divisions that opened up between progressive writers, theorists and artists in the late 20th century. Suggesting an alternative approach to understanding art’s historical antecedents, it avoids received art-historical narratives or canonical figures, refuting both the autonomy of art as well as the separation of artist from the work they produce. It locates, instead, contemporary art in a worldly context of responsibility that opens up to an ethics of practice. [211]
