James Barr
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198269878
- eISBN:
- 9780191600401
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198269870.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
This chapter discusses the theoretical side of postmodernism, and the uncertain variety of ways in which it may touch on biblical study.
This chapter discusses the theoretical side of postmodernism, and the uncertain variety of ways in which it may touch on biblical study.
Dale B. Martin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300222838
- eISBN:
- 9780300227918
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300222838.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
Biblical Truths addresses the question, How can a thinking person of the 21st century, who accepts the conclusions of modern science, historiography, and “facts,” continue to confess the traditional ...
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Biblical Truths addresses the question, How can a thinking person of the 21st century, who accepts the conclusions of modern science, historiography, and “facts,” continue to confess the traditional orthodox creeds of Christianity? How can such Christians continue to read the New Testament as a reliable source for “truth,” faith, and knowledge? Biblical Truths uses postmodern, antifoundational theories and philosophy to offer a ways of reading the Bible that are theologically faithful but intellectually respectable.Less
Biblical Truths addresses the question, How can a thinking person of the 21st century, who accepts the conclusions of modern science, historiography, and “facts,” continue to confess the traditional orthodox creeds of Christianity? How can such Christians continue to read the New Testament as a reliable source for “truth,” faith, and knowledge? Biblical Truths uses postmodern, antifoundational theories and philosophy to offer a ways of reading the Bible that are theologically faithful but intellectually respectable.
Catherine Constable
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231174558
- eISBN:
- 9780231850834
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231174558.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This volume focuses on postmodern film aesthetics, thinking through ways in which it challenges the aesthetic paradigms currently dominating analyses of Hollywood cinema. The first chapter explores ...
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This volume focuses on postmodern film aesthetics, thinking through ways in which it challenges the aesthetic paradigms currently dominating analyses of Hollywood cinema. The first chapter explores conceptions of the classical, modernist, post-classical/new Hollywood, and their construction as a linear history of style in which postmodernism forms a debatable final act. This history is challenged by using Jean-François Lyotard’s non-linear conception of postmodernism in order to view postmodern aesthetics as a paradigm that can occur across the history of Hollywood. Chapter 2 explores famous 'nihilistic' theorists of the postmodern, Jean Baudrillard and Frederic Jameson, addressing the ways in which their work impacts on reading Hollywood films. Within Film Studies, writing on postmodernism and Hollywood cinema has drawn on the more negative aspects of Jameson’s work. Postmodern films are seen as expressions of the logic of late capitalism, and thus incapable of offering political critique, while their relentless utilisation of past styles is reflective of aesthetic bankruptcy. In contrast, the final chapter argues in favor of taking up the work of 'affirmative' postmodern theorists, notably Linda Hutcheon, in order to set up nuanced and positive variants of postmodern film aesthetics. For Hutcheon, postmodern art is characterized by paradox, due to its simultaneous re-inscription and deconstruction of past art forms. This doubled movement of both evoking and dismantling convention underpins its political potential, namely the de-naturalisation of a history of representation. The range, diversity and critical potential of postmodern aesthetic strategies are demonstrated by detailed readings of four film texts.Less
This volume focuses on postmodern film aesthetics, thinking through ways in which it challenges the aesthetic paradigms currently dominating analyses of Hollywood cinema. The first chapter explores conceptions of the classical, modernist, post-classical/new Hollywood, and their construction as a linear history of style in which postmodernism forms a debatable final act. This history is challenged by using Jean-François Lyotard’s non-linear conception of postmodernism in order to view postmodern aesthetics as a paradigm that can occur across the history of Hollywood. Chapter 2 explores famous 'nihilistic' theorists of the postmodern, Jean Baudrillard and Frederic Jameson, addressing the ways in which their work impacts on reading Hollywood films. Within Film Studies, writing on postmodernism and Hollywood cinema has drawn on the more negative aspects of Jameson’s work. Postmodern films are seen as expressions of the logic of late capitalism, and thus incapable of offering political critique, while their relentless utilisation of past styles is reflective of aesthetic bankruptcy. In contrast, the final chapter argues in favor of taking up the work of 'affirmative' postmodern theorists, notably Linda Hutcheon, in order to set up nuanced and positive variants of postmodern film aesthetics. For Hutcheon, postmodern art is characterized by paradox, due to its simultaneous re-inscription and deconstruction of past art forms. This doubled movement of both evoking and dismantling convention underpins its political potential, namely the de-naturalisation of a history of representation. The range, diversity and critical potential of postmodern aesthetic strategies are demonstrated by detailed readings of four film texts.
J. Hillis Miller
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263103
- eISBN:
- 9780823266579
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263103.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Communities in Fiction reads in detail six novels or stories (one each by Trollope, Hardy, Conrad, Woolf, Pynchon, and Cervantes) by way of theories of community worked out (contradictorily) by ...
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Communities in Fiction reads in detail six novels or stories (one each by Trollope, Hardy, Conrad, Woolf, Pynchon, and Cervantes) by way of theories of community worked out (contradictorily) by Raymond Williams and Martin Heidegger for communities in the real world. Communities in Fiction’s topic is the question of how communities or non-communities are represented in fictional works. Such fictional communities help the reader understand real communities, including those in which the reader lives. As against the presumption that the trajectory in literature from Victorian to Modern to Postmodern is the story of a gradual loss of belief in the possibility of community, this book demonstrates that communities have always been presented in fictions as precarious and fractured. Moreover, the juxtaposition of Pynchon and Cervantes in the last chapter is in part a demonstration that period characterizations are never to be trusted. All the themes and narrative devices of Western fiction from the beginning of the print era to the present were there at the beginning, in Cervantes. Most of all, however, Communities in Fiction looks in detail at its six fictions, with entire allegiance to their texts, to see just what they say, what stories they tell, and what narratological and rhetorical devices they use to say what they do say and to tell the stories they do tell. This book attempts to express the joy of reading these works and to demonstrate the exemplary insight they provide into living in real communities that are always problematic and unstable.Less
Communities in Fiction reads in detail six novels or stories (one each by Trollope, Hardy, Conrad, Woolf, Pynchon, and Cervantes) by way of theories of community worked out (contradictorily) by Raymond Williams and Martin Heidegger for communities in the real world. Communities in Fiction’s topic is the question of how communities or non-communities are represented in fictional works. Such fictional communities help the reader understand real communities, including those in which the reader lives. As against the presumption that the trajectory in literature from Victorian to Modern to Postmodern is the story of a gradual loss of belief in the possibility of community, this book demonstrates that communities have always been presented in fictions as precarious and fractured. Moreover, the juxtaposition of Pynchon and Cervantes in the last chapter is in part a demonstration that period characterizations are never to be trusted. All the themes and narrative devices of Western fiction from the beginning of the print era to the present were there at the beginning, in Cervantes. Most of all, however, Communities in Fiction looks in detail at its six fictions, with entire allegiance to their texts, to see just what they say, what stories they tell, and what narratological and rhetorical devices they use to say what they do say and to tell the stories they do tell. This book attempts to express the joy of reading these works and to demonstrate the exemplary insight they provide into living in real communities that are always problematic and unstable.
Roland Faber and Jeremy Fackenthal (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251551
- eISBN:
- 9780823252985
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251551.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This book explores the complex philosophical ways in which theology is, should, and can be a “theopoetics” of multiplicity. In its insistence on the ultimacy of the irreducible manifoldness of the ...
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This book explores the complex philosophical ways in which theology is, should, and can be a “theopoetics” of multiplicity. In its insistence on the ultimacy of the irreducible manifoldness of the world in ontological, aesthetical, and ethical terms, this “poetics” invokes the love of the folded divine for the manifold of the process of becoming, and it becomes the creative expression of this love as a mutual happening and as the relationality of its “creatures.” Poiesis expresses the mutuality of the world of becoming and of value, of creativity and the divine, of new formulations of this mystery in a world of religious violence, political antagonism, and ecological turmoil in order to address “metaphorically” the deep importance of the recognition of such a poietics of love. The term theopoetics is ambivalent and open to many associations: the theme of poetry and aesthetic theory, theology and literature, a multiplicity of imageries of repressed literary qualities, myths, and metaphorical theologies. The chapters in this book explore how the term theopoetics contributes to work being done on the edge of theology, philosophy, literature, and sociology. In this sense, the book presents a vital multiplicity within itself and a discussion that practices multiplicity.Less
This book explores the complex philosophical ways in which theology is, should, and can be a “theopoetics” of multiplicity. In its insistence on the ultimacy of the irreducible manifoldness of the world in ontological, aesthetical, and ethical terms, this “poetics” invokes the love of the folded divine for the manifold of the process of becoming, and it becomes the creative expression of this love as a mutual happening and as the relationality of its “creatures.” Poiesis expresses the mutuality of the world of becoming and of value, of creativity and the divine, of new formulations of this mystery in a world of religious violence, political antagonism, and ecological turmoil in order to address “metaphorically” the deep importance of the recognition of such a poietics of love. The term theopoetics is ambivalent and open to many associations: the theme of poetry and aesthetic theory, theology and literature, a multiplicity of imageries of repressed literary qualities, myths, and metaphorical theologies. The chapters in this book explore how the term theopoetics contributes to work being done on the edge of theology, philosophy, literature, and sociology. In this sense, the book presents a vital multiplicity within itself and a discussion that practices multiplicity.
Kyoo Lee
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823244843
- eISBN:
- 9780823250738
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823244843.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Logic/Philosophy of Mathematics
Focusing on the first four images of the Other mobilized in René Descartes’ Meditations—namely, the blind, the mad, the dreamy, and the bad—Reading Descartes Otherwise casts light on what have ...
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Focusing on the first four images of the Other mobilized in René Descartes’ Meditations—namely, the blind, the mad, the dreamy, and the bad—Reading Descartes Otherwise casts light on what have heretofore been the phenomenological shadows of “Cartesian rationality.” In doing so, it discovers dynamic signs of spectral alterity lodged both at the core and on the edges of modern Cartesian subjectivity. Calling for a Copernican reorientation of the very notion “Cartesianism,” the book's series of close, creatively critical readings of Descartes’ signature images brings the dramatic forces, moments, and scenes of the cogito into our own contemporary moment. While unravelling the knotted skeins of ambiguity that have been spun within philosophical modernity out of such clichés as “Descartes, the abstract modern subject” and “Descartes, the father of modern philosophy,” the analysis highlights a figure who is at once everywhere and nowhere, a living Cartesian ghost. This effort at revitalizing and reframing the legacy of Cartesian modernity, in a way mindful of its proto-phenomenological traces, also involves reflecting on some of the trends in contemporary Cartesian scholarship while putting Descartes in dialogue with a host of twentieth century and contemporary Continental philosophers ranging from Edmund Husserl, Gaston Bachelard and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jean-Luc Marion, and Alain Badiou among others.Less
Focusing on the first four images of the Other mobilized in René Descartes’ Meditations—namely, the blind, the mad, the dreamy, and the bad—Reading Descartes Otherwise casts light on what have heretofore been the phenomenological shadows of “Cartesian rationality.” In doing so, it discovers dynamic signs of spectral alterity lodged both at the core and on the edges of modern Cartesian subjectivity. Calling for a Copernican reorientation of the very notion “Cartesianism,” the book's series of close, creatively critical readings of Descartes’ signature images brings the dramatic forces, moments, and scenes of the cogito into our own contemporary moment. While unravelling the knotted skeins of ambiguity that have been spun within philosophical modernity out of such clichés as “Descartes, the abstract modern subject” and “Descartes, the father of modern philosophy,” the analysis highlights a figure who is at once everywhere and nowhere, a living Cartesian ghost. This effort at revitalizing and reframing the legacy of Cartesian modernity, in a way mindful of its proto-phenomenological traces, also involves reflecting on some of the trends in contemporary Cartesian scholarship while putting Descartes in dialogue with a host of twentieth century and contemporary Continental philosophers ranging from Edmund Husserl, Gaston Bachelard and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jean-Luc Marion, and Alain Badiou among others.
Akane Kawakami
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382745
- eISBN:
- 9781786945235
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382745.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book is an introduction to the work of Patrick Modiano, the Nobel-Prize-winning French contemporary author. Using a theoretical approach based on the work of Genette and Ricoeur, the study ...
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This book is an introduction to the work of Patrick Modiano, the Nobel-Prize-winning French contemporary author. Using a theoretical approach based on the work of Genette and Ricoeur, the study teases out the complexities of Modiano’s apparently simple narratives, showing how they skilfully weave together the fictional and historical to involve and draw the reader into the worlds of his novels, whether it be the murky labyrinth of the années noires or the amoral yet attractive landscape of the sixties. The book also discusses new aspects of Modiano’s post-2000 novels, such as the greater role played in them by women, the unexpected appearance of ideas from Nietzsche, and a meditation on the nature of time that owes much to – but is profoundly different from – that of his illustrious precursor, Proust.Less
This book is an introduction to the work of Patrick Modiano, the Nobel-Prize-winning French contemporary author. Using a theoretical approach based on the work of Genette and Ricoeur, the study teases out the complexities of Modiano’s apparently simple narratives, showing how they skilfully weave together the fictional and historical to involve and draw the reader into the worlds of his novels, whether it be the murky labyrinth of the années noires or the amoral yet attractive landscape of the sixties. The book also discusses new aspects of Modiano’s post-2000 novels, such as the greater role played in them by women, the unexpected appearance of ideas from Nietzsche, and a meditation on the nature of time that owes much to – but is profoundly different from – that of his illustrious precursor, Proust.
Aaron W. Hughes
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199356812
- eISBN:
- 9780199358199
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199356812.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism, Philosophy of Religion
The term “Jewish philosophy” is, in many ways, a paradox. Is it theology or is it philosophy? Is it a philosophical way of understanding Judaism, or a Jewish way of understanding philosophy? Does it ...
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The term “Jewish philosophy” is, in many ways, a paradox. Is it theology or is it philosophy? Is it a philosophical way of understanding Judaism, or a Jewish way of understanding philosophy? Does it use universal methods to articulate Judaism’s particularity or does it justify Judaism’s particularity as a way to illumine the universal? The tension between “philosophy” and “Judaism,” between the “universal” and the “particular,” reverberates throughout the length and breadth of Jewish philosophical writing, from Saadya Gaon in the ninth century to Emmanuel Levinas in the twentieth. But rather than just assume, as most scholars of Jewish philosophy do, that the terms “philosophy” and “Judaism” can simply exist together without each ultimately transforming the other, Hughes explores the fallout that ensues from their cohabitation, adroitly examining the historical, cultural, intellectual, and religious filiations between Judaism and philosophy. Breaking with received opinion, this book seeks to challenge the exclusionary, essentialist, and even totalitarian nature that is inherent to the practice of what is problematically referred to as “Jewish philosophy.” Hughes begins with the premise that Jewish philosophy, as it is presently conceived, is impossible. He then begins the process of offering a sophisticated and constructive rethinking of the discipline that avoids the traditional extremes of universalism and particularism.Less
The term “Jewish philosophy” is, in many ways, a paradox. Is it theology or is it philosophy? Is it a philosophical way of understanding Judaism, or a Jewish way of understanding philosophy? Does it use universal methods to articulate Judaism’s particularity or does it justify Judaism’s particularity as a way to illumine the universal? The tension between “philosophy” and “Judaism,” between the “universal” and the “particular,” reverberates throughout the length and breadth of Jewish philosophical writing, from Saadya Gaon in the ninth century to Emmanuel Levinas in the twentieth. But rather than just assume, as most scholars of Jewish philosophy do, that the terms “philosophy” and “Judaism” can simply exist together without each ultimately transforming the other, Hughes explores the fallout that ensues from their cohabitation, adroitly examining the historical, cultural, intellectual, and religious filiations between Judaism and philosophy. Breaking with received opinion, this book seeks to challenge the exclusionary, essentialist, and even totalitarian nature that is inherent to the practice of what is problematically referred to as “Jewish philosophy.” Hughes begins with the premise that Jewish philosophy, as it is presently conceived, is impossible. He then begins the process of offering a sophisticated and constructive rethinking of the discipline that avoids the traditional extremes of universalism and particularism.
Tan See Kam
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9789888208852
- eISBN:
- 9789888313518
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208852.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The two Blues films manifest a strong postmodern tendency by establishing an intertextual relationship between the “present” of the film and the “past” embodied, for example, in the cultural ...
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The two Blues films manifest a strong postmodern tendency by establishing an intertextual relationship between the “present” of the film and the “past” embodied, for example, in the cultural phenomenon of Peking Opera, which heavily informs Peking Opera Blues. As such, both films, with their blending of the cinematic, the theatrical and the dramatic conjuring up amazing spectacles that emphasize visuality, performance and movement, may both be read as a postmodern shadowplay of attractions (dianguang yingxi) which has the characteristics of an on-screen vaudeville show. This dianying (electric shadowplay) has parodic invocations that, through strategies of disruption and postmodern bricolage often involve a playful mixing of history, fiction, time, place, and language. This creates postmodern pastiches, most especially with ways of reading history, by incorporating the filmic and the operatic and thereby creating meta-cinematic structures where the resultant aural and visual excessiveness calls into question illusions of fixed systems of representation.Less
The two Blues films manifest a strong postmodern tendency by establishing an intertextual relationship between the “present” of the film and the “past” embodied, for example, in the cultural phenomenon of Peking Opera, which heavily informs Peking Opera Blues. As such, both films, with their blending of the cinematic, the theatrical and the dramatic conjuring up amazing spectacles that emphasize visuality, performance and movement, may both be read as a postmodern shadowplay of attractions (dianguang yingxi) which has the characteristics of an on-screen vaudeville show. This dianying (electric shadowplay) has parodic invocations that, through strategies of disruption and postmodern bricolage often involve a playful mixing of history, fiction, time, place, and language. This creates postmodern pastiches, most especially with ways of reading history, by incorporating the filmic and the operatic and thereby creating meta-cinematic structures where the resultant aural and visual excessiveness calls into question illusions of fixed systems of representation.
Michelle Devereaux
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474446044
- eISBN:
- 9781474476652
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474446044.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The conclusion of the book revisits the issues and ideas put forth in the introduction, specifically focusing on how the individual films address them. It considers the idea of postmodern ...
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The conclusion of the book revisits the issues and ideas put forth in the introduction, specifically focusing on how the individual films address them. It considers the idea of postmodern ‘indeterminacy’, posited by theorists such as Jean-François Lyotard and Fredric Jameson, and suggests the films relation to it results in what Patricia Waugh refers to as a ‘radical fictional sense of truth’ and a questioning of absolutes through a Romantic lens. But this questioning also results in the need to fight against the solipsism that so frequently attends it—an integral theme of the films featured. Finally, the conclusion describes how the resurgence of emotion in the films results in a form of transcendence that aligns clearly with the Romantic project.Less
The conclusion of the book revisits the issues and ideas put forth in the introduction, specifically focusing on how the individual films address them. It considers the idea of postmodern ‘indeterminacy’, posited by theorists such as Jean-François Lyotard and Fredric Jameson, and suggests the films relation to it results in what Patricia Waugh refers to as a ‘radical fictional sense of truth’ and a questioning of absolutes through a Romantic lens. But this questioning also results in the need to fight against the solipsism that so frequently attends it—an integral theme of the films featured. Finally, the conclusion describes how the resurgence of emotion in the films results in a form of transcendence that aligns clearly with the Romantic project.
Steve Redhead
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748643448
- eISBN:
- 9780748652945
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748643448.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter investigates some aspects of the speeding-up of sport and sports media in contemporary accelerated culture alongside a generalised rethinking of the sociology of modernity. In a 1990s ...
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This chapter investigates some aspects of the speeding-up of sport and sports media in contemporary accelerated culture alongside a generalised rethinking of the sociology of modernity. In a 1990s book of essays entitled Sport and Postmodern Times Brian Pronger coined the term ‘post-sport’ when reviewing the transgression of the body in sport within queer theory. But the term ‘post-sport’ also connotes a more apocalyptic place for sport and sport media: the world, for instance, of ubiquitous illegal betting dominated scandals in international cricket and the corrupt practices of financial incentives for sport media event bids like the World Cup within FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, from the 1990s onwards, and the ‘live’ global sport media coverage of such events.Less
This chapter investigates some aspects of the speeding-up of sport and sports media in contemporary accelerated culture alongside a generalised rethinking of the sociology of modernity. In a 1990s book of essays entitled Sport and Postmodern Times Brian Pronger coined the term ‘post-sport’ when reviewing the transgression of the body in sport within queer theory. But the term ‘post-sport’ also connotes a more apocalyptic place for sport and sport media: the world, for instance, of ubiquitous illegal betting dominated scandals in international cricket and the corrupt practices of financial incentives for sport media event bids like the World Cup within FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, from the 1990s onwards, and the ‘live’ global sport media coverage of such events.
Alan G. Gross and Joseph E. Harmon
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190465926
- eISBN:
- 9780197559635
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190465926.003.0008
- Subject:
- Education, Educational Equipment and Technology
Has there been in the 21st-century humanities an Internet transformation similar to that in the sciences? A comparison of online elite journals suggests that the ...
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Has there been in the 21st-century humanities an Internet transformation similar to that in the sciences? A comparison of online elite journals suggests that the Internet transformation in the humanities is noticeably less far along. This generalization applies to the 10 elite humanities journals identified by Eugene Garfield: Language (journal of the Linguistic Society of America), Journal of Philosophy, American Antiquity, PMLA (journal of the Modern Language Association), Linguistic Inquiry, Past & Present, Philosophical Review, American Historical Review, Economic History Review, and Journal of Economic History. Even a journal called Music, Sound, and the Moving Image has no music, sound, or moving images. This state of affairs also applies to online journals. Within the past decade, the Open Humanities Press established 17 open-access journals in “response to the crisis in scholarly publishing in the humanities”; tellingly, of these 17, the articles in all but one are in the form of PDF or HTML files with straight text and, typically, few if any links or images. An exception is Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, which “brings together visionary scholars with cutting-edge designers and technologists to propose a rethinking of the dynamic relation of form to content in academic research.” There is an obvious explanation for this state of digital affairs: the differences between the two cultures. The typical humanities essay is primarily a verbal document composed by a single author, written in a more personal style than that of the scientific article. Typically, it is designed around an argument or narrative that does not easily lend itself to nonsequential reading. One cannot imagine essays by scholars as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Jürgen Habermas, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, or Martha Nussbaum benefitting in any substantive way from the affordances of the web, aside from easier access to a global readership. In many cases, a simple web-based reproduction of the print version suffices. Still, the elite humanities journals are not entirely free of Internet innovation.
Less
Has there been in the 21st-century humanities an Internet transformation similar to that in the sciences? A comparison of online elite journals suggests that the Internet transformation in the humanities is noticeably less far along. This generalization applies to the 10 elite humanities journals identified by Eugene Garfield: Language (journal of the Linguistic Society of America), Journal of Philosophy, American Antiquity, PMLA (journal of the Modern Language Association), Linguistic Inquiry, Past & Present, Philosophical Review, American Historical Review, Economic History Review, and Journal of Economic History. Even a journal called Music, Sound, and the Moving Image has no music, sound, or moving images. This state of affairs also applies to online journals. Within the past decade, the Open Humanities Press established 17 open-access journals in “response to the crisis in scholarly publishing in the humanities”; tellingly, of these 17, the articles in all but one are in the form of PDF or HTML files with straight text and, typically, few if any links or images. An exception is Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, which “brings together visionary scholars with cutting-edge designers and technologists to propose a rethinking of the dynamic relation of form to content in academic research.” There is an obvious explanation for this state of digital affairs: the differences between the two cultures. The typical humanities essay is primarily a verbal document composed by a single author, written in a more personal style than that of the scientific article. Typically, it is designed around an argument or narrative that does not easily lend itself to nonsequential reading. One cannot imagine essays by scholars as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Jürgen Habermas, Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, or Martha Nussbaum benefitting in any substantive way from the affordances of the web, aside from easier access to a global readership. In many cases, a simple web-based reproduction of the print version suffices. Still, the elite humanities journals are not entirely free of Internet innovation.
Abby Carlozzo
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042959
- eISBN:
- 9780252051814
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042959.003.0013
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
In this essay, Abby Carlozzo explores insights on improvisation gained from her fieldwork in Burkina Faso. She explores the philosophical and ideological tensions that arise from North American and ...
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In this essay, Abby Carlozzo explores insights on improvisation gained from her fieldwork in Burkina Faso. She explores the philosophical and ideological tensions that arise from North American and European understandings of improvisation as a discrete creative practice vis a vis an “Africanist” perspective that understands improvisation as inextricably linked to the parameters of living and ever-evolving dance traditions. Carlozzo aligns her analysis with scholarship on improvisatory dance approaches and aesthetics in the African Diaspora and argues that “improvisation” in African dance contexts is better described as “stylistic innovation within form.”Less
In this essay, Abby Carlozzo explores insights on improvisation gained from her fieldwork in Burkina Faso. She explores the philosophical and ideological tensions that arise from North American and European understandings of improvisation as a discrete creative practice vis a vis an “Africanist” perspective that understands improvisation as inextricably linked to the parameters of living and ever-evolving dance traditions. Carlozzo aligns her analysis with scholarship on improvisatory dance approaches and aesthetics in the African Diaspora and argues that “improvisation” in African dance contexts is better described as “stylistic innovation within form.”
Dale B. Martin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300222838
- eISBN:
- 9780300227918
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300222838.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
The modern scholarly task of “biblical theology,” “theology of the Old Testament,” or “theology of the New Testament” may be historically traced from around 1800 and through the 20th century. Its ...
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The modern scholarly task of “biblical theology,” “theology of the Old Testament,” or “theology of the New Testament” may be historically traced from around 1800 and through the 20th century. Its goal was both to describe the theology contained in the Bible but also to use that historical construction as a foundation for modern Christian theological appropriation of the Bible. The task, though, led either to bad theology, bad historiography, or both. A robust, Christian, orthodox theology must move beyond the limits of modernism and practice more creative, innovative readings of scripture.Less
The modern scholarly task of “biblical theology,” “theology of the Old Testament,” or “theology of the New Testament” may be historically traced from around 1800 and through the 20th century. Its goal was both to describe the theology contained in the Bible but also to use that historical construction as a foundation for modern Christian theological appropriation of the Bible. The task, though, led either to bad theology, bad historiography, or both. A robust, Christian, orthodox theology must move beyond the limits of modernism and practice more creative, innovative readings of scripture.
Calvin Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096280
- eISBN:
- 9781526109866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096280.003.0011
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Calvin Thomas explores the differing roles of the abject as a theme in the writings of the contemporary authors Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. For Thomas, Wallace’s novella ‘The Suffering ...
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Calvin Thomas explores the differing roles of the abject as a theme in the writings of the contemporary authors Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. For Thomas, Wallace’s novella ‘The Suffering Channel’, which features an artist who claims to excrete fully-modelled figurative sculptures, demonstrates how literature provides a crucial means to convey abject suffering. Wallace’s faecal theme provides the means by which the author analyses abjected masculinity in contemporary America and also art’s claim to use stories to reveal truths.Less
Calvin Thomas explores the differing roles of the abject as a theme in the writings of the contemporary authors Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. For Thomas, Wallace’s novella ‘The Suffering Channel’, which features an artist who claims to excrete fully-modelled figurative sculptures, demonstrates how literature provides a crucial means to convey abject suffering. Wallace’s faecal theme provides the means by which the author analyses abjected masculinity in contemporary America and also art’s claim to use stories to reveal truths.
Joan Ramon Resina
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620252
- eISBN:
- 9781789623857
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620252.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
Transatlantic studies can be seen as a response to institutional pressures to rationalize resources by collapsing former units into “super-regional” frames of reference. Transatlanticism proposes an ...
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Transatlantic studies can be seen as a response to institutional pressures to rationalize resources by collapsing former units into “super-regional” frames of reference. Transatlanticism proposes an inter-continental framework, bringing under its canopy the cognate but often alienated specialties of Hispanism and Latin Americanism. In the “new” discipline, the old system of Hispanic studies, featuring the culture of Castilian Spain and its linguistic legacy in the nations born of its former colonies, reasserts itself under conditions of scarcity associated with the implosion of the Humanities. An alternative to this “modern” paradigm could be a postmodern, ironic discipline. The mark of the postmodern is the retention of pre-modern elements within an incongruous structure operating with a different functionality. For transatlantic Hispanism, irony could translate into awareness of the discipline’s imperial origins, while recasting it according to a new principle of organization that no longer rests on the alleged universality of an imperial language that fixes cultural value. An ironic discipline takes stock of its limits, and by doing so leaves them conceptually behind. In this way, and in this way only, it thinks the “trans” of the “trans” and assumes its place in the post-postmodern university.Less
Transatlantic studies can be seen as a response to institutional pressures to rationalize resources by collapsing former units into “super-regional” frames of reference. Transatlanticism proposes an inter-continental framework, bringing under its canopy the cognate but often alienated specialties of Hispanism and Latin Americanism. In the “new” discipline, the old system of Hispanic studies, featuring the culture of Castilian Spain and its linguistic legacy in the nations born of its former colonies, reasserts itself under conditions of scarcity associated with the implosion of the Humanities. An alternative to this “modern” paradigm could be a postmodern, ironic discipline. The mark of the postmodern is the retention of pre-modern elements within an incongruous structure operating with a different functionality. For transatlantic Hispanism, irony could translate into awareness of the discipline’s imperial origins, while recasting it according to a new principle of organization that no longer rests on the alleged universality of an imperial language that fixes cultural value. An ironic discipline takes stock of its limits, and by doing so leaves them conceptually behind. In this way, and in this way only, it thinks the “trans” of the “trans” and assumes its place in the post-postmodern university.
Catherine Constable
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231174558
- eISBN:
- 9780231850834
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231174558.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Chapter three focuses on affirmative theorists, particularly Linda Hutcheon, charting the ways in which they provide the means to conceptualise nuanced and positive variants of postmodern aesthetics. ...
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Chapter three focuses on affirmative theorists, particularly Linda Hutcheon, charting the ways in which they provide the means to conceptualise nuanced and positive variants of postmodern aesthetics. The first part of the chapter explores Peter and Will Brooker’s circular model of postmodern aesthetics, linking it to Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal return. It then examines Hutcheon’s model in which postmodern art is characterised by a paradoxical doubled movement, namely the simultaneous re-inscription and deconstruction of past art forms. This evocation and dismantling of convention creates its political potential, namely the de-naturalisation of a history of representation, as well as forming the basis of complicitous critique. Combining Hutcheon with Lyotard’s non-linear model of the postmodern, the last part of this chapter explores a diverse range of postmodern aesthetic strategies through the detailed textual analysis of four Hollywood films: Sherlock Junior (Buster Keaton, 1924), Bombshell (Victor Fleming 1933), Kill Bill Volume 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003) and Kill Bill Volume 2 (2004).Less
Chapter three focuses on affirmative theorists, particularly Linda Hutcheon, charting the ways in which they provide the means to conceptualise nuanced and positive variants of postmodern aesthetics. The first part of the chapter explores Peter and Will Brooker’s circular model of postmodern aesthetics, linking it to Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal return. It then examines Hutcheon’s model in which postmodern art is characterised by a paradoxical doubled movement, namely the simultaneous re-inscription and deconstruction of past art forms. This evocation and dismantling of convention creates its political potential, namely the de-naturalisation of a history of representation, as well as forming the basis of complicitous critique. Combining Hutcheon with Lyotard’s non-linear model of the postmodern, the last part of this chapter explores a diverse range of postmodern aesthetic strategies through the detailed textual analysis of four Hollywood films: Sherlock Junior (Buster Keaton, 1924), Bombshell (Victor Fleming 1933), Kill Bill Volume 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003) and Kill Bill Volume 2 (2004).
Adam Zachary Newton
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823263516
- eISBN:
- 9780823266470
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823263516.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
To Make the Hands Impure explores the act of reading as an embodied practice where ethics becomes a matter of tact—in the doubled sense of touch and regard. With the image of a book lying in the ...
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To Make the Hands Impure explores the act of reading as an embodied practice where ethics becomes a matter of tact—in the doubled sense of touch and regard. With the image of a book lying in the hands of its readers as insistent refrain, Newton’s argument To Make the Hands Impure stages the encounter of literary experience and scriptural traditions—the difficult and the holy—by cutting a provocative cross-disciplinary swath through classical Jewish texts, modern Jewish philosophy, film and performance, literature, translation, and the material text. The book’s conception of impurity as the redemptive effect of the sacred offers a profound rethinking of the postmodern meanings of Jewish tradition. Instead of continuing to engage theology, either Christian or Rabbinic, To Make the Hands Impure uses and reinterprets other resources of Rabbinic tradition in order to rethink reading a literary text, both holy and secular, as secular midrash. Its tapestry of comparative readings, through which authors and their works are made to shed light on each other, can also be described as a contrapuntal symphony. The range of works and authors includes the Talmud and midrash, Conrad’s Nostromo and Pascal’s Mémorial, Henry Darger and Martin Scorsese, the September 11th Memorial and a synagogue in Havana. Separate chapters conduct masterly treatments of Emmanuel Levinas, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Stanley Cavell by emphasizing their performances as readers—a trebled orientation to Talmud, Novel, and Theater/ Cinema.Less
To Make the Hands Impure explores the act of reading as an embodied practice where ethics becomes a matter of tact—in the doubled sense of touch and regard. With the image of a book lying in the hands of its readers as insistent refrain, Newton’s argument To Make the Hands Impure stages the encounter of literary experience and scriptural traditions—the difficult and the holy—by cutting a provocative cross-disciplinary swath through classical Jewish texts, modern Jewish philosophy, film and performance, literature, translation, and the material text. The book’s conception of impurity as the redemptive effect of the sacred offers a profound rethinking of the postmodern meanings of Jewish tradition. Instead of continuing to engage theology, either Christian or Rabbinic, To Make the Hands Impure uses and reinterprets other resources of Rabbinic tradition in order to rethink reading a literary text, both holy and secular, as secular midrash. Its tapestry of comparative readings, through which authors and their works are made to shed light on each other, can also be described as a contrapuntal symphony. The range of works and authors includes the Talmud and midrash, Conrad’s Nostromo and Pascal’s Mémorial, Henry Darger and Martin Scorsese, the September 11th Memorial and a synagogue in Havana. Separate chapters conduct masterly treatments of Emmanuel Levinas, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Stanley Cavell by emphasizing their performances as readers—a trebled orientation to Talmud, Novel, and Theater/ Cinema.
M. David Litwa
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780300242638
- eISBN:
- 9780300249484
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300242638.003.0017
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
Despite the demonstrated historiographical tropes of the gospels, today they are perceived to convey a bevy of myths. Myths can still be true despite being unhistorical. Sometimes Christian ...
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Despite the demonstrated historiographical tropes of the gospels, today they are perceived to convey a bevy of myths. Myths can still be true despite being unhistorical. Sometimes Christian apologists defend the historicity of gospel myths to uphold their truth value. This is a modern technique of rationalization, the attempt to update Christian myths by making them seem more plausible. In reality, historicality does not demonstrate truth. So to study Jesus seriously, less investment in the so-called historical Jesus and increased attention to the mythological Jesus is a desideratum. Only by integrating gospel studies into myth studies can the former find a place in Humanities programs of modern public universities.Less
Despite the demonstrated historiographical tropes of the gospels, today they are perceived to convey a bevy of myths. Myths can still be true despite being unhistorical. Sometimes Christian apologists defend the historicity of gospel myths to uphold their truth value. This is a modern technique of rationalization, the attempt to update Christian myths by making them seem more plausible. In reality, historicality does not demonstrate truth. So to study Jesus seriously, less investment in the so-called historical Jesus and increased attention to the mythological Jesus is a desideratum. Only by integrating gospel studies into myth studies can the former find a place in Humanities programs of modern public universities.
Philipa Rothfield
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474429344
- eISBN:
- 9781474438568
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474429344.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter draws on Deleuzian thought in order to think through the role of experience within dance and the activity of dancing more generally. It contrasts phenomenological approaches to dancing, ...
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This chapter draws on Deleuzian thought in order to think through the role of experience within dance and the activity of dancing more generally. It contrasts phenomenological approaches to dancing, which appeal to notions of subjective agency, with a Deleuzian re-reading of subjectivity. In the process, it refers to Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche, using Nietzsche’s concept of force to account for the many ways in which forces combine to produce movement. The notion of force is able to explain the way action unfolds without being the product of human agency. It offers a way of rethinking phenomenological notions of agency. According to this account, relations of force underlie action, as well as the many modes of interiority (subjectivity). But these two kinds of formation (of force) are different in kind. They belong to differing types (of force). The pursuit of action, including the utilisation of experience in action, constitutes a certain type of ethos, which Deleuze calls the active type, whereas the formation of experience belongs to ‘the reactive apparatus’, that which reacts but does not act. The active type drives a wedge between the dancing and the dancer. Deleuze’s treatment of Nietzsche can be adapted to account for the variety of dance practices, their production of training and technique, custom and virtuosity. In particular, it is able to account for the specific ways in which postmodern dance displaces the subjectivity of the dancer.Less
This chapter draws on Deleuzian thought in order to think through the role of experience within dance and the activity of dancing more generally. It contrasts phenomenological approaches to dancing, which appeal to notions of subjective agency, with a Deleuzian re-reading of subjectivity. In the process, it refers to Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche, using Nietzsche’s concept of force to account for the many ways in which forces combine to produce movement. The notion of force is able to explain the way action unfolds without being the product of human agency. It offers a way of rethinking phenomenological notions of agency. According to this account, relations of force underlie action, as well as the many modes of interiority (subjectivity). But these two kinds of formation (of force) are different in kind. They belong to differing types (of force). The pursuit of action, including the utilisation of experience in action, constitutes a certain type of ethos, which Deleuze calls the active type, whereas the formation of experience belongs to ‘the reactive apparatus’, that which reacts but does not act. The active type drives a wedge between the dancing and the dancer. Deleuze’s treatment of Nietzsche can be adapted to account for the variety of dance practices, their production of training and technique, custom and virtuosity. In particular, it is able to account for the specific ways in which postmodern dance displaces the subjectivity of the dancer.
