Carl A. Raschke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231173841
- eISBN:
- 9780231539623
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231173841.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
The difference between “value of origin” and “origin of value”—is what philosophy as genealogy seeks to discern and in the process opens up an interval at a site of experience that is neither ...
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The difference between “value of origin” and “origin of value”—is what philosophy as genealogy seeks to discern and in the process opens up an interval at a site of experience that is neither conceptual nor purely “aesthetic.” We may call this interval the space of the experience of art, which allows us to intuit both the force that gives rise to the experience and the event of its formation that illumines in its plasticity. But in recognizing this moment of valuation, genealogy goes even one step further. It arrives at the threshold of establishing how force sets in motion the kind of complex value structures and value assemblages that inform the collective life of humanity. In short, it seeks to ascertain the force that constitutes the political.Less
The difference between “value of origin” and “origin of value”—is what philosophy as genealogy seeks to discern and in the process opens up an interval at a site of experience that is neither conceptual nor purely “aesthetic.” We may call this interval the space of the experience of art, which allows us to intuit both the force that gives rise to the experience and the event of its formation that illumines in its plasticity. But in recognizing this moment of valuation, genealogy goes even one step further. It arrives at the threshold of establishing how force sets in motion the kind of complex value structures and value assemblages that inform the collective life of humanity. In short, it seeks to ascertain the force that constitutes the political.
Alex Tissandier
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474417747
- eISBN:
- 9781474449748
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474417747.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Leibniz is a constant, but often overlooked, presence in Deleuze’s philosophy. This book explains three key moments in Deleuze’s philosophical development through the lens of his engagement with ...
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Leibniz is a constant, but often overlooked, presence in Deleuze’s philosophy. This book explains three key moments in Deleuze’s philosophical development through the lens of his engagement with Leibniz. In doing so it hopes to offer a focused framework for understanding some of the most difficult aspects of Deleuze’s philosophy. Part One examines Deleuze’s account of the “anti-Cartesian reaction” of Spinoza and Leibniz which culminates in their two competing theories of expression. It argues that in some key respects Deleuze favours Leibniz’s interpretation of this key concept over Spinoza’s. Part Two looks at Deleuze’s critique of representation and his attempt to create a theory of difference that will underlie, rather than rely upon, conceptual opposition. It examines the crucial role played by the Leibnizian concepts of incompossibility and divergence in Deleuze’s theory of ‘vice-diction’, created in order to offer a sub-representational, or pre-individual, substitute for Hegelian contradiction. Part Three looks in detail at one of Deleuze’s last major works, The Fold. It argues for Leibniz’s central place in this text, and shows how Deleuze uses concepts from across Leibniz’s philosophy and mathematics as a framework to articulate a systematic account of his own mature philosophy.Less
Leibniz is a constant, but often overlooked, presence in Deleuze’s philosophy. This book explains three key moments in Deleuze’s philosophical development through the lens of his engagement with Leibniz. In doing so it hopes to offer a focused framework for understanding some of the most difficult aspects of Deleuze’s philosophy. Part One examines Deleuze’s account of the “anti-Cartesian reaction” of Spinoza and Leibniz which culminates in their two competing theories of expression. It argues that in some key respects Deleuze favours Leibniz’s interpretation of this key concept over Spinoza’s. Part Two looks at Deleuze’s critique of representation and his attempt to create a theory of difference that will underlie, rather than rely upon, conceptual opposition. It examines the crucial role played by the Leibnizian concepts of incompossibility and divergence in Deleuze’s theory of ‘vice-diction’, created in order to offer a sub-representational, or pre-individual, substitute for Hegelian contradiction. Part Three looks in detail at one of Deleuze’s last major works, The Fold. It argues for Leibniz’s central place in this text, and shows how Deleuze uses concepts from across Leibniz’s philosophy and mathematics as a framework to articulate a systematic account of his own mature philosophy.
Robert Miklitsch
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040689
- eISBN:
- 9780252099120
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040689.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Given that 1955, the dead center of “the Fifties,” was the year in which RKO, the “house of noir,” was sold to Desilu Studios, the home of I Love Lucy, it would appear on the face of things that ...
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Given that 1955, the dead center of “the Fifties,” was the year in which RKO, the “house of noir,” was sold to Desilu Studios, the home of I Love Lucy, it would appear on the face of things that classic American film noir was good and dead by midcentury. But despite the received critical wisdom about the genre, The Red and the Black proposes that the grand, rise-and-fall narrative about classic noir misprizes the way in which, via various subgenres (melodrama, semi-documentary, etc.), it dramatizes complex notions about gender and sexuality, race and family, nation and homosexuality. The clichés about 1950s noir also misrecognize the way in which, via new media and technologies (color, television, 3-D, widescreen), it effects a dynamic segue between 1940s expressionist noir and early, “modernist” neo-noir. Since the negative, stereotypical determination of Cold War noir tends to be a function of generalities about the genre and the period, The Red and the Black focuses less on “the Fifties” than on the performative contradictions of particular films and the representative cultural-political formations—anticommunism, the atomic bomb, and new media/technologies--of which they are singular “examples.” In fine, in “the Fifties,” in the age of TV and three-dimension, the femme fatale and the nuclear family, Cinemascope and Technicolor, the A-bomb and McCarthyism, the blacklist and “reds under the beds,” ‘50s noir not only existed but flourished.Less
Given that 1955, the dead center of “the Fifties,” was the year in which RKO, the “house of noir,” was sold to Desilu Studios, the home of I Love Lucy, it would appear on the face of things that classic American film noir was good and dead by midcentury. But despite the received critical wisdom about the genre, The Red and the Black proposes that the grand, rise-and-fall narrative about classic noir misprizes the way in which, via various subgenres (melodrama, semi-documentary, etc.), it dramatizes complex notions about gender and sexuality, race and family, nation and homosexuality. The clichés about 1950s noir also misrecognize the way in which, via new media and technologies (color, television, 3-D, widescreen), it effects a dynamic segue between 1940s expressionist noir and early, “modernist” neo-noir. Since the negative, stereotypical determination of Cold War noir tends to be a function of generalities about the genre and the period, The Red and the Black focuses less on “the Fifties” than on the performative contradictions of particular films and the representative cultural-political formations—anticommunism, the atomic bomb, and new media/technologies--of which they are singular “examples.” In fine, in “the Fifties,” in the age of TV and three-dimension, the femme fatale and the nuclear family, Cinemascope and Technicolor, the A-bomb and McCarthyism, the blacklist and “reds under the beds,” ‘50s noir not only existed but flourished.
June O. Leavitt
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199827831
- eISBN:
- 9780199919444
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827831.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
This chapter presents the classical theory about clairvoyance and contrasts it to Kafka’s confession to Rudolph Steiner about being clairvoyant and to the discourse on clairvoyance popularized by the ...
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This chapter presents the classical theory about clairvoyance and contrasts it to Kafka’s confession to Rudolph Steiner about being clairvoyant and to the discourse on clairvoyance popularized by the modern Theosophical movement. The chapter analyzes the statement that Kafka made to Steiner during their meeting that his soul yearned for “Theosophy,” in light of the tremendous impact which the founder of modern Theosophy, Madame H.P. Blavatsky, made on European arts, literature and culture.Less
This chapter presents the classical theory about clairvoyance and contrasts it to Kafka’s confession to Rudolph Steiner about being clairvoyant and to the discourse on clairvoyance popularized by the modern Theosophical movement. The chapter analyzes the statement that Kafka made to Steiner during their meeting that his soul yearned for “Theosophy,” in light of the tremendous impact which the founder of modern Theosophy, Madame H.P. Blavatsky, made on European arts, literature and culture.
Eric Salzman and Thomas Desi
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195099362
- eISBN:
- 9780199864737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195099362.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
This chapter discusses the following subjects in a music theater context: Verismo to expressionism to musical modernism; the development of neoclassicism, presentational theater and the new chamber ...
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This chapter discusses the following subjects in a music theater context: Verismo to expressionism to musical modernism; the development of neoclassicism, presentational theater and the new chamber opera; cross influences of musical populism and the return of modernism in the form of serialism, anti-theater and electro-acoustics; minimalism and the revival of tonality.Less
This chapter discusses the following subjects in a music theater context: Verismo to expressionism to musical modernism; the development of neoclassicism, presentational theater and the new chamber opera; cross influences of musical populism and the return of modernism in the form of serialism, anti-theater and electro-acoustics; minimalism and the revival of tonality.
Robyn Ferrell
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231148801
- eISBN:
- 9780231504423
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231148801.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
As the international art market globalizes the indigenous image, it changes its identity, status, value, and purpose in local and larger contexts. Focusing on a school of Australian Aboriginal ...
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As the international art market globalizes the indigenous image, it changes its identity, status, value, and purpose in local and larger contexts. Focusing on a school of Australian Aboriginal painting that has become popular in the contemporary art world, the book traces the influence of cultural exchanges on art, the self, and attitudes toward the other. Aboriginal acrylic painting, produced by indigenous women artists of the Australian Desert, bears a superficial resemblance to abstract expressionism and is often read as such by viewers. Yet to see this art only through a Western lens is to miss its unique ontology, logics of sensation, and rich politics and religion. The book explores the culture that produces these paintings and connects their aesthetic to the brutal environmental and economic realities of the painters. From here, it travels to urban locales, observing museums and department stores as they traffic interchangeably in art and commodities. The book ties the history of these desert works to global acts of genocide and dispossession. Rethinking the value of the artistic image in the global market and different interpretations of the sacred, it considers photojournalism, ecotourism, and other sacred sites of the Western subject, investigating the intersection of modern art and postmodern culture. The book ultimately challenges the primacy of the “European gaze” and its fascination with sacred cultures, constructing a more balanced intercultural dialogue that deemphasizes the aesthetic of the real championed by Western philosophy.Less
As the international art market globalizes the indigenous image, it changes its identity, status, value, and purpose in local and larger contexts. Focusing on a school of Australian Aboriginal painting that has become popular in the contemporary art world, the book traces the influence of cultural exchanges on art, the self, and attitudes toward the other. Aboriginal acrylic painting, produced by indigenous women artists of the Australian Desert, bears a superficial resemblance to abstract expressionism and is often read as such by viewers. Yet to see this art only through a Western lens is to miss its unique ontology, logics of sensation, and rich politics and religion. The book explores the culture that produces these paintings and connects their aesthetic to the brutal environmental and economic realities of the painters. From here, it travels to urban locales, observing museums and department stores as they traffic interchangeably in art and commodities. The book ties the history of these desert works to global acts of genocide and dispossession. Rethinking the value of the artistic image in the global market and different interpretations of the sacred, it considers photojournalism, ecotourism, and other sacred sites of the Western subject, investigating the intersection of modern art and postmodern culture. The book ultimately challenges the primacy of the “European gaze” and its fascination with sacred cultures, constructing a more balanced intercultural dialogue that deemphasizes the aesthetic of the real championed by Western philosophy.
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199604128
- eISBN:
- 9780191729362
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604128.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The exotic, it is demonstrated in this book, provokes central questions about the modern self and the spaces it inhabits as reflected in major works of German literature and in the philosophy and art ...
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The exotic, it is demonstrated in this book, provokes central questions about the modern self and the spaces it inhabits as reflected in major works of German literature and in the philosophy and art that inspires it. Exotic spaces in the writings of such authors as Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig, Robert Musil, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gottfried Benn, and Bertold Brecht, along with the thought of Nietzsche, Freud, Levi-Strauss, and Simmel and the art of German Expressionism, are shown to present alternatives to and reconfigurations of the landscape and experience of modernity. In evocations that may be principally descriptive, symbolic, imaginative, or aesthetic or metaphysical, exotic spaces contest and reconfigure the relationship between the familiar and the foreign, the self and the other. Exotic spaces may serve not only to affirm the subject in a symbolic conquering of territory, as emphasized in post-colonial interpretations, or project the fantasy of escapism to a lost paradise, as utopian readings suggest, but condition moral, aesthetic, or imaginative transformation. Such transformation, while risking disaster or dissolution of the self as well as endangerment of the other, promotes new possibilities of perceiving or being, and reconfigures the boundaries of a familiar world. As exotic spaces are conceived as mystical, liberating, erotic, infectious, frightening or mysterious, several possibilities for transformation emerge in their exposure: re-enchantment, collapse of the rational self, liberation of the imagination, and aesthetic transformation, revealing the paradoxically ‘primitive’ nature of modern experience. In original new readings of canonical authors and rediscoveries of forgotten ones, this study establishes that exotic experience can evidence the fragility and possibilities of the European or Germanic self as depicted in modernist literature.Less
The exotic, it is demonstrated in this book, provokes central questions about the modern self and the spaces it inhabits as reflected in major works of German literature and in the philosophy and art that inspires it. Exotic spaces in the writings of such authors as Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Stefan Zweig, Robert Musil, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gottfried Benn, and Bertold Brecht, along with the thought of Nietzsche, Freud, Levi-Strauss, and Simmel and the art of German Expressionism, are shown to present alternatives to and reconfigurations of the landscape and experience of modernity. In evocations that may be principally descriptive, symbolic, imaginative, or aesthetic or metaphysical, exotic spaces contest and reconfigure the relationship between the familiar and the foreign, the self and the other. Exotic spaces may serve not only to affirm the subject in a symbolic conquering of territory, as emphasized in post-colonial interpretations, or project the fantasy of escapism to a lost paradise, as utopian readings suggest, but condition moral, aesthetic, or imaginative transformation. Such transformation, while risking disaster or dissolution of the self as well as endangerment of the other, promotes new possibilities of perceiving or being, and reconfigures the boundaries of a familiar world. As exotic spaces are conceived as mystical, liberating, erotic, infectious, frightening or mysterious, several possibilities for transformation emerge in their exposure: re-enchantment, collapse of the rational self, liberation of the imagination, and aesthetic transformation, revealing the paradoxically ‘primitive’ nature of modern experience. In original new readings of canonical authors and rediscoveries of forgotten ones, this study establishes that exotic experience can evidence the fragility and possibilities of the European or Germanic self as depicted in modernist literature.
M. Cody Poulton
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824833411
- eISBN:
- 9780824869151
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824833411.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
In the opening decades of the twentieth century in Japan, practically every major author wrote plays that were published and performed. This book examines the full range of early twentieth-century ...
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In the opening decades of the twentieth century in Japan, practically every major author wrote plays that were published and performed. This book examines the full range of early twentieth-century Japanese drama and includes translations of representative one-act plays. The book looks at the emergence of drama as a modern literary and artistic form and chronicles the creation of modern Japanese drama as a reaction to both traditional (particularly kabuki) dramaturgy and European drama. Translations and productions of the latter became the model for the so-called New Theatre (shingeki), where the question of how to be both modern and Japanese at the same time was hotly contested. Following introductory chapters on the development of Japanese drama from the 1880s to the early 1930s, are translations of nine seminal one-act plays by nine dramatists, including two women, Okada Yachiyo and Hasegawa Shigure. The subject matter of these plays is that of modern drama everywhere: discord between men and women, between parents and children, and the resulting disintegration of marriages and families. Realism prevails as the mode of modernity, but other styles are presented: the symbolism of brittle melodrama, minimalistic lyricism, politically incisive expressionism, and a proto-absurdist work by Japan's master of prewar drama, Kishida Kunio.Less
In the opening decades of the twentieth century in Japan, practically every major author wrote plays that were published and performed. This book examines the full range of early twentieth-century Japanese drama and includes translations of representative one-act plays. The book looks at the emergence of drama as a modern literary and artistic form and chronicles the creation of modern Japanese drama as a reaction to both traditional (particularly kabuki) dramaturgy and European drama. Translations and productions of the latter became the model for the so-called New Theatre (shingeki), where the question of how to be both modern and Japanese at the same time was hotly contested. Following introductory chapters on the development of Japanese drama from the 1880s to the early 1930s, are translations of nine seminal one-act plays by nine dramatists, including two women, Okada Yachiyo and Hasegawa Shigure. The subject matter of these plays is that of modern drama everywhere: discord between men and women, between parents and children, and the resulting disintegration of marriages and families. Realism prevails as the mode of modernity, but other styles are presented: the symbolism of brittle melodrama, minimalistic lyricism, politically incisive expressionism, and a proto-absurdist work by Japan's master of prewar drama, Kishida Kunio.
Arthur P. Shimamura
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199732142
- eISBN:
- 9780199918485
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199732142.003.0010
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
The nature of aesthetic experiences can be approached from many perspectives. Philosophers, psychologists, and recently neuroscientists have considered the variety of ways art influences our sensory, ...
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The nature of aesthetic experiences can be approached from many perspectives. Philosophers, psychologists, and recently neuroscientists have considered the variety of ways art influences our sensory, emotional and conceptual processes. Four philosophical approaches are considered: 1) mimetic approach or how successfully an artwork offers a window to the real world, 2) expressionist approach or how well an artwork expresses feelings and moods, 3) formalist approach or how well an artwork induces a sense of significant form, and 4) conceptual approach or how well an artwork conveys intellectual or thought-provoking statements. Psychologists and neuroscientists have conducted empirical analyses of aesthetic responses to art. These issues are introduced with a framework for considering our art experience, the I-SKE framework, which considers the artist’s intention and the way artworks influence the beholder’s sensations, knowledge, and emotions.Less
The nature of aesthetic experiences can be approached from many perspectives. Philosophers, psychologists, and recently neuroscientists have considered the variety of ways art influences our sensory, emotional and conceptual processes. Four philosophical approaches are considered: 1) mimetic approach or how successfully an artwork offers a window to the real world, 2) expressionist approach or how well an artwork expresses feelings and moods, 3) formalist approach or how well an artwork induces a sense of significant form, and 4) conceptual approach or how well an artwork conveys intellectual or thought-provoking statements. Psychologists and neuroscientists have conducted empirical analyses of aesthetic responses to art. These issues are introduced with a framework for considering our art experience, the I-SKE framework, which considers the artist’s intention and the way artworks influence the beholder’s sensations, knowledge, and emotions.
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199604128
- eISBN:
- 9780191729362
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604128.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
In modernism, the city is exoticized as a primitive realm, a symbolic convergence of the spaces of external urban experience and the inner psyche. Exoticization in Brecht’s drama Im Dickicht der ...
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In modernism, the city is exoticized as a primitive realm, a symbolic convergence of the spaces of external urban experience and the inner psyche. Exoticization in Brecht’s drama Im Dickicht der Städte occurs through depictions of fragmentation of perception, intense emotional and sexual struggle, and metaphoric comparison of the city to a jungle or a swamp. Fractured sensations, animalistic lust, fear, or aggression, and confusion between imagination and objective reality, threaten the ostensibly rational order of urban life, and may lead to the unveiling of a more essential substrate. Brecht’s drama sheds critical light on modernity and the urban form of modern life, in particular the fracturing of the individual and his social foundations in urban spaces, by associating the primitive with social antagonism and exploitation. As in Expressionist fiction and poetry and modernist aesthetics, the city and the human psyche symbolically converge.Less
In modernism, the city is exoticized as a primitive realm, a symbolic convergence of the spaces of external urban experience and the inner psyche. Exoticization in Brecht’s drama Im Dickicht der Städte occurs through depictions of fragmentation of perception, intense emotional and sexual struggle, and metaphoric comparison of the city to a jungle or a swamp. Fractured sensations, animalistic lust, fear, or aggression, and confusion between imagination and objective reality, threaten the ostensibly rational order of urban life, and may lead to the unveiling of a more essential substrate. Brecht’s drama sheds critical light on modernity and the urban form of modern life, in particular the fracturing of the individual and his social foundations in urban spaces, by associating the primitive with social antagonism and exploitation. As in Expressionist fiction and poetry and modernist aesthetics, the city and the human psyche symbolically converge.
Keith Lehrer
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195304985
- eISBN:
- 9780199918164
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195304985.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics, General
In this chapter, we contrast the relationship between our theory of how art as exemplarizing conscious experience to create novel form and content with some traditional theories in aesthetics, most ...
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In this chapter, we contrast the relationship between our theory of how art as exemplarizing conscious experience to create novel form and content with some traditional theories in aesthetics, most notably expressionism and formalism. Much traditional aesthetic theory, focused on the question of how artworks are to be distinguished from objects in the attempt to offer a definition or at least a characterization of what art is. This is a mistake. Art is that part of experience that changes the content of our world, of ourselves, and of art itself. Art is a dynamic of the reality of change. An artwork just in case it is created or chosen with the result that it elicits exemplar representation from aesthetic attention of the receiver with new form and content, including feeling and emotion, that reconfigures experience all aspects of life in a way that has intrinsic value.Less
In this chapter, we contrast the relationship between our theory of how art as exemplarizing conscious experience to create novel form and content with some traditional theories in aesthetics, most notably expressionism and formalism. Much traditional aesthetic theory, focused on the question of how artworks are to be distinguished from objects in the attempt to offer a definition or at least a characterization of what art is. This is a mistake. Art is that part of experience that changes the content of our world, of ourselves, and of art itself. Art is a dynamic of the reality of change. An artwork just in case it is created or chosen with the result that it elicits exemplar representation from aesthetic attention of the receiver with new form and content, including feeling and emotion, that reconfigures experience all aspects of life in a way that has intrinsic value.
Scott Spector
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520219090
- eISBN:
- 9780520929777
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520219090.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This book maps the “territories” carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which ...
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This book maps the “territories” carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which Franz Kafka and his contemporaries flourished, revealing previously unseen relationships between politics and culture. The readings of an array of German writers feature the work of Kafka and the so-called “Prague circle,” and encompass journalism, political theory, Zionism, and translation, as well as literary program and practice. With the collapse of German-liberal cultural and political power in the late-nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire, Prague's bourgeois Jews found themselves squeezed between a growing Czech national movement on the one hand and a racial rather than cultural conception of Germanness on the other. Displaced from the central social and cultural position they had come to occupy, the members of the “postliberal” Kafka generation were dazzlingly productive and original, far out of proportion to their numbers. Seeking a relationship between ideological crisis and cultural innovation, the author observes the emergence of new forms of territoriality. He identifies three fundamental areas of cultural inventiveness: Expressionism, a revolt against all limits and boundaries; a spiritual form of Zionism incorporating a novel approach to Jewish identity; and a sort of cultural no-man's-land in which translation and mediation took the place of “territory.” The investigation of these areas shows that the intensely particular, idiosyncratic experience of German-speaking Jews in Prague allows access to much broader and more general conditions of modernity.Less
This book maps the “territories” carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which Franz Kafka and his contemporaries flourished, revealing previously unseen relationships between politics and culture. The readings of an array of German writers feature the work of Kafka and the so-called “Prague circle,” and encompass journalism, political theory, Zionism, and translation, as well as literary program and practice. With the collapse of German-liberal cultural and political power in the late-nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire, Prague's bourgeois Jews found themselves squeezed between a growing Czech national movement on the one hand and a racial rather than cultural conception of Germanness on the other. Displaced from the central social and cultural position they had come to occupy, the members of the “postliberal” Kafka generation were dazzlingly productive and original, far out of proportion to their numbers. Seeking a relationship between ideological crisis and cultural innovation, the author observes the emergence of new forms of territoriality. He identifies three fundamental areas of cultural inventiveness: Expressionism, a revolt against all limits and boundaries; a spiritual form of Zionism incorporating a novel approach to Jewish identity; and a sort of cultural no-man's-land in which translation and mediation took the place of “territory.” The investigation of these areas shows that the intensely particular, idiosyncratic experience of German-speaking Jews in Prague allows access to much broader and more general conditions of modernity.
Christopher Gair
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748619887
- eISBN:
- 9780748671137
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748619887.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
The American Counterculture played a major role during a pivotal moment in American history. Post-War prosperity combined with the social and political repression characteristic of middle-class life ...
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The American Counterculture played a major role during a pivotal moment in American history. Post-War prosperity combined with the social and political repression characteristic of middle-class life to produce both widespread disobedience and artistic creativity in the Baby Boomer generation. This book explores the relationship between the counterculture and American popular culture. It looks at the ways in which Hollywood and corporate record labels commodified and adapted countercultural texts, and the extent to which countercultural artists and their texts were appropriated. It offers an interdisciplinary account of the counterculture and an appraisal of the key literary, musical, political and visual texts that were seen to challenge dominant ideologies.Less
The American Counterculture played a major role during a pivotal moment in American history. Post-War prosperity combined with the social and political repression characteristic of middle-class life to produce both widespread disobedience and artistic creativity in the Baby Boomer generation. This book explores the relationship between the counterculture and American popular culture. It looks at the ways in which Hollywood and corporate record labels commodified and adapted countercultural texts, and the extent to which countercultural artists and their texts were appropriated. It offers an interdisciplinary account of the counterculture and an appraisal of the key literary, musical, political and visual texts that were seen to challenge dominant ideologies.
Jonathan Brant
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199639342
- eISBN:
- 9780191738098
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199639342.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, Theology
This chapter provides a theoretical justification for the application of Tillich’s theology to the medium of film. This work is necessary because Tillich was very much a theologian of high culture ...
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This chapter provides a theoretical justification for the application of Tillich’s theology to the medium of film. This work is necessary because Tillich was very much a theologian of high culture and had very little interest in popular culture. The first section argues that one common approach to Tillich’s theology fails to distinguish between two senses of the word ‘religion’ in his writings and, therefore, wrongly assumes that his method of correlation is too positivist with respect to revelation, doctrine and religious institutions. A more nuanced reading is then offered. The second section of the chapter begins with a survey of religion-film scholars’ approaches to Tillich’s thought before offering an extended thought experiment drawing on the works of Bazin and Kracauer suggesting that the unique characteristics of film give it precisely the kind of breakthrough potential that Tillich associated with his most-favoured art-form, expressionist painting.Less
This chapter provides a theoretical justification for the application of Tillich’s theology to the medium of film. This work is necessary because Tillich was very much a theologian of high culture and had very little interest in popular culture. The first section argues that one common approach to Tillich’s theology fails to distinguish between two senses of the word ‘religion’ in his writings and, therefore, wrongly assumes that his method of correlation is too positivist with respect to revelation, doctrine and religious institutions. A more nuanced reading is then offered. The second section of the chapter begins with a survey of religion-film scholars’ approaches to Tillich’s thought before offering an extended thought experiment drawing on the works of Bazin and Kracauer suggesting that the unique characteristics of film give it precisely the kind of breakthrough potential that Tillich associated with his most-favoured art-form, expressionist painting.
Robert Hampson and Will Montgomery (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846312311
- eISBN:
- 9781846316067
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846316067
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Frank O'Hara's writing is central to any consideration of twentieth-century American poetry. This book asks why O'Hara remains so important to twenty-first-century readers and writers of poetry. The ...
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Frank O'Hara's writing is central to any consideration of twentieth-century American poetry. This book asks why O'Hara remains so important to twenty-first-century readers and writers of poetry. The book is transatlantic in tone, combining American scholarship with a wide sampling of British writers. For many, O'Hara's distinctive appeal depends on his witty depictions of urban experience, his relationship to the painters of Abstract Expressionism and the exhilarating immediacy of his poetic voice. Yet these chatty and approachable qualities coexist with a testing engagement with currents in European and American modernism. This book offers a comprehensive picture of the poet, presenting the conversational insouciance of the writing alongside its more intransigent features.Less
Frank O'Hara's writing is central to any consideration of twentieth-century American poetry. This book asks why O'Hara remains so important to twenty-first-century readers and writers of poetry. The book is transatlantic in tone, combining American scholarship with a wide sampling of British writers. For many, O'Hara's distinctive appeal depends on his witty depictions of urban experience, his relationship to the painters of Abstract Expressionism and the exhilarating immediacy of his poetic voice. Yet these chatty and approachable qualities coexist with a testing engagement with currents in European and American modernism. This book offers a comprehensive picture of the poet, presenting the conversational insouciance of the writing alongside its more intransigent features.
Alex Tissandier
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474417747
- eISBN:
- 9781474449748
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474417747.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter looks in detail at the three main engagements with Leibniz in the main text of Deleuze’s Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. The first concerns the role of real definitions and proofs ...
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This chapter looks in detail at the three main engagements with Leibniz in the main text of Deleuze’s Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. The first concerns the role of real definitions and proofs of possibility in arguments for the existence of God. The second concerns the theory of adequation in a logic of ideas. The third concerns mechanism, force and essence in a theory of bodies. The chapter argues that these engagements all share the same form. First, Deleuze locates a similarity between Leibniz and Spinoza in their criticism of a particular Cartesian doctrine. Second, he grounds this criticism in a shared concern for the lack of a sufficient reason operating in Descartes’s philosophy. Third, he nominates expression as the concept best suited to address this lack and fulfil the requirements of sufficient reason. Finally, he shows that the way expression functions in Spinoza’s philosophy is each time superior to Leibniz’s own use of the concept. Despite the priority given to Spinoza in this text, it nevertheless contains our first introduction to various key Leibnizian concepts which will become increasingly important in Deleuze’s later philosophy.Less
This chapter looks in detail at the three main engagements with Leibniz in the main text of Deleuze’s Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. The first concerns the role of real definitions and proofs of possibility in arguments for the existence of God. The second concerns the theory of adequation in a logic of ideas. The third concerns mechanism, force and essence in a theory of bodies. The chapter argues that these engagements all share the same form. First, Deleuze locates a similarity between Leibniz and Spinoza in their criticism of a particular Cartesian doctrine. Second, he grounds this criticism in a shared concern for the lack of a sufficient reason operating in Descartes’s philosophy. Third, he nominates expression as the concept best suited to address this lack and fulfil the requirements of sufficient reason. Finally, he shows that the way expression functions in Spinoza’s philosophy is each time superior to Leibniz’s own use of the concept. Despite the priority given to Spinoza in this text, it nevertheless contains our first introduction to various key Leibnizian concepts which will become increasingly important in Deleuze’s later philosophy.
Alex Tissandier
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474417747
- eISBN:
- 9781474449748
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474417747.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter looks at Leibniz’s central role in the concluding chapter of Deleuze’s Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. His elevated presence suggests a dramatic shift in Deleuze’s reading when ...
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This chapter looks at Leibniz’s central role in the concluding chapter of Deleuze’s Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. His elevated presence suggests a dramatic shift in Deleuze’s reading when compared with the rest of the text. It examines Deleuze’s lengthy discussion of Leibniz’s concept of expression and argues that within this discussion there is a shift from a ‘two-term’ concept of expression to a triadic concept which is closer to the one Deleuze finds in Spinoza. It then re-examines Deleuze’s central criticism of Leibniz, this time understood as a criticism of his ‘equivocal’ concept of expression compared to Spinoza’s ‘univocal’ concept. It shows that ultimately all of Deleuze’s criticisms of Leibniz can be reduced to an aversion to certain of Leibniz’s theological commitments and motivations. Finally, it looks in detail at the penultimate paragraph which, it argues, ends with a brief description of what will ultimately become Deleuze’s double process of actualisation and counter-actualisation. Crucially, Deleuze turns to Leibniz, rather than Spinoza, in order to explain these processes.Less
This chapter looks at Leibniz’s central role in the concluding chapter of Deleuze’s Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. His elevated presence suggests a dramatic shift in Deleuze’s reading when compared with the rest of the text. It examines Deleuze’s lengthy discussion of Leibniz’s concept of expression and argues that within this discussion there is a shift from a ‘two-term’ concept of expression to a triadic concept which is closer to the one Deleuze finds in Spinoza. It then re-examines Deleuze’s central criticism of Leibniz, this time understood as a criticism of his ‘equivocal’ concept of expression compared to Spinoza’s ‘univocal’ concept. It shows that ultimately all of Deleuze’s criticisms of Leibniz can be reduced to an aversion to certain of Leibniz’s theological commitments and motivations. Finally, it looks in detail at the penultimate paragraph which, it argues, ends with a brief description of what will ultimately become Deleuze’s double process of actualisation and counter-actualisation. Crucially, Deleuze turns to Leibniz, rather than Spinoza, in order to explain these processes.
Scott Spector
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520219090
- eISBN:
- 9780520929777
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520219090.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter talks about the retrospective attempts to situate Prague German expressionism within the larger cultural context that have been plagued by persistent literary-historical myths. The ...
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This chapter talks about the retrospective attempts to situate Prague German expressionism within the larger cultural context that have been plagued by persistent literary-historical myths. The Prague expressionists did not take up the liberal appeal for civility in the period that manifested national and ideological conflict. The desire to “break open” the discrete circles of a modern, fragmentary existence contained within an explosive revolutionary element. The expressionist battle in the Prague context represented two kinds of civil war, then: the first, the attack on the figure of petty liberal complacency symbolized by the father; and the second, a war within the self, the struggle to release the dormant spirit from within the comfortable but constrictive confines of the body. The antinaturalist performance of the expressionist actor represents the outward expression of inner truth that exactly parallels the act on the surface of “reality” via the spiritual revolution of humanity.Less
This chapter talks about the retrospective attempts to situate Prague German expressionism within the larger cultural context that have been plagued by persistent literary-historical myths. The Prague expressionists did not take up the liberal appeal for civility in the period that manifested national and ideological conflict. The desire to “break open” the discrete circles of a modern, fragmentary existence contained within an explosive revolutionary element. The expressionist battle in the Prague context represented two kinds of civil war, then: the first, the attack on the figure of petty liberal complacency symbolized by the father; and the second, a war within the self, the struggle to release the dormant spirit from within the comfortable but constrictive confines of the body. The antinaturalist performance of the expressionist actor represents the outward expression of inner truth that exactly parallels the act on the surface of “reality” via the spiritual revolution of humanity.
Graham Lock
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195340501
- eISBN:
- 9780199852215
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340501.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
Joe Overstreet was born in Conehatta, Mississippi, in 1933. He spent his teenage years in California, where he studied art at various institutions, worked as a merchant seaman, and became an early ...
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Joe Overstreet was born in Conehatta, Mississippi, in 1933. He spent his teenage years in California, where he studied art at various institutions, worked as a merchant seaman, and became an early beatnik. As a veteran abstract expressionist, he says the music has helped to keep him alive and its influence has, at times, drawn him back toward a more figurative art, notably with outstanding canvases such as Strange Fruit and his Storyville Series. The author interviewed Joe Overstreet on two occasions. The first was in October 2003 in his studio at Kenkeleba House, on New York's Lower East Side. The second interview was in April 2004.Less
Joe Overstreet was born in Conehatta, Mississippi, in 1933. He spent his teenage years in California, where he studied art at various institutions, worked as a merchant seaman, and became an early beatnik. As a veteran abstract expressionist, he says the music has helped to keep him alive and its influence has, at times, drawn him back toward a more figurative art, notably with outstanding canvases such as Strange Fruit and his Storyville Series. The author interviewed Joe Overstreet on two occasions. The first was in October 2003 in his studio at Kenkeleba House, on New York's Lower East Side. The second interview was in April 2004.
Sara Wood
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195340501
- eISBN:
- 9780199852215
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340501.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
Whereas Piper's art looked back to the classic women's blues of the 1920s, her contemporary Norman Lewis listened to the new sounds of bebop. This chapter shows that this music inspired a crucial ...
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Whereas Piper's art looked back to the classic women's blues of the 1920s, her contemporary Norman Lewis listened to the new sounds of bebop. This chapter shows that this music inspired a crucial phase in his development of an African American abstract expressionism which is still largely unrecognized by art historians. This description, from a review of a 1951 exhibition of the paintings of the African American abstract expressionist artist Norman Lewis, draws attention to the lyrical qualities of his work and invites the viewer to compare his approach as a visual artist to that of a musical performer. The impulse to think of Lewis in this context presents a valuable opportunity to open up readings of his paintings and explore his uses of music. It also offers a chance to reassess his contribution to American abstract expressionism and the issues that have defined his position within it.Less
Whereas Piper's art looked back to the classic women's blues of the 1920s, her contemporary Norman Lewis listened to the new sounds of bebop. This chapter shows that this music inspired a crucial phase in his development of an African American abstract expressionism which is still largely unrecognized by art historians. This description, from a review of a 1951 exhibition of the paintings of the African American abstract expressionist artist Norman Lewis, draws attention to the lyrical qualities of his work and invites the viewer to compare his approach as a visual artist to that of a musical performer. The impulse to think of Lewis in this context presents a valuable opportunity to open up readings of his paintings and explore his uses of music. It also offers a chance to reassess his contribution to American abstract expressionism and the issues that have defined his position within it.
