The Mahabharata is at once an archive and a living text, a sourcebook complete by itself and an open text perennially under construction. Driving home this striking contemporary relevance of the famous Indian epic, Mahabharata Now focuses on the issues of narration, aesthetics and ethics, as also their interlinkages. The cross-disciplinary essays in the volume imaginatively re-interpret the 'timeless' classic in the light of the pre-modern Indian narrative styles, poetics, aesthetic codes, and moral puzzles; the Western theories on modern ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy of science; and the contemporary social, ethical and political concerns. The essays are all united in their effort to situate the Mahabharata in the context of here and now without violating the sanctity of the 'written text' as we have it today. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of Indian and comparative philosophy, Indian and comparative literature, cultural studies, and history.

The cultural discourse of theatrical performance defines the theatre sign interaction as an active semiosis. This, in turn, specifies the main objective of the study - the formulation of the basic parameters of this architectonics as a fundament of theatralite. Since the time of Antiquity the theatre has always been discussing general aesthetic, philosophical, ethical and social issues in the context of a visual image of the specific objects of an intellectual discourse. The book takes a close look at this process of signification, formation of meanings, presentation and interpretation on stage: a theatre performance is a product of an intense sign environment and a major symbol of theatricality.

The first edition of Stephen Mulhall's acclaimed On Film was a study of the four Alien films, and made the highly original and controversial argument that films themselves can philosophise. In its second edition, On Film increased its breadth and vision considerably to encompass films such as the Mission: Impossible series and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. In this significantly expanded third edition Stephen Mulhall adds new chapters on the Jason Bourne films, the fourth Mission: Impossible movie, JJ Abrams' Star Trek and Star Trek: Into Darkness, and Ridley Scott's Prometheus (in which he returns to the Alien universe he created). In so doing, Mulhall reappraises in fascinating ways the central issues taken up in earlier editions of On Film: the genres of science fiction and thriller, the impact of digital as opposed to photographic modes of technology on the nature of cinema as a medium (and its relation to television), and the fate of sequeldom in mainstream contemporary cinema (with its emphasis on remakes, reboots and multi-media superhero franchises). On Film, third edition is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, film theory and cultural studies, and in the way philosophy can enrich our understanding of cinema.

Drawing on the philosophies of art developed by the continental authors and studies of Anglo-American philosophers, this book presents a panorama of the philosophy of art. It discusses definitions offered from the analytical school including Arthur Danto's representationalism, Dipert's theories of artefactualism, Dickie's institutional and procedural theories and Levinson's historical and cultural theories. From the continental theories it reflects on Hegel's notion of philosophy of art, Martin Heidegger's and Hans Georg Gadamer's hermeneutic tradition and Alexius Meinong's theory of objects. This range of definitions and theories are judged and defended using a form of representationalism that begins with the results of Arthur Danto's thinking and integrates the aesthetic reflection of the Baumgarten School. The result is not only a presentation of philosophy of art from the beginning of the twentieth century to present day, but a study that proposes a theory capable of synthesizing the finest contributions of the analytic and continental traditions.

Hanna Segal's work, especially on symbolism, aesthetics, dreams, and the exploration of psychotic thinking, has established her as an outstanding figure in psychoanalysis, particularly in psychoanalysis of the Kleinian tradition. In Dream, Phantasy and Art she reworks her ideas on these topics and brings them vividly alive in a new integration which links them afresh to the work of Freud, Klein, and Bion. Throughout the book, the clinical illustrations the author has selected brilliantly spotlight the theory, touching the imagination, and fixing even the most difficult ideas permanently in the reader's mind. In a mutually enhancing relationship, theory and clinical example are combined, and then applied, to create the author's new and original theories of art and aesthetics. As Betty Joseph notes in her foreword, Segal's writing, and in particular this book, does much to enrich psychoanalysis not only because of the clarity and intelligence but also because of the depth and breadth of her interests and her clinical imagination.

This volume adopts a varied approach to the study of the "material world" in the French literature, thought and visual arts of the 19th century. Beginning with more purely philosphical definitions of materialism, seen as a topic within the history of ideas, it moves to a broader, more general treatment of materialism - and examines the political, social and cultural repercussions of the emergence of this consumer society.;In particular, the book tackles the question of how things, objects and the material surface of the world - for so long disdained and excluded by a deeply entrenched Neo-classical cultural tradition - came to be fully incorporated into the literature and visual arts of the period. Contributors look not only at the Romantic and Realist transcendence of the Neo-classical heritage of abstraction and idealism, but also adopt modern critical perspectives to analyze central themes such as urbanization, fetishism and the representation of the female body. By the author of "Popular Culture in Modern France: A Study of Cultural Discourse" and co-editor (with N. Hewitt) of "France and the Mass Media".

From Digital to Analog delves into the origins of digitization and its effects on contemporary culture. The book challenges the "common sense" assertion that digitization is just another step in the evolution of the culture of the editorial, film and recorded music industries and their enforcement of copyright laws. Digital technologies in contemporary culture have paradoxically undermined and, at the same time, strengthened such practices, provoking an unprecedented quarrel over the possession of, and access to, cultural products. Agustin Berti uses the release of Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) in 1992 to study this paradox. The importance of Agrippa for digital culture studies is proven through the discussion of the frequently understated importance of the materiality of digital culture. The book develops a critique of digital technology and its alleged neutrality and transparency. Ultimately, it illustrates how Agrippa anticipated a number of contemporary phenomena such as piracy, leaks, remixes, memes, and more, forcing us to rethink the concept of digital content itself and thus the way in which culture is produced, received and preserved today. From Digital to Analog is ideal reading for a graduate student readership, especially Master candidates in the fields of Literature, Arts, Digital Humanities, Digital Culture and New Media Studies.

From Digital to Analog delves into the origins of digitization and its effects on contemporary culture. The book challenges the "common sense" assertion that digitization is just another step in the evolution of the culture of the editorial, film and recorded music industries and their enforcement of copyright laws. Digital technologies in contemporary culture have paradoxically undermined and, at the same time, strengthened such practices, provoking an unprecedented quarrel over the possession of, and access to, cultural products. Agustin Berti uses the release of Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) in 1992 to study this paradox. The importance of Agrippa for digital culture studies is proven through the discussion of the frequently understated importance of the materiality of digital culture. The book develops a critique of digital technology and its alleged neutrality and transparency. Ultimately, it illustrates how Agrippa anticipated a number of contemporary phenomena such as piracy, leaks, remixes, memes, and more, forcing us to rethink the concept of digital content itself and thus the way in which culture is produced, received and preserved today. From Digital to Analog is ideal reading for a graduate student readership, especially Master candidates in the fields of Literature, Arts, Digital Humanities, Digital Culture and New Media Studies.

In On the Genealogy of Color, Zed Adams argues for a historicized approach to conceptual analysis, by exploring the relevance of the history of color science for contemporary philosophical debates about color realism. Adams contends that two prominent positions in these debates, Cartesian anti-realism and Oxford realism, are both predicated on the assumption that the concept of color is ahistorical and unrevisable. Adams takes issue with this premise by offering a philosophical genealogy of the concept of color. This book makes a significant contribution to recent debates on philosophical methodology by demonstrating the efficacy of using the genealogical method to explore philosophical concepts, and will appeal to philosophers of perception, philosophers of mind, and metaphysicians.

Leading international scholars present analysis and case studies from different cultural settings, East and West, exploring aesthetic interest and experience in our daily lives at home, in workplaces, using everyday things, in our built and natural environments, and in our relationships and communities. A wide range of views and examples of everyday aesthetics are presented from western philosophical paradigms, from Confucian and Daoist aesthetics, and from the Japanese tradition. All indicate universal features of human aesthetic lives together with their cultural variations. Comparative Everyday Aesthetics is a significant contribution to a key trend in international aesthetics for thinking beyond narrow art-centered conceptions of the aesthetic. It generates global discussions about good, aesthetic, everyday living in all its various aspects. It also promotes aesthetic education for personal, social, and environmental development and presents opportunities for global collaborative projects in philosophical aesthetics.

Aristotle's Poetics is the first philosophical account of an art form and the foundational text in aesthetics. The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Aristotle and the Poetics is an accessible guide to this often dense and cryptic work. Angela Curran introduces and assesses: Aristotle's life and the background to the Poetics the ideas and text of the Poetics the continuing importance of Aristotle's work to philosophy today.

This volume explores how the visual arts are presenting and responding to Christian theology and demonstrates how modern and contemporary artists and artworks have actively engaged in conversation with Christianity. Modern intellectual enquiry has often been reluctant to engage theology as an enriching or useful form of visual analysis, but critics are increasingly revisiting religious narratives and Christian thought in pursuit of understanding our present-day visual culture. In this book an international group of contributors demonstrate how theology is often implicit within artworks and how, regardless of a viewer's personal faith, it can become implicit in a viewer's visual encounter. Their observations include deliberate juxtaposition of Christian symbols, imaginative play with theologies, the validation of non-confessional or secular public engagement, and inversions of biblical interpretation. Case studies such as an interactive Easter, glow-sticks as sacrament, and visualisation of the Bible's polyphonic voices enrich this discussion. Together, they call for a greater interpretative generosity and more nuance around theology's cultural contexts in the modern era. By engaging with theology, culture, and the visual art, this collection offers a fresh lens through which to see the interaction of religion and art. As such, it will be of great use to those working in Religion and the Arts, Visual Art, Material Religion, Theology, Aesthetics, and Cultural Studies.

Kenosis Creativity Architecture locates and explores creativity's grounding in the ancient concept of kenosis, the "emptying" that allows creativity to happen; that makes appearance possible. It concretises that grounding through architecture-a primal expression of human creativity-critically examining, for the first time, kenotic instantiations evidenced in four iconic, international projects; works by Kahn, Pei, Ando, and Libeskind. Then, in a final turn, the potentiality of architecture's own emptying is probed. Architect and author Randall Lindstrom draws on Western and Eastern philosophy, including that of Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, Vattimo, Nishida, and Nishitani, as well as on the theology of Christianity, Judaism, and aspects of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. Every chapter expands the argument that, if responsiveness to our world is taken seriously-if proper and sustainable responses are to be realised-then a deeper understanding of creativity, and so kenosis, is essential. This book opens-up a way of thinking about creativity and humanity's readiness to be creative. It thereby presents a crucial enquiry-at the nexus of architecture, philosophy, and theology-for researchers, graduate and postgraduate students, and practitioners alike.

Architecture's role is becoming increasingly limited to serving the all-pervasive system of globalised capitalism and becoming a constituent, complicit part of its mechanism. The Resistant Object of Architecture addresses this problem, and does so in a way that represents a marked departure from predominant responses which, as the book shows, do not address the core issue. The book addresses this problem by focusing on the question "what is architecture?," and responds to this question by developing the immanent structural logic of architecture that enables it to work not only as an instrumental thinking practice, but as a practice of creative thinking. This means that it alone determines its issues, problems, and priorities, and precisely because of that it has the capacity and cogency to destabilise, indeed pierce holes in the system in which it operates. The Resistant Object of Architecture draws on various theoretical sources, from the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan and the philosophy of Alain Badiou, to contemporary architectural theory. In contrast to the predominant view of today, it demonstrates that architecture has an affirmative, transformative capacity. This book is an ideal read for those interested in architectural theory and history, analysis of contemporary architecture, and philosophy of architecture.

Mapping Paradigms in Modern and Contemporary Art defines a new cartographic aesthetic, or what Simonetta Moro calls carto-aesthetics, as a key to interpreting specific phenomena in modern and contemporary art, through the concept of poetic cartography. The problem of mapping, although indebted to the "spatial turn" of poststructuralist philosophy, is reconstructed as hermeneutics, while exposing the nexus between topology, space-time, and memory. The book posits that the emergence of "mapping" as a ubiquitous theme in contemporary art can be attributed to the power of the cartographic model to constitute multiple worldviews that can be seen as paradigmatic of the post-modern and contemporary condition. This book will be of particular interest to scholars in art history, art theory, aesthetics, and cartography.

This book examines how contemporary artists have engaged with histories of nature, geology, and extinction within the context of the changing planet. Susan Ballard describes how artists challenge the categories of animal, mineral, and vegetable-turning to a multispecies order of relations that opens up a new vision of what it means to live within the Anthropocene. Considering the work of a broad range of artists including Francisco de Goya, J. M. W. Turner, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Yhonnie Scarce, Joyce Campbell, Lisa Reihana, Katie Paterson, Taryn Simon, Susan Norrie, Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho, Ken + Julia Yonetani, David Haines and Joyce Hinterding, Angela Tiatia, and Hito Steyerl and with a particular focus on artists from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, this book reveals the emergence of a planetary aesthetics that challenges fixed concepts of nature in the Anthropocene. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, narrative nonfiction, digital and media art, and the environmental humanities.

This volume advances a comprehensive transdisciplinary approach to the affective lives of institutions - theoretical, conceptual, empirical, and critical. With this approach, the volume foregrounds the role of affect in sustaining as well as transforming institutional arrangements that are deeply problematic. As part of its analysis, this book develops a novel understanding of institutional affect. It explores how institutions produce, frame, and condition affective dynamics and emotional repertoires, in ways that engender conformance or resistance to institutional requirements. This collection of works will be important for scholars and students of interdisciplinary affect and emotion studies from a wide range of disciplines, including social sciences, cultural studies, social and cultural anthropology, organizational and institution studies, media studies, social philosophy, aesthetics, and critical theory.

This book explores environments where art, imagination, and creative practice meet urban spaces at the point where they connect to the digital world. It investigates relationships between urban visualizations, aesthetics, and politics in the context of new technologies, and social and urban challenges toward the Sustainable Development Goals. Responding to questions stemming from critical theory, the book focuses on an interdisciplinary actualization of technological developments and social challenges. It demonstrates how art, architecture, and design can transform culture, society, and nature through artistic and cultural achievements, integration, and new developments. The book begins with the theoretical framework of social aesthetics theories before discussing global contemporary visual culture and technological evolution. Across the 12 chapters, it looks at how architecture and design play significant roles in causing and solving complex environmental transformations in the digital turn. By fostering transdisciplinary encounters between architecture, design, visual arts, and cinematography, this book presents different theoretical approaches to how the arts' interplay with the environment responds to the logic of the constructions of reality. This book will appeal to scholars, researchers, and upper-level students in aesthetics, philosophy, visual cultural studies, communication studies, and media studies with a particular interest in sociopolitical and environmental discussions.

Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998) was one of the most important French philosophers of the Twentieth Century. His impact has been felt across many disciplines: sociology; cultural studies; art theory and politics. This volume presents a diverse selection of interviews, conversations and debates which relate to the five decades of his working life, both as a political militant, experimental philosopher and teacher. Including hard-to-find interviews and previously untranslated material, this is the first time that interviews with Lyotard have been presented as a collection. Key concepts from Lyotard's thought - the differend, the postmodern, the immaterial - are debated and discussed across different time periods, prompted by specific contexts and provocations. In addition there are debates with other thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, which may be less familiar to an Anglophone audience. These debates and interviews help to contextualise Lyotard, highlighting the importance of Marx, Freud, Kant and Wittgenstein, in addition to the Jewish thought which accompanies the questions of silence, justice and presence that pervades Lyotard's thinking.

In various ways, the essays presented in this volume explore the structures and aesthetic possibilities of music, dance and dramatic representation in ritual and theatrical situations in a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Each essay enters into a discussion of the "logic" of aesthetic processes exploring their social and political and symbolic import. The aim is above all to explore the way artistic and aesthetic practices in performance produce and structure experience.

Media Criticism in a Digital Age introduces readers to a variety of critical approaches to audio and video discourse on radio, television and the Internet. It is intended for those preparing for electronic media careers as well as for anyone seeking to enhance their media literacy. This book takes the unequivocal view that the material heard and seen over digital media is worthy of serious consideration. Media Criticism in a Digital Age applies key aesthetic, sociological, philosophical, psychological, structural and economic principles to arrive at a comprehensive evaluation of programming and advertising content. It offers a rich blend of insights from both industry and academic authorities. These insights range from the observations of Plato and Aristotle to the research that motivates twenty-first century marketing and advertising. Key features of the book are comprised of: multiple video examples including commercials, cartoons and custom graphics to illustrate core critical concepts; chapters reflecting today's media world, including coverage of broadband and social media issues; fifty perceptive critiques penned by a variety of widely respected media observers and; a supplementary website for professors that provides suggested exercises to accompany each chapter (www.routledge .com/cw/orlik) Media Criticism in a Digital Age equips emerging media professionals as well as perceptive consumers with the evaluative tools to maximize their media understanding and enjoyment.

In Philosophy of Song and Singing: An Introduction, Jeanette Bicknell explores key aesthetic, ethical, and other philosophical questions that have not yet been thoroughly researched by philosophers, musicologists, or scientists. Issues addressed include: The relationship between the meaning of a song's words and its music The performer's role and the ensuing gender complications, social ontology, and personal identity The performer's ethical obligations to audiences, composers, lyricists, and those for whom the material holds particular significance The metaphysical status of isolated solo performances compared to the continuous singing of opera or the interrupted singing of stage and screen musicals Each chapter focuses on one major musical example and includes several shorter discussions of other selections. All have been chosen for their illustrative power and their accessibility for any interested reader and are readily available.

In this book, McMahon argues that a reading of Kant's body of work in the light of a pragmatist theory of meaning and language (which arguably is a Kantian legacy) leads one to put community reception ahead of individual reception in the order of aesthetic relations. A core premise of the book is that neo-pragmatism draws attention to an otherwise overlooked aspect of Kant's "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment," and this is the conception of community which it sets forth. While offering an interpretation of Kant's aesthetic theory, the book focuses on the implications of Kant's third critique for contemporary art. McMahon draws upon Kant and his legacy in pragmatist theories of meaning and language to argue that aesthetic judgment is a version of moral judgment: a way to cultivate attitudes conducive to community, which plays a pivotal role in the evolution of language, meaning, and knowledge.

This book boldly crosses traditional academic boundaries, offering an original, philosophically informed argument about the nature of language, reading and interpreting the poetry of Wallace Stevens and the novels of Vladimir Nabokov. Redeeming Words and the Promise of Happiness is a work both in literary criticism and in philosophy. The approach is strongly influenced by Walter Benjamin's philosophy of language and Theodor Adorno's aesthetic theory, but the other philosophers-notably Plato, Kant, Hegel, Emerson, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein-figure significantly in the reading and interpretation. Kleinberg-Levin argues that despite its damaged, corrupted condition, language is in its very existence the bearer of a utopian or messianic promise of happiness. Moreover, he argues, by reconciling sensuous sense and intelligible sense; showing the sheer power of words to create fictional worlds and deconstruct what they have just created; and redeeming the revelatory power of words-the power to turn the familiar into something astonishing, strange or perplexing-the two writers in this study sustain our hope for a world of reconciled antagonisms and contradictions, evoking in the way they freely play with the sounds and meanings of words, some intimations of a new world-but our world here, this very world, not some heavenly world-in which the promise of happiness might be redeemed. Reflecting on the poetry of Stevens, Kleinberg-Levin argues that the poet defies the correspondence theory of truth so that words may be faithful to truth as transformative and revelatory. He also argues that in the pleasure we get from the sensuous play of words, there is an anticipation of the promise of happiness that challenges the theological doctrine of an otherworldly happiness. And in reading Nabokov, Kleinberg-Levin shows how that writer inherits Mallarme's conception of literature, causing with his word plays the sudden reduction of the fictional world he has just created to its necessary conditions of materiality. The novel is revealed as a work of fiction; we see its conditions of possibility, created and destroyed before our very eyes. But the pleasure in seeing words doing this, and the pleasure in their sensuous materiality, are intimations of the promise of happiness that language bears. Using a Kantian definition of modernism, according to which a work is modernist if it reveals and questions inherited assumptions about its necessary conditions of possibility, these studies show how and why both Stevens and Nabokov are exemplars of literary modernism.

Paul Virilio is an innovative figure in the study of architecture, space, and the city. Virilio for Architects primes readers for their first encounter with his crucial texts on some of the vital theoretical debates of the twenty-first century, including: Oblique Architecture and Bunker Archeology Critical Space and the Overexposed City The Ultracity and Very High Buildings Grey Ecology and Global Hypermovement In exploring Virilio's most important architectural ideas and their impact, John Armitage traces his engagement with other key architectural and scientific thinkers such as Claude Parent, Benoit B. Mandelbrot, and Bernard Tschumi. Virilio for Architects allows students, researchers, and non-academic readers to connect with Virilio's distinctive architectural theories, critical studies, and fresh ideas.