Georges Didi-Huberman is a philosopher of images whose work is overdue for attention from English-language readers. Since the publication of his first book in 1982, he has published 46 essays, mostly with the prestigious Editions de Minuit, on topics ranging from monographs on individual artists to critical excursions into political philosophy. He is recognised in France and elsewhere in Europe as one of the foremost philosophers of the image writing today. In Georges Didi-Huberman and Film, Alison Smith concentrates on how Didi-Huberman's work has been informed by cinema, especially in his major (and ongoing) recent work L'Oeil de l'Histoire (The Eye of History). The book traces the development of Didi-Huberman's visual thought towards a cinematic sensibility already inherent in his early work on images in relationship to each other. After exploring his increasingly political understanding of the vital role of cinematic montage, it traces his growing understanding of cinema as a medium for expressing a dynamic representation of peoples' memory and experience, and documents his engagement with contemporary filmmakers such as Laura Waddington and Vincent Dieutre.

The zany, the cute, and the interesting saturate postmodern culture. They dominate the look of its art and commodities as well as our discourse about the ambivalent feelings these objects often inspire. In this radiant study, Sianne Ngai offers a theory of the aesthetic categories that most people use to process the hypercommodified, mass-mediated, performance-driven world of late capitalism, treating them with the same seriousness philosophers have reserved for analysis of the beautiful and the sublime. Ngai explores how each of these aesthetic categories expresses conflicting feelings that connect to the ways in which postmodern subjects work, exchange, and consume. As a style of performing that takes the form of affective labor, the zany is bound up with production and engages our playfulness and our sense of desperation. The interesting is tied to the circulation of discourse and inspires interest but also boredom. The cute's involvement with consumption brings out feelings of tenderness and aggression simultaneously. At the deepest level, Ngai argues, these equivocal categories are about our complex relationship to performing, information, and commodities. Through readings of Adorno, Schlegel, and Nietzsche alongside cultural artifacts ranging from Bob Perelman's poetry to Ed Ruscha's photography books to the situation comedy of Lucille Ball, Ngai shows how these everyday aesthetic categories also provide traction to classic problems in aesthetic theory. The zany, cute, and interesting are not postmodernity's only meaningful aesthetic categories, Ngai argues, but the ones best suited for grasping the radical transformation of aesthetic experience and discourse under its conditions.

In the footsteps of Ingardeniana II, this volume marks the 20th anniver- sary of Roman Ingarden's death, partly focusing upon his thought, partly bringing his aesthetics into the present-day framework of research. It might have appeared puzzling to the followers of our Analecta Husserliana why within the original horizon encircled by the research work of our International Society of Phenomenology and Literatur- whose research work is devised in a diametrically opposed direction to that of Roman Ingarden - there is steadfastly running through our discussions a line of Ingardenian reflection. The reason, as I have pointed out in the introduction to Ingardeniana II, expertly edited by Hans Rudnik, is clear: Ingarden's analysis of the intentional structures of works of art offers in its distinct and clear-cut forms an 'objective' correlate - as well as a point of reference - to the vast conundrum of issues concerning the creative endeavor of the writer, poet, artist in their struggle to endow life with its specifically human significance; a conundrum that in our research we are trying to disentangl- elucidating its mysterious ramifications, their sources and dynamic virtualities. As a matter of fact, Ingarden's thought, newly interpreted and originally expanded, occupies a legitimate place in the present collec- tion. We find here, in the first place, an original expansion of Ingarden's aesthetic theory in the monograph of ladwiga Smith followed by the essays of Wadaw Osadnik, Yushiro Takei and Charles Rzepka.

Can poetry articulate something about love that philosophy cannot? The Form of Love argues that it can. In close readings of seven "metaphysical" poems, the book shows how poets of the early modern period and beyond use poetic form to turn philosophy to other ends, in order not to represent the truth about love but to create a virtual experience of love, in all its guises. The Form of Love shows how verse creates love that can't exist without poetry's specific affordances, and how poems can, in their impossibility, prompt love's radical re-imagining. Like the philosophies on which they draw, metaphysical poems imagine love as an intense form of non-sovereignty, of giving up control. They even imagine love as a liberating bondage-to a friend, a beloved, a saint, a God, or a garden. Yet these poems create strange, striking versions of such love, made in, rather than through, the devices, structures, and forces where love appears. Tracing how poems think, Kuzner argues, requires an intimate form of reading: close-even too close-attention to and thinking with the text. Showing how poetry thinks of love otherwise than other fields, the book reveals how poetry and philosophy can nevertheless enter into a relation that is itself like love.

This book interrogates the concept of the subject in the poem, against the broader background of literary-theoretical issues related to the lyric subject. Specifically, what kind of subject is the subject in the poem? What relation does it have to other forms of subjectivation that human beings experience in their life practices? What is its singularity? "The Lyric Subject is a most impressive achievement: a shrewd evaluation of a wide range of writings (philosophical, linguistic, literary) bearing on the question of the lyric subject. With myriad poetic examples, Varja Balz alorsky Antic develops a rich, multileveled mapping of the various forms of subjectivity and agency in the lyric." Jonathan Culler, Professor Emeritus at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

The point is to get away from questions of origin, to forget about where a theory or a form of knowledge or politics come from originally, and to define instead scenes where we can see things play out, with the idea that the origin itself is a kind of scene : this is how Jacques Ranciere defines his intellectual project. In this long conversation with Laurent Jeanpierre and Dork Zabunyan, Ranciere demonstrates the richness and fruitfulness of this approach, never yielding to the temptation of linearity or causality, bringing out scenes, instances, that together form an intellectual project. The development of Ranciere s philosophical work, from his formative years through the political and methodological break with Louis Althusser and the lessons of May 68, is documented here, as are the confrontations with other thinkers, the controversies and occasional misunderstandings. So too is the unity of his work and the distinctive style of his thinking, despite the frequent disconnect between politics and aesthetics and the subterranean movement between categories and works. Lastly one sees his view of our age, and of our age s many different and competing realities. What we gain in the end is a rich and multi-layered portrait of a life and a body of thought dedicated to the exercise of philosophy and to the emergence of possible new worlds.

This book is about the human mental capacities that are mostly veiled in the use of language yet can be revealed through music activities. In speech, just one word is articulated at the time, whereas in music different pitches sound simultaneously. This conflict demonstrates that rationality must be regarded as relative, as rationality in music may create chaos in speech. Moreover, investigating the role of sound in synesthesia reveals that its aesthetic combinations are related to the human capacity to enjoy different types of harmonies in music. Drawing on new research regarding synesthesia as a more fundamental basis for human cognition, this book brings this a step further by introducing synesthesia as a general metacognitive process, hinting at the aesthetical origin of fundamental logical operations. Bringing together a number of cultural perspectives on music, language, and mathematics, this volume expertly illustrates that music reveals a fundamental system that deeply combines the sensorial and the intellectual human capacities.

This collection aims to map a diversity of approaches to the artform by creating a 360° view on the circus. Three sections of the book, Aesthetics, Practice, Culture, approach aesthetic developments, issues of artistic practice, and the circus’ role within society. This book consists of a collection of articles from renowned circus researchers, junior researchers, and artists. It also provides the core statements and discussions of the conference UpSideDown—Circus and Space in a graphic recording format. Hence, it allows a clear entry into the field of circus research and emphasizes the diversity of approaches that are well balanced between theoretical and artistic point of views. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of circus studies, emerging disciples of circus and performance.

This book focuses on piano teachers and the many pains they encounter in their careers. These pains play an essential role in blocking the musical inspiration of their students. The author identifies with the sensitivities of the teachers, aiming at the inspiration permeated and safer playing of their students.The book penetrates the protective mechanisms of the teachers that, on the one hand, maintain their professional functioning, while on the other hand, block refreshing ideas. It combines exploration of secure and culturally informed inspired playing, coping with exaggerated anxiety and understanding the interaction of piano actions with pianist's physiology. This book helps to open teachers' perceptions of the ways to enable more secure and more inspired performances while remembering the inner feelings of the piano teachers.

Care Ethics and Poetry is the first book to address the relationship between poetry and feminist care ethics. The authors argue that morality, and more specifically, moral progress, is a product of inquiry, imagination, and confronting new experiences. Engaging poetry, therefore, can contribute to the habits necessary for a robust moral life-specifically, caring. Each chapter offers poems that can provoke considerations of moral relations without explicitly moralizing. The book contributes to valorizing poetry and aesthetic experience as much as it does to reassessing how we think about care ethics.

We live in scandalous times. Every day some new controversy demands our attention, our emotional investment, and, ultimately, our judgment. Many of these routine transgressions will be understood in 'revelatory' terms, as peeling back the multiple layers of artifice and spin to reveal an underlying, and oftentimes disturbing, 'truth'. Otherswill be recognized as calculated marketing exercises that simply present the strategic face of contemporary capitalism. Yet these 'ordinary' scandals can themselves be seen to be largely derivative of another, altogether more fundamental-and fundamentally rare-form of disruption. Such is the real scandal that accompanies instances of authentic creation. Building on the philosophy of Alain Badiou, Scandalous Times not only argues the case for such 'real scandal', but also shows how it is today being abrogated and substituted through the increasing production of novel forms of state-sanctioned controversy. From Duchamp to Donald Trump, Scandalous Times explores the ways in which areas from art and advertising to politics and social media have come to actively contribute to this 'static' fabrication of controversy, all the while arguing for the need to rethink creativity as a radical exception to the state, and not its proxy.

Unfreezing Music Education argues that discussing the conflicting meanings of music should occupy a more central role in formal music education and music teacher preparation programs than is currently the case. Drawing on the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, the author seeks to take a dialectical approach to musical meaning, rooted in critical formalism, that avoids the pitfalls of both traditional aesthetic arguments and radical subjectivity. This book makes the case for helping students understand that the meaning of musical forms is socially constructed through a process of reification, and argues that encouraging greater awareness of the processes through which music's fluid meanings become hidden will help students to think more critically about music. Connecting this philosophical argument with concrete, practical challenges faced by students and educators, this study will be of interest to researchers across music education and philosophy, as well as post-secondary music educators and all others interested in aesthetic philosophy, critical theory, cultural studies, or the sociology of music and music education.

This book analyzes the nature and functions of horror films from the vantage of a theoretical reconstruction of George Santayana's account of beauty. This neo-Santayanan framework forms the conceptual backdrop for a new model of horror's aesthetic enjoyment, the nature of which is detailed through the examination of plot, cinematic, and visual devices distinctive of the popular genre. According to this model, the audience derives pleasure from the films through confronting the aversive scenarios they communicate and rationalizing a denial of their personal applicability. The films then come to embody these acts of self-assertion and intellectual overcoming and become objects of pride. How horror films can acquire necropolitical functions within the context of abusive systems of power is also clarified. These functions, which exploit the power of anti-tragedy, downward social comparison, or vicarious emotion, work to remediate aggressive, ascetic, or revolutionary impulses in ways that are not injurious to the status quo. This book champions horror as a source of self-empowerment and unmitigated beauty, but also attests to the potential social harms of the genre.

The monograph presents psychological interpretations of the specific reactions of individuals within the perception of attractive human faces. It concentrates on exploring selected attributes of human face that increase its attractiveness. After introducing essential information on the specifics of facial perception and its brain correlates, the monograph presents findings on the effect of symmetry, averageness, proportions, sexually dimorphic features, personality characteristics, or the importance of specific parts of the face to its attractiveness. Based on the results of both foreign and own research, the authors formulate interpretations of why and how the identification and preference of examined characteristics have been developed and maintained by the evolution.

This book examines Leo Tolstoy's struggle to understand the relationship of God and man, in connection with his attempt to answer questions regarding the meaning of life. Tolstoy addressed such issues in a systematic way and with great concerns for the future of humanity. Predrag Cicovacki approaches Tolstoy both as a thinker and as an artist, and examines various sides of his intellectual and artistic engagement: his social criticism, his ambiguous relationship to nature, his understanding of art, and his attempted reconstruction of the true religion. By combining philosophical, religious, and literary analysis, Cicovacki undertakes an interdisciplinary study, showing much can be learned from Tolstoy's insights, as well as from his mistakes.

This stimulating volume brings together an international team of emerging, mid-career, and senior scholars to investigate the relations between philosophical approaches to language and the language of literature. It has proven easy for philosophers of language to leave literary language to one side, just as it has proven easy for literary scholars to discuss questions of meaning separately from relevant issues in the philosophy of language. This volume brings the two together in mutually enlightening ways: considerations of literary meaning are deepened by adding philosophical approaches, just as philosophical issues are enriched by bringing them into contact or interweaving them with literary cases in all their subtlety.

The relationship between philosophy and theatre is a central theme in the writings of Plato and Aristotle and of dramatists from Aristophanes to Stoppard. Where Plato argued that playwrights and actors should be banished from the ideal city for their suspect imitations of reality, Aristotle argued that theatre, particularly tragedy, was vital for stimulating our emotions and helping us to understanding ourselves. Despite this rich history the study of philosophy and theatre has been largely overlooked in contemporary philosophy. This is the first book to introduce philosophy and theatre. It covers key topics and debates, presenting the contributions of major figures in the history of philosophy, including: what is theatre? How does theatre compare with other arts? theatre as imitation, including Plato on mimesis truth and illusion in the theatre, including Nietzsche on tragedy theatre as history theatre and morality, including Rousseau's criticisms of theatre audience and emotion, including Aristotle on catharsis theatre and politics, including Brecht's Epic Theatre. Including annotated further reading and summaries at the end of each chapter, Philosophy and Theatre is an ideal starting point for those studying philosophy, theatre studies and related subjects in the arts and humanities.

This book considers the experience of enchantment in art. Considering the essential characteristics, dynamics and conditions of the experience of enchantment in relation to art, including liminality, it offers studies of different kinds of artistic experience and activity, including painting, music, fiction and poetry, before exploring the possibility of a life oriented to enchantment as the activity of art itself. With attention to the complex relationship between wonder in art and the programmatic disenchantment to which it is often subject, the author draws on the thought of a diverse range of philosophers, sociological theorists and artists, to offer an understanding of art through the idea of enchantment, and enchantment through art. An accessible study, richly illustrated with experience - both that of the author and others - Art and Enchantment will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and anyone with interests in the nature of aesthetic experience.

This book analyses the epistemological problems that Shakespeare explores in Othello. In particular, it uses the methods of analytic philosophy, especially the work of the later Wittgenstein, to characterize these problems and the play.

Truth is in trouble. In response, this book presents a new conception of truth. It recognizes that prominent philosophers have questioned whether the idea of truth is important. Some have asked why we even need it. Their questions reinforce broader trends in Western society, where many wonder whether or why we should pursue truth. Indeed, some pundits say we have become a "post-truth" society. Yet there are good reasons not to embrace the cultural Zeitgeist or go with the philosophical flow, reasons to regard truth as a substantive and socially significant idea. This book explains why. First it argues that propositional truth is only one kind of truth-an important kind, but not all important. Then it shows how propositional truth belongs to the more comprehensive process of truth as a whole. This process is a dynamic correlation between human fidelity to societal principles and a life-giving disclosure of society. The correlation comes to expression in distinct social domains of truth, where either propositional or nonpropositional truth is primary. The final chapters lay out five such domains: science, politics, art, religion, and philosophy. Anyone who cares about the future of truth in society will want to read this pathbreaking book.

This book discusses the ethical dimension of the interpretation of texts and events. Its purpose is not to address the neutrality or ideological biases of interpreters, but rather to discuss the underlying issue of the intervention of interpreters into the process of interpretation. The author calls this intervention the "ethical" aspect of interpretation and argues that interpreters are neither neutral nor necessarily activists. He examines three models of interpretation, all of which recognize the role that interpreters play in the process of interpretation. In these models, the question of the truth or validity of interpretation is dependent upon the attitude of interpreters. These three models are: (1) the principle of charity in interpretation in the two different versions defended by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Donald Davidson; (2) the production of truth, as developed by Paul Ricoeur and Michel Foucault; and (3) the regulative principle in interpretation as formal validity claims-as presented by Karl-Otto Apel and Jurgen Habermas-and as benevolence or love as an epistemic virtue-as defended by Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher. The critical discussion of these three models, which brings to the fore the different manners in which interpreters intervene in the process of interpretation as persons, lays the foundations for an ethics of interpretation. The Ethics of Interpretation will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in hermeneutics, 19th- and 20th-century philosophy, literary theory, and cultural theory.