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This is the definitive analysis of art as a social and perceptual
system by Germany's leading social theorist of the late twentieth
century. It not only represents an important intellectual step in
discussions of art--in its rigor and in its having refreshingly set
itself the task of creating a set of distinctions for determining
what counts as art that could be valid for those creating as well
as those receiving art works--but it also represents an important
advance in systems theory.
Returning to the eighteenth-century notion of aesthetics as
pertaining to the "knowledge of the senses," Luhmann begins with
the idea that all art, including literature, is rooted in
perception. He insists on the radical incommensurability between
psychic systems (perception) and social systems (communication).
Art is a special kind of communication that uses perceptions
instead of language. It operates at the boundary between the social
system and consciousness in ways that profoundly irritate
communication while remaining strictly internal to the social.
In seven densely argued chapters, Luhmann develops this basic
premise in great historical and empirical detail. Framed by the
general problem of art's status as a social system, each chapter
elaborates, in both its synchronic and diachronic dimensions, a
particular aspect of this problem. The consideration of art within
the context of a theory of second-order observation leads to a
reconceptualization of aesthetic form. The remaining chapters
explore the question of the system's code, its function, and its
evolution, concluding with an analysis of "self-description."
"Art as a Social System" draws on a vast body of scholarship,
combining the results of three decades of research in the social
sciences, phenomenology, evolutionary biology, cybernetics, and
information theory with an intimate knowledge of art history,
literature, aesthetics, and contemporary literary theory. The book
also engages virtually every major theorist of art and aesthetics
from Baumgarten to Derrida.
This is the definitive analysis of art as a social and perceptual
system by Germany's leading social theorist of the late twentieth
century. It not only represents an important intellectual step in
discussions of art--in its rigor and in its having refreshingly set
itself the task of creating a set of distinctions for determining
what counts as art that could be valid for those creating as well
as those receiving art works--but it also represents an important
advance in systems theory.
Returning to the eighteenth-century notion of aesthetics as
pertaining to the "knowledge of the senses," Luhmann begins with
the idea that all art, including literature, is rooted in
perception. He insists on the radical incommensurability between
psychic systems (perception) and social systems (communication).
Art is a special kind of communication that uses perceptions
instead of language. It operates at the boundary between the social
system and consciousness in ways that profoundly irritate
communication while remaining strictly internal to the social.
In seven densely argued chapters, Luhmann develops this basic
premise in great historical and empirical detail. Framed by the
general problem of art's status as a social system, each chapter
elaborates, in both its synchronic and diachronic dimensions, a
particular aspect of this problem. The consideration of art within
the context of a theory of second-order observation leads to a
reconceptualization of aesthetic form. The remaining chapters
explore the question of the system's code, its function, and its
evolution, concluding with an analysis of "self-description."
"Art as a Social System" draws on a vast body of scholarship,
combining the results of three decades of research in the social
sciences, phenomenology, evolutionary biology, cybernetics, and
information theory with an intimate knowledge of art history,
literature, aesthetics, and contemporary literary theory. The book
also engages virtually every major theorist of art and aesthetics
from Baumgarten to Derrida.
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