Dialectical Passions

Negation in Postwar Art Theory

AvGail Day

Inbunden, Engelska, 2010

Del i serien Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts

612 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar. Fri frakt över 249 kr.

Beskrivning

Representing a new generation of theorists reaffirming the radical dimensions of art, Gail Day launches a bold critique of late twentieth-century art theory and its often reductive analysis of cultural objects. Exploring core debates in discourses on art, from the New Left to theories of "critical postmodernism" and beyond, Day counters the belief that recent tendencies in art fail to be adequately critical. She also challenges the political inertia that results from these conclusions. Day organizes her defense around critics who have engaged substantively with emancipatory thought and social process: T. J. Clark, Manfredo Tafuri, Fredric Jameson, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, and Hal Foster, among others. She maps the tension between radical dialectics and left nihilism and assesses the interpretation and internalization of negation in art theory. Chapters confront the claim that exchange and equivalence have subsumed the use value of cultural objects--and with it critical distance-- and interrogate the proposition of completed nihilism and the metropolis put forward in the politics of Italian operaismo.Day covers the debates on symbol and allegory waged within the context of 1980s art and their relation to the writings of Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man. She also examines common conceptions of mediation, totality, negation, and the politics of anticipation. A necessary unsettling of received wisdoms, Dialectical Passions recasts emancipatory reflection in aesthetics, art, and architecture.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2010-12-22
Mått:152 x 229 x 25 mm
Vikt:572 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts
Antal sidor:320
Förlag:Columbia University Press
ISBN:9780231149389
Utmärkelser:Winner of Deutscher Memorial Prize 2011

Utforska kategorier

Filosofiska discipliner inom Filosofi och religion

Mer om författaren

Gail Day is senior lecturer in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds.

Recensioner i media

Gail Day's Dialectical Passions is a uniquely important book. Day argues persuasively that the powerful negations that characterize the finest Marxist thinking about art architecture to come from the postwar New Left is characterized by real--and passionate--dialectical instability. It is largely this, in her view, that prevents it from being fully subsumed by the hegemonic forms of late capitalist culture. The negations practiced by these writers, most notably T. J. Clark and Manfredo Tafuri, have been uncompromisingly realistic and resolutely non-romantic. At the same time, she argues, they share with Marx a belief, however endangered it now is, in the necessity of a genuinely radical political alternative. Day's book makes evident the value of such thinking in resisting the fixed polarities and relentless pessimism of much present-day cultural theory and its increasingly empty critiques of capitalist commodification. -- Alexander Potts, Max Loehr Collegiate Professor, Department of History of Art, University of Michigan A wonderfully enjoyable examination of some of the key figures, debates, and points of intrigue in art theory influenced by the New Left. -- Matthew Flisfeder PUBLIC

Innehållsförteckning

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. T. J. Clark and the Pain of the Unattainable Beyond 2. Looking the Negative in the Face: Manfredo Tafuri and the Venice School of Architecture 3. Absolute Dialectical Unrest, Or, the Dizziness of a Perpetually Self-Engendered Disorder 4. The Immobilization of Social Abstraction Afterword: Abstract and Transitive Possibilities Notes Index