Unis vers Cythère

The Author: Josef Chytry is Senior Adjunct Professor in Critical Studies at California College of the Arts in Oakland/San Francisco, and is Managing Editor of the journal Industrial and Corporate Change at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Cytherica: Aesthetic-Political Essays in an Aphrodisian Key (Peter Lang, 2005) and The Aesthetic State: A Quest in Modern German Thought (1989), and a co-editor of Understanding Industrial and Corporate Change (2005) and Technology, Organization, and Competitiveness (1998). He was Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Tübingen and received a D.Phil. in politics and the history of ideas from the University of Oxford.

«Josef Chytry’s ‘Unis vers Cythère’ is a highly creative and imaginative contribution to the emerging fields of political aesthetics and socio-aesthetics. In the first part of the volume, the author provides a rich and lively exploration of the way in which theatre, art, and the image of the polis interact with political thinking to create a kind of erotic of politics. In doing so, Chytry significantly expands our understanding of the idea of justice and gives us a fascinating account of the way that the threads of civic art and dramaturgy are subtlety woven into our notions of truth, fairness, and love. The volume ranges happily through antiquity, early modernity, the travails of the twentieth century, and the collapse of Communism. From there, Chytry turns his attention to the contemporary development of aesthetic economies. He offers an engaging and astute account of large-scale artistic enterprises, from Wagner’s Bayreuth to the Italian film studio Cinecittà, and explores the growing role of the poetic and the artistic in management and organization theory. ‘Unis vers Cythère’ is a serious meditation on the role of theatre, performance, and the arts in modern management, and art as a managerial practice – and a shrewd rumination on aesthetics as the inspirer of our grandest as well as our most intimate conceptions of politics. This is a first-class work.» (Peter Murphy, Associate Professor of Communications, Monash University, Australia)«The field to which Josef Chytry has been a pioneer with his great study ‘The Aesthetic State’ (1989) has undergone a dramatic expansion in international academia over the past decade. Today it is a fact that in the areas of socio-economics and management, aesthetics is regarded as one of the most important perspectives for the study of social innovation and economic enterprises. Many of us who have relatively recently joined the field of aesthetic social science are most indebted to the earlier work of Dr. Chytry. He is one of the few researchers in the field who is globally regarded as thoroughly competent in both philosophy and cultural studies. With this work he will with certainty contribute to an increased understanding of interactions where artistic creativity affects social innovation.» (Pierre Guillet de Monthoux, Professor of General Management, Stockholm University, Sweden; Professor of Philosophy of Management, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark)