Joan Ramon Resina - Böcker

Autobiography is a long-established literary modality of self-exposure with commanding works such as Augustine’s Confessions, Rousseau’s book of the same title, and Salvador Dalí’s paradoxical reformulation of that title in his Unspeakable Confessions. Like all genres with a distinguished career, autobiography has elicited a fair amount of critical and theoretical reflection. Classic works by Käte Hamburger and Philippe Lejeune in the 1960s and 70s articulated distinctions and similarities between fiction and the genre of personal declaration. Especially since Foucault’s seminal essay on "Self Writing," self-production through writing has become more versatile, gaining a broader range of expression, diversifying its social function, and colonizing new media of representation. For this reason, it seems appropriate to speak of life-writing as a concept that includes but is not limited to classic autobiography. Awareness of language’s performativity permits us to read life-writing texts not as a record but as the space where the self is realized, or in some instances de-realized. Such texts can build identity, but they can also contest ascribed identity by producing alternative or disjointed scenarios of identification. And they not only relate to the present, but may also act upon the past by virtue of their retrospective effects in the confluence of narrator and witness.

Autobiography is a long-established literary modality of self-exposure with commanding works such as Augustine’s Confessions, Rousseau’s book of the same title, and Salvador Dalí’s paradoxical reformulation of that title in his Unspeakable Confessions. Like all genres with a distinguished career, autobiography has elicited a fair amount of critical and theoretical reflection. Classic works by Käte Hamburger and Philippe Lejeune in the 1960s and 70s articulated distinctions and similarities between fiction and the genre of personal declaration. Especially since Foucault’s seminal essay on "Self Writing," self-production through writing has become more versatile, gaining a broader range of expression, diversifying its social function, and colonizing new media of representation. For this reason, it seems appropriate to speak of life-writing as a concept that includes but is not limited to classic autobiography. Awareness of language’s performativity permits us to read life-writing texts not as a record but as the space where the self is realized, or in some instances de-realized. Such texts can build identity, but they can also contest ascribed identity by producing alternative or disjointed scenarios of identification. And they not only relate to the present, but may also act upon the past by virtue of their retrospective effects in the confluence of narrator and witness.

Encourages a deep reading of a selection of essential Spanish films.From the origins of the New Spanish Cinema in the 1950s to the end of the last century, Burning Darkness features essays on a selection of essential films by Spain's most important directors, including Pedro Almodóvar, Luis Buñuel, Víctor Erice, Ventura Pons, and others. Contributors focus on current theoretical debates and issues of representation, politics, cultural identity, and aesthetics. Rather than historically surveying Spanish films, the book encourages a deep reading of these essential works and the ways they cast light on specific aspects of Spanish society and its recent history. Accessibly written, it will appeal not only to students and scholars but also to anyone interested in Spanish cinema.

Encourages a deep reading of a selection of essential Spanish films.From the origins of the New Spanish Cinema in the 1950s to the end of the last century, Burning Darkness features essays on a selection of essential films by Spain's most important directors, including Pedro Almodóvar, Luis Buñuel, Víctor Erice, Ventura Pons, and others. Contributors focus on current theoretical debates and issues of representation, politics, cultural identity, and aesthetics. Rather than historically surveying Spanish films, the book encourages a deep reading of these essential works and the ways they cast light on specific aspects of Spanish society and its recent history. Accessibly written, it will appeal not only to students and scholars but also to anyone interested in Spanish cinema.

Criticism on the textual and iconographic construction of the city is extensive, yet the problem of historical change in representations of "the urban" has received little attention. Believing traditional accounts are limited by their reflection of a specific historical moment, Joan Ramon Resina and Dieter Ingenschay focus, by contrast, on transition. In essays written for this volume, scholars of literary and visual studies, the history of architecture, cultural theory, and urban geography explore the ways perceptual or conceptual paradigms of the city supersede or replace others, while at the same time retaining the "after-image" of what went before.The writers touch on a wide variety of issues related to contemporary urban cultures as they journey through cities including New York, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Tijuana, Berlin, and London. Drawing on the work of Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Camilo José Cela, Honoré de Balzac, and Alfred Stieglitz, their approach is broadly cultural rather than technical. After-Images of the City takes into account the intrinsic instability of the image and reveals that representations of the modern metropolis cannot be fixed in time and history.

Criticism on the textual and iconographic construction of the city is extensive, yet the problem of historical change in representations of "the urban" has received little attention. Believing traditional accounts are limited by their reflection of a specific historical moment, Joan Ramon Resina and Dieter Ingenschay focus, by contrast, on transition. In essays written for this volume, scholars of literary and visual studies, the history of architecture, cultural theory, and urban geography explore the ways perceptual or conceptual paradigms of the city supersede or replace others, while at the same time retaining the "after-image" of what went before.The writers touch on a wide variety of issues related to contemporary urban cultures as they journey through cities including New York, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Tijuana, Berlin, and London. Drawing on the work of Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Camilo José Cela, Honoré de Balzac, and Alfred Stieglitz, their approach is broadly cultural rather than technical. After-Images of the City takes into account the intrinsic instability of the image and reveals that representations of the modern metropolis cannot be fixed in time and history.

Since the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Barcelona has striven to sustain an image of modernity that distinguishes itself within Spain. Barcelona's Vocation of Modernity traces the development of that image through texts that foreground key social and historical issues. It begins with Barcelona's "coming of age" in the 1888 Universal Exposition and focuses on the first major narrative work of modern Catalan literature, La febre d'or. Positing an inextricable link between literature and modernity, Resina establishes a literary framework for the evolution of the image of Barcelona's modernity through the 1980s, when the consciousness of modernity took on an ironic circularity. Because the city is an aggregation of knowledge, Resina draws from sociology, urban studies, sociolinguistics, history, psychoanalysis, and literary history to produce a complex account of Barcelona's self-reflection through culture. The last chapter offers a glimpse into the "post-historical" city, where temporality has been sacrificed to the spatialization associated with the seductions of the spectacle.

This multi-disciplinary study explores the explosion of cultural, social, linguistic, and architectural development in urban and rural settlements on and surrounding the Iberian peninsula during the 20th century.

This book’s premise is not only the commonly accepted cultural relativity of economic concepts, but also the observation that the current shift in the meaning of concepts like “market,” “currency,” “exchange,” and “money” suggests that culture is undergoing a change with unpredictable economic and political consequences. The essays in the book raise basic questions concerning exchange – what is exchanged, who exchanges and how, which kind of currency is used, and indeed what is money and how does it convey and retain value over time. These issues are all classical objects of economic theory, but less often have they been approached from a cultural perspective. Works treating economic and monetary issues from a cultural perspective are few and far apart, and this book aims to contribute to such a perspective with a variety of approaches.

This book’s premise is not only the commonly accepted cultural relativity of economic concepts, but also the observation that the current shift in the meaning of concepts like “market,” “currency,” “exchange,” and “money” suggests that culture is undergoing a change with unpredictable economic and political consequences. The essays in the book raise basic questions concerning exchange – what is exchanged, who exchanges and how, which kind of currency is used, and indeed what is money and how does it convey and retain value over time. These issues are all classical objects of economic theory, but less often have they been approached from a cultural perspective. Works treating economic and monetary issues from a cultural perspective are few and far apart, and this book aims to contribute to such a perspective with a variety of approaches.

Luchino Visconti (1906-1976) was one of Europe’s most prestigious filmmakers, who rose to prominence as part of the Italian neo-realist movement, alongside contemporaries Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini. Famous for his elegant lifestyle, as friend of Jean Renoir and Coco Chanel amongst others, his vibrant technicolour dramas are also known for their decadence and stunning display of aesthetic mastery and sensory pleasure.Looking beyond this colourful façade, however, Resina explores the philosophical implications of decadence with a particular focus on three films from the late phase in Visconti’s production, Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), and Ludwig (1972). From the incestuous relationship between decadence and power to decadence as an outcome of straining toward formal perfection, Resina uncovers the unity and philosophical cohesiveness of these films that deal with different subjects and historical periods.Reading these films and their decadence in light of the time of filming and Visconti’s own sense of cultural doom, Resina further demonstrates the relevance of Visconti’s philosophy today and how much they still have to say to our contemporary situation.

Luchino Visconti (1906-1976) was one of Europe’s most prestigious filmmakers, who rose to prominence as part of the Italian neo-realist movement, alongside contemporaries Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini. Famous for his elegant lifestyle, as friend of Jean Renoir and Coco Chanel amongst others, his vibrant technicolour dramas are also known for their decadence and stunning display of aesthetic mastery and sensory pleasure.Looking beyond this colourful façade, however, Resina explores the philosophical implications of decadence with a particular focus on three films from the late phase in Visconti’s production, Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971), and Ludwig (1972). From the incestuous relationship between decadence and power to decadence as an outcome of straining toward formal perfection, Resina uncovers the unity and philosophical cohesiveness of these films that deal with different subjects and historical periods.Reading these films and their decadence in light of the time of filming and Visconti’s own sense of cultural doom, Resina further demonstrates the relevance of Visconti’s philosophy today and how much they still have to say to our contemporary situation.

Repetition is constitutive of human life. Both the species and the individual develop through repetition. Unlike simple recall, repetition is permeated by the past and the present and is oriented toward the future. Repetition of central actions and events plays an important role in the lives of individuals and the life of society. It helps to create meaning and memory. Because repetition is a central aspect of human life, it plays a role in all social and cultural spheres. It is important for several branches of the humanities and social studies. This book presents studies of an array of repetitive phenomena and to show that repetition analysis is opening up a new field of study within single disciplines and interdisciplinary research. Recommended for scholars of literature, music, culture, and communication.

The Ghost in the Constitution offers a reflection on the political use of the concept of historical memory foregrounding the case ofSpain. The book analyses the philosophical implications of the transference of the notion of memory from the individual consciousness to the collective subject and considers the conflation of epistemology with ethics. A subtheme is the origins and transmission of political violence, and its endurance in the form of symbolic violence and “negationism” in the post-Franco era. Some chapters treat of specific “traumatic” phenomena such as the bombing of Guernica and the Holocaust.

The Ghost in the Constitution offers a reflection on the political use of the concept of historical memory foregrounding the case ofSpain. The book analyses the philosophical implications of the transference of the notion of memory from the individual consciousness to the collective subject and considers the conflation of epistemology with ethics. A subtheme is the origins and transmission of political violence, and its endurance in the form of symbolic violence and “negationism” in the post-Franco era. Some chapters treat of specific “traumatic” phenomena such as the bombing of Guernica and the Holocaust.

The essays in this book explore the history of ruins in multiple cultures and periods. Authors study ways in which ruins can be appropriated, foregrounded and re-semanticized for political purposes. The links between the materiality of monuments and global processes of ruination are seldom explored, as are the historicity of rubble and its museumification. Ruins are predicated on the interplay between presence and absence; they remind us of caducity while conjuring up the spectrum of the completeness that would negate them. They can awaken the eeriness of the disintegrating modern city and serve as a metaphor for institutional decay. But they can also underpin proposals of restoration through salvage and reuse of the rubble.