Michael Gubser – författare

Expands our understanding of Alois Riegl beyond his role as an art historian to a pivotal figure in cultural theory at large, while placing his interest in history and time within the intellectual world of fin-de-siècle Vienna.

Alois Riegl’s art history has influenced thinkers as diverse as Erwin Panofsky, Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Paul Feyerabend, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari. One of the founders of the modern discipline of art history, Riegl is best known for his theories of representation. Yet his inquiries into the role of temporality in artistic production—including his argument that art conveys a culture’s consciousness of time—show him to be a more wide-ranging and influential commentator on historiographical issues than has been previously acknowledged. In Time’s Visible Surface, Michael Gubser presents Riegl’s work as a sustained examination of the categories of temporality and history in art. Supported by a rich exploration of Riegl’s writings, Gubser argues that Riegl viewed artworks as registering historical time visibly in artistic forms.

Gubser’s discussion of Riegl’s academic milieu also challenges the widespread belief that Austrian modernism adopted a self-consciously ahistorical worldview. By analyzing the works of Riegl’s professors and colleagues at the University of Vienna, Gubser shows that Riegl’s interest in temporality, from his early articles on calendar art through later volumes on the Roman art industry and Dutch portraiture, fit into a broad discourse on time, history, and empiricism that engaged Viennese thinkers such as the philosopher Franz Brentano, the historian Theodor von Sickel, and the art historian Franz Wickhoff. By expanding our understanding of Riegl and his intellectual context, Time’s Visible Surface demonstrates that Riegl is a pivotal figure in cultural theory and that fin-de-siècle Vienna holds continued relevance for today’s cultural and philosophical debates.

Development analysts tend to give short shrift to the seemingly minor bureaucratic hitches faced by practitioners—those who design, manage, implement, and evaluate aid projects. Often critical of foreign aid either for its apparent ineffectiveness at alleviating poverty or its purported neocolonial implications, the academic literature rarely acknowledges the experiences and pressures faced by practitioners themselves as they implement aid-funded development projects—the meetings, paperwork, negotiations, site visits, financial transactions, logistical arrangements, interviews, program activities, and beneficiary interactions—that keep projects running. And yet the impact of aid projects, and indeed the impact of development itself, often grows out of the daily activities and personal interactions of development practitioners. This unique book considers challenges from the perspective of development practitioners who confront technical, managerial, political, theoretical, and moral quandaries on a daily basis.

With chapters written by expert practitioners on different aspects of design and management of international development activities, this book examines real issues and navigates the often contradictory demands of local development needs, including international donor imperatives; limited financial resources, time, information, and assurance of results; the competing pulls of administrative efficiency; and the desire to alleviate suffering. It also gives readers access to the crucial but little-heard voices of those who spend their professional lives designing and managing foreign aid projects, offering insight into what did or did not work on projects they have managed, implemented, or evaluated. These insights do not seek to identify universally right or wrong ways of doing development; instead, they highlight pros and cons associated with various approaches and decisions. This book provides valuable insights for students and others interested in a development career, encourages practitioners to engage in reflection, and persuades researchers to further consider the influence of practice on project success or failure.