Sylvere Lotringer - Böcker

What does it mean to"do theory" in America? In what ways has "French Theory" changed American intellectual and artistic life? How different is it from what French intellectuals themselves conceived, and what does all this tell us about American intellectual life? Is "French Theory" still a significant force in America, raising conceptual questions not easily answered? In this volume of new work--including the French writers Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and Gilled Delezue, as well as essays by Sylvere Lotringer and Sande Cohen, Mario Biagoli, Elie During, Chris Kraus, Alison Gingeras, and Kriss Ravetto, among others--French theorists assess the impact and reception of their work in America, and American-based critics account for their effects in different areas of cultural criticism and art over the last thirty years.

What does it mean to"do theory" in America? In what ways has "French Theory" changed American intellectual and artistic life? How different is it from what French intellectuals themselves conceived, and what does all this tell us about American intellectual life? Is "French Theory" still a significant force in America, raising conceptual questions not easily answered? In this volume of new work--including the French writers Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, and Gilled Delezue, as well as essays by Sylvere Lotringer and Sande Cohen, Mario Biagoli, Elie During, Chris Kraus, Alison Gingeras, and Kriss Ravetto, among others--French theorists assess the impact and reception of their work in America, and American-based critics account for their effects in different areas of cultural criticism and art over the last thirty years.

American artist Nancy Spero (b.1929) concentrates on the depiction of women: mythological women, movie women, tortured women. Inspired by classical and modern sources, she collages and imprints her contemporary goddesses on to long, papyrus-like friezes that scroll around museum walls.Her subject matter, which has ranged from the writings of Artaud to the Vietnam War, mirrors her life. Working in Paris in the cultural ferment of the 1960s, she moved to New York in the 1970s to co-establish the feminist gallery A.I.R. and to join with artists and critics such as Leon Golub, Robert Morris and Lucy R Lippard in forming the Art Workers' Coalition. Since the 1980s she has attracted international acclaim, her exquisite works giving form to feminist issues and new critical discourses.The Survey by Jon Bird, cultural theorist and curator of the first British retrospective of Spero's work, discusses developments in her practice since the 1950s. Contemporary art scholar and critic Jo Anna Isaak talks with the artist about her life and work. Art historian Sylvere Lotringer, Edtior of Semiotext(e) and author of Overexposed, focuses on her 1993 installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In recognition of the impact Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove made on her, Spero has chosen a scene from the screenplay; key excerpts from Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity by feminist theorist Alice Jardine on the place of women in a patriarchal culture complete the Artist's Choice section. Also included are a selection of Spero's own writings, many published here for the first time.

Those who are mad like Antonin Artaud, are they just as mad as he was? Madness, like the plague, is contagious, and everyone, from his psychiatrists to his disciples, family, and critics, everyone who gets close to Artaud, seems to participate in his delirium. SylvÈre Lotringer explores various embodiments of this shared delirium through what Artaud called “mental dramas”-a series of confrontations with his witnesses or “persecutors” where we uncover the raw delirium at work, even in Lotringer himself. Mad Like Artaud does not intend to add one more layer of commentary to the bitter controversies that have been surrounding the cursed poet’s work since his death in 1948, nor does it take sides among the different camps who are still haggling over his corpse. This book speaks of the site where “madness” itself is simmering.