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

Theodor W. Adorno was a major twentieth-century philosopher and social critic whose writings on oppositional culture in art, music, and literature increasingly stand at the center of contemporary intellectual debate. In this excellent collection, Robert Hullot-Kentor, widely regarded as the most distinguished American translator and commentator on Adorno, gathers together sixteen essays he has written about the philosopher over the past twenty years. The opening essay, "e;Origin Is the Goal,"e; pursues Adorno's thesis of the dialectic of enlightenment to better understand the urgent social and political situation of the United States. "e;Back to Adorno"e; examines Adorno's idea that sacrifice is the primordial form of human domination; "e;Second Salvage"e; reconstructs Adorno's unfinished study of the transformation of music in radio transmission; and "e;What Is Mechanical Reproduction"e; revisits Adorno's criticism of Walter Benjamin. Further essays cover a broad range of topics: Adorno's affinities with Wallace Stevens and Nabokov, his complex relationship with Kierkegaard and psychoanalysis, and his critical study of popular music.Many of these essays have been revised, with new material added that emphasizes the relevance of Adorno's thought to the United States today. Things Beyond Resemblance is a timely and richly analytical collection crucial to the study of critical theory, aesthetics, continental philosophy, and Adorno.

As the international art market globalizes the indigenous image, it changes its identity, status, value, and purpose in local and larger contexts. Focusing on a school of Australian Aboriginal painting that has become popular in the contemporary art world, Robyn Ferrell traces the influence of cultural exchanges on art, the self, and attitudes toward the other.Aboriginal acrylic painting, produced by indigenous women artists of the Australian Desert, bears a superficial resemblance to abstract expressionism and is often read as such by viewers. Yet to see this art only through a Western lens is to miss its unique ontology, logics of sensation, and rich politics and religion. Ferrell explores the culture that produces these paintings and connects its aesthetic to the brutal environmental and economic realities of its people. From here, she travels to urban locales, observing museums and department stores as they traffic interchangeably in art and commodities. Ferrell ties the history of these desert works to global acts of genocide and dispossession. Rethinking the value of the artistic image in the global market and different interpretations of the sacred, she considers photojournalism, ecotourism, and other sacred sites of the western subject, investigating the intersection of modern art and postmodern culture. She ultimately challenges the primacy of the "e;European gaze"e; and its fascination with sacred cultures, constructing a more balanced intercultural dialogue that deemphasizes the aesthetic of the real championed by western philosophy.

What would happen if pleasure were made the organizing principle for social relations and sexual pleasure ruled over all?

Mozart's "Don Giovanni" is an operatic masterpiece full of iconic and mythical tensions. This book examines the aesthetic and moral legacy of Mozart's opera in the literature, philosophy, and culture of the nineteenth century. It addresses the opera's impact on the philosophical visions of Kierkegaard, Goethe, and Williams.

Mozart's Don Giovanni is an operatic masterpiece full of iconic and mythical tensions. This book examines the aesthetic and moral legacy of Mozart's opera in the literature, philosophy, and culture of the nineteenth century. It also addresses the opera's impact on the philosophical visions of Kierkegaard, Goethe, and Williams.