In this reply to my reviewers, I touch upon Husserl’s notion of fantasy. Whereas Kant positions fantasy outside the scope of his own work, Husserl brings it back. The importance of this notion lies in freeing imagination from the tight link to images, as for Husserl imagination is an activity that functions as a “quasi perception.” Ihde and Stiegler enrich Husserl’s analysis of imagination with various aspects of technology: Ihde shows how changes in the technologies that mediate our (...) imagination will necessarily change our imagination; Stiegler broadens Husserl’s analysis of retention. The two theories can be combined into a new understanding of subjectivity that is modeled as layers. Some layers can be performed by AI. The second part deals with the question of whether AI can be imaginative. Traditionally, imaginative creativity is associated with art. Bioart and AI art are brought as examples of a new definition of art, according to which art is the arrangement of materials in a way that produces a meaning. This definition does not refer specifically to creativity. In both forms of art, the biological/artificial and the human cooperate so that the former arranges the materials and the latter produces the meaning, albeit this division of labor is not clear-cut. The result is a co-shaping process. My conclusion is that algorithms can be considered creative by human standards, but this entails a new mode of imagination that is co-shaped and co-shared by humans and algorithms. The layer paradigm explains how such co-shaping works in practice. (shrink)

The Situationist International have become a canonical reference point when discussing artists’ participation in political action or activism. This article attempts to decentre the SI from this position, by tracing their theories and representations of political agency and labour. I argue that their notion of agency is deeply conflicted, epitomized by the dual invocations ‘never work/all power to the workers’ councils. I examine how the SI’s representations of agency betray an attraction to and fascination with 1960s reactionary fantasies around brainwashing, (...) conditioning, control and torture. Their practical descriptions of a constructed situation, which ‘makes people live’ are, in fact, closer to torturous state control than total liberation. The notions of agency they mobilise draw on colonial and classist sources, which actually deny the agency of radical movements. As a result, the SI produce a series of weak fantasies of participation, in which agency is denied and ‘demanding the impossible’ is actually a demand to constitute and police the impossible. Artistic-political agency was both guarded centre and constituent other. The SI’s policing of their identity, tied in name to the agency of ‘situations’, involved the ongoing exclusion and repression of other artists’ more practically-engaged labour within social movements. (shrink)

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, 19 essays document the April 1998 international congress held at Harvard University. They ponder on such topics as the phenomenology of the experience of enchantment, Leonardo's enchantress, the ambiguous meaning of musical enchantment in Kant's Third Critique, art and the reenchantment of sensuous human activity, the creative voice, the allure of the Naza, Henri Matisse's early critical reception in New York, Zizek's sublimicist aesthetic of enchanted (...) class='Hi'>fantasy, and enchantment in Baroque festive court performance in France. There is no subject index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

This article engages with the immuno-political juxtaposition of the healthy self and the pathogenic other to critically examine the representation of Nazis and Jews in Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel _Maus_ (1996). Written as a postmemory narrative, _Maus_ recounts the horrors experienced by the author’s father Vladek Spiegelman as a survivor of the Holocaust that claimed an approximate six million Jewish lives. Beginning with the years leading up to World War II, Spiegelman’s novel reimagines the discrimination, dislocation, and dehumanization (...) suffered by Vladek and his family at various prison camps in Nazi-occupied Poland before being transferred to Auschwitz. Deploying an immuno-political reading of _Maus_, this article investigates how the Third Reich undertook a systematic extermination of the Jewish race by construing them as _immunological nonself_ or pathogenic others. It further argues that Nazism’s fantasy of constructing a racially aseptic German identity by eradicating the Jews as vermin or parasites was reinforced by the late nineteenth-century eugenicist ideologies of racial hygiene. This article finally considers how policies of excessive immunization that was deployed by Nazi biopolitics against the Jewish community, as well as exercised by the Jews to survive the Holocaust, eventually assumed the form of an autoimmune pathology that culminated with the attempted destruction of the entire medico-juridical infrastructure of the German Reich on the one hand and the fostering of suicidal tendencies by the Jewish survivors on the other. (shrink)

Who is Lucrezia, the mysterious woman at the center of Machiavelli’s comic play Mandragola? And why is she deemed “fit to govern a kingdom”? This article revisits these questions with attention to Mandragola’s sophisticated, and often irreverent, allusions to Roman source materials. While scholars have long recognized that Mandragola draws on Roman history and drama, its sustained engagement with Lucretian and Ovidian poetry has gone largely unnoticed. In what follows, I trace these allusions and show how Machiavelli uses them to (...) bring into view the fertility of erotic desire. Mandragola is replete with Lucretian phrases and imagery, but a close examination of these references indicates they are made playfully, and even satirically, in the style of Ovid’s Ars amatoria, a didactic elegy on the art of seduction that develops a mixed assessment of Epicurean teachings. Like Ovid, Machiavelli embraces the hedonism that motivates Epicureanism—but without accepting that happiness requires distancing ourselves from illusion. This departure allows both Ovid and Machiavelli to reassess the status of erotic desire. For Lucretius, erotic desire must be handled with extreme caution lest it entangle the mind in ruinous false beliefs and destroy the possibility of theoretical wisdom. Machiavelli, following Ovid, recommends a different course, in which happiness is achieved through the deliberate manipulation of erotic fantasy. For Machiavelli, staging erotic fantasies is an essential part of statecraft. (shrink)

Did the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) influence the art of his time? Art historians have been fiercely debating this question for decades. This book starts with Ficino's views on the imagination as a faculty of the soul, and shows how these ideas were part of a long philosophical tradition and inspired fresh insights. This approach, combined with little known historical material, offers a new understanding of whether, how and why Ficino's Platonic conceptions of the imagination may have been received (...) in the art of the Italian Renaissance. The discussion explores Ficino's possible influence on the work of Botticelli and Michelangelo, and examines the appropriation of Ficino's ideas by early modern art theorists. (shrink)

In the contemporary postmodern era, the boundaries that once rigidly separated well-established genres have become more fluid, resulting in what scholars Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan call ‘genre-blurring’. This phenomenon of incorporating elements from diverse genres represents a challenge to dominant ideologies and expands the possibilities within fictional texts. The dystopian fiction written by feminist writers towards the end of the twentieth century and beyond significantly exemplifies this form of hybrid textuality. In doing so, these writers seek to renovate the (...) dystopian genre by making it both formally and politically oppositional. This article aims to explore Midnight Robber (2000), a feminist dystopian novel by Nalo Hopkinson, a Jamaican–Canadian writer, to illustrate how the author manipulates the generic boundaries of science fiction, fantasy and mythology. By amalgamating Afro-Caribbean religious and cultural beliefs, mythical creatures and traditional knowledge systems with a technologically advanced future world, Hopkinson challenges the essentially White, Eurocentric model of dystopian fiction. The article will also examine how, as an Afrofuturist writer, Hopkinson attempts to challenge and subvert the patriarchal discourse of dystopian fiction, traditionally dominated by White male writers, through a strong Black female character, Tan-Tan, who seeks to resist the patriarchal structures governing her, and finally succeeds in emerging as a female leader figure. For this purpose, Barbara Creed’s insights into the monstrous-feminine are explored, introducing novelty into the discourse of feminist dystopia. (shrink)

Many on the left lament an apathy or amnesia toward recent acts of war. Particularly during the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, opposition to war seemed to lack the heat and potency of the 1960s and 1970s, giving the impression that passionate dissent was all but dead. Through an analysis of three politically engaged works of art, Rosalyn Deutsche argues against this melancholic attitude, confirming the power of contemporary art to criticize subjectivity as well as war. Deutsche selects (...) three videos centered on the deployment of the atomic bomb: Krzysztof Wodiczko's _Hiroshima Projection_ (1999), made after the first Gulf War; Silvia Kolbowski's _After Hiroshima mon amour_ (2005-2008); and Leslie Thornton's _Let Me Count the Ways_ (2004-2008), which followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Each of these works confronts the ethical task of addressing historical disaster, and each explores the intersection of past and present wars. These artworks profoundly contribute to the discourse of war resistance, illuminating the complex dynamics of viewing and interpretation. Deutsche employs feminist and psychoanalytic approaches in her study, questioning both the role of totalizing images in the production of warlike subjects and the fantasies that perpetuate, especially among the left, traditional notions of political dissent. She ultimately reveals the passive collusion between leftist critique and dominant discourse in which personal dimensions of war are denied. (shrink)

Imagery Rehearsal Therapy is effective for trauma-related nightmares and is also a challenge to patients in finding access to their traumatic memories, because these are saved in non-verbal, visual, or audiovisual language. Art therapy is an experiential treatment that addresses images rather than words. This study investigates the possibility of an IRT-AT combination. Systematic literature review and field research was conducted, and the integration of theoretical and practice-based knowledge resulted in a framework for Imagery Rehearsal-based Art Therapy. The added value (...) of AT in IRT appears to be more readily gaining access to traumatic experiences, living through feelings, and breaking through avoidance. Exposure and re-scripting take place more indirectly, experientially and sometimes in a playlike manner using art assignments and materials. In the artwork, imagination, play and fantasy offer creative space to stop the vicious circle of nightmares by changing theme, story line, ending, or any part of the dream into a more positive and acceptable one. IR-AT emerges as a promising method for treatment, and could be especially useful for patients who benefit least from verbal exposure techniques. This description of IR-AT offers a base for further research. (shrink)

At M. Bernard's I saw several magnificent paintings on porcelain by Monsieur Constantin. In two hundred years, Raphael's frescoes will be known only through Monsieur Constantin.Stendhal, Voyage en France, 1837If we compare the forms that the act of copying has assumed in various civilizations, we cannot fail to notice that a certain number of phenomena are specific to European culture since the Renaissance. Perhaps one of the most singular of these phenomena is the will to create and to possess imperishable (...) reproductions of works that have been singled out, at a given moment, as the brightest jewels of Western art. The history of the fortune of Graeco-Roman sculptures has been masterfully related by Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny in Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, even if it would no doubt be worthwhile to give further consideration to the critical fortune of materials used for reproduction, and particularly to the particular prestige attached to bronze—from the Mantuan works of Antico to the reconstitutions of Greek Urbilder in bronze, instead of the plaster used earlier, which were executed at the beginning of the twentieth century, such as the two Doryphoros that Georg Römer realized from various ancient marble copies of Polyclitus's athlete. But, in fact, it was not only in modern Europe that copies were made in bronze. The production of copies using this alloy was particularly prevalent in imperial China after the rediscovery, in the second half of the eleventh century of our era, of a collection of archaic bronzes from the Shang era. This is why I prefer to call attention to a practice that appears to me, in contrast, to be unique to the Western world: the copying of renowned paintings in materials that are supposed to defy time. (shrink)

The nature of fantasy has been little discussed, despite its importance in the arts. Its significance is brought out here in relation to the long‐standing debate on the alleged paradox of fiction—that we respond emotionally to characters and events known to be unreal. Examination of the paradox shows it to be ill founded once the nature of fantasy is appreciated. Moreover, a detailed consideration of fantasy shows that it can itself provide a plausible account of our emotional (...) reactions to creative literature, an account that, after a review of some possible objections, is then contrasted with the leading contemporary theories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Fantasy Matters Too MuchJack Zipes (bio)In September 1997 a fairy-tale princess and a holy saint, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa, died within a few days of each other. Millions of people openly and dramatically expressed their grief and mourning. Their pictures along with many different images of Diana and Mother Teresa were beamed all over the world through television and the Internet. The mass media carried all (...) sorts of stories and acclaimed the two of them as the fairy-tale princess and the saint, so that little was left to the imagination. Fantastic spectacle was all that mattered.We speculate with the fantastic. Fantasy is a celebrity and money-making machine. As a module in our brains, it has the capacity to transform plain junk into gold that glitters. Fantasy mobilizes and instrumentalizes the fantastic to form and celebrate spectacles that exist and have always existed—illusions of social relations of exploitation based on power. Spectacles violate and drain our imaginations by glorifying social relations of power that are made spectacular and involve the magic of fetishism. Generally, the results bring about delusion and acclamation of particular sets of social relations that are commodified, sold, and consumed. We acclaim commodities that we don’t know, products that are not of our own making and that we consume mentally and physically. We reproduce images consciously and unconsciously that are not of our own making. The media and the corporate world occupy our psyches and manipulate our fantasies even when we [End Page 77] dream. Our relations are mediated through fantastic spectacle and through fetish abetted by the latest technology that connects us to each other while also disconnecting us from our minds and feelings. Simultaneously, we seek to project our desires in the form of fantasies onto reality and endeavor to occupy a space in which our most profound wishes and desires can be realized. We seek cognition and recognition. In each instance—in the tension between corporate determination of the fantastic and individual projection of desire—we seem to anchor our understanding of reality in artworks dependent on the fantastic, such as the Bible and fairy tales. Hence, Mother Teresa the saint. Diana the fairy-tale princess.It is through fantasy that we have always sought to make sense of the world, not through reason. Reason matters, but fantasy matters more. Perhaps it has mattered too much, and our reliance on fantasy may wear thin and betray us even while it nourishes us and gives us hope that the world can be a better place. We have imagined gods, the kingdom of a single god, the miraculous feats of divine and semidivine characters, and the commandments that have been established to lead us to the good life, if not paradise. It is through the fictive projections of our imaginations based on personal experience that we have sought to grasp, explain, alter, and comment on reality. This is again why such staples as the Bible and the Grimms fairy tales have become canonical texts: unlike reality, they allegedly open the mysteries of life and reveal ways in which we can maintain ourselves and our integrity in a conflict-ridden world. They compensate for the constant violation of nature and life itself and for the everyday violation of our lives engendered through spectacle. They contest reality and also become conflated with reality.But our fantasy and the fantasies that we conceive have become desperate because they are outstripped by real existing conditions that instrumentalize them at every waking second of our day, and even when we slumber. It is a commonplace today that fiction, especially science fiction and what we label fantasy in the world of art, cannot keep pace with the devastating and disturbing fantastic of real occurrences, or what I call the incredible credibility of the real. When the normal is so fantastically abnormal, what role can fantastic artworks play in our lives? Is the violence that we encounter in our everyday lives so much more fantastic than in literature, film, and the arts that we seek to consume the fantastic like harmless junk food as quick fixes and consolation? Can our joys really and realistically... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Peter Lamarque TRUTH AND ART IN IRIS MURDOCH'S THE BLACK PRINCE "Art," writes Bradley Pearson, protagonist and narrator in The Black Prince, "is concerned not just primarily but absolutely with truth." Bradley Pearson is also concerned with truth. And understandably so, as he has just taken the rap, and been imprisoned, for a murder he claims he never committed. There are two rather different concerns here with truth: there (...) is the high-minded concern of the artist and there is the more pragmatic concern of the despised and falsely convicted man writing his "apologia." The careful juxtaposition of these two appeals to truth is a central theme in The Black Prince. The bulk of the novel purports to be a first-person narration of events in the later life of Bradley Pearson. Bradley is a writer who has been waiting patiently and silently for the inspiration, "the dark blaze," to produce a great work of art. This "dark blaze" eventually shows itself as the "black Eros," in a passionate but short-lived love affair with the youngJulian Baffin. Bradley is reflecting on these events from his prison cell, guided by his mentor and fellow prisoner, the "editor" P. Loxias (a witty reference to Apollo, god of truth). He sees his art and his love as stemming "from the same source" (p. 172) and, although sensitive to his shortcomings as an artist, he believes that through a divine inspiration he has attained a kind of Platonic tranquillity in the presence of truth and self-knowledge. However, through the device of "postscripts," purportedly written by other characters, we are presented with another picture of him rather different from his own. His former friends, more down to earth, though variously self-interested, depict him as a pitiful, even contemptible, charlatan lost in fantasy and delusion and a suitable case for psychoanalysis. What, then, is the real Bradley Pearson? Is he the pathetic, fantasy-ridden creature of the "postscripts"? Or is he, as he thinks, the great artist inspired by the gods and by Eros who has seen the revelation of truth? 209 2 1 0 Philosophy and Literature By forcing us to raise these questions about the novel, Iris Murdoch, I suggest, is inviting us to reflect on, and relate, two concerns we might have with truth in works of fiction. The first is with truth internal to the novel, truth-within-fiction, which informs us about the fictional characters and events. In The Black Prince, our attention is focused on unravelling and assessing the "truth" of Bradley's account. The second is with truth proper, as it might be revealed through fiction. This is truth not about the fictional world but about the non-fictional real world. It is often maintained that novels can instruct us in acquiring knowledge of the world. This, I suggest, is the type of truth that Bradley, so grandly and solemnly, and frequently, identifies with art. The nature of such truth is the main topic of this article. II What sense can we make of Bradley's repeated claims to the effect that "good art speaks truth" (p. xi)? One answer, reflecting an obvious feature of literary works, is that propositions about the world are often expressed, explicitly, within a fictional context; they might be uttered by one of the characters or directly by the author. The Black Prince offers many such propositions, some of which, on the nature of art, I shall be considering in detail. Examples are plentiful. Thus, Bradley remarks on marriage: "People who boast of happy marriages are, I submit, usually self-deceivers, if not actually liars. The human soul is not framed for continued proximity..." (p. 64). He meditates on love: "The foreverness of real love is one of the reasons why even unrequited love is a source of joy" (pp. 173-74) and discusses jealousy (p. 207). He also reflects on human consciousness and responsibility (p. 155) and on selfishness and goodness: "The burden of genuine goodness is instinctively appreciated as intolerable, and a desire for it would put out of focus the other and ordinary wishes by which one lives" (p. 149). Such explicit propositions carry us beyond the... (shrink)

As the poet T.S. Eliot said, 'Where is the wisdom lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge lost in information?' Our postmodern 'information culture' forces us to be over-cerebral, but it doesn't teach us to think; consequently it becomes nearly impossible for us to imagine a knowledge that is beyond information, much less a Wisdom that is beyond knowledge. We all know what it is to uselessly 'spin our wheels' in barren thought and fantasy; certain valid contemplative disciplines even (...) have as their main goal the pacification of the 'monkey mind', the over-heated brain that prevents us from genuinely living our lives, from being fully present to the world, to each other, and to ourselves. But such pacification can also have a nihilistic side to it. It can subtly fool us into believing that the pursuit of meaning, the attainment of intellectual stability and certainty, is neither possible or desirable - a belief that is of great use to the political and economic Powers That Be in the emerging global society, who are always delighted to hear people express the opinion that there is no such thing as objective Truth, that we can't really know what is real, or if anything is real, beyond our own subjective experience. To the degree that the people start to believe that nothing can be known (our hidden masters reason), they will stop asking embarrassing and inconvenient questions. The notion of objective truth - not to mention Absolute truth - immediately suggests oppression, tyranny and fanaticism to the postmodern mind. Why? Because we have been systematically taught to see things this way by those Social Engineers who construct and impose the terms by which Reality is to be viewed. In order to break free from this socially-imposed subjectivism, we need to remember that Reality is not something determined by belief, but rather that belief is only true when it conforms itself to Reality. If we see nothing beyond this material/social world, we will be forced to take our own subjectivity as the only way to awaken from the social trance, and so fall even more deeply into that very trance, which is precisely a collective subjectivity. But if we know Objective Truth as metaphysical, beyond material nature and human society, then we have begun to catch a glimpse of the One Way Out. The traditional notion of Knowledge maintains that, 1) Truth can be known with certainty, and, 2) that the reason for knowing Truth is to transform our lives from a state of chaotic uncertainty, vulnerable to all the suffering that illusion and impermanence can produce, into one of eternal certainty and stability, where the knower becomes one with the Thing known - a state that goes by the name of bliss. To begin the path toward this bliss, however, we will need to know how to know; and this requires, as the necessary first step, that we know how to take knowledge seriously. As metaphysician Frithjof Schuon put it: 'Knowledge only saves us on condition that it enlists all that we are, only when it is a way and when it works and transforms and wounds our nature, even as the plough wounds the soil'. The shifting illusions of individual and collective subjectivity cannot protect us, and will always betray us. But if we are firmly rooted in that Truth which, in the words of Lew Welch, 'goes on whether we look at it or not', then we have a Protector - one Who is always there, upon Whom we can always rely, and to Whom we can always turn, when we can no longer remedy or deny or escape from the suffering and insecurity of conditional life. So let's begin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ornament, Fantasy, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century French LiteratureGeoffrey Galt HarphamOrnament, Fantasy, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century French Literature, by Rae Beth Gordon; xvii & 288pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, $42.50.As Rae Beth Gordon notes in the introduction to her stimulating and original book, ornament, which is devoted to grace, charm, and attractiveness, becomes the object of suspicion and moralizing disdain when it exceeds what numerous commentators (...) refer to as “its proper limits.” The limits are set low by those who wish to maintain the integrity of the center—the melodic line, the text, the main image, the literal sense, the consensual meaning—against the disruptive and excessive forces of the margin. Transgress the margin to which ornament is properly confined, as artists in virtually every medium available in nineteenth-century France did, and a series of crucial binary distinctions collapses, threatening not only the center, but ornament itself, which is defined by its limits, its position on a well-defined edge.What distinguished nineteenth-century French literature was, from Gordon’s point of view, a sustained interest, among critics as well as artists, in cultivating the creative possibilities opened up by compromising the boundary between ornament and its other. So fertile and successful has this project proven to be that today’s postmodernity has not come to an end of it, continuing to discover its most interesting possibilities on the margin. And within the field of art history, we see that ornament, once widely denigrated as the source of confusion, has become virtually orthodox; as the title of Ernst Gombrich’s book on the subject indicates, ornament is now held to appeal to and gratify The Sense of Order.Gordon takes advantage of the posthistory of her subject, applying to studies of Nerval, Mallarmé, Gautier, Huysmans a theoretical armature drawn from the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Winnicott, and Lacan. Drawing attention to a dimension of meaning or intention that has been “suppressed or excluded from the central field,” ornament, she argues, “anticipates the way psychiatry, perceptual psychology, and aesthetics converge in the fin de siècle.” Ornament, in other words, is cognate with the unconscious, and its prevalence in fin de siècle art and literature may be considered a sign of a certain cultural receptivity to the discoveries Freud was about to make, the “French” modality of a phenomenon to which Freud would give a “Viennese” formulation. [End Page 364]It is fashionable, especially in medieval studies, to focus on the disruptively counter-doctrinal potential of marginal elements such as gargoyles or textual illuminations. But Gordon generally argues another kind of case altogether, one that has, perhaps, even greater contemporary interest. Ornament, she claims, discloses the essential principles of aesthetic production. The expressive power of line, the “sense of order” to which it appeals, the subordination of literal depiction to design, the primacy of relationships over individual figures—all these reflect, as Wilhelm Worringer was explicitly to claim in 1908, energies deriving from the very beginnings of art itself.Thus, when principles and figures of ornament began to invade the “sense” or “business” of the text itself, as they did in nineteenth-century French literature, what is happening is not only a radical adjustment of a certain conception of ornament, but a large movement of return. Art becomes under these circumstances both decadent and primordial, devoting itself to both meaningless proliferation and to “pure art.” Gordon tracks this ambivalent movement with very considerable assurance and learning in an argument as sinuous as the ornamental line itself. The chapters on Nerval (“Lace as Textual Metaphor”) and Gautier (“Trills, Frills, and Decorative Frames for the Object of Desire”) are particularly illuminating, inspired by a kind of theoretical wit that does justice to their objects. Gordon is somewhat less successful in communicating the relevance to Mallarmé of Lacan, the exposition of whom—of which?—is laborious. But the responsibility probably lies more heavily with Lacan than with Gordon. Labored accounts of Lacan may even be considered as a species of ornament, a refinement and a new barbarism, peculiar to critical discourse in the fin of our own siècle.Geoffrey Galt HarphamTulane UniversityCopyright... (shrink)

This study is a phenomenological inquiry into several relatively unexplored phenomena, including certain key methodological issues. It seeks to elicit and explicate the grounds of free-fantasy variation, which Husserl insists contains his “fundamental methodological insight” since it articulates “the fundamental form of all particular transcendental methods…” In the course of pursuing the full sense of this method and its grounds, the essay also uncovers the origins and eventual presence of “self” and explores the multiple connections among self, mental life, (...) embodiment and the surrounding world. To that end, it is necessary to take seriously Husserl’s otherwise odd declaration that “‘feigning’ [‘Fiktion’] makes up the vital element of phenomenology as of every other eidetic science…”, and thus that every philosopher must “fertilize” his or her “fantasy” through works of art and history as well as other areas and practices of human life. The essay offers an in-depth probing of several striking but largely unexplored phenomena: exemplifying and possibilizing, and concludes with an exploration of one of the most pervasive themes in phenomenological inquiry: intersubjectivity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 32-41 [Access article in PDF] Does Art Education Dream of Disneyland? [Figures] Introduction What image can we present when challenged to illustrate art education in the form of a scheme? The word "illustration" literally means to build understanding through an explanatory diagram. In art education or anything [End Page 32] else, the use of a visual image to understand a certain system (...) can be interpreted as a question of human sensitivity and recognition. Translating minute nuances or peculiarities of information into a vibrant image is, however, a confusing and difficult exercise. In this essay, I attempt to portray those elements crucial to the teaching and learning process of art education using Disneyland as a structural as well as a functional metaphor. The Happiest Place on Earth? Disneyland is depicted as "a dream world" and "the happiest place on earth." As described in various incisive essays, Disneyland is a symbol of modern American culture, an ultimate form of the consumer society or the hegemony of entertainment. 1 To start with, the structural elements of this epitome of Walt Disney's vision are outlined.Walt Disney created Main Street USA (the World Bazaar) to make all visitors feel as if they are the leading character in a Disney film, walking through the main street of life. He attempted to remove the ugliness of everyday life from his dream space by eradicating the back streets of the real world. The design of the buildings along Main Street originates from Walt Disney's hometown. The sense of distance within the Disney complex is enhanced by using a smaller scale for the upper stories of buildings and a progressively narrowing street.Sleeping Beauty's Castle (or Cinderella Castle at Tokyo Disneyland) lies beyond Main Street and is modeled on Neuschwanstein Castle in Fussen,South Bayern, Germany. The road leading to the castle ascends slightly which amplifies the anticipation factor for visitors. Sleeping Beauty's Castle is the centerpiece of Disneyland and functions as the hub to guide visitors to various lands. Several attractive spaces radiate from this hub, forming a total of six areas.On the extension line from the Entrance via Sleeping Beauty's Castle lies Fantasyland where Walt Disney has reproduced the world of animation based on European legends and fables. Toontown lies beyond Fantasyland. This is a world of familiar characters, such as Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy. Traveling clockwise, Tomorrowland is next where all kinds of imaginary worlds await visitors. Adventureland, on the opposite side of Main Street, offers worlds of different cultures and spaces for adventure. Beyond Adventureland lies Westernland, designed to invite visitors to return to the Wild West.It is possible to form a hypothesis that there are three axes connecting the six lands. Those axes run through Sleeping Beauty's Castle that acts as the hub and two opposing areas on the same axis with the Castle being the point of symmetry.The first axis could be the axis of "reality." If Main Street is considered to be the "crawling approachway" from the everyday sphere to dreamland,Fantasyland, offering playful space of extraordinary imagination, is set [End Page 33] against the ordinary space for everyday life. The second axis is the axis of "relationship" which connects individual persons to society. Toontown presents a world of fraternity and is a place where people bonded by kinship or friendship can trust each other and feel at ease. Frontierland, located on the opposite side of this axis creates a solitary space where people leave family and friends for the adventure of traveling to unknown lands. The third and final axis is that of "time" from the past to the future. Tomorrowland is a future world based on fantasy and imagination where prophecies becomereality. On the opposite side of this axis lies Westernland embodying the history and traditions of the American past.It is possible to regard each area of Disneyland, structured by these different worlds, as a metaphor to reflect the basic content and structure of art education in the context of the general curriculum. In fact... (shrink)

Abstract:As new digital technologies, consumer demand, and social issues such as COVID-19 render workplaces increasingly data-centric, employers will require culturally and technologically adept workers who can utilize creativity in every stage of the production process. To prepare students for this demand, institutions of higher education must establish flexible programs that provide professional or technical curricula combined with a liberal arts education that fosters students’ abilities to build imaginations beyond conventionally accepted norms. The capacity for creative fantasy intersects with cognitive (...) maturity and higher-order thinking and thus can be measured using models of adult development. Schools should develop knowledge platforms that can first assess a student’s maturity stage and then design a personalized liberal and professional education plan that maximizes their creative abilities. This article therefore engages adult development theory to map possible trajectories toward students’ constructive use of innovative fantasy and to address ways educational institutions can reorient their approaches. (shrink)

This collection brings together a selection of writings on art by the internationally acclaimed novelist, historian and critic Marina Warner. For 30 years Warner has published widely on a range of art-world subjects and objects, from contemporary installation and film works to paintings by Flemish and Italian Renaissance masters, through Victorian photography and twentieth-century political drawings and prints. Warner's extraordinary curiosity in art and culture is conveyed in writing that is at once poetic and playful, elegant and rigorous, training our (...) eyes on the smallest of details while painting a broad-brushstroke landscape of art past and present. Themes familiar to Warner's readers--myth and fantasy, psychic and sexual experience, the vast and marvelous expanse of the human imagination--are treated in the lectures and articles, stories, interviews and essays contained here, some of which are published for the first time or republished from out-of-print sources. For the first of two volumes, editor Vivian Sky Rehberg has assembled themed sections titled "Playing in the Dark," "Telling Tales" and "Phantom Technologies." Texts include interviews with Tacita Dean and Paula Rego; catalogue essays on Leonora Carrington, Henry Fuseli, Zarina Bhimji, Tony Oursler and Fischli/Weiss; articles on Tracy Emin, Marlene Dumas, Louise Bourgeois; stories for artist's books by Kiki Smith and Helen Douglas; and lectures on Francis Bacon, Hieronymous Bosch and William Kentridge. "The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought" invites us to explore new ways of seeing and engaging with the traces of our artistic heritage. Marina Warner is a writer of fiction, criticism and history. Holder of 12 honorary degrees and two honorary fellowships, Warner is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature. She has judged the The Jerwood Drawing Prize and the Turner Prize; she is a regular broadcaster on the BBC, and has taught and given lectures worldwide, including the National Gallery and ICA, London and the Prado in Madrid; she has delivered the Presidential Lecture at Stanford University and the Carpenter Lecture at Harvard. She has been awarded a CBE, Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France and Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella di Solidareità, Italy. Warner is a winner of the Aby Warburg Prize and a Getty Scholar. Vivian Sky Rehberg is an art historian and critic based in Paris and Rotterdam. A founding editor of "Journal of Visual Culture," she is a contributing editor of "Frieze," and has written for numerous contemporary art publications. Previously Chair of the department of Critical Studies at Parsons Paris School of Art + Design, where she taught modern and contemporary art, Rehberg is currently Course Director for the Masters in Fine Art at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.. (shrink)

Rudolf Steiner's vision of art, as with all forms of human expression, is that it should reflect our human experience of the Divine. This was not intended to suggest vague, mystical fantasy. As one of the few true initiates of the twentieth century, he was able to experience the realms from which humanity and all nature descend into temporal and spatial existence. He was able to speak with confidence of the qualitative and dynamic worlds of soul and spirit, from (...) which all the phenomena we experience spring, including our individual existence. The means by which the living nature of these realms can be expressed is not through rationally expressed concepts--which point only to the material, quantitative perceptions from which they are derived--but through the various forms and languages of art. Through art, human beings express the qualitative experiences of life. But Steiner goes even further. In the more recent history of art, especially that of the West, artistic expression has become less a product of spiritual inspiration and more the expression of personal experience, which is identified with materialistic existence. Naturalistic and realistic representations of the physical world are devoid of spiritual expression. As humanity has descended into a materialized, spiritually void experience of life, art has followed that trend. Today, it is little more than expressions of subjective, sensory views of the world. Modern nonrepresentational art, on the other hand, is an instinctive backlash against that trend, but does not get beyond personal expression. Contemporary art remains sadly isolated from the source of its own being: the world of soul and spirit. Steiner, however, attempts to unite personal human experience with the spiritual source of art, so that artists are spiritually conscious of the realm from which inspired expression descends into human existence. Such artists are neither isolated from the spirit, nor do they act as automatic mediumistic channels, but as a conscious and cooperative instruments of spirit. Human consciousness must come to truly sense some experience of spirit before real progress in art can occur, and this is what Steiner tries to help artists achieve in the lectures and writings collected in this volume. Some of the works in this collection have been unavailable in English for some time. Topics include the being of the arts; Goethe as the founder of a new science of aesthetics; technology and art; new millenniums; the purpose of modern art and architecture; living walls; glass windows; wall colors; moving the circle; the seven planetary symbols in the first Goetheanum; "The Group" statue; and color, faces, and physiognomy. (shrink)

Throughout his lectures and published writings on anthropology, Kant describes a form of unintentional, unstructured, obscure, and pleasurable imaginative mental activity, which he calls fantasy (Phantasie), where we ‘take pleasure in letting our mind wander about in obscurity.’ In the context of his pragmatic anthropology, Kant was concerned not only to describe this form of mental activity as a fact of human psychology, but more importantly, to criticize and discourage it. But must we share Kant’s negative evaluation? Could (...) class='Hi'>fantasy play a positive role in some kinds of experience? In this paper I first reconstruct Kant’s conception of fantasy, and then consider what role fantasy might play in aesthetic experience. Precisely because of his anxieties about fantasy, Kant is careful to distinguish between the lawless freedom of the imagination in fantasy and the ‘free lawfulness’ of the imagination in aesthetic judgment. Departing from Kant, and with help from Susan Sontag, I argue that certain aesthetic objects, especially certain works of modernist art, positively invite fantasy, making fantasy part of proper aesthetic appreciation. I conclude by suggesting that while fantasy can indeed play a positive role in aesthetic appreciation, there is still reason to regard fantasy as ‘normatively ambiguous.’. (shrink)

In art and literature, animals appear not only as an allegoric representation but as a reference which troubles the border between humanity and animality. The aim of this book is to challenge traditional ways of confronting animality with humanity and to consider how the Darwinian turn has modified this relationship in postmodern narratives. The subject of animality in culture, ethics, philosophy, art and literature is explored and reevaluated, and a host of questions regarding the conditions of co-existence of humans and (...) animals is asked: Should discourse ethics now include entities that initially seemed mute and were excluded from discussions? Does the modern animal rights movement need a theology, and vice versa, is there a theology that needs animals? Are animals in literature just metaphors of human characters, or do they reveal something more profound, a direction of human desires, or a fantasy of transgressing humanity? This book provides answers and thus gives a new impetus to a so far largely overlooked field. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the analysis of the characteristic features of the process of displaying virtual network platforms and cybernetic technologies in the early 1970s — early 2020s in the fantastic universe (literary and cinematic) created by S. King, one of the leading American science fiction writers of our time. In this study, the authors provide a justification for the relevance and scientific novelty of the problem under study. This paper analyzes the specific features of the impact of electronic (...) communication communities and computer technologies on modern society. This article provides an argument for the need to comprehend the coverage of this social problem in fantastic art — specifically in literature and cinematography — as one of the additional aspects of the progress of the predictive function of science. This study provides a reasoned explanation of the definition of the fantastic literary and cinematic universe of S. King as an object of research, taking into account its priority position in the fantasy genre as a whole. This problem was chosen by the authors for analysis in order to reasonably refute stereotypes, according to which the works of S. King and the film adaptations created on their basis are a complex of mass culture materials of an entertainment nature that do not have any semantic significance. At the same time, the authors explore the cardinal differences in the coverage of the studied problem in the original literary works of S. King and their film adaptations. This approach, among other things, allowed the authors to identify the reasons for the negative attitude of the writer to the embodiment of his books on the cinema screen. In this work, the specifics of the process of transformation of the display of social networks and high technologies in the fantastic universe of S. King during the 1970s and early 2020s are comprehended in the context of the author’s reaction to objective changes in scientific and technological progress and ideas about it in public opinion, as well as the growth of their importance in socio-economic, spiritual and the political spheres of life of the human community. In this study, using the example of the fantastic universe of S. King, the characteristic features of the evolution of the position of experts in the field of computer technology over the past five decades in the context of their perception in literature and cinema are also analyzed. The work also examines the moral criteria for the use of social networks and cybernetic technologies in public life and their impact on the development of modern family relations in the perception of S. King, one of the subjects of the formation of public relations in Western society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What is Fantasy?Brian Laetz and Joshua J. JohnstonWizards, elves, dragons, and trolls—this is certainly the stuff of fantasy, populating the fictions of such giants as Tolkien, no less than the juvenilia of many aspiring writers. However, it is much easier to identify typical elements of fantasy, than it is to understand the category of fantasy itself. There can be little doubt that, in practice, the (...) genre is pretty well defined, concretely manifesting itself in the shelves reserved for it in video shops and bookstores. But stating why a work belongs on these shelves, rather than those in the near vicinity, such as horror and science fiction, or those more remote, like plain old fiction, presents a real challenge. Certainly, a mere few feet could separate fantasy from the other shelves, but the conceptual distance those feet represent appears great indeed. What, if anything, distinguishes this genre from other categories of mass art. In other words, what is fantasy?To begin, fantasy is a transmedia genre, since there are fantasy novels and movies, for instance, as is illustrated by J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga and its recent cinematic adaptation. It is interesting to note that fantasy includes works from other media as well, such as paintings, which often accompany fantasy narratives, like Frank Frazetta's recognizable illustrations for Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories. Forms of entertainment are also affiliated with the genre, such as role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons, though one might balk at considering such things even forms of mass art? Nonetheless, despite the variety of media and entertainments associated with fantasy, [End Page 161] narratives occupy a fundamental place within the genre. For paintings, drawings, and the like are only recognizably fantastic given some narrative background that tells us what wizards, trolls, and dragons look like.1 Plausibly, it is what allows us to see that a drawing depicts an elf, for example, rather than a child with odd pointy ears. Thus, even if some works of fantasy are, strictly speaking, non-narrative, fantastic narratives remain fundamental, since these other works would not be classified as fantasy without them. This warrants initially setting aside things like fantasy games and paintings to focus on narratives. What, precisely, makes a narrative fantastic?First, fantastic narratives are essentially fictional. For regardless of how one ultimately understands the nature of fiction, the notion of true fantasy seems patently incoherent, quite unlike, say, true crime. And it must be stressed that this point should be compatible with any theory of fiction. Second, the sort of things that can make a work fantastic, like wizards and dragons, must be prominent in the work—they cannot be minor details. For example, had there been a two-minute scene in Spartacus in which someone cast a spell, the scene would have been fantastic, but ultimately the movie would not be classified any differently; you would still find it on the drama shelf. Moreover, this condition is not peculiar to fantasy.2 For instance, no one who has suffered through a Steven Seagal film would seriously classify it as romance or even action-romance, simply because it has a minor romantic subplot. Fantasy is no different from any other genre in this regard: whatever features define a genre must be prominent in a work in order for it to belong to the relevant genre. Third, the sort of content that can make a work fantastic must not solely be viewed as symbols for things that are not fantastic. In other words, these elements cannot just be taken as allegorical.3 This alone would seem to disqualify George Orwell's Animal Farm from the genre, since most read the intelligent animals as merely symbols portraying various factions in communist Russia. It should be noted that the actual intentions of the author probably matter little here. For example, even if scholars discovered that Tolkien merely intended the Middle Earth saga as an elaborate allegory, it would remain fantasy; few would be tempted to move the books to another shelf. Fourth, the relevant content must not solely be mocked or lampooned within the work.4 This is necessary... (shrink)

In this essay, I want to provide an introduction to Aristotle's theory of the Greek Tragedy, which he outlines in his book, the Poetics . Many philosophers since Aristotle, including Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin, have analysed tragic art and developed their own theories of how it works and what it is for. What makes Aristotle's theory interesting is that it is as relevant to art today as it was in Ancient Greece because it explains the features of not just (...) tragic art, but of the films and stories that we enjoy today. I will explain the features that Aristotle says make a good tragic play and give examples of them from popular culture. The examples I give will be from tragedy, but also from romance, crime and fantasy to demonstrate how he has outlined, not just the features of Greek Tragedy, but also the internal workings of the drama that we enjoy today. The contemporary relevance of Aristotle's theory is in the fact that the features he outlines are basic features of great stories, which I think is best illustrated by applying Aristotle's analysis to popular Hollywood movies. (shrink)

Is it ever morally wrong to enjoy fantasizing about immoral things? Many video games allow players to commit numerous violent and immoral acts. But, should players worry about the morality of their virtual actions? A common argument is that games offer merely the virtual representation of violence. No one is actually harmed by committing a violent act in a game. So, it cannot be morally wrong to perform such acts. While this is an intuitive argument, it does not resolve the (...) issue. -/- Focusing on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies, Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy advances debates about the ethical criticism of art, not only by shining light on the interesting and under-examined case of virtual fantasies, but also by its novel application of a virtue ethical account. Video games are works of fiction that enable players to entertain a fantasy. So, a full understanding of the ethical criticism of video games must focus attention on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies. -/- Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy engages with debates and critical discussions of games in both the popular media and recent work in philosophy, psychology, media studies, and game studies. (shrink)

In this chapter, we examine Iris Murdoch’s views about art. We highlight continuities and differences between her views on art and aesthetics, and those of Plato, Kant, and Freud. We argue that Murdoch’s views about art, though traditionally linked to Plato, are more compatible with Kant’s thought than has been acknowledged—though with his ethics rather than his aesthetics. Murdoch shows Plato’s influence in her idea that beauty is the good in a different guise. However, Murdoch shows a more Kantian than (...) Platonic influence in her suggestion that the experience of beauty can be conducive to virtue, and distances herself from Plato in her claim that the enjoyment, as well as the production, of certain kinds of art can be virtuous. We also argue that her view of bad art as self-consoling fantasy is consonant with Freudian thought. Lastly, we question her view of bad art, specifically concerning her identification of bad art as self-consoling fantasy or entertainment, and her separation of the latter and good art. (shrink)

It is an irony perhaps worthy of John Ashbery that the critics who made his reputation as our premier contemporary poet have virtually ignored the innovations which in fact make his work distinctively of our time. The received terms show us how Ashbery revitalizes the old wisdom of Keats or the virile fantasies of Emersonian strength but they do so at the cost of almost everything about the work deeply responsive to irreducibly contemporary demands on the psyche. Such omissions not (...) only distance Ashbery from the urgencies of the present, they also make it far more difficult to appreciate just how the best contemporary art actually defines the challenges and possibilities created by that present. By banishing writers like Ashbery to literary tradition, we leave the domain of the postmodern to two dominant discourses. One is driven by post-structural theory’s idealization of the nomadic, the undecidable, and the profusion of simulacra. The other champions Marxist values which cast as the most significant contemporary art the rather slight oppositional devices of artists like Sherrie Levine, Hans Haacke, and Barbara Kruger. These critical idealizations then ignore what might be the central historical problem facing contemporary art. Can it continue to elaborate new dimensions of that late fifties postmodernism which set the values of Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and Robert Rauschenberg against the increasingly formalist versions of modernism that then dominated the art world and the poetry workshops? Or does the age demand the emergence of a new sensibility, strands of which are being woven in post-structuralist mills? Charles Altieri is professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Washington. Author of books on contemporary poetry and literary theory, he has just completed a book on abstraction in modern poetry and painting. This essay lays some groundwork for a book, Bourgeois Utopians, attempt to keep the arts central to our discussion of postmodernism. (shrink)

‘ANY state of mind in which anyone takes a great interest is very likely to be called “knowledge”, because no other word in psychology has such emotive virtue’, wrote Ogden and Richards apropos of those who claim that art affords us a kind of knowledge uniquely its own. While one may agree with the implications of this remark, and it is a salutary warning to anyone tempted to make extravagant claims for art, it does less than justice to the intentions (...) of those who make these claims. They are at least facing up to a real problem—a problem which has troubled philosophers since the time of Plato. For, beyond doubt, the arts have been held in high regard in every society with a well developed culture. To dismiss art as mere entertainment or pleasant deception or fantasy gratification or play only raises the question why intelligent and educated people take such trivial stuff seriously, why they consider it important and often find it profound. One way of meeting this problem is to say that art gives us a special kind of knowledge or insight which other branches of human learning—history, science and even philosophy—do not and cannot give us. This may not be a solution to the problem, but it is a view that deserves to be taken seriously, and I propose in this article to consider one aspect of it. (shrink)

How do the arts give us pleasure? Covering a very wide range of artistic works, from Auden to David Lynch, Rembrandt to Edward Weston, and Richard Strauss to Keith Jarrett, Pleasure and the Arts offers us an explanation of our enjoyable emotional engagements with literature, music, and painting. The arts direct us to intimate and particularized relationships, with the people represented in the works, or with those we imagine produced them. When we listen to music, look at a purely abstract (...) painting, or drink a glass of wine, can we enjoy the experience without verbalizing our response? Do our interpretative assumptions, our awareness of technique, and our attitudes to fantasy, get in the way of our appreciation of art, or enhance it? Examining these questions and more, we discover how curiosity drives us to enjoy narratives, ordinary jokes, metaphors, and modernist epiphanies, and how narrative in all the arts can order and provoke intense enjoyment. Pleasurable in its own right, Pleasure and the Arts presents a sparkling explanation of the enduring interest of artistic expression. (shrink)

This paper attempts to investigate Kierkegaard’s thought through the category of mimesis. First, two meanings of the word are distinguished and analyzed: the archaic meaning that links it to the concept of re-enactment, and the traditional meaning that links it to the aesthetic field of art. These two meanings are then considered in relation to Kierkegaard’s opus, showing the oscillation of mimesis as corresponding to that between the aesthetic, which lives in fantasy and in the unfulfilled possibility, and the (...) religious, which finds its identity in the imitation of Christ and in the transparent relationship to God. (shrink)

The Collective Imagination explicates the media of social creativity and explains how the imagination has shaped historically significant social institutions. It focuses on the media of wit, paradox, and metaphor, and develops a distinctive and original interpretation of the imagination’s appositional quality. Murphy’s conception of the collective imagination is compared with that of Cornelius Castoriadis. The discussion suggests that Murphy’s claims are likely to be disputed, particularly because they diverge from the common equation of contemporary creativity with social progress. Murphy (...) draws attention to a kind of conservative disposition that is necessary for imagination to have substantial social efficacy. Murphy claims that the creativity of the collective imagination has to a large extent been eclipsed by fantasy and kitsch. The deleterious effects of fantasy’s denial of reality are explored in relation to four domains of collective creativity: art, society, economy and politics. It is argued that the ramifications of Murphy’s profound interpretation of the imagination may be developed in ways that differ from some of his conclusions. (shrink)

This article investigates the aesthetic experience within telematic space, using terms introduced by kleinian psychoanalysis. We argue that the object of the aesthetic experience in multi-sensory interactive installations can be analysed within a spatial context of a dual nature, involving both the physical space of the installation and the virtual space of the participating subject’s perception, a hybrid space. Therefore, we discuss the aesthetic experience of interactive artworks as an intersubjective relationship between the artist and the audience, where the aesthetic (...) object becomes the subjective perceptual experience of this process of interaction. The space, where the visitor ‘meets’ the artist, is the place of the aesthetic experience. Aesthetic experience takes place in both the physical and the ‘potential’ world of our internal representations, the internalized, ‘mental space’ of projected fantasies: our unconscious. (shrink)

The viscerally Freudian elements of Adorno's use of the concept of mimesis interweave with readings of Kafka in which certain thoughts about childhood play an important role. The first section of this article links biological mimicry with critical theory and art: both mimic what they criticize, while also conserving a repressed and childlike mimetic relationship with otherness and sexual difference. Adorno criticizes both the civilized repression of the mimetic impulse and its subsequently distorted return, a dialectic neglected by direct appeals (...) to mimesis. Good art tries to extricate itself from these distortions. Conversely, the second section of this article explores Adorno's suggestion that fascistic psychology is a refuge for a twisted mimesis of mimesis, which gratifies the worst side of repressed nature while ideologically appealing to the best. Anti-Semitic humour shows how the fascist mimics his own aggressive fantasy of natural law, while secretly envying the closeness to nature he thinks he detects in other races. The final section uses Freud's theories on sympathetic and sadistic comedy to unpack Adorno's readings of Kafka and Mörike. Adorno's critical recuperation of mimetically childlike moments of ridiculousness in art clarifies his differentiation of the varieties of mimesis, as well as countering the gloomy stereotype of the humourless intellectual. But the black side of Adorno's use of laughter dialectically maintains his commitment to painfully remembering the victims of history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 19-30 [Access article in PDF] Bugged Out:A Reflection on Art Experience Christopher Perricone I used to enjoy art. Not all the arts equally. Overall literature spoke to me most clearly. I am not sure exactly why. I guess some combination of inborn and learned dispositions. Whatever is the case, my enjoyment of literature always seemed natural to me, since literature was of (...) a medium I already knew, the vocabulary and grammar of my own language. But I enjoyed paintings and musical pieces as well, some of which I shall never forget even though they have virtually faded from my life, from what I have become.I cannot say that I ever had a favorite artwork. I have always thought the idea foolish, reminiscent of children who think often in terms of favorites, whether colors, candies, or friends. However, there are some works that do stand out in memory, even though, as I say, I cannot bring myself to enjoy them now. They are ghosts whose forms are discernible, but whose flesh is long gone.I had read lots of literature. I even enjoyed the act and the atmosphere of reading. I remember the chair I sat in, the lighting, the room. I also used to love to wake up on weekends, eat a leisurely breakfast, and then get back into bed and read until noon. Of course the setting itself of reading was ultimately not crucial, it was merely a pleasant means of facilitating one's excursion into another world. It was the other world that counted. So many worlds. Of course, I entered joyfully the worlds of Shakespeare and Dante, which Harold Bloom recently has judged at the center of the Western canon, but I entered also lesser but personally not less significant worlds to which I was drawn. 1 I needed some tutoring in Shakespeare and Dante because they did not quite speak my language, my twentieth-century American tongue. I had trouble negotiating their worlds. However, I had none whatsoever when it came to the worlds of James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Graham Greene, Walt Whitman, T.S.Eliot, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, or Joseph Conrad. I was at home in these worlds, different [End Page 19] worlds, but nonetheless home. I loved Conrad's the "Heart of Darkness." For me this was one of the truly haunting tales. After my first reading of the "Heart of Darkness," I can honestly say, my life was changed. I neither talked nor walked the same. I moved among and around people and things differently. I saw myself differently both among others and when I would stand before my mirror alone. And subsequent readings brought about further changes, changes of my comportment in the world. I imagined that I saw, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled the details from the beginning of that story to its very end. I sat on the deck of the Nellie with Marlow, Conrad's character narrator, and his listeners. I watched with them as the sun went down over the Thames. I followed Marlow as he told the story of how he had "set off for the center of the earth," up the Congo perhaps where in his mind all human life had its source; how as he came closer to the center facts became less straightforward, the greed for ivory, the "flavor of mortality in lies," the hollowness of Mr. Kurtz, the final horror of it all. I sweated in the heat of the "Heart of Darkness." Like any experience of a masterpiece, the "Heart of Darkness" was a visceral experience for me. After such experiences one feels emotionally and physically drained. One feels comfort in thinking, as with a dream, it was not real. And yet there is a lingering discomfort: as it were no mere fantasy at all.I often had feelings of the same intensity and profundity in respect to painting and music. They, too, were worlds for me. I enjoyed the varioustouches of the painters. In particular, I enjoyed the gold, the... (shrink)

Latour’s actor-network ‘theory’ (ANT), and more generally Latour’s constructivist and relativistic work, has since long been debunked. (1) It does not make any sense, mixing all conceptual categories together (humans and non-humans, facts and moral prescriptions, science and politics); (2) nevertheless, it pretends to explain important issues such as our current environmental crisis and what to do to overcome it; (3) consequently, it can have extremely damaging political consequences. Latour’s ANT may perhaps be considered as a work of art but (...) certainly not as a work of science. Unfortunately, I find that Anders Blok and Casper Bruun Jensen’s attempt to salvage it is unconvincing and inherits the same problems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Place for Healing:A Hospital Art Class, Writing, and a Researcher's TaskJulia Kellman (bio)Introduction[O]bjects transform the top of our chest into a site of memory. I think of private landscapes like this one as querencias, places that hold the heart. The word has been translated as homing instinct and affection. Expatriate Alastair Reid introduced me to it in 1965, writing about the Spanish bullfight in The New Yorker. After (...) the first wound the bull chooses his querencia, the place in the ring where he returns for a moment to rest before the fight goes on, and where he finally dies. Querencia comes from the common Spanish verb querer; among its many meanings are to love, to want, to hold, and to command. Reid spoke of hometowns and native countries as querencias; exiles cling to their memories of them.1Place, "space that has the capacity to be remembered and to evoke what is most precious,"2 by its nature orients us to a particular perspective, to a way of looking at the world. Each place has its own local accent, its own constellation of habits, its own rhythm of language and thought. We are grounded in landscape in the same manner that we are situated in our social world, imprinted like other creatures on a typography, pattern of weather, cycle of seasons, scents, and colors.3Our hearts, too, are embedded in such places; and in this article, through this "act of personal witness," this "inscription of a self and a description of an object" as the anthropologist and writer Ruth Benhar4 describes it, we will see how the members of an art class for people with HIV/AIDS at a local hospital have similarly become grounded in their art space and in the tiny art community that has grown up around it. Additionally, we will discover the importance of a more descriptive style of writing as means for examining the role of art in the lives of people who are ill, for their various difficult [End Page 106] situations call for particular clarity and empathy that both honors and relates the stories of their lives. It will become clear as this article proceeds that the personal engagement of a researcher/writer in such a situation is critical as well. For not only must she be open—vulnerable, as Behar suggests—to the people with whom she works as a means of spanning the chasm between a life of illness and a life of health, but she must also be sensitive to the reader's needs, for she is the reader's guide and surrogate.5 This role as guide and alter-ego demands that the researcher tell the story of other lives in a manner that enables the reader to empathetically and eagerly undertake a journey with the researcher into a world unlike her own.6Personal Engagement: The Researcher/WriterHoward Brody, doctor and medical ethicist, explains the necessity for stories of illness to be descriptive.7 He asserts that the stories in which we are most interested are not merely factual recitations; they are about what the illness means to the individual—they include how that person understands events. "It is far too simple-minded" he writes, to assume that "the writer of literature presents to us a world of fantasy that never existed whereas the author of a nonfictional pathography has some special insight into the world as it really exists, even if the relevant world is nothing but his own subjective experiences."8 He concludes "in stories of that sort (stories of the meaning of things) the line between so-called truth and fiction becomes more blurred and ceases to affect the uses we make of the stories for the deeper understanding of the human response to illness."9 Further, Brody continues, one must understand stories of sickness in order to truly develop a philosophical understanding of what it means to be ill. Such an understanding, Brody suggests, not only provides ethical guidance for health care workers and others but also will lead to improved care for patients and better education of health professionals.10 This view of... (shrink)

As the pagan classical world was subsumed into Christianity sexually hyperactive gods and goddesses transmuted into saints, their former statues that glorified the perfection of their bodies smashed into pieces and reimagined as austere two-dimensional icons to be worshipped by the new faithful. That dualistic and polemic narrative, where the soul’s purpose was to annihilate the body, survives today in the distinction between software and hardware, algorithms and robots, the former as the “ghosts” that animate the empty vessels, the “machines”. (...) But how does this narrative impact our cultural and social fantasies in the twenty-first century as we accelerate toward coexisting, uniting, or merging with intelligent artifacts? How does “humanness” blur when it is claimed by no-biological human-like entities too, or when humans augment their perception, consciousness and physical power through genetic engineering, drugs, or software and mechanical prostheses? Suppose we are destined to remake ourselves in the image of our ancient gods. Will it be through the embodiment of technologies in the physical reality, or through the complete disembodiment of our minds inside virtual worlds? (shrink)

The essay provides a commentary on Walter Benjamin’s “News from Flowers”, a review of the album of plant photography of Karl Blossfeldt. I place Benjamin’s account of Blossfeldt’s achievement both in relation to Goethe’s studies of the vegetal realm as well as to the fantasy world of Grandville’s Animated Flowers. This juxtaposition allows me to interpret Benjamin’s understanding of the possibilities opened by photography and the transformation it brings to the relation of art to science and the imagination.

Angesichts des Ausstellungsbetriebs, bei dem das, dem eine Ausstellung doch dienen soll: das Kunstwerk und sein Betrachter, immer mehr zur Staffage der Selbstinszenierung bedeutungsschwangerer Ausstellungsräume gerät, und angesichts einer von nahezu allen Wissenschaften, die mit Kunst sich beschäftigen, vollzogenen Verabschiedung des Kunstwerks als sinnvoller Kategorie, von einer Ästhetik im Ausgang vom Werk noch zu reden, scheint, gelinde gesagt, anachronistisch. Überall ist es offensichtlich und die entsprechenden Theorien sanktionieren es: Kunst ist, was das öffentliche Gerede und die Kaufkraft der Finanzfachleute dazu (...) macht, symbolisches und reales Kapital. Daß aber dieser Prozeß zu seiner Legitimation sich stets noch auf substantielle Werke bezieht, legt die Vermutung nahe, daß mit ihrem Verschwinden auch der Leerlauf des Betriebs sich offenbaren, dieser zusammenbrechen würde. So ist dasjenige, das die autonome Kunst zu verschlingen droht, zugleich dasjenige, das von ihrem Fortbestehen zeugt. – Wenn anders Kunst aber als autonom soll gelten können, so muß sie es in ihren Gebilden: den Kunstwerken selbst erweisen. (shrink)

_Philosophy in Cultural Theory_ boldly crosses disciplinary boundaries to offer a philosophical critique of cultural theory today. Drawing on the legacy of Walter Benjamin, Peter Osborne looks critically at central philosophical debates in cultural theory, such as: * the relationship between sign and image * the technological basis of cultural form * the conceptuality of art * the place of fantasy in human affairs. It will appeal to those in philosophy, cultural studies and art theory.

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN INTENTION & ATTENTION thread: Jeremy Fernando, Sitting in the Dock of the bay, watching... * R.H. Jackson, Reading Eyes * Gina Rae Foster, Nyctoleptic Nomadism: The Drift/Swerve of Knowing * Bronwyn Lay, Driftwood * Patricia Reed, Sentences on Drifitng * David Prater, drift: a way * * * * "… to sleep perchance to dream " 1 To dream: to be not quite asleep, yet not particularly awake. Or, rather: to be awake but not quite know it. For, it is only when we dream, when we are dreaming, that we know that we are not in that final sleep. But we can only know that we are dreaming, that we have dreamt, when we are awake, when we have awoken; after it is too late. When all we know is that the sleep beyond finitude, the sleep that is the step beyond, is not yet upon us, is only to come. To die to sleep … To dream: a sleep that refuses sleep. Perchance to dream: to drift—between sleep and sleep. Aye there's the rub For, can we even know if we have been sleeping? Or, if death has claimed us?—even if a little death. α Ω α Ω α Ω To drift: but from, to, what? For, to drift implies a certain direction that one was headed from, heading to, headed for; without these indications, markers, points in relation with each other, one would just be moving. Can one know—intend—one's drift? Certainly a stunt driver would say so. But even as (s)he is starting her slide, all that (s)he can know is that she is setting the car, herself, the car with herself in it, in motion: after which the drift itself takes over. After which, all (s)he can do is attend to it. At the point of the drift: both (s)he and the car are drifting—here, one might not even be able to separate the movement from those involved in it. Without either of them, there would not be a drift; there is no drifting without the drifter. Both the drifter and the drifting are in a relationality; in which, all that they can know is that they are in relation with each other. Hence, the drift itself is a relationality. A non-essence. But, it is not as if we cannot speak of it. Perhaps though: we can only speak of it as if we can speak of it. Always already an imaginary gesture; where what is being imagined is the relationality between the drift and the ones drifting. Thus, we have a situation where the drifter and drifting are in a relationality; where relationality itself is what is being imagined. Perhaps then, what are we drifting from, to? , is a moot question. As is, what is drifting? Perhaps then, all we can say is drift? To speak of drift is an attempt to speak of the unspeakable. Not that what is speakable and what is unspeakable are antonyms: if that were so, speaking the unspeakable would make no sense, be a contradiction. But that in every act of speaking, something unspeakable is potentially said: something that opens, ruptures, wounds even. And not just that—at the point where it punctures, speaking itself moves out of the way for the unspeakable; speaking itself disappears. "… the whole art is to know how to disappear before dying, and instead of dying. " 2 To disappear; or, to drift out of sight. Where the words themselves slip away. After all: "in the Beginning was the Word. It was only afterwards that Silence came." Perhaps the wish, the hope, is that "the end itself has disappeared …" (Baudrillard, 70) Remaining hidden from us. Perhaps only glimpsed when we dream. Secret. α Ω α Ω α Ω " Bury all your secrets in my skin " (Corey Taylor) Which is the problem: words cling. And they remain. Perhaps not ontologically; but they certainly remain to haunt us. And here, we should not forget Lucretius' lesson that communication occurs in the skin between the parties in communion with each other. Which is not to say that the encounter is determined by atoms—and more precisely atoms that move in straight lines until they collide with each other—that communication is pre-determined. For, one must not forget that will is found, discovered, enacted even, at the moment the atoms swerve. Clinamen . Drift. But even in their movement—drifting—they trace themselves into the skin between; a tangential touching. Perhaps only briefly. But even then, enough … "… there's always texture that betrays the place." (May Ee Wong) Here though, one must not forget that betrayal cannot happen in the absence of love. In fact, betrayal is the very excess of love: where one loves the other so much that one can no longer bear to see the other drift from what (s)he could have been. Whether that idealised other exists or is only in one's head is another question altogether. Perhaps, a fetishised other: keeping in mind that "fetishes are hinged around simulation." After all, "when one is supposed to show up as an oil rig diver no one is expecting actual crude oil" (Amanda Sordes); in fact, actualisation is the perfect way to destroy the fantasy. Perhaps then, the only way to maintain love for another is to maintain a proper distance, as it were, from love: allow the love to constantly alter, change. And here, one must not forget that if love is a relationality between one and another who remains wholly other (otherwise just a mere manifestation of the self), love is a relationality that knows nothing except for the fact that it is in a relation. For, to love one has to attend to—without subsuming another, some other, under oneself. Which means that to love, one has to be willing to risk, to open oneself, to allow oneself to be wounded, torn apart. In new ways, ways that we have yet to understand, come across, ways we do not yet have a name for. Thus, this movement in love is one that occurs in utter blindness; to not only the other, but to what love is. This is love as pure drifting. Perhaps always searching for love itself, without ever knowing what it is that it is looking for. Love: only at the very moment when the word love itself disappears. Perhaps all we can do is sit, and attend: watching the tides flowing away—as if they were having their "last swim of the summer." (Hendrik Speck) Like a butterfly. α Ω α Ω α Ω Isn't it quite amazing how the appearance of a butterfly can inject a stutter or pause into any conversation? Words and words pour out of the animals in assembly, before they are all of a sudden arrested by the passing flight. Heads turn to trace a lilting poetics, attempting to close the distance with this seemingly awkward beauty. There are no straight lines here, only a relative arrival and departure to bracket a brilliant and bewildering trajectory, surging and lurching in a vibrating and nomadic line avant la lettre. (Sean Smith, 'I Seek You: Countdown to Stereoscopic Tear') Before the letter. Before the possibility of naming. Before being sayable. Quite possibly also before language. And yet, a "surging and lurching," a movement with an effect—"vibrating and nomadic"—tracing itself before there is even anything to trace. Leaving something, even if that thing remains unknowable, for us to attend to. Drifting into us. I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee..." (Carly Simon) NOTES William Shakespeare, Hamlet , Act 3 Scene 1. Jean Baudrillard, Why hasn't everything already disappeared? , 25.  . (shrink)

Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993) and Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013) are fantasy films that use the device of practical immortality in order to raise important philosophical questions about what constitutes a good life and to explore the nature of romantic love. Groundhog Day provides fairly conventional answers about how to live a good life by focusing on issues of spiritual redemption, selflessness, and developing one’s human potential. In contrast, Lovers provides a dark portrayal of a civilization (...) on the brink of extinction but offers a glimmer of hope for the future. The lifestyle and values of married vampires Adam and Eve represent an alternative vision of the core values needed to sustain a better world: greater reliance on human imagination, maintaining a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world, creating and appreciating works of art and living in harmony with the natural world. Both films also offer a perspective on the importance of romantic love in living a good life. Although these perspectives often diverge from one another, they do overlap in some interesting ways. The style of film criticism used in this paper is inspired by the film philosophy of Stanley Cavell. (shrink)

This article tries to display some of the postulations that the German psychologist Rudolf Arnheim sketched out in his 1959 text Form and the consumer. It’s sustained that these postulations conclude that the artistic form is widely implicated in the confrontation of culture and a particular time, so if a crisis in form is to be taken as true, what is to come is an epochal twilight produced by a destabilization in its sense. Throughout this writing, the idea of a (...) crisis in culture is to be confronted with the apparent symbolic crisis of art, examining the consequent question about the loss of a narrative in the work of art. (shrink)

Originally published in 1961. The essays in this volume focus on the awareness of science and art, evolution and Freudian psychology. Besides the chapter on Darwin and Freud, the author discusses criticism, the fantasy element in drama and popular literature, the history of the novel, the motivation of science and the function of erotic art.

In contrast to [Susan] Sontag, who used the tools of literary criticism to evaluate sexually explicit fiction, I will use the conventions of pornography to interpret a dramatic monologue in which an expected sexual encounter fails to take place. In analyzing Rossetti’s “Jenny,” I will employ an interpretive model based on the work of [Steven] Marcus, [Susan] Griffin, and [Andrea] Dworkin. Despite different assumptions about sexuality—Marcus is a Freudian, Griffin believes in a mystical eros residing in the psyche and waiting (...) to be rediscovered, Dworkin regards heterosexuality as a construct for subjugating women and masking men’s homoerotic drive—they share several ideas applicable to “Jenny.” Although pornography features, and indeed perpetuates, various kinds of masculine power, especially the powers of money, class, and culture, it purports to be ahistorical in order to obscure its status as ideology. It depicts male sexuality as fear-laden aggression resulting in very little pleasure; thus it is not liberating on either a political or a personal basis. Pornography does not include “others.” Women are present only to be silenced, objectified, treated as screens on which a man projects his fantasies. Marcus, Griffin, and Dworkin are all concerned with what Suleiman calls “the representational or fantasmatic content” of pornography and “the political implications of that content.” The risks of emphasizing the representational—most especially, the denigration of language and style that result from Dworkin’s approach—can, as Suleiman says, be mitigated by careful attention to a particular text .In Rossetti’s poem, a young man attempts to purchase a night’s pleasure with a London prostitute named Jenny. After she thwarts his plans by falling asleep, he spends the night meditating about her beauty, speculating about her past, present, and future, and thinking about the causes of prostitution. Although Rossetti’s subject matter is consistent with the etymological definition of pornography as “writing about prostitutes,” he avoids the explicit depiction of sexual activity which has been the common element in most modern accounts of the genre. Indeed, the only physical contact between the narrator and Jenny occurs at daybreak when he places coins in her hair and gives her a parting kiss. Robin Sheets is associate professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. She has written on Thackeray, George Eliot, and other Victorian writers and is coauthor of The Woman Question: Society and Literature in Britain and American, 1837-1883. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to analyze the way in which Edmund Husserl deals with the problem of the constitution of image in his writings. The difference between a common thing and a work of art lies in the fact that the ‘thing’ is submitted as an object to perception, while the work of art is the product of the human capacity called imagination or fantasy (Phantasie). Therefore, the difference between perception (which is an objectifying act) and imagination (...) (which refers to a mental representation) is the fundamental difference Husserl operates with in his analysis of the phenomenological problem of the image building. I also want to show that Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of the image is fundamental in the understanding of the work of art (aesthetic phenomena including) and of its difference from a common thing. From the point of view of the History of Philosophy, the Husserlian analysis presupposes the overcoming of the classical opposition between subject and object, and the aesthetic experience is one of the (privileged) ways through which this overcoming can be achieved. (shrink)