In this book Christoph Menke attempts to explain art's sovereign power to subvert reason without falling into an error common to Adorno's negative dialectics and Derrida's deconstruction.

In this book Christoph Menke attempts to explain art's sovereign power to subvert reason without falling into an error common to Adorno's negative dialectics and Derrida's deconstruction. Recent discussions of aesthetics, whether in the hermeneutic or the analytic tradition, understand the place of art and aesthetic experience according to a model of autonomy--as just one among the many modes of experience that make up the realm of reason, situated beside the other spheres of value. In contrast, Theodor Adorno and Jacques Derrida view art and aesthetic experience as a medium for the dissolution of nonaesthetic reason, an experientially enacted critique of reason. Art is not only autonomous, following its own law, different from nonaesthetic reason, but sovereign: it subverts the rule of reason.In this book Christoph Menke attempts to explain art's sovereign power to subvert reason without falling into an error common to Adorno's negative dialectics and Derrida's deconstruction. The error, which already appeared in romanticism, is to conceive of the sovereignty of art as reflecting the superiority of its knowledge. For art entails no knowledge and its negativity toward reason cannot be articulated as an insight into the nature of reason: art is sovereign not despite, but because of, its autonomy. Menke brings to his arguments a firm grounding in both philosophy and literary studies, as well as familiarity with German, French, and American sources.

Recent discussions of aesthetics, whether in the hermeneutic or the analytic tradition, understand the place of art and aesthetic experience according to a model of "autonomy"--as just one among the many modes of experience that make up the realm of reason, situated beside the other "spheres of value." In contrast, Theodor Adorno and Jacques Derrida view art and aesthetic experience as a medium for the dissolution of nonaesthetic reason, an experientially enacted critique of reason. Art is not only autonomous, following its own law, different from nonaesthetic reason, but sovereign: it subverts the rule of reason.In this book Christoph Menke attempts to explain art's sovereign power to subvert reason without falling into an error common to Adorno's negative dialectics and Derrida's deconstruction. The error, which already appeared in romanticism, is to conceive of the sovereignty of art as reflecting the superiority of its knowledge. For art entails no knowledge and its negativity toward reason cannot be articulated as an insight into the nature of reason: art is sovereign not despite, but because of, its autonomy. Menke brings to his arguments a firm grounding in both philosophy and literary studies, as well as familiarity with German, French, and American sources.

"Creating Aztlâan interrogates the important role of Aztlâan in Chicano and Indigenous art and culture. Using the idea that lowriding is an Indigenous way of being, author Dylan A. T. Miner (Mâetis) discusses the multiple roles that Aztlâan has played atvarious moments in time, engaging pre-colonial indigeneities, alongside colonial, modern, and contemporary Xicano responses to colonization"--

In this wide-ranging book, renowned philosopher and cultural theorist Peter Sloterdijk examines art in all its rich and varied forms: from music to architecture, light to movement, and design to typography. Moving between the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, his analyses span the centuries, from ancient civilizations to contemporary Hollywood. With great verve and insight he considers the key issues that have faced thinkers from Aristotle to Adorno, looking at art in its relation to ethics, metaphysics, society, politics, anthropology and the subject. Sloterdijk explores a variety of topics, from the Greco-Roman invention of postcards to the rise of the capitalist art market, from the black boxes and white cubes of modernism to the growth of museums and memorial culture. In doing so, he extends his characteristic method of defamiliarization to transform the way we look at works of art and artistic movements. His bold and original approach leads us away from the well-trodden paths of conventional art history to develop a theory of aesthetics which rejects strict categorization, emphasizing instead the crucial importance of individual subjectivity as a counter to the latent dangers of collective culture. This sustained reflection, at once playful, serious and provocative, goes to the very heart of Sloterdijk’s enduring philosophical preoccupation with the aesthetic. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy and aesthetics and will appeal to anyone interested in culture and the arts more generally.

This book brings together leading scholars and practitioners to take stock of the frictions generated by a tumultuous time in the Australian art field and to probe what the crises might mean for the future of the arts in Australia. Specific topics include national and international art markets; art practices in their broader social and political contexts; social relations and institutions and their role in contemporary Australian art; the policy regimes and funding programmes of Australian governments; and national and international art markets. In addition, the collection will pay detailed attention to the field of indigenous art and the work of Indigenous artists. This book will be of interest to scholars in contemporary art, art history, cultural studies, and Indigenous peoples.