The Politics and Aesthetics of Refusal

The Politics and Aesthetics of Refusal

Author: Caroline Hamilton

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2009-03-26

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1443806390

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The Politics and Aesthetics of Refusal is an eclectic collection of essays from emerging academics who engage with the notion of “refusal” both as the embodiment of a resistance to conventional boundaries between academic disciplines, and as a concept with an underlying negative or reactive force that can be widely interpreted and applied. The applications of “refusal” outlined in this volume—ranging from activism and the politics of cultural production through to problems of identity and knowledge classification—raise questions about often-elided relationships of agency and complicity in routine experience. The sense of “refusal” that emerges from this book is perhaps most easily classified by what it is not—namely, a prescriptive, conclusive, or unified account of what it is to reject, react, or work against any particular instance of theory or practice in any given domain. The value of a thematically-oriented collection like this is its ability to work across disciplines, media, and philosophical frameworks rather than limiting its focus to a narrow territory. According to Herbert Marcuse, refusal must not only be the guiding principle for all artistic creation, it must also be a manifestation of artistic creation itself. With this volume, we have attempted to compose a collection which is not only theoretically guided by refusal, but practically informed by it as well. The collection in itself constitutes, we hope, a constructive rejection of the usual constrictions of discipline and approach placed upon new scholars. "This rich collection of essays on the political, aesthetic and ethical dimensions of that form of social action called refusal is an important contribution to our understanding of the tensions and contradictions of contemporary culture." John Frow, Professor of English Literary Studies at the University of Melbourne


Book Synopsis The Politics and Aesthetics of Refusal by : Caroline Hamilton

Download or read book The Politics and Aesthetics of Refusal written by Caroline Hamilton and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics and Aesthetics of Refusal is an eclectic collection of essays from emerging academics who engage with the notion of “refusal” both as the embodiment of a resistance to conventional boundaries between academic disciplines, and as a concept with an underlying negative or reactive force that can be widely interpreted and applied. The applications of “refusal” outlined in this volume—ranging from activism and the politics of cultural production through to problems of identity and knowledge classification—raise questions about often-elided relationships of agency and complicity in routine experience. The sense of “refusal” that emerges from this book is perhaps most easily classified by what it is not—namely, a prescriptive, conclusive, or unified account of what it is to reject, react, or work against any particular instance of theory or practice in any given domain. The value of a thematically-oriented collection like this is its ability to work across disciplines, media, and philosophical frameworks rather than limiting its focus to a narrow territory. According to Herbert Marcuse, refusal must not only be the guiding principle for all artistic creation, it must also be a manifestation of artistic creation itself. With this volume, we have attempted to compose a collection which is not only theoretically guided by refusal, but practically informed by it as well. The collection in itself constitutes, we hope, a constructive rejection of the usual constrictions of discipline and approach placed upon new scholars. "This rich collection of essays on the political, aesthetic and ethical dimensions of that form of social action called refusal is an important contribution to our understanding of the tensions and contradictions of contemporary culture." John Frow, Professor of English Literary Studies at the University of Melbourne


Space, Politics and Aesthetics

Space, Politics and Aesthetics

Author: Mustafa Dikec

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2015-06-04

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0748686010

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Mustafa Dikec reveals the aesthetic premises that underlie Hannah Arendt, Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Ranciere's political thinking, and demonstrates how their politics depend on the construction and apprehension of worlds through spatial forms and distrib


Book Synopsis Space, Politics and Aesthetics by : Mustafa Dikec

Download or read book Space, Politics and Aesthetics written by Mustafa Dikec and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mustafa Dikec reveals the aesthetic premises that underlie Hannah Arendt, Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Ranciere's political thinking, and demonstrates how their politics depend on the construction and apprehension of worlds through spatial forms and distrib


The Politics of Aesthetics

The Politics of Aesthetics

Author: Jacques Rancière

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2013-05-08

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1780936877

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The Politics of Aesthetics rethinks the relationship between art and politics, reclaiming "aesthetics" from the narrow confines it is often reduced to. Jacques Rancière reveals its intrinsic link to politics by analysing what they both have in common: the delimitation of the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, the thinkable and the unthinkable, the possible and the impossible. Presented as a set of inter-linked interviews, The Politics of Aesthetics provides the most comprehensive introduction to Rancière's work to date, ranging across the history of art and politics from the Greek polis to the aesthetic revolution of the modern age. Available now in the Bloomsbury Revelations series 10 years after its original publication, The Politics of Aesthetics includes an afterword by Slavoj Zizek, an interview for the English edition, a glossary of technical terms and an extensive bibliography.


Book Synopsis The Politics of Aesthetics by : Jacques Rancière

Download or read book The Politics of Aesthetics written by Jacques Rancière and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-08 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics of Aesthetics rethinks the relationship between art and politics, reclaiming "aesthetics" from the narrow confines it is often reduced to. Jacques Rancière reveals its intrinsic link to politics by analysing what they both have in common: the delimitation of the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, the thinkable and the unthinkable, the possible and the impossible. Presented as a set of inter-linked interviews, The Politics of Aesthetics provides the most comprehensive introduction to Rancière's work to date, ranging across the history of art and politics from the Greek polis to the aesthetic revolution of the modern age. Available now in the Bloomsbury Revelations series 10 years after its original publication, The Politics of Aesthetics includes an afterword by Slavoj Zizek, an interview for the English edition, a glossary of technical terms and an extensive bibliography.


A Feminist Theory of Refusal

A Feminist Theory of Refusal

Author: Bonnie Honig

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 067424849X

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An acclaimed political theorist offers a fresh, interdisciplinary analysis of the politics of refusal, highlighting the promise of a feminist politics that does not simply withdraw from the status quo but also transforms it. The Bacchae, Euripides’s fifth-century tragedy, famously depicts the wine god Dionysus and the women who follow him as indolent, drunken, mad. But Bonnie Honig sees the women differently. They reject work, not out of laziness, but because they have had enough of women’s routine obedience. Later they escape prison, leave the city of Thebes, explore alternative lifestyles, kill the king, and then return to claim the city. Their “arc of refusal,” Honig argues, can inspire a new feminist politics of refusal. Refusal, the withdrawal from unjust political and economic systems, is a key theme in political philosophy. Its best-known literary avatar is Herman Melville’s Bartleby, whose response to every request is, “I prefer not to.” A feminist politics of refusal, by contrast, cannot simply decline to participate in the machinations of power. Honig argues that a feminist refusal aims at transformation and, ultimately, self-governance. Withdrawal is a first step, not the end game. Rethinking the concepts of refusal in the work of Giorgio Agamben, Adriana Cavarero, and Saidiya Hartman, Honig places collective efforts toward self-governance at refusal’s core and, in doing so, invigorates discourse on civil and uncivil disobedience. She seeks new protagonists in film, art, and in historical and fictional figures including Sophocles’s Antigone, Ovid’s Procne, Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp, Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna, and Muhammad Ali. Rather than decline the corruptions of politics, these agents of refusal join the women of Thebes first in saying no and then in risking to undertake transformative action.


Book Synopsis A Feminist Theory of Refusal by : Bonnie Honig

Download or read book A Feminist Theory of Refusal written by Bonnie Honig and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An acclaimed political theorist offers a fresh, interdisciplinary analysis of the politics of refusal, highlighting the promise of a feminist politics that does not simply withdraw from the status quo but also transforms it. The Bacchae, Euripides’s fifth-century tragedy, famously depicts the wine god Dionysus and the women who follow him as indolent, drunken, mad. But Bonnie Honig sees the women differently. They reject work, not out of laziness, but because they have had enough of women’s routine obedience. Later they escape prison, leave the city of Thebes, explore alternative lifestyles, kill the king, and then return to claim the city. Their “arc of refusal,” Honig argues, can inspire a new feminist politics of refusal. Refusal, the withdrawal from unjust political and economic systems, is a key theme in political philosophy. Its best-known literary avatar is Herman Melville’s Bartleby, whose response to every request is, “I prefer not to.” A feminist politics of refusal, by contrast, cannot simply decline to participate in the machinations of power. Honig argues that a feminist refusal aims at transformation and, ultimately, self-governance. Withdrawal is a first step, not the end game. Rethinking the concepts of refusal in the work of Giorgio Agamben, Adriana Cavarero, and Saidiya Hartman, Honig places collective efforts toward self-governance at refusal’s core and, in doing so, invigorates discourse on civil and uncivil disobedience. She seeks new protagonists in film, art, and in historical and fictional figures including Sophocles’s Antigone, Ovid’s Procne, Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp, Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna, and Muhammad Ali. Rather than decline the corruptions of politics, these agents of refusal join the women of Thebes first in saying no and then in risking to undertake transformative action.


Baudelaire Contra Benjamin

Baudelaire Contra Benjamin

Author: Beibei Guan

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-05-23

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1498595081

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This book offers the first sustained argument against the philosophy of Walter Benjamin and his readings of Charles Baudelaire. More broadly, it is also a critique of politicized aesthetics and cultural Marxism, of which Benjamin is a pioneering and emblematic figure. Cristaudo and Beibei argue that Baudelaire was not mistaken in refusing to subject aesthetics to morality and politics. Baudelaire’s refusal was based on the recognition that existential matters, such as sickness, evil, death, sexual longing, melancholy, and beauty itself—all themes at the center of his poetry—are by nature intrinsically supra-political. By contrast, Benjamin’s faith in political redemption, while breaking with the enlightenment’s faith in progress, nevertheless conforms to another core element of faith of the enlightenment, via faith in the ability of morals and politics to liberate humanity. The authors make the case that Benjamin’s understanding of politics is severely deficient because it is not sufficiently versed in an understanding of economics or the nature of class interests, and that Marx’s own theory of economics is fundamentally deficient and creates an insurmountable problem for those deferring to a future industrial society free from capitalism.


Book Synopsis Baudelaire Contra Benjamin by : Beibei Guan

Download or read book Baudelaire Contra Benjamin written by Beibei Guan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-05-23 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first sustained argument against the philosophy of Walter Benjamin and his readings of Charles Baudelaire. More broadly, it is also a critique of politicized aesthetics and cultural Marxism, of which Benjamin is a pioneering and emblematic figure. Cristaudo and Beibei argue that Baudelaire was not mistaken in refusing to subject aesthetics to morality and politics. Baudelaire’s refusal was based on the recognition that existential matters, such as sickness, evil, death, sexual longing, melancholy, and beauty itself—all themes at the center of his poetry—are by nature intrinsically supra-political. By contrast, Benjamin’s faith in political redemption, while breaking with the enlightenment’s faith in progress, nevertheless conforms to another core element of faith of the enlightenment, via faith in the ability of morals and politics to liberate humanity. The authors make the case that Benjamin’s understanding of politics is severely deficient because it is not sufficiently versed in an understanding of economics or the nature of class interests, and that Marx’s own theory of economics is fundamentally deficient and creates an insurmountable problem for those deferring to a future industrial society free from capitalism.


The Politics and Aesthetics of Entrepreneurship

The Politics and Aesthetics of Entrepreneurship

Author: Daniel Hjorth

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1848446071

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Stylish, bold, fiery, and full of zest, this book could well have been called Embodying Entrepreneurship . . . for perhaps the first time, we have a cultured, scholarly, in-the-flesh treatment of entrepreneurial life. Ranging from striptease to de Sade, the aboriginal to Christo, and the grotesque to the sublime, The Politics and Aesthetics of Entrepreneurship is a tantalizing and critically refreshing work throughout. This one could easily become the bad boy book of entrepreneurial studies, given how strongly it challenges (slaps?) existing entrepreneurship studies. Daved Barry, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal Daniel Hjorth and Chris Steyaert make a unique contribution to management education. Their ability to illustrate complex ideas through theatre and visual media is outstanding and much appreciated by a wide audience. This book is no exception. Their insights into the nature of entrepreneurship are fresh and original. Their style of presentation is both rich and rewarding. This is a book to surprise you and it will. Heather Höpfl, University of Essex, UK . . . the four books comprising the series would certainly be a valuable addition to any entrepreneurship library. However, each book also stands alone as an individual purchase. Lorraine Warren, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research This fourth book in the New Movements in Entrepreneurship series focuses on the politics and aesthetics of entrepreneurial processes, in order to shed light on entrepreneurial creation itself. Presenting original empirical material, the eminent contributors examine control and entrepreneurship in various organizational contexts. They go on to demonstrate how control can be exercised entrepreneurially, how art brings an entrepreneurial force into society, and how entrepreneurship operates by aesthetic moves. The need to move beyond the traditional focus on the economic and business implications of entrepreneurship is also discussed, as is the relevance of political and aesthetic theory to our understanding of entrepreneurship as a creative force. The book provides entrepreneurship studies with a new language, that in itself is an aesthetic effort with political implications, resulting in new theoretical, empirical and practical possibilities. It will prove a fascinating read for students, academics and researchers with an interest in entrepreneurship and management and creativity and aesthetics.


Book Synopsis The Politics and Aesthetics of Entrepreneurship by : Daniel Hjorth

Download or read book The Politics and Aesthetics of Entrepreneurship written by Daniel Hjorth and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stylish, bold, fiery, and full of zest, this book could well have been called Embodying Entrepreneurship . . . for perhaps the first time, we have a cultured, scholarly, in-the-flesh treatment of entrepreneurial life. Ranging from striptease to de Sade, the aboriginal to Christo, and the grotesque to the sublime, The Politics and Aesthetics of Entrepreneurship is a tantalizing and critically refreshing work throughout. This one could easily become the bad boy book of entrepreneurial studies, given how strongly it challenges (slaps?) existing entrepreneurship studies. Daved Barry, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal Daniel Hjorth and Chris Steyaert make a unique contribution to management education. Their ability to illustrate complex ideas through theatre and visual media is outstanding and much appreciated by a wide audience. This book is no exception. Their insights into the nature of entrepreneurship are fresh and original. Their style of presentation is both rich and rewarding. This is a book to surprise you and it will. Heather Höpfl, University of Essex, UK . . . the four books comprising the series would certainly be a valuable addition to any entrepreneurship library. However, each book also stands alone as an individual purchase. Lorraine Warren, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research This fourth book in the New Movements in Entrepreneurship series focuses on the politics and aesthetics of entrepreneurial processes, in order to shed light on entrepreneurial creation itself. Presenting original empirical material, the eminent contributors examine control and entrepreneurship in various organizational contexts. They go on to demonstrate how control can be exercised entrepreneurially, how art brings an entrepreneurial force into society, and how entrepreneurship operates by aesthetic moves. The need to move beyond the traditional focus on the economic and business implications of entrepreneurship is also discussed, as is the relevance of political and aesthetic theory to our understanding of entrepreneurship as a creative force. The book provides entrepreneurship studies with a new language, that in itself is an aesthetic effort with political implications, resulting in new theoretical, empirical and practical possibilities. It will prove a fascinating read for students, academics and researchers with an interest in entrepreneurship and management and creativity and aesthetics.


The Aesthetics of Necropolitics

The Aesthetics of Necropolitics

Author: Natasha Lushetich

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-12-11

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1786606860

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The collection comprises contributions from leading artist-theorists in the fields of necropolitics and tactical media, and from increasingly influential scholars of biomediality and urban performativity


Book Synopsis The Aesthetics of Necropolitics by : Natasha Lushetich

Download or read book The Aesthetics of Necropolitics written by Natasha Lushetich and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collection comprises contributions from leading artist-theorists in the fields of necropolitics and tactical media, and from increasingly influential scholars of biomediality and urban performativity


Melodrama

Melodrama

Author: Jonathan Goldberg

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2016-07-22

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0822374048

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Offering a new queer theorization of melodrama, Jonathan Goldberg explores the ways melodramatic film and literature provide an aesthetics of impossibility. Focused on the notion of what Douglas Sirk termed the "impossible situation" in melodrama, such as impasses in sexual relations that are not simply reflections of social taboo and prohibitions, Goldberg pursues films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Todd Haynes that respond to Sirk's prompt. His analysis hones in on melodrama's original definition--a form combining music and drama--as he explores the use of melodrama in Beethoven's opera Fidelio, films by Alfred Hitchcock, and fiction by Willa Cather and Patricia Highsmith, including her Ripley novels. Goldberg illuminates how music and sound provide queer ways to promote identifications that exceed the bounds of the identity categories meant to regulate social life. The interaction of musical, dramatic, and visual elements gives melodrama its indeterminacy, making it resistant to normative forms of value and a powerful tool for creating new potentials.


Book Synopsis Melodrama by : Jonathan Goldberg

Download or read book Melodrama written by Jonathan Goldberg and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a new queer theorization of melodrama, Jonathan Goldberg explores the ways melodramatic film and literature provide an aesthetics of impossibility. Focused on the notion of what Douglas Sirk termed the "impossible situation" in melodrama, such as impasses in sexual relations that are not simply reflections of social taboo and prohibitions, Goldberg pursues films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Todd Haynes that respond to Sirk's prompt. His analysis hones in on melodrama's original definition--a form combining music and drama--as he explores the use of melodrama in Beethoven's opera Fidelio, films by Alfred Hitchcock, and fiction by Willa Cather and Patricia Highsmith, including her Ripley novels. Goldberg illuminates how music and sound provide queer ways to promote identifications that exceed the bounds of the identity categories meant to regulate social life. The interaction of musical, dramatic, and visual elements gives melodrama its indeterminacy, making it resistant to normative forms of value and a powerful tool for creating new potentials.


Listening to Images

Listening to Images

Author: Tina M. Campt

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2017-03-17

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 0822373580

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In Listening to Images Tina M. Campt explores a way of listening closely to photography, engaging with lost archives of historically dismissed photographs of black subjects taken throughout the black diaspora. Engaging with photographs through sound, Campt looks beyond what one usually sees and attunes her senses to the other affective frequencies through which these photographs register. She hears in these photos—which range from late nineteenth-century ethnographic photographs of rural African women and photographs taken in an early twentieth-century Cape Town prison to postwar passport photographs in Birmingham, England and 1960s mug shots of the Freedom Riders—a quiet intensity and quotidian practices of refusal. Originally intended to dehumanize, police, and restrict their subjects, these photographs convey the softly buzzing tension of colonialism, the low hum of resistance and subversion, and the anticipation and performance of a future that has yet to happen. Engaging with discourses of fugitivity, black futurity, and black feminist theory, Campt takes these tools of colonialism and repurposes them, hearing and sharing their moments of refusal, rupture, and imagination.


Book Synopsis Listening to Images by : Tina M. Campt

Download or read book Listening to Images written by Tina M. Campt and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-17 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Listening to Images Tina M. Campt explores a way of listening closely to photography, engaging with lost archives of historically dismissed photographs of black subjects taken throughout the black diaspora. Engaging with photographs through sound, Campt looks beyond what one usually sees and attunes her senses to the other affective frequencies through which these photographs register. She hears in these photos—which range from late nineteenth-century ethnographic photographs of rural African women and photographs taken in an early twentieth-century Cape Town prison to postwar passport photographs in Birmingham, England and 1960s mug shots of the Freedom Riders—a quiet intensity and quotidian practices of refusal. Originally intended to dehumanize, police, and restrict their subjects, these photographs convey the softly buzzing tension of colonialism, the low hum of resistance and subversion, and the anticipation and performance of a future that has yet to happen. Engaging with discourses of fugitivity, black futurity, and black feminist theory, Campt takes these tools of colonialism and repurposes them, hearing and sharing their moments of refusal, rupture, and imagination.


The Refusal of Politics

The Refusal of Politics

Author: Laurent Dubreuil

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781474426992

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Dubreuil provocatively proposes an extremist rethinking of the limits of politics - toward a break from politics, the political and policies. He calls for a refusal of politics, suggesting a form of apolitics that would make our lives more liveable.


Book Synopsis The Refusal of Politics by : Laurent Dubreuil

Download or read book The Refusal of Politics written by Laurent Dubreuil and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dubreuil provocatively proposes an extremist rethinking of the limits of politics - toward a break from politics, the political and policies. He calls for a refusal of politics, suggesting a form of apolitics that would make our lives more liveable.