This new, completely revised and re-written edition of aesthetics and subjectivity brings up to date the original book's account of the path of German philosophy from Kant, via Fichte and Holderlin, the early Romantis, Schelling, Hegel, Schleimacher, to Nietzsche, in view of recent historical research and contemporary arguments in philosophy and theory in the humanities. The original book helpe…
Here is an idea that just might save the world. It is that science, properly understood, provides us with the methodological key to the salvation of humanity. A version of this idea can be found in the works of Karl Popper. Famously, Popper argued that science cannot verify theories but can only refute them, and this is how science makes progress. Scientists are forced to think up something bet…
Marina Grishakova belongs to the younger generation scholars of the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics. Her book is part of a semio-narratological tradition of a single author or a single work research that tackles issues of wider theoretical import: applicability of the concept of “modeling” in the humanities, theory of mimesis and the function of experimental literature in (post)modernist c…
Over the past 20 years European theatre underwent fundamental changes in terms of aesthetic focus, institutional structure and in its position in society. The impetus for these changes was provided by a new generation in the independent theatre scene. This book brings together studies on the state of independent theatre in different European countries, focusing on the fields of dance and perfor…
With machines mediating most of our cultural practices, and innovations, obsolescence and revivals constantly transforming our relation with images and sounds, media feel more unstable than ever. But was there ever a ‘stable’ moment in media history? Inventing Cinema proposes to approach this question through an archaeology and epistemology of media machines. The archaeology analyses them a…
Ute Holl explores cinema as a cultural technique of trance, unconsciously transforming everyday spatio-temporal perception. The archaeology of experimental and anthropological cinema leads into psycho-physiological laboratories of the 19th century. Through personal and systematic catenations, avant-garde filmmaking is closely linked to the emerging aesthetics of feedback in cybernetic models of…
Victoria Aarons and Alan L. Berger show that Holocaust literary representation has continued to flourish—gaining increased momentum even as its perspective shifts, as a third generation adds its voice to the chorus of post-Holocaust writers. In negotiating the complex thematic imperatives and narrative conceits of the literature of these writers, this bold new work examines those structu…
Thinking Literature across Continents finds Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller— two thinkers from different continents, cultures, training, and critical perspectives— debating and reflecting upon what literature is and why it matters. Ghosh and Miller do not attempt to formulate a joint theory of literature; rather, they allow their different backgrounds and lively disagreements to stimulate…
In the story of the three baseball umpires, two novice umpires compete in boasting how they respect «truth» and the way things «really» are. One says, «I call them the way I see them»; the other, trying to trump this remark, responds, «I call them the way they are». Then enters the third, most seasoned umpire, saying, «They aren’t, until I call them». This book deals with two widel…
Research that deals with metaphors and linguistic imagery has increased in the last thirty years. However, studies that question existing theories of metaphor from a comparative perspective are less common. The reason for the present theoretical sketch was the metaphorical model of conceptualism, alias the cognitive theory of metaphor: at least with this theory, `metaphor' itself has become a m…