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The present volume is to date the only comprehensive study of the beginnings of narrative prose writing in South Africa, covering the period from the 1890s to the 1920s. As can only be expected from a multi-ethnic as well as multicultural society, a varied history like this does not lend itself to being presented as a narrative of literary development and change along a linear continuum. If literature is conceived of as a cultural activity whose task it is to process and reflect upon the social experience and the discourses prevalent in a given society, a context as diverse as the South African one can only give rise to a number of competing stories that refuse to be merged into a single and coherent literary history. The authors thus dealt with in more detail are Sol T. Plaatje, Thomas Mofolo, Douglas Blackburn, Olive Schreiner, Samuel E.K. Mqhayi, Herman Charles Bosman, Stephen Black, C.J. Langenhoven and Louis Leipholdt.
Aesthetic and Ethical Transformations
Series:
Ästhetische Praxis, Volume: 3
Editor:
This volume explores and expands a Wittgensteinian account of philosophy as an ongoing practice and exercise. It investigates the simultaneously aesthetic and ethical dimension of philosophical exercises, so as to uncover their transformative potential for and within ordinary practice, conceived of as a weave of trained, embodied habits. For this purpose, the volume focuses on three intertwined aspects:
1. It examines the aesthetic form of Wittgenstein’s texts, so as to consider the use of pictures, comparisons, and instructions as exercises to be enacted by readers, and further analyzes the transformative effects – both aesthetic and ethical – that such exercises bring out.
2. It draws a number of connections between Wittgenstein’s philosophical exercises and particular aesthetic practices.
3. It sheds light on continuities and discontinuities between Wittgenstein’s account of philosophy and the ancient conception of philosophy as an exercise and a way of life.
1. It examines the aesthetic form of Wittgenstein’s texts, so as to consider the use of pictures, comparisons, and instructions as exercises to be enacted by readers, and further analyzes the transformative effects – both aesthetic and ethical – that such exercises bring out.
2. It draws a number of connections between Wittgenstein’s philosophical exercises and particular aesthetic practices.
3. It sheds light on continuities and discontinuities between Wittgenstein’s account of philosophy and the ancient conception of philosophy as an exercise and a way of life.
Stream – Archive – Ambience
The ubiquity of digital images is an effect of their distributive versatility. They can be stored almost indefinitely, transmitted instantaneously, reproduced without transformations, visualized in many layers, dated and processed. Their mobilization does not take place randomly, but follows a complex media logistics of format standards, infrastructures and transport calculations. Digital images will be and are distributed: not as sessile objects, bindingly fixed entities, but as stream-like modulated processes. The study conceptualizes actors and agendas of image data traffic, examines retro-digitized archive image corpora in terms of media history and distribution histories, and deals with 'calmed' image sensor operations in intelligent environments.
The Meaning of Eric Voegelin’s Theory of Representation
Editor:
Die aktuelle Krise der liberalen Demokratie ist in den Mittelpunkt der verfassungsrechtlichen, historischen, philosophischen, theologischen und politischen Analyse gerückt. Der Populismus und die wachsende Abneigung gegen politische Eliten und ihre Dominanz in den Volksvertretungen stellt zunehmend das Wesen der Repräsentanz und die Beziehung zwischen Repräsentanz und Demokratie in Frage. Die Gefährdung von repräsentativen Demokratien durch autoritär auftretende politische Führungsfiguren hat der berühmte Politikwissenschaftler Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) nach Überwindung des Faschismus in Europa mit den Worten beschrieben: “If a government is nothing but representative in the constitutional sense, a representative ruler in the existential sense will sooner or later make an end of it; and quite possibly the new existential ruler will not be too representative in the constitutional sense”.
Body, Word and Free Will in On the Song of Songs by Bernard of Clairvaux
What is love, what kinds of love are there, how do these relate, and how does the Christian tradition articulate the problem of love in view of the triangulation of self, neighbour and God? In short, what is the relationship between human love (eros) and divine love (agape)? This is the problem of love at the heart of the Chrisitan tradition in which God is love (1 Jn 4.8). A historical overview shows that four models have addressed the problem of love in tradition: univocity, equivocity, analogy and metamorphosis. In the first, eros and agape collapse into one reality. According to the second, eros and agape are mutually exclusive realities. In the third model, eros and agape relate in terms of similarities and only to a limited degree. The model of metamorphosis orients desire towards an integrative and higher transformation of eros and agape. This book develops the model of metamorphosis based on a philosophical reading of "On the Song of Songs" by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153).
Diese Arbeit stellt einen neuartigen Ansatz vor, die symbolischen Strukturen, die der traditionellen chinesischen Tuschmalerei zugrunde liegen, zu verstehen und im interkulturellen Kontext zu vermitteln. Lichen Zhang nimmt damit eine substantielle Erweiterung von Ernst Cassirers Konzeption des menschlichen Geistes als einem universellen symbolischen Netzwerk vor und beweist stringent die Anwendbarkeit des symbolphilosophischen Konzepts auf die bildende Kunst. Das Buch stellt mit eindrucksvollen Bildbeispielen die weitreichenden Konsequenzen dieses neuen Blickwinkels anhand der traditionellen chinesischen Tuschmalerei dar. So wird der Einfluss, den chinesische Philosophien, Ethik, Religion, Gesellschaft und frühe Naturwissenschaften über die Jahrhunderte hinweg auf die Kunst hatten, durch systematische Aufarbeitung als Objektivierung einer geistigen Aktivität offenbar.
Cultural Representations of Housing across Media
Contributors:
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Few ideas are as universally key, basic and primal as “home”. Few ideas require more attention and new, critical re-examination in recognition of ongoing social change. In the post-pandemic and ecological reflection on how we live and approach “home” in its diverse definitions, engagement with this topic is only bound to grow in the future. This rapidly rising interest in the multidisciplinary field of housing studies is reflected also by our collection, which can be seen as an introduction to the entire research area thanks to the opening chapter, outlining its history and complexity. The following chapters by an international group of scholars representing different generations and methodological approaches examine some of the many meanings of home, houses or housing as they have been expressed in Western culture, not only across time but also across varied media: from traditional and digital theatre, through varied literary genres, to film and television, photography and street art.
Vol. I–Vol. VI
Bis zum 31.12.2022 gilt der Subskriptionspreis € 998,00 - später: € 1.298.00
Cy Twombly (1928–2011), one of America’s most important artists, inscribed on his works written notes and fragments of poetry, even whole poems, throughout the whole period of his creative activity. The present Catalogue of Inscriptions for the first time collects in six opulent volumes all 901 of Twombly’s written notations, presenting them in transcription and in the context of their 113 different literary sources, and so traces the artist’s lifelong intellectual engagement with poetry and the forms of the scriptural. More than 90% of the decipherment and more than half of the authors quoted by Twombly are first assignments.
Roland Barthes described Cy Twombly’s oeuvre as a “work of writing”. In fact, Twombly’s use of written texts clearly sets him apart from other second generation representatives of the New York School (Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns). Twombly provided around 40% of his pictorial works from 1953 onwards with textual notations and literary quotations from poets from antiquity to the present day, such as Sappho, Praxilla, Rumi, ʿAbbās ibn al-Aḥnaf, Keats, Rilke, Bachmann, Faiz Ahmed Faiz or Patricia Waters. Yet the level of meaning of the handwritten inscriptions remains an element of his pictorial language whose interpretation is still disputed today, since only 19 poets have been cited to date.
On the basis of the publication, the scriptural becomes clearly recognizable for the first time as an equal element in the structure of Cy Twombly’s work and an essential medium of signification in his pictorial world. The introductory volume, drawing on the results of the work of transcription and ascription, analyzes how Twombly’s inscriptional practice developed and how complex constellations of iconotextual references are created between the scriptural and the graphic in his works. Against the background of the conception of poetics of Charles Olson, Twombly’s teacher at Black Mountain College, it becomes evident that in Twombly the scriptural is the principal bearer of “remanence”, the phenomenon that enables a re-enactment, in each present moment of reception, of what is represented. Cy Twombly described this energy force and emotional intensity as “the phenomenon of finding the memory of something that has vanished and left no trace of itself”.
Cy Twombly (1928–2011), one of America’s most important artists, inscribed on his works written notes and fragments of poetry, even whole poems, throughout the whole period of his creative activity. The present Catalogue of Inscriptions for the first time collects in six opulent volumes all 901 of Twombly’s written notations, presenting them in transcription and in the context of their 113 different literary sources, and so traces the artist’s lifelong intellectual engagement with poetry and the forms of the scriptural. More than 90% of the decipherment and more than half of the authors quoted by Twombly are first assignments.
Roland Barthes described Cy Twombly’s oeuvre as a “work of writing”. In fact, Twombly’s use of written texts clearly sets him apart from other second generation representatives of the New York School (Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns). Twombly provided around 40% of his pictorial works from 1953 onwards with textual notations and literary quotations from poets from antiquity to the present day, such as Sappho, Praxilla, Rumi, ʿAbbās ibn al-Aḥnaf, Keats, Rilke, Bachmann, Faiz Ahmed Faiz or Patricia Waters. Yet the level of meaning of the handwritten inscriptions remains an element of his pictorial language whose interpretation is still disputed today, since only 19 poets have been cited to date.
On the basis of the publication, the scriptural becomes clearly recognizable for the first time as an equal element in the structure of Cy Twombly’s work and an essential medium of signification in his pictorial world. The introductory volume, drawing on the results of the work of transcription and ascription, analyzes how Twombly’s inscriptional practice developed and how complex constellations of iconotextual references are created between the scriptural and the graphic in his works. Against the background of the conception of poetics of Charles Olson, Twombly’s teacher at Black Mountain College, it becomes evident that in Twombly the scriptural is the principal bearer of “remanence”, the phenomenon that enables a re-enactment, in each present moment of reception, of what is represented. Cy Twombly described this energy force and emotional intensity as “the phenomenon of finding the memory of something that has vanished and left no trace of itself”.
Translated from Italian by Robert T. Valgenti
This essay develops a theory of improvisation as practice of aesthetic sense-making. While considering all arts, references are made to many concrete cases. A topic in vogue since the XX. century, as evidenced by the great philosophers who were interested in it (Ryle, Derrida, Eco among others), improvisation, a felicitous mixture of habit and creativity, norm and freedom, is constitutive of human action. Human practices – including very well-regulated activities such as playing chess, piloting airplanes, or medicine – permit and often require it to varying degrees.
Improvisation is also the true source of artistic experience. Consequently, the aesthetics of improvisation result in a philosophy of art: Art was born as improvisation. Yet improvisation has its own aesthetic dimension: that of a "grammar of contingency" in which notions such as emergence, presence, curiosity and authenticity explain the pleasures of joyful adventure and empathic involvement elicited by improvisation.
Improvisation is also the true source of artistic experience. Consequently, the aesthetics of improvisation result in a philosophy of art: Art was born as improvisation. Yet improvisation has its own aesthetic dimension: that of a "grammar of contingency" in which notions such as emergence, presence, curiosity and authenticity explain the pleasures of joyful adventure and empathic involvement elicited by improvisation.
Classical Theories and New Perspectives
Cultural memory has been a concept for already 30 years. But what is social memory? The topics of memory, remembering and forgetting are meeting with increasing resonance in sociology. This introduction to the sociology of memory is the first to systematically develop some of the basic theories in this field and to provide an overview of the issues and problems involved.