The Aesthetics of Ambiguity

The Aesthetics of Ambiguity PDF Author: Nav Haq
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789492095763
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In today?s globalised world, terms such as multiculturalism and pluralism assume a shared culture with shared values and convictions about openness, democracy, and equality. This in turn can be seen as a monoculture of views and attitudes. Yet being able to deal with differences, paradoxes, and ambiguities results from a learning process and does not just happen on its own. Art has played a pivotal role in this process since the dawn of modernity, and artists in particular have the ability to play with cultural conventions. This book gives a platform to art and artists who dare to challenge the rules of our globalised, monocultural society, and explores their successes and failures.

The Aesthetics of Ambiguity

The Aesthetics of Ambiguity PDF Author: Nav Haq
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789492095763
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
In today?s globalised world, terms such as multiculturalism and pluralism assume a shared culture with shared values and convictions about openness, democracy, and equality. This in turn can be seen as a monoculture of views and attitudes. Yet being able to deal with differences, paradoxes, and ambiguities results from a learning process and does not just happen on its own. Art has played a pivotal role in this process since the dawn of modernity, and artists in particular have the ability to play with cultural conventions. This book gives a platform to art and artists who dare to challenge the rules of our globalised, monocultural society, and explores their successes and failures.

Embodying Ambiguity

Embodying Ambiguity PDF Author: Catriona MacLeod
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814325391
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Embodying Ambiguity traces the shifts in the representation of the androgyny myth in the literature and aesthetics of the late eighteenth century and nineteenth century. Catriona MacLeod examines important pedagogic implications of the androgyny ideal for Classical, Romantic, and Realist texts, beginning with Aristophane's narrative of the origin of human sexuality in Plato's Symposium and including the hermaphroditic androgyny proposed by Winckelmann and the heterosexual complementary model found in Schiller and Schlegel.

Potential Images

Potential Images PDF Author: Dario Gamboni
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 9781861891495
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
In Potential Images Dario Gamboni explores ambiguity in modern art, considering images that rely to a great degree on a projected or imaginative response from viewers to achieve their effect. Ambiguity became increasingly important in late 19th- and early 20th-century aesthetics, as is evidenced in works by such artists as Redon, Cezanne, Gauguin, Ensor and the Nabis. Similarly, the Cubists subverted traditional representational conventions, requiring their viewers to decipher images to extract their full meanings. The same device was taken up in the various experiments leading to abstraction. For example, it was Kandinsky's intention that his work could be interpreted in both figurative and non-figurative ways, and Duchamp's Readymades suggested the radical conclusion that 'it is the beholder who makes the picture'. These invitations to viewers to participate in the process of artistic communication had social and political implications, as they accorded artist and beholder symmetrical, almost interchangeable, roles.

Strategies of Ambiguity in Ancient Literature

Strategies of Ambiguity in Ancient Literature PDF Author: Martin Vöhler
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110715813
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Ambiguity in the sense of two or more possible meanings is considered to be a distinctive feature of modern art and literature. It characterizes the "open artwork" (Eco) and is generated by "disruptive tactics" (Wellershoff) and strategies to engender uncertainty. While ambiguity is seen as a "paradigm of modernity" (Bode), there is skepticism regarding its use in the pre-modern era. Older studies were dominated by the conviction that there was a lack of ambiguity in pre-modernity because, according to the rules of the "old rhetoric", ambiguity was seen as an avoidable error (vitium) and a violation of the dictate of clarity (perspicuitas). The aim of the volume is to re-examine the putative "absence of ambiguity" in the pre-modern era. Is it not possible to find clear examples of deliberately employed (intended) ambiguity in antiquity? Are the oracles and riddles, the Palinode of Stesichoros and Socrates (Phaedrus), the dissoi logoi of rhetoric, the ambiguities of the tragedies all exceptions or do they not indicate a distinct interest in the artistic use of ambiguity? The presentations of the conference, which will include scholars from various philologies, will combine a recourse to theoretical concepts of intended ambiguity with exemplary analyses from the field of pre-modern art and literature.

A History of Ambiguity

A History of Ambiguity PDF Author: Anthony Ossa-Richardson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691188777
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
Ever since it was first published in 1930, William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity has been perceived as a milestone in literary criticism—far from being an impediment to communication, ambiguity now seemed an index of poetic richness and expressive power. Little, however, has been written on the broader trajectory of Western thought about ambiguity before Empson; as a result, the nature of his innovation has been poorly understood. A History of Ambiguity remedies this omission. Starting with classical grammar and rhetoric, and moving on to moral theology, law, biblical exegesis, German philosophy, and literary criticism, Anthony Ossa-Richardson explores the many ways in which readers and theorists posited, denied, conceptualised, and argued over the existence of multiple meanings in texts between antiquity and the twentieth century. This process took on a variety of interconnected forms, from the Renaissance delight in the ‘elegance’ of ambiguities in Horace, through the extraordinary Catholic claim that Scripture could contain multiple literal—and not just allegorical—senses, to the theory of dramatic irony developed in the nineteenth century, a theory intertwined with discoveries of the double meanings in Greek tragedy. Such narratives are not merely of antiquarian interest: rather, they provide an insight into the foundations of modern criticism, revealing deep resonances between acts of interpretation in disparate eras and contexts. A History of Ambiguity lays bare the long tradition of efforts to liberate language, and even a poet’s intention, from the strictures of a single meaning.

Lincoln

Lincoln PDF Author: Steven Johnston
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442261315
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
In this book, political theorist Steve Johnston explores Lincoln’s thought and political philosophy, but also his intentional and shrewdly calculated ambiguity – enabling him to be maximally politically effective in the face of unprecedented challenges.

Allegory in Iranian Cinema

Allegory in Iranian Cinema PDF Author: Michelle Langford
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350113263
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Iranian filmmakers have long been recognised for creating a vibrant, aesthetically rich cinema whilst working under strict state censorship regulations. As Michelle Langford reveals, many have found indirect, allegorical ways of expressing forbidden topics and issues in their films. But for many, allegory is much more than a foil against haphazardly applied censorship rules. Drawing on a long history of allegorical expression in Persian poetry and the arts, allegory has become an integral part of the poetics of Iranian cinema. Allegory in Iranian Cinema explores the allegorical aesthetics of Iranian cinema, explaining how it has emerged from deep cultural traditions and how it functions as a strategy for both supporting and resisting dominant ideology. As well as tracing the roots of allegory in Iranian cinema before and after the 1979 revolution, Langford also theorizes this cinematic mode. She draws on a range of cinematic, philosophical and cultural concepts - developed by thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Christian Metz and Vivian Sobchack - to provide a theoretical framework for detailed analyses of films by renowned directors of the pre-and post-revolutionary eras including Masoud Kimiai, Dariush Mehrjui, Ebrahim Golestan, Kamran Shirdel, Majid Majidi, Jafar Panahi, Marziyeh Meshkini, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and Asghar Farhadi. Allegory in Iranian Cinema explains how a centuries-old means of expression, interpretation, encoding and decoding becomes, in the hands of Iran's most skilled cineastes, a powerful tool with which to critique and challenge social and cultural norms.

Art and the Absolute

Art and the Absolute PDF Author: William Desmond
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438400926
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Art and the Absolute restores Hegel's aesthetics to a place of central importance in the Hegelian system. In so doing, it brings Hegel into direct relation with the central thrust of contemporary philosophy. The book draws on the astonishing scope and depths of Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics, exploring the multifaceted issue of art and the absolute. Why does Hegel ascribe absoluteness to art? What can such absoluteness mean? How does it relate to religion and philosophy? How does Hegel's view of art illuminate the contemporary absence of the absolute? Art and the Absolute argues that these aesthetic questions are not mere theoretical conundrums for abstract analysis. It argues that Hegel's understanding of art can provide an indispensable hermeneutic relevant to current controversies. Art and the Absolute explores the intricacies of Hegel's aesthetic thought, communicating its contemporary relevance. It shows how for Hegel art illuminates the other areas of significant human experience such as history, religion, politics, literature. Against traditional, closed views, the result is a challenge to re-read Hegel's aesthetic philosophy.

Strategic Ambiguities

Strategic Ambiguities PDF Author: Eric M. Eisenberg
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1452238642
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
"Eisenberg′s book is refreshing, in addition to its theoretical merits, for the presence of a distinctive human voice, unafraid to express passion, anger and hope. Readers will benefit enormously from the substance of his book, but also from its form." —HUMAN RELATIONS In Strategic Ambiguities: Essays on Communication, Organization, and Identity, Eric M. Eisenberg, an internationally recognized leader in the theory and practice of organizational communication, collects and reflects upon more than two decades of his writing. Strategic Ambiguities is a provocative journey through the development of a new aesthetics of communication that rejects fundamentalisms and embraces a contingent, life-affirming worldview. Strategic Ambiguities: Explores the role of language and communication in the construction of social structures and personal identities. Provides a useful intellectual and historical context for students through framing chapters and head notes developed especially for this volume. Chronicles the historical development of an important argument about communicating and organizing through the sustained focus on a single theorist. Intended Audience: This text is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses such as Organizational Communication, Communication Theory, and Organizational Behavior in the fields of Communication, Business & Management, and Educational Leadership. "This collection of essays is insightful, thought-provoking, and forward-looking. Eric Eisenberg takes on challenging positions, writes in a cogent and accessible manner, and always stimulates new scholarship. This work will be an important teaching tool, not just for the innovative content of the writing, but also for the historical narrative of organizational communication embedded in it." —Steve May, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Lay audiences will find the text rich with evocative narratives even as the theoretical moves will engage students and teacher-scholars. This edited compilation is likely to serve as a springboard for future inquiry and an invaluable resource for teaching and learning in undergraduate and graduate communication courses." —THE REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION

Guilty Aesthetic Pleasures

Guilty Aesthetic Pleasures PDF Author: Timothy Aubry
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674988965
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
In the wake of radical social movements in the 1960s and 1970s, literary studies’ embrace of politics entailed a widespread rejection of aesthetic considerations. For scholars invested in literature’s role in supporting or challenging dominant ideologies, appreciating literature’s formal beauty seemed frivolous and irresponsible, even complicit with the iniquities of the social order. This suspicion of aesthetics became the default posture within literary scholarship, a means of establishing the rigor of one’s thought and the purity of one’s political commitments. Yet as Timothy Aubry explains, aesthetic pleasure never fully disappeared from the academy. It simply went underground. From New Criticism to the digital humanities, Aubry recasts aesthetics as the complicated, morally ambiguous, embattled yet resilient protagonist in late twentieth-century and early twenty-first–century literary studies. He argues that academic critics never stopped asserting preferences for certain texts, rhetorical strategies, or intellectual responses. Rather than serving as the enemy of formalism and aesthetics, political criticism enabled scholars to promote heightened experiences of perceptual acuity and complexity while adjudicating which formal strategies are best designed to bolster these experiences. Political criticism, in other words, did not eradicate but served covertly to nurture reading practices aimed at achieving aesthetic satisfaction. Guilty Aesthetic Pleasures shows that literary studies’ break with midcentury formalism was not as clean as it once appeared. Today, when so many scholars are advocating renewed attention to textual surfaces and aesthetic experiences, Aubry’s work illuminates the surprisingly vast common ground between the formalists and the schools of criticism that succeeded them.