Forbidden Aesthetics Ethical Justice And Terror In Modern Western Culture

Forbidden Aesthetics, Ethical Justice, and Terror in Modern Western Culture explores the subjective experience of the beautiful in the face of terror and human tragedy. Emmanouil Aretoulakis proposes that behind the horror, repulsion, and outrage felt by humanity before images of natural or man-made catastrophes/acts of terror(ism) throughout the centuries lurks a kind of inexplicable individual fascination which is closely connected to the Kantian idea of the disinterested judgement of the beautiful as well as the Burkean concept of delight before real catastrophe. At stake is an aesthetic experience of the beautiful, that most of us, eye witnesses or other, would not be willing to acknowledge due to the immorality of such a concession. That feeling which goes unacknowledged because improper is a forbidden feeling and the aesthetics connected with it is a forbidden aesthetics. The forbidden aesthetics Aretoulakis proposes is naturally dominant in representations of the par excellence terrorist event of the twenty-first century, 11 September 2001, but shows itself also in other catastrophic landmarks in history. For instance, the Hiroshima/Nagasaki nuclear bombing in 1945, or the 1755 Lisbon tsunami, both of which could be characterized, radically, as terrorist manifestations too, regardless of whether the former event took place in the context of a generalized war while the latter emerged as a symptom of natural terrorism, the terrorism of nature. This book will be of interest to philosophers who work on aesthetics and ethics and students in literary studies and psychology.

The present state of research in precarity demands meta-questions and hence we need to probe both philosophy and practice in light of precarity’s different manifestations. The plural perspectives by which this phenomenon can be addressed also suggest potential for further theorization alongside that of Butler and her critics. By inviting scholars and experts from different fields and disciplines, and by applying multiple frameworks, methodological approaches, and critical lenses, this volume seeks to explore the different facets of our precarious world, while providing insights into the challenges of our possible futures.

This book focuses on literal and metaphorical ruins, as they are appropriated and imagined in different forms of writing. Examining British and American literature and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the book begins in the era of industrial modernity with studies of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Henry James and Daphne Du Maurier. It then moves on to the significance of ruins in the twentieth century, against the backdrop of conflict, waste and destruction, analyzing authors such as Beckett and Pinter, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Leonard Cohen. The collection concludes with current debates on ruins, through discussions of Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, as well as reflections on the refugee crisis that take the ruin beyond the text, offering new perspectives on its diverse legacies and conceptual resources.

Challenging the ‘success story’ of curiosity from original sin to intellectual virtue, this study uses an innovative methodological approach to the history of ideas as a non-teleological neural network based on current research in information technology and neurophysiology. The network offers a dynamic alternative to the ‘development’ of curiosity within the progress-oriented mythology of the Enlightenment, emphasizing the oscillation and interaction of ideas within the processes of their construction, as well as exposing the power relations behind them. The text corpus focuses on enactments of curiosity in English literature of the 'Long' Eighteenth Century (c. 1680-1818), such as transgression of boundaries, breach of taboo, gendered curiosity, sensationalism, or academic endeavour, bringing together a variety of examples from all major genres. The Age of Curiosity contributes to current debates on a post-Foucauldian renewal of Lovejoy’s history of ideas in Enlightenment studies, exploring both curiosity as an indispensable trait for the search of answers to the fundamental yet unresolved questions of ‘identity’ or ‘truth’, and its potential as cura, the care for others and the world.

Strong Foundations addresses policy requirements from the Early Years Learning Framework, the National Quality Standard and Quality Improvement Plans, highlighting links between research and practice, and making connections to the five EYLF Learning Outcomes. The book showcases evidence from Australian and international research.

Crossroads! Intersections physical and/or metaphorical demand processes of consideration, determination, decision and commitment. Stasis is no longer an option where convergence is poised before the unknown. Where categories such as gender, culture, ethnicity, socio-economic status, philosophy and religion clash, the multivariate process can reach such complexity that literary, sociological and psychological tools can have differing interpretations. Real-life intersections range from the mundane (choosing among food items on a menu according to taste preferences) to survival-determinants (evaluating the efficacy of various medical procedures). But such intersections are at the two ends of a very long continuum that takes in issues of form/function, and traditional vs.modern. For example, Home may be defined both as a physical place and/or a mental construct. In more esoteric contexts, artists chiefly known for visual production, representing their ideas with color and form, not infrequently cross media to paint with words. Philosophy, religion, art and literature cross paths via symbols and other visual and linguistic constructs. Writers deal with how and where their own or their characters multiple identities intersect. The Hispanic world is an extraordinarily vivid place to explore these crossroads. This collection of essays addresses a multitude of crossroads in numerous Hispanic contexts across the intersections of time & space/tradition & modernity. The contexts are wide-ranging; e.g., the visual, architectural: how Spains age-old oenological tradition meets modern technology, how the vestiges of long-term dictatorship lurk in the spaces of Spains democracy; and how space/architecture, and art/poetry cross in Latin America. Painters Pablo Picasso and Frida Kahlos productions cross the visual to the written; and magical realism products of the twentieth century Latin American artistic movement defy nature, science, time and space.

This book explores the concept of 'cognitive injustice': the failure to recognise the different ways of knowing by which people across the globe run their lives and provide meaning to their existence. Boaventura de Sousa Santos shows why global social justice is not possible without global cognitive justice. Santos argues that Western domination has profoundly marginalised knowledge and wisdom that had been in existence in the global South. She contends that today it is imperative to recover and valorize the epistemological diversity of the world. Epistemologies of the South outlines a new kind of bottom-up cosmopolitanism, in which conviviality, solidarity and life triumph against the logic of market-ridden greed and individualism.

Does the study of aesthetics have tangible effects in the real world? Does examining the work of diaspora writers and artists change our view of "the Other"? In this thoughtful book, Ebrahimi argues that an education in the humanities is as essential as one in politics and ethics, critically training the imagination toward greater empathy. Despite the surge in Iranian memoirs, their contributions to debunking an abstract idea of terror and their role in encouraging democratic thinking remain understudied. In examining creative work by women of Iranian descent, Ebrahimi argues that Shirin Neshat, Marjane Satrapi, and Parsua Bashi make the Other familiar and break a cycle of reactionary xenophobia. These authors, instead of relying on indignation, build imaginative bridges in their work that make it impossible to blame one evil, external enemy. Ebrahimi explores both classic and hybrid art forms, including graphic novels and photo-poetry, to advocate for the importance of aesthetics to inform and influence a global community. Drawing on the theories of Rancière, Butler, Arendt, and Levinas, Ebrahimi identifies the ways in which these works give a human face to the Other, creating the space and language to imagine a new political and ethical landscape.