The Sense Of Semblance Philosophical Analyses Of Holocaust Art

The Sense of Semblance is the first book to incorporate contemporary analytic philosophy in interpretations of art and architecture, literature, and film about the Holocaust. The book’s principal aim is to move beyond the familiar debates surrounding postmodernism by demonstrating the usefulness of alternative theories of meaning and understanding from the Anglophone analytic tradition. The book takes as its starting point the claim that Holocaust artworks must fulfill at least two specific yet potentially reciprocally countervailing desiderata: they must meet aesthetic criteria (lest they be, say, merely historical documents) and they must meet historical criteria (they must accurately represent the Holocaust, lest they be merely artworks). I locate this problematic within the tradition of philosophical aesthetics, as a version of the conflict between aesthetic autonomy and aesthetic heteronomy, and claim that Theodor W. Adorno’s “dialectic of aesthetic semblance” describes the normative demand that a successful artwork maintain a dynamic tension between these dual desiderata. While working within a framework inspired by Adorno, the book further claims that certain concepts and lines of reasoning from contemporary philosophy best explicate how individual artworks fulfill these dual desiderata, including the causal theory of names, the philosophy of tacit knowledge, analytic philosophy of quotation, Sartre’s theory of the imaginary, work in the epistemology of testimony, and Walter Benjamin’s theory of dialectical images. Individual chapters provide close readings of lyric poetry by Paul Celan (including a critique of Derridean deconstruction), Holocaust memorials in Berlin, texts by the Austrian quotational artist Heimrad Bäcker, Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah and Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus. The result is a set of interpretations of Holocaust artworks that, in their precision, specificity and clarity, inaugurate a dialogue between contemporary analytic philosophy and contemporary art.

The Sense of Semblance is the first book to incorporate contemporary analytic philosophy in interpretations of art and architecture, literature, and film about the Holocaust. The book's principal aim is to move beyond the familiar debates surrounding postmodernism by demonstrating the usefulness of alternative theories of meaning and understanding from the Anglophone analytic tradition. The book takes as its starting point the claim that Holocaust artworks must fulfill at least two specific yet potentially reciprocally countervailing desiderata: they must meet aesthetic criteria (lest they be, say, merely historical documents) and they must meet historical criteria (they must accurately represent the Holocaust, lest they be merely artworks). I locate this problematic within the tradition of philosophical aesthetics, as a version of the conflict between aesthetic autonomy and aesthetic heteronomy, and claim that Theodor W. Adorno's "dialectic of aesthetic semblance" describes the normative demand that a successful artwork maintain a dynamic tension between these dual desiderata. While working within a framework inspired by Adorno, the book further claims that certain concepts and lines of reasoning from contemporary philosophy best explicate how individual artworks fulfill these dual desiderata, including the causal theory of names, the philosophy of tacit knowledge, analytic philosophy of quotation, Sartre's theory of the imaginary, work in the epistemology of testimony, and Walter Benjamin's theory of dialectical images. Individual chapters provide close readings of lyric poetry by Paul Celan (including a critique of Derridean deconstruction), Holocaust memorials in Berlin, texts by the Austrian quotational artist Heimrad Bäcker, Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah and Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus. The result is a set of interpretations of Holocaust artworks that, in their precision, specificity and clarity, inaugurate a dialogue between contemporary analytic philosophy and contemporary art.

Public space is political space. When a work of public art is put up or taken down, it is an inherently political statement, and the work’s aesthetics are inextricably entwined with its political valences. Democracy’s openness allows public art to explore its values critically and to suggest new ones. However, it also facilitates artworks that can surreptitiously or fortuitously undermine democratic values. Today, as bigotry and authoritarianism are on the rise and democratic movements seek to combat them, as Confederate monuments fall and sculptures celebrating diversity rise, the struggle over the values enshrined in the public arena has taken on a new urgency. In this book, Fred Evans develops philosophical and political criteria for assessing how public art can respond to the fragility of democracy. He calls for considering such artworks as acts of citizenship, pointing to their capacity to resist autocratic tendencies and reveal new dimensions of democratic society. Through close considerations of Chicago’s Millennium Park and New York’s National September 11 Memorial, Evans shows how a wide range of artworks participate in democratic dialogues. A nuanced consideration of contemporary art, aesthetics, and political theory, this book is a timely and rigorous elucidation of how thoughtful public art can contribute to the flourishing of a democratic way of life.

This collection explores Rancière's thought along a number of music-historical trajectories, including Italian and German opera, Romantic and modernist music, Latin American and South African music, jazz, and contemporary popular music, and sets him in dialogue with key thinkers including Adorno, Althusser, Badiou and Deleuze.

"Ending violent conflict requires societies to take leaps of political imagination. Artistic communities are often uniquely placed to help promote new thinking by enabling people to see things differently. In place of conflict’s binary divisions, artists are often charged with exploring the ambiguities and possibilities of the excluded middle. Yet, their role in peacebuilding remains little explored. This excellent and agenda-setting volume provides a ground-breaking look at a range of artistic practices, and the ways in which they have attempted to support peacebuilding – a must-read for all practitioners and policy-makers, and indeed other peacemakers looking for inspiration."Professor Christine Bell, FBA, Professor of Constitutional Law, Assistant Principal (Global Justice), and co-director of the Global Justice Academy, The University of Edinburgh, UK "Peacebuilding and the Arts offers an impressive and impressively comprehensive engagement with the role that visual art, music, literature, film and theatre play in building peaceful and just societies. Without idealizing the role of the arts, the authors explore their potential and limits in a wide range of cases, from Korea, Cambodia, Colombia and Northern Ireland to Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa and Israel-Palestine."Roland Bleiker, Professor of International Relations, University of Queensland, Australia, and author of Aesthetics and World Politics and Visual Global Politics "Peacebuilding and the Arts is the first publication to focus critically and comprehensively on the relations between the creative arts and peacebuilding, expanding the conventional boundaries of peacebuilding and conflict transformation to include the artist, actor, poet, novelist, dramatist, musician, dancer and film director. The sections on the visual arts, music, literature, film and theatre, include case studies from very different cultures, contexts and settings but a central theme is that the creative arts can play a unique and crucial role in the building of peaceful and just societies, with the power to transform relationships, heal wounds, and nurture compassion and empathy. Peacebuilding and the Arts is a vital and unique resource which will stimulate critical discussion and further research, but it will also help to refine and reframe our understanding of peacebuilding. While it will undoubtedly become mandatory reading for students of peacebuilding and the arts, its original approach and dynamic exploratory style should attract a much wider interdisciplinary audience."Professor Anna King, Professor of Religious Studies and Social Anthropology and Director of Research, Centre of Religion, Reconciliation and Peace (WCRRP), University of Winchester, UK This volume explores the relationship between peacebuilding and the arts. Through a series of original essays, authors consider some of the ways that different art forms (including film, theatre, music, literature, dance, and other forms of visual art) can contribute to the processes and practices of building peace. This book breaks new ground, by setting out fresh ways of analysing the relationship between peacebuilding and the arts. Divided into five sections on the Visual Arts, Music, Literature, Film and Theatre/Dance, over 20 authors offer conceptual overviews of each art form as well as new case studies from around the globe and critical reflections on how the arts can contribute to peacebuilding. As interest in the topic increases, no other book approaches this complex relationship in the way that Peacebuilding and the Arts does. By bringing together the insights of scholars and practitioners working at the intersection of the arts and peacebuilding, this book develops a series of unique, critical perspectives on the interaction of diverse art forms with a range of peacebuilding endeavours.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Filming the End of the Holocaust considers how the US Government commissioned the US Signal Corps and other filmmakers to document the horrors of the concentration camps during the April-May 1945 liberation. The evidence of the Nazis' genocidal actions amassed in these films, some of them made by Hollywood luminaries such as John Ford and Billy Wilder, would go on to have a major impact at the Nuremberg Trials; they helped to indict Nazi officials as the judges witnessed scenes of torture, human experimentation and extermination of Jews and non-Jews in the gas chambers and crematoria. These films, some produced by the Soviets, were integral to the war crime trials that followed the Holocaust and the Second World War, and this book provides a thorough, close analysis of the footage in these films and their historical significance. Using research carried out at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the US National Archives and the film collection at the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University, this book explores the rationale for filming the atrocities and their use in the subsequent trials of Nazi officials in greater detail than anything previously published. Including an extensive bibliography and filmography, Filming the End of the Holocaust is an important text for scholars and students of the Holocaust and its aftermath.

This volume is a comprehensive Handbook of Russian thought that provides an in-depth survey of major figures, currents, and developments in Russian intellectual history, spanning the period from the late eighteenth century to the late twentieth century. Written by a group of distinguished scholars as well as some younger ones from Russia, Europe, the United States, and Canada, this Handbook reconstructs a vibrant picture of the intellectual and cultural life in Russia and the Soviet Union during the most buoyant period in the country's history. Contrary to the widespread view of Russian modernity as a product of intellectual borrowing and imitation, the essays collected in this volume reveal the creative spirit of Russian thought, which produced a range of original philosophical and social ideas, as well as great literature, art, and criticism. While rejecting reductive interpretations, the Handbook employs a unifying approach to its subject matter, presenting Russian thought in the context of the country's changing historical landscape. This Handbook will open up a new intellectual world to many readers and provide a secure base for its further exploration.

Combining the philosophy and musicology of T.W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze, alongside an exploration of the dialectical character of music production, Joseph Weiss exposes the unresolved contradictions of contemporary music. By following the outermost mediations between nature, history, and technology, the book reflects on how advanced music critically responds to the ongoing catastrophe of both the Middle Passage and Auschwitz. Following what the author calls the “categorical imperative” of music, Weiss investigates the significance of a wide range of musical phenomena including the territorialization of the lullaby, the improvisation and sorrow song of the blues and jazz, as well as the cosmological limits of the electroacoustic avant-garde. In the era of commodity production, racialized violence and dispossession, the author defends critical music as a singular index of political possibilities.