The German Left and Aesthetic Politics


Book Description

Franz Mehring : literary practice as a socialist form -- Political spontaneism and cultural practice -- Märten and the development of a theoretical position : from reformism to the November Revolution -- The 'German October' and reconfiguration -- Wittfogel's critique of Thalheimer's introduction.




The Present Prospects of Social Art History


Book Description

The Present Prospects of Social Art History represents a major reconsideration of how art historians analyze works of art and the role that historical factors, both those at the moment when the work was created and when the historian addresses the objects at hand, play in informing their interpretations. Featuring the work of some of the discipline's leading scholars, the volume contains a collection of essays that consider the advantages, limitations, and specific challenges of seeing works of art primarily through a historical perspective. The assembled texts, along with an introduction by the co-editors, demonstrate an array of possible methodological approaches that acknowledge the crucial role of history in the creation, reception, and exhibition of works of art.







A Companion to American Art


Book Description

A Companion to American Art presents 35 newly-commissioned essays by leading scholars that explore the methodology, historiography, and current state of the field of American art history. Features contributions from a balance of established and emerging scholars, art and architectural historians, and other specialists Includes several paired essays to emphasize dialogue and debate between scholars on important contemporary issues in American art history Examines topics such as the methodological stakes in the writing of American art history, changing ideas about what constitutes “Americanness,” and the relationship of art to public culture Offers a fascinating portrait of the evolution and current state of the field of American art history and suggests future directions of scholarship




The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume 6, The Nineteenth Century, c.1830–1914


Book Description

In the nineteenth century, literary criticism first developed into an autonomous, professional discipline in the universities. This volume provides a comprehensive and authoritative study of the vast field of literary criticism between 1830 and 1914. In over thirty essays written from a broad range of perspectives, international scholars examine the growth of literary criticism as an institution, and the major critical developments in diverse national traditions and in different genres, as well as the major movements of Realism, Naturalism, Symbolism and Decadence. The History offers a detailed focus on some of the era's great critical figures, such as Sainte-Beuve, Hippolyte Taine and Matthew Arnold, and includes essays devoted to the connections of literary criticism with other disciplines in science, the arts and Biblical studies. The publication of this volume marks the completion of the monumental Cambridge History of Literary Criticism from antiquity to the present day.




Imaginary Relations


Book Description

This book sets out to clarify the nature of the aesthetic as a category within the theory of historical materialism. It opens with an analysis of Marx's brief discussion of Greek art in the Grundrisse, moves through a series of readings of specifically bourgeois texts, including those of Ruskin, G.M. Hopkins, Nietzsche and Henry James, and then to the terrain of Marxism in the concepts of history underwriting the work of Fredric Jameson and Jean-Paul Sartre. Sprinkler detours through the recent works of Perry Anderson to set the stage for a systematic consideration of the theoretical itinerary and continuing relevance of the contributions of Louis Althusser. Imaginary Relations is a cogently argued attempt to shift the terrain of Marxist theorizing about art from the domain of ideology considered as simply false consciousness to a concept of art which makes aesthetic texts sources of empirical data about the real, historical world.




Materializing Art History


Book Description

Item discusses Marxist art history in relation to the social history of art.




The Dialectics of Art


Book Description

To the question of &lquo;what is art?&rquo;, it is often simply responded that art is whatever is produced by the artist. For John Molyneux, this clearly circular answer is deeply unsatisfying. In a tour de force spanning renaissance Italy and the Dutch Republic to contemporary leading figures, The Dialectics of Art instead approaches its subject matter as a distinct field of creative human labour that emerges alongside and in opposition to the alienation and commodification brought about by capitalism. The pieces and individuals Molyneux examines — from Michelangelo’s Slaves to Rembrandts Jewish Bride to the vast drip paintings of Jackson Pollock – are presented as embodying the social contradictions of their times, giving art an inherently political relevance. In its relationship of creative and dialectical tension to prevailing social relationships and norms, such art points beyond the existing order of things, hinting at a potential future society not based on alienated labour in which creative production becomes the property and practice of all.




Language and State


Book Description

This book is a study of the growth of human society from the perspective of language. It argues that when humans begin to use language for communication, they develop and use media. Media extend the distance of communication, allowing humans to interact with one another on a large scale and form a large society. Language leads to the dissolution of primitive society and the formation of civilized society. From the formation of civilisation, humans began to group themselves by way of ethnicity or nationality. They have made themselves a people, a community, a nation and a state. They then govern their state through various types of linguistic presentations: appellation, constitution, election, and representation – all linguistic mechanisms that contribute to the building of the state and its system of governance. The spirit of the state is then built through the development of history, philosophy, literature and art, religion and law. Language has preset the whole process of the growth of the state. This book can be a reference book of political science, political linguistics or political philosophy, to be read by university students and professors.