Aesthetic Action

Author:   Florian Klinger
Publisher:   Stanford University Press
ISBN:  

9781503636972


Pages:   404
Publication Date:   02 January 2024
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Our Price $165.99 Quantity:  
Add to Cart

Share |

Aesthetic Action


Add your own review!

Overview

In this new book, Florian Klinger gives readers a basic action-theoretical account of the aesthetic. While normal action fulfills a determinate concept, Klinger argues, aesthetic action performs an indeterminacy by suspending the action's conceptual resolution. Taking as examples work by Tino Sehgal, Kara Walker, Mazen Kerbaj, Marina Abramovic, Cy Twombly, and Franz Kafka, the book examines indeterminacy in such instances as a walk that is at once leisurely and purposeful, a sound piece that is at once joyous and mournful and mechanical, or a sculpture that at once draws one in and shuts one out. Because it has irresolution as its point, aesthetic action presents itself as an unsettling of ourselves, our ways, our very sense of who we are. As performers of such action, we don't recognize one another as bearers of a shared human form as we normally would, but find ourselves tasked anew with figuring out what sharing a form would mean. In conversation with philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Anscombe; political thinkers such as Marx and Lorde; and contemporary interlocutors such as Michael Thompson, Sebastian Roedl, and Thomas Khurana, Klinger's book makes a case for a conception of the human form that systematically includes the aesthetic: an actualization of the form that is indeterminate and nevertheless rational. The book gives the project of Western philosophical aesthetics a long-overdue formulation for our present that aims to do justice to contemporary aesthetic production as it actually exists. It will appeal to those working in philosophy, art, and political thought.

Full Product Details

Author:   Florian Klinger
Publisher:   Stanford University Press
Imprint:   Stanford University Press
ISBN:  

9781503636972


ISBN 10:   1503636976
Pages:   404
Publication Date:   02 January 2024
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Preface ONE. The Unsettling 1. The Thought of Aesthetic Distinction 2. Life Form and Settledness 3. Aesthetic Unsettling 4. The Use of Unsettling 5. The Account TWO. Accounting for Ourselves 1. Determinacy 2. The Original Scene of Self-Determination 3. Form as Answer: Hegel's Conception of the Aesthetic as Determinacy 4. Form as Question: A Conception of the Aesthetic as Indeterminacy 5. The Task of a Unified Accounting THREE. A Three-Way Capacity 1. Rationality and Indeterminacy 2. A Rational Capacity 3. Failed Attempts at Conceiving Indeterminacy 4. Indeterminacy as Part of Our Form 5. Indeterminacy as Such FOUR. Logical Account of Aesthetic Action: Aspectual Irresolution 1. The Concept of Aesthetic Action 2. Distinction through Aspectual Irresolution 3. Internal Unity in Crisis 4. Aesthetic Indeterminacy 5. External Unity with Action at Large FIVE. Material Account of Aesthetic Action: Bond without Terms 1. Logical and Material Accounting 2. Bond without Terms 3. Aesthetic Interaction 4. Life as Such 5. The Question of Who We Are SIX. Aesthetic Transformation 1. Aesthetic Action as Transformation 2. Performance without Resources 3. The Work of Aspectual Irresolution 4. Transformation That Includes Its Terms 5. The Aesthetic Self SEVEN. The Use of the Aesthetic 1. The Political as Example 2. Our Form as Political Task 3. Tino Sehgal: Genus Politics 4. Kara Walker: Politics of Difference 5. Mazen Kerbaj: Politics of Life as Such Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews

"""With ingenious, stunning readings, Klinger breaks new ground in aesthetics. This is a philosophy of art with which thinkers and scholars will contend for years to come.""—Henry W. Pickford, Duke University ""Aesthetic Action offers a highly original and substantial outline of a new understanding of aesthetics. This is an important and rigorous contribution to emerging conversations in philosophy, of highest interest for readers interested in giving an account of contemporary art.""—Rüdiger Campe, Yale University ""Klinger gives us an entirely new way of understanding the indeterminacy of our encounters with art. In his incisive analyses he offers a truly fresh view of art, one that opens the fields of interaction each work creates.""—Niklaus Largier, University of California, Berkeley ""This book rethinks action through aesthetics and aesthetics through action, providing us with a new insight into the kind of unsettling that the aesthetic is and affords.""—María del Rosario Acosta López, University of California, Riverside"


Author Information

Florian Klinger is Associate Professor in Germanic Studies and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Theory of Form: Gerhard Richter and Art in the Pragmatist Age (2022).

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions
Latest Reading Guide

wl

Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty
Shopping cart
Mailing List