Overview

For Want of Ambiguity focuses on the need innate within the human being to make sense of the world through symbol, metaphor, and similar modes of expression. On the basis of a select number of contemporary works of art, this book shows the need for symbol and metaphor to be psychological, and therefore ultimately physiological, and does so from the perspectives, specifically, of psychoanalysis and neuroscience. The originality of the volume lies in its unique approach to interdisciplinarity: To enlarge knowledge in one discipline, it has become all too commonplace to turn to another with the result being a kind of epistemological contamination. Instead of explaining art either through neuroscience or psychoanalysis, the authors loosen the borders which limit agency and the sense of self, an expansion afforded by both art and psychoanalysis. For Want of Ambiguity shows that just as pixels are fused for improved image processing and perception, the nervous system - indeed, the human being - is not to be looked at pixel by pixel, but in the larger sphere of exchange where dynamic potential and possibility are endlessly freeing. Each of the six chapters of this book is devoted to ways in which contemporary art lives on the border between perception and imagination, between the physical and the metaphysical.

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9781442273856

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Reviews

If the purpose of learning is to better predict how to meet your needs in the world, then what is the purpose of art? This fascinating book explores how the brain deals with things that can never be mastered through prediction. Such things are among the most heartfelt. -- Mark Solms, PhD., psychoanalyst, neuropsychologist,and research chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association, South Africa

If the purpose of learning is to better predict how to meet your needs in the world, then what is the purpose of art? This fascinating book explores how the brain deals with things that can never be mastered through prediction. Such things are among the most heartfelt.--Mark Solms, PhD., psychoanalyst, neuropsychologist, and research chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association, South Africa

Author Information

Ludovica Lumer is a neuroscientist who earned her PhD from University College London where she worked in the department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology conducting seminal research in the field of neuroaesthetics on the relationship between visual perception and artistic representation. She coauthored (with Marta Dell'Angelo) C'e da perderci la testa: scoprire il cervello giocando con l'arte, the first introductory book on neuroscience for children, using art as a pedagogical guide to understanding brain function, and (with Semir Zeki) La bella e la Bestia, a book on neuroscience and contemporary art. Dr. Lumer has long collaborated with renown international art institutions on curatorial and educational projects. Additionally, she has lectured for many years in the Psychology Department of Milano-Bicocca University. Dr. Lumer currently lives in New York where she is in private practice as a psychoanalyst. Lois Oppenheim is university distinguished scholar, professor of French, and chair of the department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Montclair State University where she teaches courses in literature and interdisciplinary psychoanalysis. She earned her PhD from New York University and trained at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. She is both Scholar Associate Member of that institute and Honorary Member of the William Alanson White Society. Dr. Oppenheim has authored over ninety papers and authored or edited fourteen books, the most recent being Psychoanalysis and the Artistic Endeavor: Conversations with Literary and Visual Artists, Imagination from Fantasy to Delusion - awarded the 2013 Courage to Dream Prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association - and A Curious Intimacy: Art and Neuro-psychoanalysis.

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