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Aesthetics and Technology in Building: The Twenty-First-Century Edition
by Thomas Leslie Pier Nervi Cristiana Chiorino Elisabetta NerviThe UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The Pirelli skyscraper in Milan. The Palazetto dello Sport in Rome. The "soaring beauty" of Pier Luigi Nervi's visionary designs and buildings changed cityscapes in the twentieth century. His uncanny ingenuity with reinforced concrete, combined with a gift for practical problem solving, revolutionized the use of open internal space in structures like arenas and concert halls. Aesthetics and Technology in Building: The Twenty-First-Century Edition introduces Nervi's ideas about architecture and engineering to a new generation of students and admirers. More than 200 photographs, details, drawings, and plans show how Nervi put his ideas into practice. Expanding on the seminal 1961 Norton Lectures at Harvard, Nervi analyzes various functional and construction problems. He also explains how precast and cast-in-place concrete can answer demands for economy, technical and functional soundness, and aesthetic perfection. Throughout, he uses his major projects to show how these now-iconic buildings emerged from structural truths and far-sighted construction processes. This new edition features dozens of added images, a new introduction, and essays by Joseph Abram, Robert Einaudi, Alberto Bologna, and Gabriele Neri on Nervi's life, work, and legacy.
Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind: Beyond Art Theory and the Cartesian Mind-Body Dichotomy (Contributions To Phenomenology #73)
by Alfonsina ScarinziThe project of naturalizing human consciousness/experience has made great technical strides (e. g. , in mapping areas of brain activity), but has been hampered in many cases by its uncritical reliance on a dualistic "Cartesian" paradigm (though as some of the authors in the collection point out, assumptions drawn from Plato and from Kant also play a role). The present volume proposes a version of naturalism in aesthetics drawn from American pragmatism (above all from Dewey, but also from James and Peirce)--one primed from the start to see human beings not only as embodied, but as inseparable from the environment they interact with--and provides a forum for authors from diverse disciplines to address specific scientific and philosophical issues within the anti-dualistic framework considering aesthetic experience as a process of embodied meaning-making. Cross-disciplinary contributions come from leading researchers including Mark Johnson, Jim Garrison, Daniel D. Hutto, John T. Haworth, Luca F. Ticini, Beatriz Calvo-Merino. The volume covers pragmatist aesthetics, neuroaesthetics, enactive cognitive science, literary studies, psychology of aesthetics, art and design, sociology.
Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture
by Allen CarlsonTraditional aesthetics is often associated with the appreciation of art, Allen Carlson shows how much of our aesthetic experience does not encompass art but nature, in our response to sunsets, mountains or horizons or more mundane surroundings, like gardens or the view from our window.He argues that knowledge of what it is we are appreciating is essential to having an appropriate aesthetic experience and that scientific understanding of nature can enhance our appreciation of it, rather than denigrate it.
Aesthetics and the Iconoclasm of Contemporary Art: Pictures Without a World (SpringerBriefs in Philosophy)
by Žarko PaićThe main themes and aims of this book are understanding aesthetics, contemporary art and the end of the avant-garde not from the traditional viewpoint of the metaphysics of the beautiful and the sublime but rather thru close connection to the techno-genesis of virtual worlds. This book tackles problems in contemporary art theory such as the body in space and time of digital technologies, along with other issues in visual studies and image science. Further intentions exhibit the fundamental reasons for the disappearance of the picture in the era of virtual reality starting from the notion of contemporary art as realized iconoclasm; art has no world for its "image". The author argues that the iconoclasm of contemporary art has severe consequences. This text appeals to philosophers of art and those interested in contemporary art theory.
Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: Comparative Perspectives
by Prabha Shankar DwivediThis volume brings together the finest research on aesthetics and the philosophy of art by stalwart critics and leading scholars in the field. It discusses various themes, such as the idea of aesthetic perception, the nature of aesthetic experience, attitude theory, the relation of art to morality, representation in art, and the association of aesthetics with language studies in the Indian tradition. It deliberates over the theories and views of Aristotle, Freud, Plato, Immanuel Kant, T. S. Eliot, George Dickie, Leo Tolstoy, R. G. Collingwood, Michael H. Mitias, Monroe C. Beardsley, and Abhinavagupta, among others. The book offers a comparative perspective on Indian and Western approaches to the study of art and aesthetics and enables readers to appreciate the similarities and differences between the conceptions of aesthetics and philosophy of art on a comparative scale detailing various aspects of both. The first of its kind, this key text will be useful for scholars and researchers of arts and aesthetics, philosophy of art, cultural studies, comparative literature, and philosophy in general. It will also appeal to general readers interested in the philosophy of art.
Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition, An Anthology (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies)
by Peter Lamarque Stein Haugom OlsenFor over fifty years, philosophers working within the broader remit of analytic philosophy have developed and refined a substantial body of work in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, curating a core foundation of scholarship which offers rigor and clarity on matters of profound and perennial interest relating to art and all forms of aesthetic appreciation. Now in its second edition and thoroughly revised, Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art—The Analytic Tradition: An Anthology captures this legacy in a comprehensive introduction to the core philosophical questions and conversations in aesthetics. Through 57 key essays selected by leading scholars Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen, this anthology collects modern classics as well as new contributions on essential topics such as the identification and ontology of art, interpretation, values of art, art and knowledge, and fiction and the imagination. New to this edition are selections which treat aesthetic experience more widely, including essays on the aesthetics of nature and aesthetics in everyday life. Other carefully-chosen pieces analyze the practice and experience of specific art forms in greater detail, including painting, photography, film, literature, music, and popular art such as comics. This bestselling collection is an essential resource for students and scholars of aesthetics, designed to foster a foundational understanding of both long-standing and contemporary topics in the field.
Aesthetics and the Revolutionary City: Real and Imagined Havana (Studies of the Americas)
by James Clifford KentAesthetics and the Revolutionary City engages in alternative ways of reading foreign visual representations of Havana through analysis of advertising images, documentary films, and photographic texts. It explores key narratives relating to the projection of different Havana imaginaries and focuses on a range of themes including: pre-revolutionary Cuba; the dream of revolution; and the metaphor of the city “frozen-in-time.” The book also synthesizes contemporary debates regarding the notion of Havana as a real and imagined city space and fleshes out its theoretical insights with a series of stand-alone, important case studies linked to the representation of the Cuban capital in the Western imaginary. The interpretations in the book bring into focus a range of critical historical moments in Cuban history (including the Cuban Revolution and the “Special Period”) and consider the ways in which they have been projected in advertising, documentary film and photography outside the island.
Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art (Routledge Revivals)
by Janet WolffFirst published in 1983, Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art provides a lucid account of two divergent tendencies in the study of aesthetics. At the one extreme, traditional aestheticians have assumed that art and literature are wholly independent, following only the laws and inspirations of artists and artistic movements, and that the question of aesthetic value is accordingly unproblematic. At the other extreme, some sociologists have treated works of art as no more than manifestations of the socio-economic circumstances which produce them, arguing that aesthetic value is therefore entirely relative matter. Janet Wolff shows how both the extreme positions are untenable, and argues convincingly that we must accept that the conceptions and criteria of aesthetic value are socially constructed and inevitably ideological, while stopping short of the reductionist alternative which fails to recognise the irreducible questions of pleasure and of aesthetic discourse. This book provides an invaluably clear guide both to old debates and to otherwise obscure modern controversies, which will be welcomed both by students and scholars in the sociology of art, in aesthetics, in art history, and in literary criticism.
Aesthetics as Phenomenology: The Appearance of Things (Studies in Continental Thought)
by Günter FigalConnecting aesthetic experience with our experience of nature or with other cultural artifacts, Aesthetics as Phenomenology focuses on what art means for cognition, recognition, and affect—how art changes our everyday disposition or behavior. Günter Figal engages in a penetrating analysis of the moment at which, in our contemplation of a work of art, reaction and thought confront each other. For those trained in the visual arts and for more casual viewers, Figal unmasks art as a decentering experience that opens further possibilities for understanding our lives and our world.
Aesthetics at Large: Volume 1: Art, Ethics, Politics (Art, Ethics, Politics)
by Thierry de DuveImmanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Thierry de Duve argues in the first volume of Aesthetics at Large, is as relevant to the appreciation of art today as it was to the enjoyment of beautiful nature in 1790. Going against the grain of all aesthetic theories situated in the Hegelian tradition, this provocative thesis, which already guided de Duve’s groundbreaking book Kant After Duchamp (1996), is here pursued in order to demonstrate that far from confining aesthetics to a stifling formalism isolated from all worldly concerns, Kant’s guidance urgently opens the understanding of art onto ethics and politics. Central to de Duve’s re-reading of the Critique of Judgment is Kant’s idea of sensus communis, ultimately interpreted as the mere yet necessary idea that human beings are capable of living in peace with one another. De Duve pushes Kant’s skepticism to its limits by submitting the idea of sensus communis to various tests leading to questions such as: Do artists speak on behalf of all of us? Is art the transcendental ground of democracy? Or, Was Adorno right when he claimed that no poetry could be written after Auschwitz? Loaded with de Duve’s trademark blend of wit and erudition and written without jargon, these essays radically renew current approaches to some of the most burning issues raised by modern and contemporary art. They are indispensable reading for anyone with a deep interest in art, art history, or philosophical aesthetics.
Aesthetics beyond the Arts: New and Recent Essays
by Arnold BerleantTaking the view that aesthetics is a study grounded in perception, the essays in this volume exhibit many sides of the perceptual complex that is the aesthetic field and develop them in different ways. They reinvigorate our understanding of such arts as music and architecture; they range across the natural landscape to the urban one; they reassess the place of beauty in the modern environment and reassess the significance of the contributions to aesthetic theory of Kant and Dewey; and they broach the kinds of meanings and larger understanding that aesthetic engagement with the human environment can offer. Written over the past decade, these original and innovative essays lead to a fresh encounter with the possibilities of aesthetic experience, one which has constantly evolved, moving in recent years in the direction of what Berleant terms 'social aesthetics', which enhances human-environmental integration and sociality.
Aesthetics from Ancient China: Aspects of Fenggu (Key Concepts in Chinese Thought and Culture)
by Yonghao WangThis book presents the concept of Fenggu, one of the most important aesthetic categories of ancient China. As an inspiring aesthetic principle, it once encapsulated the particularities of various types of artistic creation and played an important role in traditional artistic creation and theoretic critique. The present volume aims to systematically elaborate on its etymological origin, connotations and generation, its great role in overcoming the tendency of creative stereotypes, its logical positioning in the ancient aesthetic system and its profound connection with traditional culture, via comprehensive analysis of a rich repository of original materials, in combination with calligraphy, painting, and poetry criticism. The theoretical character of traditional aesthetics has been derived from agglomeration of Fenggu with other several important categories of paradigm significance. Therefore, its investigation can offer insights into the organic rhythm of the development of ancient aesthetic thought and consequently lay a solid foundation for the construction of ancient art history and aesthetic history.
Aesthetics in Digital Photography
by Henri MaîtreAutomatically evaluating the aesthetic qualities of a photograph is a current challenge for artificial intelligence technologies, yet it is also an opportunity to open up new economic and social possibilities.Aesthetics in Digital Photography presents theories developed over the last 25 centuries by philosophers and art critics, who have sometimes been governed by the objectivity of perception, and other times, of course, by the subjectivity of human judgement. It explores the advances that have been made in neuro-aesthetics and their current limitations.In the field of photography, this book puts aesthetic hypotheses up against experimental verification, and then critically examines attempts to “scientifically” measure this beauty. Special attention is paid to artificial intelligence techniques, taking advantage of machine learning methods and large databases.
Aesthetics in Grief and Mourning: Philosophical Reflections on Coping with Loss
by Kathleen Marie HigginsA philosophical exploration of aesthetic experience during bereavement. In Aesthetics of Grief and Mourning, philosopher Kathleen Marie Higgins reflects on the ways that aesthetics aids people experiencing loss. Some practices related to bereavement, such as funerals, are scripted, but many others are recursive, improvisational, mundane—telling stories, listening to music, and reflecting on art or literature. Higgins shows how these grounding, aesthetic practices can ease the disorienting effects of loss, shedding new light on the importance of aesthetics for personal and communal flourishing.
Aesthetics in Marketing
by Rajat K Baisya G. Ganesh DasA book for Indian designers and brand marketers, Aesthetics in Marketing primarily deals with understanding aesthetics beyond its visual association and making it relevant to product designing strategies. It is the first attempt of its kind to understand the influence of aesthetics in the context of two very important sectors of the industry—consumer durables and automobile. The book analyses various aesthetic attributes, qualities and elements in a product and deliberates on the important of each of these and the kind of balance necessary among them for designing successful products. It stands out on account of the theory, concepts and models discussed, which have a strong foundation in the authors` primary research. Through real-life case studies, interviews, and company and consumer surveys, the authors have brought to the fore the important of aesthetics in various aspects of marketing, like cultivation of a brand image, and have focused on the role played by demographic variables in influencing product buying decisions. Bringing a whole new meaning to the adage `beauty is in the eye of the beholder`, this book will certainly lead to introspection on the importance of `aesthetics` in the market value of a product.
Aesthetics of Absence: Texts on Theatre
by Heiner GoebbelsAesthetics of Absence presents a significant challenge to the many embedded assumptions and hierarchical structures that have become ‘naturalised’ in western theatre production. This is the first English translation of a new collection of writings and lectures by Heiner Goebbels, the renowned German theatre director, composer and teacher. These writings map Goebbels’ engagement with ‘Aesthetics of Absence’ through his own experience at the forefront of innovative music-theatre and performance making. In this volume, Goebbels reflects on works created over a period of more than 20 years staged throughout the world; introduces some of his key artistic influences, including Robert Wilson and Jean-Luc Godard; discusses the work of his students and ex-students, the collective Rimini Protokoll; and sets out the case for a radical rethinking of theatre and performance education. He gives us a rare insight into the rehearsal process of critically acclaimed works such as Eraritjaritjaka and Stifters Dinge, explaining in meticulous detail the way he weaves an eclectic range of references from fine art, theatre, literature, politics, anthropology, contemporary and classical music, jazz and folk, into his multi-textured music-theatre compositions. As an artist who is prepared to share his research and demystify the processes through which his own works come into being, as a teacher with a coherent pedagogical strategy for educating the next generation of theatre-makers, in this volume, Goebbels brings together practice, research and scholarship.
Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment
by Jillian HernandezHeavy makeup, gaudy jewelry, dramatic hairstyles, and clothes that are considered cheap, fake, too short, too tight, or too masculine: working-class Black and Latina girls and women are often framed as embodying "excessive" styles that are presumed to indicate sexual deviance. In Aesthetics of Excess Jillian Hernandez examines how middle-class discourses of aesthetic value racialize the bodies of women and girls of color. At the same time, their style can be a source of cultural capital when appropriated by the contemporary art scene. Drawing on her community arts work with Black and Latina girls in Miami, Hernandez analyzes the art and self-image of these girls alongside works produced by contemporary artists and pop musicians such as Wangechi Mutu, Kara Walker, and Nicki Minaj. Through these relational readings, Hernandez shows how notions of high and low culture are complicated when women and girls of color engage in cultural production and how they challenge the policing of their bodies and sexualities through artistic authorship.
Aesthetics of Film Production: A Hands-On Guide to Authorial Voice
by James B. JoyceExploring aesthetic decision-making skills through active, critical interpretation of the screenplay, this book investigates the ways filmmakers translate a screenplay into a powerful film. Guiding the reader through the formal choices a filmmaker makes, this book encompasses all aspects of the filmmaking process, including directing, acting, cinematography, lighting, production design, sound, and editing. Author Joyce illustrates how to apply aesthetics in a way that encourages creative thinking and stylistic choices, while emphasizing the importance of active decision-making to foreground the screenplay in the filmmaking process. Focusing on how films should be crafted stylistically from beat to beat, the book provides tangible footholds to assist filmmakers with the aesthetic decision-making process, empowering filmmakers to create films to resonate emotionally and intellectually. Ideal for students of filmmaking and aspiring filmmakers looking to train their gut and hone their creative and aesthetic decision-making in the filmmaking process. Additional online screenplay samples show how one singular story can be told with different emphasis and narrative perspectives.
Aesthetics of Fraudulence in Nineteenth-Century France: Frauds, Hoaxes, and Counterfeits
by Scott CarpenterIn his engagingly written and original book, Scott Carpenter analyzes multiple manifestations of the false in nineteenth-century France. Under Carpenter's thorough and systematic analysis, fraudulence emerges as a cultural preoccupation in nineteenth-century literature and society, whether it be in the form of literary mystifications, the thematic portrayal of frauds, or the privileging of falseness as an aesthetic principle. Focusing particularly on the aesthetics of fraudulence in works by Mérimée, Balzac, Baudelaire, Vidocq, Sand, and others, Carpenter places these literary representations within the context of other cultural phenomena, such as caricature, political history, and ceremonial events. As he highlights the special relationship between literary fiction and fraudulence, Carpenter argues that falseness arises as an aesthetic preoccupation in post-revolutionary France, where it introduces a blurring of limits between hitherto discrete categories. This transgression of boundaries challenges notions of authenticity and sincerity, categories that Romantic aesthetics championed at the beginning of the nineteenth century in France. Carpenter's study makes an important contribution to the cultural significance of mystification in nineteenth-century France and furthers our understanding of French literature and cultural history.
Aesthetics of Interaction in Digital Art
by Katja Kwastek Niamh WardeSince the 1960s, artworks that involve the participation of the spectator have received extensive scholarly attention. Yet interactive artworks using digital media still present a challenge for academic art history. In this book, Katja Kwastek argues that the particular aesthetic experience enabled by these new media works can open up new perspectives for our understanding of art and media alike. Kwastek, herself an art historian, offers a set of theoretical and methodological tools that are suitable for understanding and analyzing not only new media art but also other contemporary art forms. Addressing both the theoretician and the practitioner, Kwastek provides an introduction to the history and the terminology of interactive art, a theory of the aesthetics of interaction, and exemplary case studies of interactive media art. Kwastek lays the historical and theoretical groundwork with discussions of processual strategies of twentieth-century art and theories of aesthetic experience, process aesthetics, play, and performance. She then develops an aesthetics of interaction, discussing such aspects as real space and data space, temporal structures, instrumental and phenomenal perspectives, and the relationship between materiality and interpretability. Finally, she applies her theory to specific works of interactive media art, including narratives in virtual and real space, interactive installations, and performance -- with case studies of works by Olia Lialina, Susanne Berkenheger, Stefan Schemat, Teri Rueb, Lynn Hershman, Agnes Heged's, Tmema, David Rokeby, Sonia Cillari, and Blast Theory.
Aesthetics of Interaction in Digital Art (The\mit Press Ser.)
by Katja KwastekAn art-historical perspective on interactive media art that provides theoretical and methodological tools for understanding and analyzing digital art.Since the 1960s, artworks that involve the participation of the spectator have received extensive scholarly attention. Yet interactive artworks using digital media still present a challenge for academic art history. In this book, Katja Kwastek argues that the particular aesthetic experience enabled by these new media works can open up new perspectives for our understanding of art and media alike. Kwastek, herself an art historian, offers a set of theoretical and methodological tools that are suitable for understanding and analyzing not only new media art but also other contemporary art forms. Addressing both the theoretician and the practitioner, Kwastek provides an introduction to the history and the terminology of interactive art, a theory of the aesthetics of interaction, and exemplary case studies of interactive media art.Kwastek lays the historical and theoretical groundwork and then develops an aesthetics of interaction, discussing such aspects as real space and data space, temporal structures, instrumental and phenomenal perspectives, and the relationship between materiality and interpretability. Finally, she applies her theory to specific works of interactive media art, including narratives in virtual and real space, interactive installations, and performance—with case studies of works by Olia Lialina, Susanne Berkenheger, Stefan Schemat, Teri Rueb, Lynn Hershman, Agnes Hegedüs, Tmema, David Rokeby, Sonia Cillari, and Blast Theory.
Aesthetics of Interdisciplinarity: Art and Mathematics
by Kristóf Fenyvesi Tuuli LähdesmäkiThis anthology fosters an interdisciplinary dialogue between the mathematical and artistic approaches in the field where mathematical and artistic thinking and practice merge. The articles included highlight the most significant current ideas and phenomena, providing a multifaceted and extensive snapshot of the field and indicating how interdisciplinary approaches are applied in the research of various cultural and artistic phenomena. The discussions are related, for example, to the fields of aesthetics, anthropology, art history, art theory, artistic practice, cultural studies, ethno-mathematics, geometry, mathematics, new physics, philosophy, physics, study of visual illusions, and symmetry studies. Further, the book introduces a new concept: the interdisciplinary aesthetics of mathematical art, which the editors use to explain the manifold nature of the aesthetic principles intertwined in these discussions.
Aesthetics of Law: From Methodology to Manifestations (Law and Visual Jurisprudence #14)
by Kamil Zeidler Joanna KamieńThe aesthetics of law deals with the relationship between law and beauty by searching for aesthetic values in the law itself (an internal perspective), by finding material related to law in art and culture (an external perspective), and, lastly, by demonstrating the impact of legal norms on what can be broadly understood as beauty (law as a tool of aestheticization). Regarding all these phenomena, the aesthetics of law ultimately allows us to see the law more clearly and more profoundly. What is more, the law does not function, nor has it ever functioned, separately from its means of expression, which are incontrovertibly subject to aesthetic interpretation. If we think about law in this way, perceiving not only the message, but also the manner in which it is conveyed, the whole set of means and tools used, the perfection and beauty of the form, then we will see art in it. After all, the widely known and still applicable ancient maxim ius est ars boni et aequi equates law and art. This alone should be an argument for aesthetic reflection on the law, a field of endeavour that should never have been abandoned. The book’s twenty-three chapters, written by scholars from various countries and three continents, are thematically diverse. In them we present the manifestations of the aesthetics of law from an external perspective. If we accept a definition of the concept of law that is as broad as possible, not only as a synonym of a certain formalized normative system, but also including the process of its creation (legislation), its application and interpretation (jurisprudence), and even teaching on and research into it (doctrine), we can identify a wealth of aesthetic references in the law. A broadly understood aesthetics of law, approached solely from an external perspective, covers such disciplines as law and literature, the aesthetics of legal rhetoric, the trial as performance, the aesthetics ofcourthouse architecture, law in the fine arts, law in film, law and music, pictorial law, symbols of the law and legal symbols, symbols of the state and power, legal archaeology etc. The field of research is, therefore, wide. In addition to topics traditionally and obviously associated with the aesthetics of law, such as law and literature, law in the fine arts, and court rhetoric, there are chapters on e.g. legal ethics and trademarks. All authors share the belief that beauty in law is important, even when it is hidden in a caricature. Further, they argue for restoring the aesthetics of law to its proper place in philosophical and legal discourse, as doing so would yield a host of benefits for the addressees of law.
Aesthetics of Music: Musicological Perspectives
by Stephen DownesAesthetics of Music: Musicological Approaches is an anthology of fourteen essays, each addressing a single key concept or pair of terms in the aesthetics of music, collectively serving as an authoritative work on musical aesthetics that remains as close to 'the music' as possible. Each essay includes musical examples from works in the 18th, 19th, and into the 20th century. Topics have been selected from amongst widely recognised central issues in musical aesthetics, as well as those that have been somewhat neglected, to create a collection that covers a distinctive range of ideas. All essays cover historical origins, sources, and developments of the chosen idea, survey important musicological approaches, and offer new critical angles or musical case studies in interpretation.
Aesthetics of Negativity: Blanchot, Adorno, and Autonomy (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)
by William S. AllenMaurice Blanchot and Theodor W. Adorno are among the most difficult but also the most profound thinkers in twentieth-century aesthetics. While their methods and perspectives differ widely, they share a concern with the negativity of the artwork conceived in terms of either its experience and possibility or its critical expression. Such negativity is neither nihilistic nor pessimistic but concerns the status of the artwork and its autonomy in relation to its context or its experience. For both Blanchot and Adorno negativity is the key to understanding the status of the artwork in post-Kantian aesthetics and, although it indicates how art expresses critical possibilities, albeit negatively, it also shows that art bears an irreducible ambiguity such that its meaning can always negate itself. This ambiguity takes on an added material significance when considered in relation to language as the negativity of the work becomes aesthetic in the further sense of being both sensible and experimental, and in doing so the language of the literary work becomes a form of thinking that enables materiality to be thought in its ambiguity.In a series of rich and compelling readings, William S. Allen shows how an original and rigorous mode of thinking arises within Blanchot’s early writings and how Adorno’s aesthetics depends on a relation between language and materiality that has been widely overlooked. Furthermore, by reconsidering the problem of the autonomous work of art in terms of literature, a central issue in modernist aesthetics is given a greater critical and material relevance as a mode of thinking that is abstract and concrete, rigorous and ambiguous. While examples of this kind of writing can be found in the works of Blanchot and Beckett, the demands that such texts place on readers only confirm the challenges and the possibilities that literary autonomy poses to thought.