The Sense of Semblance: Philosophical Analyses of Holocaust Art

The Sense of Semblance: Philosophical Analyses of Holocaust Art

by Henry W. Pickford
The Sense of Semblance: Philosophical Analyses of Holocaust Art

The Sense of Semblance: Philosophical Analyses of Holocaust Art

by Henry W. Pickford

eBook

$37.49  $49.99 Save 25% Current price is $37.49, Original price is $49.99. You Save 25%.

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

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yet potentially reciprocally countervailing desiderata: they must meet aesthetic criteria (lest they be, say, merely historical documents) and they must meet historical criteria (they must accurately represent the Holocaust, lest they be merely artworks).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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780823245420
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Publication date: 12/31/2012
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 296
File size: 20 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Henry Pickford is Associate Research Professor of German at Duke University. He is the editor and translator of Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords by Theodor W. Adorno.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: The Judgment of Holocaust Art 1

1 Mandelshtam's Meridian: On Paul Celan's Aesthetic-Historical Materialism 17

2 Conflict, and Commemoration: Two Berlin Memorials 74

3 The Aesthetics of Historical Quotation: On Heimrad Bäcker's "System nachschrift" 137

4 The Aesthetic-Historical Imaginary: On Shoah and Maus 160

Conclusion: The Morality of Holocaust Art 204

Notes 211

Bibliography 253

Index 273

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews