Main entry:

Didi-Huberman, Georges, author.

Title & Author:

The eye of history : when images take positions / Georges Didi-Huberman ; translated by Shane B. Lillis.

Publication:

Toronto : RIC Books ; Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press, [2018]
©2018

Description:

xxix, 257 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Series:

RIC books ; 2

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Preface: Emancipatng the eyes of history -- The position of the exiled: exposing the war -- The disposition towards things: observing the uncanny -- The dysposition of things: dismantling order -- The composition of forces: showing politics again -- The interposition of fields: revisiting history -- The position of the child: being exposed to images.
Translated from the French.

Summary:

"From 1938 to 1955, Bertolt Brecht created montages of images and text, filling his working journal (Arbeitsjournal) and his idiosyncratic atlas of images, War Primer, with war photographs clipped from magazines and adding his own epigrammatic commentary. In this book, Georges Didi-Huberman explores the interaction of politics and aesthetics in these creations, explaining how they became the means for Brecht, a wandering poet in exile, to "take a position" about the Nazi war in Europe. Illustrated with pages from the Arbeitsjournal and War Primer and contextual images including Raoul Hausmann's poem-posters and Walter Benjamin's drawings, The Eye of History offers a new view of important but little-known works by Brecht. Didi-Huberman shows that Brecht took positions without taking sides; he used these montages to challenge the viewpoints of the press and propose other readings, to offer a stylistic and political response to the inescapable visibility of historical events enabled by the photographic medium. Brecht's montages disrupt and scrutinize this visibility by juxtaposing representations of war found in magazines with his own epigrams -- a "documentary lyricism" that dismounts and remounts modern history. The montages created meaningful disorder, exposing the truth by disorganizing -- a process Didi-Huberman calls a "dialectic of the monteur." These works are examples of "the eyes of history"--When seeing may simultaneously deepen and critique historical knowledge. The montages Didi-Huberman argues, are Brecht's most Benjaminian works." -- publisher's website.

ISBN:

9780262037877 (hardcover)
0262037874 (hardcover)

Subject:

Brecht, Bertolt, 1898-1956. Arbeitsjournal.
Brecht, Bertolt, 1898-1956. Kriegsfibel.
Brecht, Bertolt, 1898-1956 Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
Brecht, Bertolt, 1898-1956
Brecht, Bertolt, 1898-1956 Criticism and interpretation Criti.
Brecht, Bertolt, 1898-1956 Diaries.
Brecht, Bertolt, 1898-1956. Arbeitsjournal. English.
Arbeitsjournal (Brecht, Bertolt)
Kriegsfibel (Brecht, Bertolt)
World War, 1939-1945 Pictorial works.
World War, 1939-1945 Poetry.
Guerre mondiale, 1939-1945 Ouvrages illustrés.
Guerre mondiale, 1939-1945 Poésie.
Historiography and photography.
Image (Philosophy)

Form/genre:

illustrated books.
poetry.
Illustrated works
Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
Pictorial works
Poetry
Ouvrages illustrés.
Poésie.

Added entries:

Lillis, Shane B. (Shane Brendan), translator.
RIC books ; 2.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 321967
Call No.: 321967
Copy: 1
Status: Available