The ecstasy of communication
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First published in France in 1987, The Ecstasy of Communication was Baudrillard’s summarization of his work for a postdoctoral degree at the Sorbonne : a dense, poetically crystalline essay that boiled down two decades of radical, provocative theory into an aphoristically eloquent swan song to twentieth-century alienation. Baudrillard’s quixotic effort to be recognized by(...)
The ecstasy of communication
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First published in France in 1987, The Ecstasy of Communication was Baudrillard’s summarization of his work for a postdoctoral degree at the Sorbonne : a dense, poetically crystalline essay that boiled down two decades of radical, provocative theory into an aphoristically eloquent swan song to twentieth-century alienation. Baudrillard’s quixotic effort to be recognized by the French intellectual establishment may have been doomed to failure, but this text immediately became a pinnacle to his work, a mid-career assessment that looked both forward and back. By carefully distilling the most radical elements of his previous books, Baudrillard constructed the skeleton key to all of the work that was to come in the second half of his career, and set the scene for what he termed the “obscene”: a world in which alienation has been succeeded by ceaseless communication and information. The Ecstasy of Communication is a decisive, compact description of what it means to be “wired” in our braver-than-brave new world, where sexuality has been superseded by pornography, knowledge by information, hysteria by schizophrenia, subject by object, and violence by terror. The Ecstasy of Communication is an anti-manifesto that confronted and dispensed with such influences as Marshall McLuhan, Guy Debord, and Georges Bataille. It is an essential crib-book, lexicon, and companion piece to any and all of Baudrillard’s books. Twenty-five years after its original publication, it remains not only a prescient portrait of our contemporary condition, but also a dark mirror into which we have not yet dared to look.
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Lost dimension
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To read these five essays of 1983 is to begin to come to terms with the theoretical cataclysm of the present. In Lost Dimension, Paul Virilio considers the displacement of the concept of dimensional space by Einsteinian space/time as it is related to the transparent boundaries of the postmodern city and contemporary economy. Virilio imagines a coming world of interactive,(...)
Lost dimension
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To read these five essays of 1983 is to begin to come to terms with the theoretical cataclysm of the present. In Lost Dimension, Paul Virilio considers the displacement of the concept of dimensional space by Einsteinian space/time as it is related to the transparent boundaries of the postmodern city and contemporary economy. Virilio imagines a coming world of interactive, informational networks offering a prison-house of illusionary transcendence. He pictures global terrorism (perpetrated by and against technological states) filling up the surreal void of an abandoned real. In a multidisciplinary excavation of contemporary physics, architecture, esthetic theory, and sociology, Virilio traces the dystopic unity of the contemporary Western predicament with lightning prescience and clarity.
Critical Theory
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Why is it so hard to make up our minds? Adam and Eve set the template : do we or don’t we eat the apple? They chose, half-heartedly, and nothing was ever the same again. With this book, Kenneth Weisbrode offers an introduction to the age-old struggle with ambivalence. Ambivalence results from a basic desire to have it both ways. This is only natural - although(...)
On ambivalence : the problems and pleasures of having it both ways
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Why is it so hard to make up our minds? Adam and Eve set the template : do we or don’t we eat the apple? They chose, half-heartedly, and nothing was ever the same again. With this book, Kenneth Weisbrode offers an introduction to the age-old struggle with ambivalence. Ambivalence results from a basic desire to have it both ways. This is only natural - although insisting upon it against all reason often results not in "both" but in the disappointing "neither." Ambivalence has insinuated itself into our culture as a kind of obligatory reflex, or default position, before practically every choice we make. It affects not only individuals; organizations, societies, and cultures can also be ambivalent. How often have we asked the scornful question, "Are we the Hamlet of nations"? How often have we demanded that our leaders appear decisive, judicious, and stalwart? And how eager have we been to censure them when they hesitate or waver? Weisbrode traces the concept of ambivalence, from the Garden of Eden to Freud and beyond. The Obama era, he says, may be America’s own era of ambivalence: neither red nor blue but a multicolored kaleidoscope. Ambivalence, he argues, need not be destructive. We must learn to distinguish it from its symptoms - selfishness, ambiguity, and indecision - and accept that frustration, guilt, and paralysis felt by individuals need not lead automatically to a collective pathology. Drawing upon examples from philosophy, history, literature, and the social sciences, On Ambivalence is a pocket-sized portrait of a complex human condition.
Critical Theory
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The relationship of art to work and the conditions of artistic production has long engaged many in the field of visual art. Work is a broad concept, the meaning of which has changed radically as a result of the social and technological transformations that have taken place over the past century. What, then, is “work” today and what is its relation to art? What is the(...)
Work, work, work: a reader on art and labour
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The relationship of art to work and the conditions of artistic production has long engaged many in the field of visual art. Work is a broad concept, the meaning of which has changed radically as a result of the social and technological transformations that have taken place over the past century. What, then, is “work” today and what is its relation to art? What is the position of the artist if “creativity” has become a commodity? How can the artist’s conditions of production be described, and what role can art and architecture play in societal change?
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This is not the end of the book : a conversation curated byJean-Philippe de Tonnac
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Critical Theory
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From Occupy Wall Street activists and corporate adbusters to online hackers and guerilla street artists, the influence of the Situationist International (SI) is written large across our contemporary cultural landscape. Formed in 1957 asa merger of four European avant garde groups with backgrounds in Marxism and Lettrism, the SI would over the next decade introduce many(...)
50 years of recuperation of the situationist international
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From Occupy Wall Street activists and corporate adbusters to online hackers and guerilla street artists, the influence of the Situationist International (SI) is written large across our contemporary cultural landscape. Formed in 1957 asa merger of four European avant garde groups with backgrounds in Marxism and Lettrism, the SI would over the next decade introduce many key intellectual and artistic concepts to us. In 50 Years of Recuperation, now available in paperback, critically acclaimed author McKenzie Wark explores how our contemporaryunderstanding of art, politics, andeven reality itself has been shaped by these original culture jammers.
Introduction to modernity
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Originally published in 1962, when Lefebvre was beginning his career as a lecturer in sociology at the University of Strasbourg, it established his position in the vanguard of a movement which was to culminate in the events of May 1968. A classic analysis of the modern world using Marxist dialectic, it is a book which supersedes the conventional divisions between academic(...)
Introduction to modernity
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Originally published in 1962, when Lefebvre was beginning his career as a lecturer in sociology at the University of Strasbourg, it established his position in the vanguard of a movement which was to culminate in the events of May 1968. A classic analysis of the modern world using Marxist dialectic, it is a book which supersedes the conventional divisions between academic disciplines. With dazzling skill, Lefebvre moves from philosophy to sociology, from literature to history, to present a profound analysis of the social, political and cultural forces at work in France and the world in the aftermath of Stalin's death—an analysis in which the contours of our own “postmodernity” appear with startling clarity.
Critical Theory
Society of the spectacle
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An essential text, and the main theoretical work of the situationists. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960's up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life in the late 20th(...)
Society of the spectacle
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An essential text, and the main theoretical work of the situationists. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960's up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life in the late 20th century. This is the original translation by Fredy Perlman, kept in print continuously for the last 30 years, keeping the flame alive when no-one else cared.
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Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling is an analysis of Remix in art, music, and new media. Navas argues that Remix, as a form of discourse, affects culture in ways that go beyond the basic recombination of material. His investigation locates the roots of Remix in early forms of mechanical reproduction, in seven stages, beginning in the nineteenth century with the(...)
Remix theory : the aesthetics of sampling
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Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling is an analysis of Remix in art, music, and new media. Navas argues that Remix, as a form of discourse, affects culture in ways that go beyond the basic recombination of material. His investigation locates the roots of Remix in early forms of mechanical reproduction, in seven stages, beginning in the nineteenth century with the development of the photo camera and the phonograph, leading to contemporary Remix culture. This book places particular emphasis on the rise of Remix in music during the 1970s and '80s in relation to art and media at the beginning of the twenty-first Century. Navas argues that Remix is a type of binder, a cultural glue - a virus - that informs and supports contemporary culture.
Critical Theory
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En s'autorisant de la pratique de la citation et du montage, courante chez Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), le présent recueil propose à la lecture un certain nombre d'écrits de cet auteur qu'on ne cesse de découvrir à neuf : notes, articles, fragments théoriques, extraits conséquents de grandes études et recherches, ici organisés autour du concept de critique, doublé de celui d'utopie.
Walter Benjamin : critique et utopie
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En s'autorisant de la pratique de la citation et du montage, courante chez Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), le présent recueil propose à la lecture un certain nombre d'écrits de cet auteur qu'on ne cesse de découvrir à neuf : notes, articles, fragments théoriques, extraits conséquents de grandes études et recherches, ici organisés autour du concept de critique, doublé de celui d'utopie.
Critical Theory