1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910963547303321

Autore

Pickford Henry W

Titolo

The sense of semblance : philosophical analyses of Holocaust art / / Henry W. Pickford

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, : Fordham University Press, 2013

ISBN

0-8232-4543-8

0-8232-5077-6

0-8232-5031-8

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (296 p.)

Classificazione

LIT004210PHI001000HIS043000

Disciplina

700/.458405318

Soggetti

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), and the arts

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Judgment of Holocaust Art -- 2. Conflict and Commemoration -- 3. The Aesthetics of Historical Quotation -- 4. The Aesthetic-Historical Imaginary: -- Conclusion: The Morality of Holocaust Art -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

"Holocaust artworks intuitively must fulfill at least two criteria: artistic (lest they be merely historical documents) and historical (lest they distort the Holocaust or become merely artworks). The Sense of Semblance locates this problematic within philosophical aesthetics, as a version of the conflict between aesthetic autonomy and heteronomy, and argues that Adorno's dialectic of aesthetic semblance describes the normative demand that artworks maintain a dynamic tension between the two. The Sense of Semblance aims to move beyond familiar debates surrounding postmodernism by demonstrating the usefulness of contemporary theories of meaning and understanding, including those from the analytic tradition. Pickford shows how the causal theory of names, the philosophy of tacit knowledge, the analytic philosophy of quotation, Sartre's theory of the imaginary, the epistemology of testimony, and Walter Benjamin's dialectical image can help explicate how individual artworks fulfill artistic and historical desiderata. In close readings of Celan's poetry, Holocaust memorials in Berlin, the quotational artist Heimrad Backer, Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah, and



Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus, Pickford offers interpretations that, in their precision, specificity, and clarity, inaugurate a dialogue between contemporary analytic philosophy and contemporary art. 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"--