Arnold Schoenberg: Structural Functions of Harmony (1954/1969)

This book is Schoenberg’s last completed theoretical work and represents his final thoughts on the subject of classical and romantic harmony.

The earlier chapters recapitulate in condensed form the principles laid down in his Theory of Harmony; the later chapters break entirely new ground, for they analyze the system of key relationships within the structure of whole movements and affirm the principle of “monotonality,” showing how all modulations within a movement are merely deviations from, and not negations of, its main tonality.

Schoenberg’s argument is supported by music examples, which range from entire development sections of classical symphonies to analyses of the experimental harmonic progressions of Strauss, Debussy, Reger, and Schoenberg’s own early music. The final chapter, “Apollonian Evaluation of a Dionysian Epoch,” discusses the music of our time, with particular reference to the possibility of new methods of harmonic analysis.

Structural Functions of Harmony is a standard work on its subject and provides an invaluable key to the development of musical structure during the last two hundred and fifty years. This new edition, with corrections, a new preface, and an index of subject headings, has been prepared under the editorial supervision of Leonard Stein.

First published in 1954 by Williams and Norgate Limited
Revised Edition with Corrections
Edited by Leonard Stein
Publisher Ernest Benn Limited, 1969; published in Faber Paperbacks by Faber and Faber, London, 1983
ISBN 0571130003
203 pages

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Rasa Smite: Creative Networks: In the Rearview Mirror of Eastern European History (2011/2012)

Creative Networks explores the dawn of the Internet culture in the age of network society from the perspective of Eastern Europe. From a theoretical angle the networks are introduced and interpreted as complex socio-technical systems. The author analyzes the development of these networked self-organized formations starting off with ‘virtual communities’ of ‘creative networks’, which emerged during the early phase of the Internet, up to the phenomena of today’s online ‘social networks’. Along with the translocal case studies of Nettime, Syndicate, Faces and Xchange networks (as well as with the other important facets of the 1990s network culture in Europe), the author studies also local community networking case of alternative and digital culture that evolved around E-Lab in the 1990s in Latvia. By focusing primarily on the network culture of 1990s, this study reflects those changes in the social structure of today’s society that are occurring under the process of socio-technical transformation.

The book is based on a dissertation by Rasa Smite, with the title “Creative Network Communities” and was defended in Riga Stradins University, February 2011.

First published in Latvian in Riga: RIXC and Liepaja: LiepU MPLab, 2011.
Translated by Linda Vebere
Publisher Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2012
Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works 3.0 Netherlands License
ISBN 9789081857505
160 pages

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Gary Genosko: Félix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction (2002)

This is the first detailed assessment of the life and work of Felix Guattari–”Mr. Anti” as the French press labelled him–the friend of and collaborator with Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan and Antonio Negri, and one of the 20th Century’s last great activist-intellectuals. Guattari is widely known for his celebrated writings with Deleuze, but these writings do not represent the true breadth and impact of his thinking, writing and activism. Guattari’s major work as a clinical and theoretical innovator in psychoanalysis was closely linked to his participation in struggles against European right-wing politics. Felix Guattari introduces the reader to the diversity and sheer range of Guattari’s interests, from anti-psychiatry, to Japanese culture, political activism and his theorizing of subjectification.Highlighting why Guattari’s work is of increasing relevance to contemporary political, psychoanalytical and philosophical thought, Felix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction presents the reader with an adventurous and provocative introduction to this radical thinker.

Publisher Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002
Transversals: New Directions in Philosophy series
ISBN 082646033X, 9780826460332
278 pages

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Vilém Flusser: Za filosofii fotografie (1983/1994) [Czech]

Knihou Za filosofii fotografie se Vilém Flusser zařadil mezi autory, kteří pochopili fotografii jako komplexní zjev naší doby, a to nejen v umělecko-estetickém nebo čistě informačním slova smyslu, nýbrž v jeho celé společenské a filosofické dimenzi. Podobně jako Susan Sonntagová a Roland Barthes, byť pochopitelně z jiného východiska a s jinými výsledky, pouští se Vilém Flusser do analýzy fotografie v jejích estetických, vědeckých i politických aspektech a používá výsledky svého zkoumání k popisu kulturní krize, v níž se naše civilizace při svém přechodu z industriálního k postindustriálnímu vývojovému stupni nachází. Středem Flusserovy pozornosti jsou přitom především souvislosti mezi fotografií a novodobou kulturou, v níž je text postupně vytlačován obrazem, a mezi lidskou svobodou a novými formami společenského života, v němž práce ztrácí svou původní důležitost a je suplována stále více hrou.

First published as Für eine Philosophie der Fotografie, European Photography, 1983
Translated by Božena Koseková, Josef Kosek
Publisher Hynek, Prague, 1994
Volume 2 of Edice Punkt
ISBN 808590604X, 9788085906042
75 pages

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Katherine S. Dreier, James Johnson Sweeney, Naum Gabo: Three Lectures on Modern Art (1949)

“These lectures by three brilliant leaders in Modern Art were delivered at Yale University under the auspices of the Thomas Rutherford Trowbridge Art Lecture Foundation.

These three lectures deal with the founding of the Société Anonyme; Museum of Modern Art; 1920, which was organized by Katherine S. Dreier, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray to bring clarity and understanding to the confusion which the many new forms of expression in art brought over by the Armory Exhibition in 1913 had caused.”

The lectures include “Intrinsic Significance” in Modern Art by Katherine S. Dreier. Modern Art and Tradition by James Johnson Sweeney, and A Retrospective View of Constructive Art by Naum Gabo.

Foreword by Dean Charles Sawyer
Publisher The Philosophical Library, 1949
91 pages
via archive.org

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Naum Gabo–Antoine Pevsner, catalogue (1948)

Introduction by Herbert Read
Texts by Ruth Olson and Abraham Chanin
Publisher The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1948
83 pages
via archive.org

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Benjamin Noys: The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory (2010)

The Persistence of the Negative offers an original and compelling critique of contemporary Continental theory through a rehabilitation of the negative. Against the usual image of rival thinkers and schools, Benjamin Noys identifies and attacks a shared consensus on the primacy of affirmation and the expelling of the negative that runs through the leading figures of contemporary theory: Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, Antonio Negri, and Alain Badiou.

While positioning the emergence of affirmative theory as a political response to the corrosive effects of contemporary capitalism, Noys argues that, all too often, affirmation is left re-affirming the conditions of the present rather than providing the means to disrupt and resist them.

Refusing to endorse an anti-theory position that would read theory as the symptom of political defeat, The Persistence of the Negative traverses these leading thinkers in a series of lucid readings to reveal the disavowed effects of negativity operating within their work.

Overturning the limits of recent debates on the politics of theory, The Persistence of the Negative vigorously defends the return of theory to its political calling.

Publisher Edinburgh University Press, 2010
ISBN 0748638636, 9780748638635
196 pages

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