Alain Badiou: Handbook of Inaesthetics (1998–)

“Didacticism, romanticism, and classicism are the possible schemata for the knotting of art and philosophy, the third term in this knot being the education of subjects, youth in particular. What characterizes the century that has just come to a close is that, while it underwent the saturation of these three schemata, it failed to introduce a new one. Today, this predicament tends to produce a kind of unknotting of terms, a desperate dis-relation between art and philosophy, together with the pure and simple collapse of what circulated between them: the theme of education.

Whence the thesis of which this book is nothing but a series of variations: faced with such a situation of saturation and closure, we must attempt to propose a new schema, a fourth type of knot between philosophy and art.

Among these “inaesthetic” variations, the reader will encounter a sustained debate with contemporary philosophical uses of the poem, bold articulations of the specificity and prospects of theater, cinema, and dance, along with subtle and provocative readings of Fernando Pessoa, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Samuel Beckett.”

Originally published in French as Petit manuel d’inesthetique, Seuil, Paris, 1998

Translated by Alberto Toscano
Publisher Stanford University Press, 2004
Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics series
ISBN 0804744092, 9780804744096
168 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2020-7-5)

Hal Foster (ed.): The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (1983)

“A collection of late-twentieth-century cultural criticism, named a Best Book of the Year by the Village Voice. In The Anti-Aesthetic, critics such as Jean Baudrillard, Rosalind Krauss, Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said consider the full range of postmodern cultural production, from the writing of John Cage, to Cindy Sherman’s film stills, to Barbara Kruger’s collages. The book provides an introduction for newcomers and a point of reference for those already engaged in discussions of postmodern art, culture, and criticism.”

With essays by Jean Baudrillard, Douglas Crimp, Kenneth Frampton, Jurgen Habermas, Fredric Jameson, Rosalind Krauss, Craig Owens, Edward W. Said, and Gregory L. Ulmer.

Edited and with an Introduction by Hal Foster
Publisher Bay Press, Port Townsend, WA, 1983
ISBN 0941920011, 9780941920018
xvi+159 pages

Reviews: Dana Polan (New German Critique, 1984), Laura Kipnis (Minnesota Review, 1984).

PDF (15 MB, updated on 2015-5-5)

Umberto Eco: The Open Work (1962–) [IT, PT, EN]

“Umberto Eco’s The Open Work remains significant for its concept of “openness”–the artist’s decision to leave arrangements of some constituents of a work to the public or to chance–and for its striking anticipation of two major themes of contemporary literary theory: the element of multiplicity and plurality in art, and the insistence on literary response as an interactive process between reader and text. The questions Eco raises, and the answers he suggests, are intertwined in the continuing debate on literature, art, and culture in general.

This new English edition includes an introduction by David Robey that explores Eco’s thought at the period of The Open Work, prior to his absorption in semiotics. The book now contains key essays on Eco’s mentor Luigi Pareyson, on television and mass culture, and on the politics of art.”

First published in Italian as Opera aperta, 1962.

English edition
Translated by Anna Cancogni
With an Introduction by David Robey
Publisher Harvard University Press, 1989
ISBN 0674639766, 9780674639768
285 pages

Publisher

Opera aperta (Italian, 4th ed., 1962/1997, added on 2015-1-8)
Obra aberta (Portuguese, trans. Giovanni Cutolo, 8th ed., 1971/1991)
The Open Work (English, trans. Anna Cancogni, 1989)