Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Surpassing modernity: ambivalence in art, politics and society

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Bloomsbury Academic 2019 LondonDescription: x, 249 pISBN:
  • 9781350008342
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 111.85 M2S8
Summary: For the past thirty to forty years, cultural analysis has focused on developing terms to explain the surpassing of modernity. Discussion is stranded in an impasse between those who view the term modernity with automatic disdain-as deterministic, Eurocentric or imperialistic-and a booming interest that is renewing the study of modernism. Another dilemma is that the urge to move away from, or beyond, modernity arises because it is viewed as difficult, even unsavoury. Yet, there has always been a view of modernity as somehow difficult to live with, and that has been said by figures we regard today as typical modernists. McNamara argues in this book that it is time to forget the quest to surpass modernity. Instead, we should re-examine a legacy that continues to inform our artistic conceptions, our political debates, our critical justifications, even if that legacy is baffling and contradictory. We may find it difficult to live with, but without recourse to this legacy, our critical-cultural ambitions would remain seriously diminished. How do we explain the culture we live in today? And how do we, as citizens, make sense of it? This book suggests these questions have become increasingly difficult to answer. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/surpassing-modernity-9781350008342/
Tags from this library: No tags from this library for this title. Log in to add tags.
Star ratings
    Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)
Holdings
Item type Current library Item location Collection Shelving location Call number Status Date due Barcode
Books Vikram Sarabhai Library Rack 4-A / Slot 125 (0 Floor, West Wing) Non-fiction General Stacks 111.85 M2S8 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 199508

Table of contents

Introduction: the Surpassing Paradigm
PART ONE
Chapter One
What Are We Talking About? A Landscape in which Nothing was the Same Except the Clouds

Chapter Two
Petty-bourgeois Revolutionaries: Reflections on Polke's Wir Kleinbürger! (We Petty Bourgeois!)

Chapter Three
What is Art Supposed to Do? The Modernist Legacy, the Arab Spring, a Censorship Case in Sharjah, and Artist Arrests in the Year of the Protestor

Chapter Four
Inversions, Conversions, Aberrations: Visual Acuity and the Erratic Chemistry of Art-historical Transmission in a Transcultural Situation
Conclusion
Bibliography

For the past thirty to forty years, cultural analysis has focused on developing terms to explain the surpassing of modernity. Discussion is stranded in an impasse between those who view the term modernity with automatic disdain-as deterministic, Eurocentric or imperialistic-and a booming interest that is renewing the study of modernism. Another dilemma is that the urge to move away from, or beyond, modernity arises because it is viewed as difficult, even unsavoury. Yet, there has always been a view of modernity as somehow difficult to live with, and that has been said by figures we regard today as typical modernists. McNamara argues in this book that it is time to forget the quest to surpass modernity. Instead, we should re-examine a legacy that continues to inform our artistic conceptions, our political debates, our critical justifications, even if that legacy is baffling and contradictory. We may find it difficult to live with, but without recourse to this legacy, our critical-cultural ambitions would remain seriously diminished. How do we explain the culture we live in today? And how do we, as citizens, make sense of it? This book suggests these questions have become increasingly difficult to answer.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/surpassing-modernity-9781350008342/

There are no comments on this title.

to post a comment.