Overview

A Return to Aesthetics confronts postmodernism's rejection of aesthetics by showing that this critique rests on central concepts of classical aesthetic theory, namely autonomous form, disinterest, and symbolic discourse. The author argues for the value of these concepts by recovering them through a historical reinterpretation of their meaning prior to their distortion by twentieth-century formalism. Loesberg then applies these concepts to a discussion of two of the most significant critics of the ideology of Enlightenment, Foucault and Bourdieu. He argues that understanding the role of aesthetics in the postmodern critique of Enlightenment will get us out of the intellectual impasse wherein numbingly repeated attacks upon postmodernism as self-contradictory match numbingly repeated defenses. Construing postmodern critiques as examples of aesthetic reseeing gives us a new understanding of the postmodern critique of the Enlightenment.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jonathan Loesberg
Publisher:   Stanford University Press
Imprint:   Stanford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.70cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.408kg
ISBN:  

9780804751162

ISBN 10:   0804751161
Pages:   304
Publication Date:   27 July 2005
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

@fmct:Contents @toc4:Introduction 1 @toc2:Chapter I Aesthetics and the Argument From Design 00 Chapter II Indifferent Embodiment 00 Chapter III Foucault's Aesthetics 000 Chapter IV Bourdieu's Aesthetics 000 @toc4:Notes 000 Bibliography 000

Reviews

.,. this is a forward-looking and vital contribution to aesthetics. In a convincing account, which masterfully links careful historical analysis with contemporary debate, Loesberg offers what is badly needed: a way out and beyond the ideological impasse between the alleged foundationalism of aesthetics and the supposed anti-aesthetics of postmodernism. -- British Journal of Aesthetics

Author Information

Jonathan Loesberg is Professor of Literature at American University. He is the author of two previous books: Fictions of Consciousness: Mill, Newman, and the Reading of Victorian Prose (1986) and Aestheticism and Deconstruction: Pater, Derrida, and De Man (1991).

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