The Practice of Persuasion: Paradox and Power in Art History

Author:   Keith Moxey
Publisher:   Cornell University Press
Edition:   illustrated edition
ISBN:  

9780801438011


Pages:   160
Publication Date:   14 December 2000
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
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The Practice of Persuasion: Paradox and Power in Art History


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Overview

This sequel to ""The Practice of Theory"" stresses the continued need for self-reflective awareness in art historical writing. Offering a series of meditations on the discipline of art history in the context of major elements in contemporary critical theory - semiotics, feminism, queer theory, postcolonial studies and deconstruction - Keith Moxey addresses such central issues as the status of the canon, the nature of aesthetic value and the character of historical knowledge. The chapters are linked by a common interest in, even fascination with, the paradoxical power of narrative. Moxey maintains that art history is a rhetoric of persuasion rather than a discourse. Each chapter in the book attempts to demonstrate the paradoxes inherent in a genre that - while committed to representing the past - must inevitably bear the imprint of the present. In Moxey's view, art history as a discipline is unable to recognize its status as a regime of truth that produces historically determined meanings and so continues to act as if based on a universal aesthetic foundation. His book should enable art historians to engage with the past in a manner less determined by tradition and more responsive to contemporary values and aspirations.

Full Product Details

Author:   Keith Moxey
Publisher:   Cornell University Press
Imprint:   Cornell University Press
Edition:   illustrated edition
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9780801438011


ISBN 10:   0801438012
Pages:   160
Publication Date:   14 December 2000
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

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Reviews

This important book consists of philosophical essays on the crucial relation between contemporary theory and the discipline of art history. --Walter S. Melion, Johns Hopkins University Renaissance Quarterly The Practice of Persuasion provides a great opening for debate, a starting point for the discussion of issues where the argumentation is in flux. Anyone wanting to see why art history is intellectually exciting right now could hardly do better than to read this extremely lucid, mercifully brief, and very important book. --David Carrier, 1999-2000 Getty Scholar For over a decade, Keith Moxey had lucidly and persuasively made the case for art hisstory's necessary embrace of theory. Not in order to add fashionable novelty or opacity, theory has become a critical means of understanding what we can call art history's philosophical unconscious. Moxey's work moves elegantly between the historical terrain of his own art historical specialisation and the art historical discourses which have interpreted that historical domain in terms of narratives and underlying my themes that reflect on another historical moment, the moment of art historical enunciation. Presented with a clarity that reflects the breadth and depth of his mastery of a range of complex theorisations of narrativity, semiotics and historiography, Moxey's new book opens the door to the excitement of renovation in the field of art history, making plain what is often obscured in difficult prose. His is an important and influential voice in contemporary debates. Lucid, trenchant and persuasive, Moxey once again stands in steadfast in defence of intellectual reflexivity argument and the self-criticism of anyone engaged in historical study. This will be a vital book for both the field of Northern European art history and for the larger debates about why art history needs to change. --Griselda Pollack, University of Leeds, Author of Differencing the Canon and Mary Cassatt Always provocative, Keith Moxey's work seeks to press at the vulnerable center of art history. In The Practice of Persuasion, Moxey marries a historiography of art history with a suggestive approach to art history writing to create a valuable, thought-provoking, and highly original book. --Catherine M. Soussloff, University of California at Santa Cruz The Practice of Persuasion stresses the ongoing need for awareness in art history writing, providing reflections on art history and modern critical theory and examining the nature of aesthetic judgments and history. --The Midwest Book Review


Author Information

Keith Moxey is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University. He is the author of The Practice of Theory: Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History, also from Cornell, and Peasants, Warriors, and Wives: Popular Imagery in the Reformation.

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