front cover of The Past's Threshold
The Past's Threshold
Essays on Photography
Siegfried Kracauer
Diaphanes, 2014
Siegfried Kracauer was a leading intellectual figure of the Weimar Republic and one of the foremost representatives of critical theory. Best known for a wealth of writings on sociology and film theory, his influence is felt in the work of many of the period’s preeminent thinkers, including his friends, the critic Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno, who once claimed he owed more to Kracauer than any other contemporary.

This volume brings together for the first time all of Kracauer’s essays on photography that he wrote between 1927 and 1933 as a journalist for the Frankfurter Zeitung, as well as an essay that appeared in the Magazine of Art after his exile in America, where he would spend the last twenty-five years of his life. The texts show Kracauer as a pioneering thinker of the photographic medium in addition to the important historian, and theorist, of film that he is acknowledged to have been. His writings here build a cohesive theory on the affinities between photography, memory and history.

With a foreword by Philippe Despoix offering insights into Kracauer’s theories and the historical context, and a Curriculum vitae in pictures, photographs from the Kracauer estate annotated by Maria Zinfert.    
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Peindre contre le crime
Thomas Kirchner
Diaphanes, 2020
Peint en 1808 pour une salle d’audience du Palais de Justice de Paris, le tableau de Pierre-Paul Prud’hon La Justice et la Vengeance divine poursuivant le Crime a toujours été considéré comme un chef-d’œuvre du romantisme français, mais rarement étudié sous l’angle de l’histoire du droit pénal. Pourtant, les débats contemporains autour de la question du libre arbitre jouèrent un rôle fondamental dans le choix de son iconographie. Selon la conception invoquée par Prud’hon, l’homme agissant librement est pleinement responsable de ses actes, y compris de ses crimes, responsabilité qui confère au législateur le droit moral de fixer des sanctions, même sévères. Les réflexions d’Emmanuel Kant revêtent dans ce contexte une importance majeure. Prud’hon en eut probablement connaissance par l’intermédiaire du commanditaire du tableau, le préfet du département de la Seine Nicolas-Thérèse-Benoît Frochot, auquel est attribuée ici la paternité du programme iconographique. À travers la présente monographie, Thomas Kirchner montre combien cette célèbre peinture est l’exact reflet des discussions juridiques et philosophiques qui animèrent la France révolutionnaire, et donnèrent naissance au nouveau Code pénal et à un nouveau Code d’instruction criminelle.
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Performing Human Rights
Contested Amnesia and Aesthetic Practices in the Global South
Edited by Liliana Gómez
Diaphanes, 2021
The invisibilization of political violence, its material traces, and spatial manifestations, characterizes conflict and post-conflict situations. Yet, artists, writers, and human rights activists increasingly seek to challenge this invisibility, contesting the related historical amnesia through counter-semantics and dissonant narratives. Adopting “performance” as a concept that is defined by repetitive, aesthetic practices—such as speech and bodily habits through which both individual and collective identities are constructed and perceived—this collection addresses various forms of performing human rights in transitional situations in Spain, Latin America, and the Middle East. Bringing scholars together with artists, writers, and curators, and working across a range of disciplines, Performing Human Rights addresses these instances of omission and neglect, revealing how alternate institutional spaces and strategies of cultural production have intervened in the processes of historical justice and collective memory.
 
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Philosophies singulières
Conversation avec Michaël Crevoisier
Mehdi Belhaj Kacem and Bernard Stiegler
Diaphanes, 2021
Rarement les philosophes dont la formation s’est faite à l'écart de l’université se sont entretenus. Le temps d’une conversation Mehdi Belhaj Kacem et Bernard Stiegler se sont prêtés au jeu, échangeant à propos de ce qui les lie à la philosophie. Inévitablement, la mort tragique de Bernard Stiegler survenue un an plus tard, donne à lire ce texte avec un regard affecté. D’autant plus qu’ici, l’enthousiasme des échanges nous fait sentir le mouvement vivant de philosophies à l’œuvre, continuant de se constituer en système.

En effet, bien que les œuvres de ces deux auteurs soient singulières, l’une et l’autre procèdent d’une même exigence qui les place au centre de la tradition philosophique : produire un système conceptuel qui donne à penser la nouveauté de la situation historique. À quoi bon la cohérence d’une philosophie qui ne nous dirait rien de ce qu’est devenu le monde ? Que vaudrait l’abstraction conceptuelle si celle-ci n’était pas au service de la compréhension de ce qui nous transforme ? Ainsi, les deux auteurs nous appellent à ne pas oublier : l’enjeu de la philosophie n’est pas la philosophie. Cette exigence critique, la présente conversation la réfléchit à bras le corps, non sans détours et tourments, mais avec franchise et esprit de liberté.
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The Philosophy of Nietzsche
Reiner Schürmann Lecture Notes
Reiner Schürmann
Diaphanes, 2018
Nietzsche praised Kant for having “annihilated Socratism,” for exhibiting all ideals as essentially unattainable, and for having exposed himself to the despair of truth—all essential traits Nietzsche claimed for his own thinking. At the same time, the existentialist philosopher remained highly critical of Kant.
            This volume of Reiner Schürmann’s lectures unpacks Nietzsche’s ambivalence towards Kant, in particular positioning Nietzsche’s claim to have brought an end to German idealism against the backdrop of the Kantian transcendental-critical tradition. Rather than simply compare the two philosophers, Schürmann’s lectures help us to understand the consequences Nietzsche derived from Kantian concepts, as well as the wider horizon within which Nietzsche’s ideas arose and can best be shown to apply. According to Schürmann’s trenchant reading: if Nietzsche was indeed “fatal” to Western philosophy, as he claimed, he was so in large part because of the Kantian transcendental thinking from which he inherited the very elements and tools of his criticism.
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Pierre Guyotat et l’Algérie
Edited by Catherine Brun, Guillaume Fau, and Donatien Grau
Diaphanes, 2024

Pierre Guyotat est une figure majeure, avant même Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats et bien au-delà, de la mémoire de la guerre d’indépendance algérienne. Idiotie est l’une des œuvres récentes les plus importantes sur ce sujet. C’est le fait de la guerre, vécue en appelé jugé récalcitrant et mis au cachot, mais aussi des voyages post-indépendance, de la rencontre avec la langue, la géologie, la faune et la flore algériennes, de la défense publique de Mohamed Laïd Moussa. Les fictions, les carnets sont marqués par l’empreinte de la terre, des langues, des corps algériens.

Guyotat contribua aussi à établir, dans la création et l’action publique, des relations nouvelles avec l'Algérie, ses auteurs, comme avec celles et ceux qui, en France, venaient de ce pays.

Cet ouvrage offre la parole à des figures de la recherche et de la création issues d’Algérie, de France et d’ailleurs. Il permet de découvrir un regard unique sur l’Algérie, affectueux et savant, celui d’un des plus grands auteurs de langue française.

Contributions de Ferroudja Allouache, Amina Azza Bekkat, Catherine Brun, Donatien Grau, Denis Hollier, Karima Lazali, Gérard Nguyen Van Khan, Philippe Roger, Tiphaine Samoyault, Nadia Sebkhi, Todd Shepard, Noura Wedell.

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front cover of The Place of the Symbolic
The Place of the Symbolic
Essays on Art and Politics
Reiner Schürmann
Diaphanes, 2021
This book weaves together Reiner Schürmann’s work on art and politics, drawing on a range of the most important thinkers and poets of the twentieth century and beyond.

The Place of the Symbolic gathers Reiner Schürmann’s essays on the nexus of art and politics. In keeping with his translation of the destruction of metaphysics into an an-archic philosophy of practice, Schürmann develops a radical theory of the place of symbols, irreducible either to idealist theories of symbols or structuralist accounts of the symbolic. Symbols, Schürmann argues, may provide a bridge between ontological difference and politics. They resist being grasped metaphysically, in terms of representation. Instead, their understanding requires a specific way of existence: attending to the coming-to-presence of phenomena. As such, the understanding of symbols discloses a form of praxis that abandons ultimate grounds and opens onto the manifold.

Alongside Schürmann’s theory of symbols, the collection includes essays on the relation between metaphysics, tragedy, and technology; on the “there is” in poetry; as well as on judgment. Throughout these characteristically lucid interventions, Schürmann’s most urgent concern remains a consideration of singular and finite practices that enact a release from universal principles. Art and politics appear here as the unworking of ultimate grounds; that is, as practices attuned to a truly groundless form of life.
 
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Politics of Emotion/Power of Affect
Edited by Susanne Witzgall and Marietta Kesting
Diaphanes, 2021
In the past decade the relevance of emotion and affect in societal dynamics and power relations has increasingly become the focus for scientists and artists. Across disciplines they are breaking down the opposition of cognition and feeling, and emphasizing the central meaning of emotions and affective atmospheres for personal judgement, decision-making and the realm of politics. The present publication can be seen as an enhancing contribution to these discourses. It particularly focusses on artistic positions, which are brought into dialogue with philosophical, gender-theoretical or neuro- and social-scientific approaches. It addresses the ambivalent political dimensions of anxiety, hope, and empathy, as well as the relationship between emotion and habit or the power of (media-)technical affective processes. The publication is the result of the sixth annual programme of the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies of the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.

With contributions by Marie-Luise Angerer, Ben Anderson, Jace Clayton, Keren Cytter, Antonio Damasio, Cécile B. Evans, Karianne Fogelberg, Deborah Gould, Susanna Hertrich, Serhat Karakayali, Marietta Kesting, Carolyn Pedwell, and Susanne Witzgall.
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Post-démocratie
Colin Crouch
Diaphanes, 2013
Paru au Royaume-Uni en 2004, cet essai se propose d’explorer les forces sociales et économiques à l’oeuvre dans les démocraties modernes. Partant du malaise profond et de la violente crise de confiance que les peuples de ces pays traversent vis-à-vis des institutions étatiques, Crouch avance que les États y cèdent progressivement tout leur pouvoir décisionnel et leur marge d’action
aux multinationales. L’importance démesurée des flux de capitaux induits par le capitalisme moderne rend en effet les gouvernements extrêmement dépendants des conglomérats. Rejetés et décrédibilisés dans leur fonction même – garantir des services publics et sociaux à la population et à répondre à ses besoins –, ils délèguent ces tâches à des entreprises privées et perdent peu à peu toute légitimité.
Concis et subtilement argumenté, cet essai offre une réponse cinglante aux chantres du néolibéralisme pour qui les sociétés dites avancées ont atteint le degré de démocratie le plus élevé possible ; et propose des pistes concrètes afin de redonner aux citoyens – principaux acteurs de la vie économique et sociale – une réelle marge d’action, dans le cadre d’un système véritablement « démocratique ».
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front cover of Power of Material/Politics of Materiality
Power of Material/Politics of Materiality
Edited by Susanne Witzgall and Kerstin Stakemeier
Diaphanes, 2014
Materiality has emerged as a new focus for art, design, and architecture. Where there was once the belief that the form of a work offered more capacity to bestow meaning, “New Materialism” asserts the agency of material within the artistic process, enmeshed as it is within a web of relationships.

For Power of Material—Politics of Materiality, editors Susanne Witzgall and Kerstin Stakemeier have brought together a diverse and interdisciplinary team of contributors to deepen the current discourse surrounding materiality. The contributors were participants at a lecture series held at the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, and, the book presents the resultant discussions and experimental practices.
 
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front cover of The Present of the Future
The Present of the Future
Edited by Susanne Witzgall and Kerstin Stakemeier
Diaphanes, 2018
As the world teeters on the brink of crisis and potentially catastrophic change, outlooks for the future have come to be characterized by anxiety. The skepticism that meets utopian visions of the future has given rise to collective nostalgia for seemingly reliable ideas. But rather than stagnate in idealism, how can artists and scholars create the potential for real change?

The result of a lecture series held at the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, The Present of the Future explores our current relationship to the future and considers strategies for artists and scholars to establish effective action for shaping alternative futures. Contributors to the book approach this problem from the perspective of diverse disciplines, including art, design, architecture, and philosophy.
 
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Professor Kant's Incredible Day
Jean Paul Mongin
Diaphanes, 2016
 
At its most basic, philosophy is about learning how to think about the world around us. It should come as no surprise, then, that children make excellent philosophers! Naturally inquisitive, pint-size scholars need little prompting before being willing to consider life’s “big questions,” however strange or impractical. Plato & Co. introduces children—and curious grown-ups—to the lives and work of famous philosophers, from Descartes to Socrates, Einstein, Marx, and Wittgenstein. Each book in the series features an engaging—and often funny—story that presents basic tenets of philosophical thought alongside vibrant color illustrations.

In Professor Kant’s Incredible Day, the philosopher Immanuel Kant wants only to be left in peace to consider life’s big questions: What can I know? What can I hope for? But, when a perfumed letter arrives one day, it interrupts his studies and sets off a series of events the dour professor could not possibly have predicted. But just when it seems as though all of Königsberg is plunged into chaos, he realizes that this perfect storm may hold the answers to his most pressing questions.
           
Plato & Co.’s clear approach and charming illustrations make this series the perfect addition to any little library.
 
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The Projectionists
Eadweard Muybridge and the Future Projections of the Moving Image
Stephen Barber
Diaphanes, 2020
Eadweard Muybridge is among the seminal originators of the contemporary world’s visual form. Projectionists examines mostly unknown aspects of Muybridge’s work: his period as a touring projectionist who enthralled audiences with unprecedented moving-images and his creation of a moving-image auditorium—long before cinemas—in which to project his work at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. That auditorium was both a catastrophe and a vital precursor for the following century’s manias for projection. Based on new research into his travels, audiences, auditoria, and projectors, Projectionists explores Muybridge’s initiating role in moving-image projection and also maps his driving inspiration for subsequent filmmakers preoccupied with the volatile entity of projection, from 1890s Berlin to contemporary Japan, via further World’s Exposition events and cinemas’ overheated projection-boxes.
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The Public in the Picture
Involving the Beholder in Antique, Islamic, Byzantine, Western Medieval and Renaissance Art
Edited by Beate Fricke and Urte Krass
Diaphanes, 2015
The act of including bystanders within the scene of an artwork has marked an important shift in the ways artists addressed the beholder, as well as a significant transformation of the relationship between images and their viewership. In such works, the “public” in the picture could be seen as a mediating between different times, people, and contents.

With The Public in the Picture, contributors describe this shift, with each essay focusing on a specific group of works created at a different moment in history. Together, the contributions explore the political, religious, and social contexts of the publics depicted and relate this shift to the rise of perspectival representation. Contributors to The Public in the Picture include Andrew Griebler, Annette Haug, Henrike Haug, Christiane Hille, Christopher Lakey, Andrea Lermer, Cornelia Logemann, Anja Rathmann-Lutz, Alberto Saviello, and Daniela Wagner.
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front cover of Pynchon’s Sound of Music
Pynchon’s Sound of Music
Christian Hänggi
Diaphanes, 2020
Pynchon's Sound of Music is dedicated to cataloging, exploring, and interpreting the manifold manifestations of music in Thomas Pynchon’s work. An original mix of close and distant readings, this monograph employs a variety of disciplines—from literary studies and musicology to philosophy, media theory, and history—to explain Pynchon through music and music through Pynchon. Encyclopedic and eclectic in its approach, Pynchon’s Sound of Music discusses the author’s use of instruments such as the kazoo, harmonica, and saxophone and embarks on close readings of the most salient and musically tantalizing passages. Zooming out to a bird’s eye view, Christian Hänggi puts Pynchon’s historical musical references and allusions into perspective to trace the trends and tendencies in the development of the author’s interest in music. A treasure trove for fans and an invaluable source for future scholarship, this book includes the Pynchon Playlist, a catalog of over 900 musical references in Pynchon’s oeuvre, and an exhaustive index of more than 700 appearances of musical instruments.
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