Emmanuel Alloa

In den Diskussionen um die Rolle der Bildwissenschaft und den iconic bzw. pictorial turn stellen die Bildtheorien des französischen Gegenwartsdenkens eine entscheidende Ressource der Auseinandersetzung dar. Während einige Texte mittlerweile kanonisch geworden sind, sind zahlreiche andere nach wie vor schwer zugänglich bzw. noch immer unübersetzt. Die Anthologie erschließt erstmals zentrale Quellen für ein Verständnis der bildlichen Wende und kartographiert, indem sie die Konsistenz der Bildfrage in theoretischen Entwürfen von Bergson bis heute sichtbar werden lässt, das französische Denken des 20. Jahrhunderts auf unvermutete Weise neu.

A Eine Anthologie

Bildtheorien Aus Frankreich

Peter Szendy

Marta Ponsa

Explores a wide range of perspectives on the economics of the image and images of the economy Published to accompany an exhibition at Jue de Paume Museum, Paris, from February - June 2020 Preface by Quentin Bajac, director of Jeu de Paume, previously head of photography at MoMA Edited by widely published Peter Szendy, author of The Supermarket of Visible translated into English at Fordham University PressArt and economics have entertained a complex and decisive relationship since ancient times. But for over a century, what is at stake goes far beyond the mere art market: what we face now is the commodification of all that is visible. We live in a world that is increasingly saturated with images. The photographs, drawings, paintings, videos, films, digital works and multimedia installations selected for the exhibition cast a keen and watchful eye over these issues. On the one hand, they reflect the upheavals that currently affect economics in general, whether in terms of unprecedentedly large storage spaces, scarce raw materials, labor and its mutations towards immaterial forms of work, or in terms of value and its new manifestations, such as cryptocurrencies. At the same time, however, these artists' works repeatedly interrogate the future of images and things visible in the age of their globalized 'iconomics'. This exhibition catalog is a collection of short texts providing a wide range of perspectives on the economics of the image and images of the economy. A number of classic essays have also been reproduced, in part or in full. Includes contributions from Emmanuel Alloa, Herv Aubron, Matthias Bruhn, Yves Citton, Elena Esposito, Maurizio Lazzarato, Catherine Malabou, Marie Rebecchi, Marta Ponsa, Antonio Somaini, Peter Szendy, Leah Temper, Elena Vogman, Dork Zabunyan and Miren Etxezarreta Zubizarreta.

The Supermarket of Images

Thomas Telios

Michael G. Festl

Federica Gregoratto

Im Zeitalter der Hochspezialisierung sind sie selten geworden, die Philosoph*innen, die an der Universität wie im Feuilleton gleichermaßen zuhause sind. Dieter Thomä ist einer dieser Wenigen. Ob in leichtfüßigen Kolumnen oder in tiefschürfenden Studien zur Geistesgeschichte - stets gilt sein Interesse den Unruheherden innerhalb von Ordnungen, den Umschlagspunkten, an denen ein System kippt. In vier Jahrzehnten publizistischer Tätigkeit hat er der Philosophie neue Gegenstände erschlossen und die Öffentlichkeit mit provokativen Zeitdiagnosen bereichert. Anlässlich seines 60. Geburtstags werden die Denkanstöße gewürdigt, die von seiner beherzten theoretischen Quertreiberei ausgingen.

Dieter Thomä - Werk und Wirken

Quertreiber des Denkens

The paradoxical logic of transparency and mediation Transparency is the metaphor of our time. Whether in government or corporate governance, finance, technology, health or the media – it is ubiquitous today, and there is hardly a current debate that does not call for more transparency. But what does this word actually stand for and what are the consequences for the life of individuals? Can knowledge from the arts, and its play of visibility and invisibility, tell us something about the paradoxical logics of transparency and mediation? This Obscure Thing Called Transparency gathers contributions by international experts who critically assess the promises and perils of transparency today.

Politics and Aesthetics of a Contemporary Metaphor

This Obscure Thing Called Transparency

On ne saurait reprocher à une pensée dont le développement a été brutalement interrompu de ne pas être conclusive. Mais si cet inachèvement a incité de nombreux auditeurs et lecteurs à prolonger ses lignes de fuite vers d'autres horizons féconds, l'œuvre elle-même a souvent fait l'objet d'un paradoxal oubli. Vouloir évaluer le legs de Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), cent ans après sa naissance, signifie donc avant tout prendre l'œuvre au sérieux en tant qu'œuvre et mettre au jour l'extrême cohérence qui la soutient. En suivant le fil rouge d'une notion, omniprésente des premiers aux derniers écrits, mais qui, en tant que concept opératoire, est passée jusqu'ici inaperçue, l'ouvrage retrace la lutte incessante de Merleau-Ponty contre toute idéologie de la transparence (transparence de soi à soi, du soi et de son savoir, du soi et de l'Autre) qui est aussi toujours la lutte de Merleau-Ponty avec lui-même. Tout en intégrant les recherches sur les textes publiés ces dernières années ainsi qu'un nombre de manuscrits à ce jour inédits, le livre se défait de la tentation philologique pour restituer au contraire l'organicité d'une pensée en acte, dont on commence à peine à mesurer toute la portée.

Merleau-Ponty, critique de la transparence

La résistance du sensible

Images have always stirred ambivalent reactions. Yet whether eliciting fascinated gazes or iconoclastic repulsion from their beholders, they have hardly ever been seen as true sources of knowledge. They were long viewed as mere appearances, placeholders for the things themselves or deceptive illusions. Today, the traditional critique of the spectacle has given way to an unconditional embrace of the visual. However, we still lack a persuasive theoretical account of how images work. Emmanuel Alloa retraces the history of Western attitudes toward the visual to propose a major rethinking of images as irreplaceable agents of our everyday engagement with the world. He examines how ideas of images and their powers have been constructed in Western humanities, art theory, and philosophy, developing a novel genealogy of both visual studies and the concept of the medium. Alloa reconstructs the earliest Western media theory—Aristotle’s concept of the diaphanous milieu of vision—and the significance of its subsequent erasure in the history of science. Ultimately, he argues for a historically informed phenomenology of images and visual media that explains why images are not simply referential depictions, windows onto the world. Instead, images constantly reactivate the power of appearing. As media of visualization, they allow things to appear that could not be visible except in and through these very material devices.

A Phenomenology of Visual Media

Looking Through Images

Dieter Thomä

This book critically engages with the idea of transparency whose ubiquitous demand stands in stark contrast to its lack of conceptual clarity. The book carefully examines this notion in its own right, traces its emergence in Early Modernity and analyzes its omnipresence in contemporary rhetoric. Today, transparency has become a catchword outplaying other Enlightenment values like empowerment, sincerity and the notion of a public sphere. In a suspicious manner, transparency is entangled in the discourses on power, surveillance, and self-exposure. Bringing together prominent scholars from the emerging field of Critical Transparency Studies, the book offers a map of the various sites at which transparency has become virulent and connects the dots between past and present. By studying its appearances in today’s hyper-mediated economies of information and by linking it back to its historical roots, the book analyzes transparency and its discontents, and scrutinizes the reasons why it has become the imperative of a supposedly post-ideological age.

Critical Perspectives

Transparency, Society and Subjectivity

Rajiv Kaushik

Frank Chouraqui 

Assesses the importance of Merleau-Ponty to current and ongoing concerns in contemporary philosophy. Maurice Merleau-Ponty is widely recognized as one of the major figures of twentieth-century philosophy. The recent publication of his lecture courses and posthumous working notes has opened new avenues for both the interpretation of his thought and philosophy in general. These works confirm that, with a surprising premonition, Merleau-Ponty addressed many of the issues that concern philosophy today. With the benefit of this fuller picture of his thought, Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy undertakes an assessment of the philosopher’s relevance for contemporary thinking. Covering a diverse range of topics, including ontology, epistemology, anthropology, embodiment, animality, politics, language, aesthetics, and art, the editors gather representative voices from North America and Europe, including both Merleau-Ponty specialists and thinkers who have come to the philosopher’s work through their own thematic interest. “Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy offers a rich set of writings by central and rising scholars, spanning various languages and traditions, who together show Merleau-Ponty’s continuing relevance for contemporary thinking on phenomenology, mind and nature, politics and power, and art and creation. This book will advance scholarship and also open new doors for those seeking to find their way into Merleau-Ponty’s ways of thinking.” — David Morris, author of The Sense of Space

Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy

Frank Chouraqui

Assesses the importance of Merleau-Ponty to current and ongoing concerns in contemporary philosophy. Maurice Merleau-Ponty is widely recognized as one of the major figures of twentieth-century philosophy. The recent publication of his lecture courses and posthumous working notes has opened new avenues for both the interpretation of his thought and philosophy in general. These works confirm that, with a surprising premonition, Merleau-Ponty addressed many of the issues that concern philosophy today. With the benefit of this fuller picture of his thought, Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy undertakes an assessment of the philosopher’s relevance for contemporary thinking. Covering a diverse range of topics, including ontology, epistemology, anthropology, embodiment, animality, politics, language, aesthetics, and art, the editors gather representative voices from North America and Europe, including both Merleau-Ponty specialists and thinkers who have come to the philosopher’s work through their own thematic interest. Emmanuel Alloa is Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. His books include Resistance of the Sensible World: An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty. Frank Chouraqui is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Continental Philosophy at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. His books include Ambiguity and the Absolute: Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty on the Question of Truth. Rajiv Kaushik is Professor of Philosophy at Brock University, Canada. His books include Merleau-Ponty between Philosophy and Symbolism: The Matrixed Ontology, also published by SUNY Press.

Emmanuel Alloa

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