Graveyard poetry: religion, aesthetics and the mid-eighteenth-century poetic condition
In: British literature in context in the long eighteenth century
In: British literature in context in the long eighteenth century
Book review of: Reverberations across small-scale British theatre: politics, aesthetics and forms, edited by Patrick Duggan and Victor Ukaegbu. Bristol: Intellect; ISBN 9781783202973 (£35.00) ; Publisher PDF
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In: Alber Philosophie
For this paper I shall look at ways of coordinating politics and entertainment, or in slightly other terms aesthetics and politics, as they have been used to construct ancient tragedy as a means to the good society. In my title this aspect of tragedy is identified as "home", to indicate tragedy's preoccupation with community. This is a note repeatedly struck in discourse about tragedy, both by the earliest commentators and by those negotiating the development of the nation-state, and of political reform, in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This essay thus first considers some of the different ways in which tragedy has been associated with the goal of the good community, by the theoretical works of Plato, Aristotle, Schlegel, Williams and Eagleton, as well as by harnessing productions and performances to the political effort of nation-building. The essay will then contrastingly explore tragedy's "homelessness", the ways in which it uproots its characters and sets them in restless motion. These latter reflections are prompted by recent receptions of tragedy that have responded to the global migrant crisis, and that are thus in dialogue with earlier critical understandings of tragedy which were more likely to foreground a sense of civic identity associated with the polis. I thus consider productions of Aeschylus' Suppliant Women in Syracuse and Edinburgh, and the new ancient trilogy, acted by Syrian women refugees, which has unfolded since 2013, in the Middle East and Europe, under the creative guidance of Omar Abu Saada and Mohammad Al Attar. The new focus is born of and gives voice to new global realities. Barbara Goff is Professor of Classics at the University of Reading, UK. She has published extensively on Greek tragedy and its reception, especially in postcolonial contexts. Her most important books include Your Secret Language: classics in the British colonies of West Africa (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone, and dramas of the African diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), and The Noose of Words: Readings of Desire, Violence and Language in Euripides' Hippolytos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Her most recent publication is a collection, co-edited with Introduction, titled Classicising Crisis: the modern age of revolutions and the Greco-Roman repertoire (London: Routledge, 2020). Keywords: tragedy, exile, home, refugee, Syria
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Philosophical biography / Ray Monk -- Ethics in the modern world / Roger Crisp -- The role of political philosophy / Jonathan Wolff -- Aesthetics and music / Aaron Ridley -- Power, knowledge and injustice / Miranda Fricker -- Feminism and pornography / Rae Langton -- Mind matters / Tim Crane -- The concerns of analytic philosophy / Michael Martin -- On vagueness / Timothy Williamson -- The rebirth of metaphysics / Robin Le Poidevin -- Continental philosophy and emancipation / Simon Critchley -- The analytic and the continental / Simon Glendinning -- Sartre's existentialsim / Christina Howells -- Post-analytic philosophy / Stephen Mulhall -- A post-human hell / Keith Ansell Pearson -- Philosophy and the public / Nigel Warburton
chapter 1 Bollywood, Bhangra and being British -- chapter 2 Mapping migration: Transnational formations of diaspora -- chapter 3 Bollywood and/ as musical theatre -- chapter 4 Bollywood on stage: Transadaptation and 'Bollywoodisation' -- chapter 5 Bending Bhangra: Rifco Arts and Bend It Like Beckham: the musical.
AbstractVirginia Woolf and the Mediated Modern Subject: Class System, Spacetime, and the Aesthetics of Creative LaborbyDavid Del Rey MenillaDoctor of Philosophy in EnglishUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Ann M Banfield, Chair Growing up in a privileged home but also existing "outside" it gave Woolf the space and time to look critically at the social forces of repression and oppression which structured her reality. As a self-described "outsider," Woolf formed her social critique through an engagement with political as well as new scientific ideas. I discuss the synergy she sees between Marx's work and Einstein's theories of Special and General Relativity. I argue that Woolf combines Marx's interest in the cultivation of our natural desires, the return to the body, as the way out of estranged labour--the ideology of private property--with Einstein's idea of spacetime, in which time is relative, which for Woolf means that characters are not confined to the "present" but can re-experience the past or even the future. Woolf presents characters whose minds and bodies can encompass a vast expanse of spacetime. For Einstein, the notions of the past, present, and future are a figment of our imaginations. Where we are in time is a function of were we are in space. Woolf plays with Einstein's theories to portray characters like Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe in To The Lighthouse who are able to revisit the past through their labor--making "patterns." The rhythmical quality of what I define as their "creative labor," a Marxist notion of being in the body, allows them to overcome the physical and mental boundaries of abstract space and time which structures religious and capitalist social relations. In many ways, we can think of Einstein as representing a further development of Marx's ideas since the abstract notions of space and time which structure religion and capitalism also structure the Enlightenment's pursuit of knowledge. The various systematic forms of repression which are rooted in religion and develop further in capitalism have neglected the body and instilled the belief in abstract, mediated, truths. Not bound by the narrowness of the "present," and the momentary illusion of power promised by the class system, Woolf's characters are able to revisit and deconstruct the causes of trauma. Free from the boundaries which keep them apart from themselves and others, they are now able to connect intimately with others across spacetime. They are able to uses other senses to relate to others. Woolf shows characters who can feel and think what other characters experience. Capitalist social relations based on establishing distinct economic boundaries between the self and others are transformed into fluid boundaries of embodied exchange. The self becomes part of a larger whole where social relations shift away from what Marx calls egotistical, "vulgar need" (90), to the recognition that we need others to develop our latent powers. For Marx as for Woolf, "human essence" (89) is creative; the selfishness which Freud ascribes to the libido only exists as a basic human need to survive. The selfish ego is not innate but a product of socio-historical forces. I discuss how Woolf, synthesizing Marx and Einstein, shows characters who can deconstruct the past in order to reconnect with their creative essence.
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In: Modernism and ...
In: Oxford scholarship online
'Socialism' names a form of collective life that has never been fully realized; consequently, it is best understood as a goal to be imagined. This study locates an aesthetic impulse that animates some of the most consequential socialist writing, thought, and practice of the long nineteenth century. This volume explores this tradition of radical activism, investigating the diverse ways that British socialists - from Robert Owen to the mid-century Christian Socialists to William Morris - marshalled the resources of the aesthetic in their efforts to surmount 'politics' and develop non-governmental forms of collective life.
In: Palgrave studies in the Enlightenment, romanticism and cultures of print
Critics and historians of the late 18th century have developed a multidisciplinary approach to the history of culture. This work, from literary critics and theorists, art historians and social historians, remaps the relations between culture and society, politics and aesthetics, law and representation