Symbolism 2019: Special Focus: Beyond Mind

Published by De Gruyter 2020

Symbolism 2019

Special Focus: Beyond Mind

Edited by: Natasha Lushetich

Volume 19 in the series Symbolism

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110634952

Overview
Contents

About this book

Special Focus editor: Natasha Lushetich
Series editors: Rüdiger Ahrens, Florian Kläger, Klaus Stierstorfer

Symbolism is cohesive. It gathers heterogeneity over time, across fields of human endeavor and systems of communication. Non-sequiturs, paradox and tautology, appear dissipative. Yet they are highly productive in reticular and fractal ways. Suffice it to look at the philosophical tautology of Parmenides’s kind, which suggests that being "is"; at the practice of the koan, which collapses dualistic thinking by way of incompatible propositions, such as "the Eastern hill keeps running on the water"; at logical paradoxes in which the operative logic is sabotaged by its own means, as in Hempel’s paradox; at absurdist dramatic texts in which protagonists record empty time in order to mark the emptiness of the time they are recording, as in Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape; or at paradoxical games like Maciunas’s Prepared Table Tennis played with paddles that have huge holes in them. In all of these examples, the existence-apprehending processes occur via unexpected itineraries, in vacant but nevertheless enunciative codes, in seemingly futile, yet calibrating performances, and in a temporality that is the cumulative time’s "other." They catapult the mind into the realm of the extra-linguistic, the para-logical and the meta-experiential, or they transfigure it through a series of reticular iterations.

Forty years after Varela et al’s groundbreaking work on the embodied, emotional and environmentally embedded mind – that marked a definitive departure from its former strictly rational conception – there is a need to re-examine the territory that lies beyond mind for a different reason: the proliferation of algorithmic logics that rely on the idea of a rational agent (human or algorithmic) making logical, self-serving decisions. This special issue explores neither-rational-nor-irrational forms of thinking and making. It sketches a cartography of a-rational processes of meaning- and knowledge-production that operate across numerous sites, practices, and disciplines: visual and media art; literature; art history; music; dance; film; intermedia and photography. Part I "Ahistoricity, Assemblages and Interpretative Reversals" focuses on the legacy of the (neo) avant-garde and amodernism. Part II "Destinerrance, Labyrinths and Folds" investigates the ways in which the Derridian delays/detours and the Deleuzian folding function as concrete ways of embodied knowledge-production. Part III, "Immanent Transcendence", offers a glimpse into the reticular and iterative structuring of transcendence that does not pre-exist immanence but is its residue.

Author / Editor information

Klaus Stierstorfer, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany; Rüdiger Ahrens, Universität Würzburg, Germany; Florian Kläger, Universität Bayreuth, Germany.

Special Focus editor: Natasha Lushetich, University of Dundee, UK.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Foreword from the Editors Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	IX
Special Focus: “Beyond Mind”
Introduction Natasha Lushetich Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I: “Ahistoricity, Assemblages and Interpretative Reversals”
The Fullness of Nothing, the Sense of the Nonsensical, and the Value of Being Unproductive Assemblage Theory, Amodernist Art, and Ways to be in the World Owen F. Smith Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
Automatic Writing: From Networked Art to Cyberwarfare Craig J. Saper Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
Cracking the Beckettian Profounds of Mind in Endgame with Game Theory Atėnė Mendelytė Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
Part II: “Destinerrance, Labyrinths and Folds”
“The End Is Built into the Beginning”: Charlie Kaufman and the Orderly Disorder of Neuroscience Romén Reyes-Peschl Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
The Fold: Musical Monads and Baroque Assemblages Timothy O’Dwyer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
The Liquid Architecture of Bodily Folding Susan Sentler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
Part III: “Immanent Transcendence”
Herat 1487: Early Virtual Reality Laura U. Marks Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151
“Aesthetic Borderlands” in Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books Todd Barnes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
The White Space Conflict Theory: Understanding Photography as Energy Gilles Massot Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
General Section
Panopticon and Pilgrimage: The Narrator- Reader Relationship in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews Sijie Wang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Language, Symbol, and “Non-Symbolic Fact” in D. G. Rossetti’s “The Woodspurge” Mark William Brown Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Art Nouveau and Interarts in A. S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book Jack Stewart Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Book Reviews
Barbara Franchi, Elvan Mutlu, eds. Crossing Borders in Victorian Travel: Spaces, Nations and Empires Felipe Espinoza Garrido Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	295
Marion Gymnich, Barbara Puschmann-Nalenz et. al. The Orphan in Fiction andComics since the 19th Century Holly Jennifer Morgan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	301
Review Essay: Recent Studies in Renaissance Aesthetics David A. Katz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	307
Review Essay: World-Building in Literatureand Beyond Evelyn Koch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	315
List of Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	329

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Scholars of Literary Studies, Cultural Studies and Art History
Pages
- Front matter: 11
- Main content: 334
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 1
- Coloured Illustrations: 10
Keywords: A-rationality; paradox; reticular iterations; tautology

eBook

Published: November 18, 2019
ISBN: 9783110634952

Hardcover

Published: November 18, 2019
ISBN: 9783110667486