An examination of contemporary art's recent emphasis on “research” and “knowledge production,” and its claims to provide a novel access to “knowledge.” Questioning the role and function of contemporary art in economic and political systems that increasingly manage data and affect, Knowledge Beside Itself delves into the peculiar emphasis placed in recent years, curatorially and institutionally, on such notions as “research” and “knowledge production.” Contemporary art is viewed here as a strategic bet on the social distinctions and value extractions made possible by claiming a different, novel access to “knowledge.” Contemporary art's various liaisons with the humanities and the social and natural sciences, as well as its practitioners' frequent embeddedness within transdisciplinary research environments and educational settings, have created a sense of epistemo-aesthetic departure, which concurs with the growing relevance of art as conduit or catalyst of knowledge. Discussing the practice of artists such as Christine Borland, Bureau d'études, Tony Chakar, Lina Dokuzović, Fernando García-Dory, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Adelita Husni-Bey, Jakob Jakobsen, Claire Pentecost, and Pilvi Takala, writer and curator Tom Holert submits the gambit of conceptualizing contemporary art as an agent of epistemic politics to a genealogical analysis of its political-economic underpinnings—in times of cognitive capitalism, machine learning, and a renewed urgency of epistemological disobedience.

An examination of contemporary art's recent emphasis on “research” and “knowledge production,” and its claims to provide a novel access to “knowledge.” Questioning the role and function of contemporary art in economic and political systems that increasingly manage data and affect, Knowledge Beside Itself delves into the peculiar emphasis placed in recent years, curatorially and institutionally, on such notions as “research” and “knowledge production.” Contemporary art is viewed here as a strategic bet on the social distinctions and value extractions made possible by claiming a different, novel access to “knowledge.” Contemporary art's various liaisons with the humanities and the social and natural sciences, as well as its practitioners' frequent embeddedness within transdisciplinary research environments and educational settings, have created a sense of epistemo-aesthetic departure, which concurs with the growing relevance of art as conduit or catalyst of knowledge. Discussing the practice of artists such as Christine Borland, Bureau d'études, Tony Chakar, Lina Dokuzović, Fernando García-Dory, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Adelita Husni-Bey, Jakob Jakobsen, Claire Pentecost, and Pilvi Takala, writer and curator Tom Holert submits the gambit of conceptualizing contemporary art as an agent of epistemic politics to a genealogical analysis of its political-economic underpinnings—in times of cognitive capitalism, machine learning, and a renewed urgency of epistemological disobedience.

In Life Beside Itself, Lisa Stevenson takes us on a haunting ethnographic journey through two historical moments when life for the Canadian Inuit has hung in the balance: the tuberculosis epidemic (1940s to the early 1960s) and the subsequent suicide epidemic (1980s to the present). Along the way, Stevenson troubles our commonsense understanding of what life is and what it means to care for the life of another. Through close attention to the images in which we think and dream and through which we understand the world, Stevenson describes a world in which life is beside itself: the name-soul of a teenager who dies in a crash lives again in his friend’s newborn baby, a young girl shares a last smoke with a dead friend in a dream, and the possessed hands of a clock spin uncontrollably over its face. In these contexts, humanitarian policies make little sense because they attempt to save lives by merely keeping a body alive. For the Inuit, and perhaps for all of us, life is "somewhere else," and the task is to articulate forms of care for others that are adequate to that truth.

"Philosophy Beside Itself " was first published in 1986. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The writings of French philosopher Jacques Derrida have been the single most powerful influence on critical theory and practice in the United States over the past decade. But with few exceptions American philosophers have taken little or no interest in Derrida's work, and the task of reception, translation, and commentary has been left to literary critics. As a result, Derrida has appeared as a figure already defined by essentially literary critical activities and interests. Stephen Melville's aim in "Philosophy Beside Itself " is to insist upon and clarify the distinctions between philosophy and criticism. He argues that until we grasp Derrida's philosophical project as such, we remain fundamentally unable to see his significance for criticism. In terms derived from Stanley Cavell's writings on modernism, Melville develops a case for Derrida as a modernist philosopher, working at once within and against that tradition and discipline. Melville first places Derrida in a Hegelian context, the structure of which he explores by examining the work of Heidegger, Lacan, and Bataille. With this foundation, he is able to reappraise the project of deconstructive criticism as developed in Paul de Man's "Blindness and Insight "and further articulated by other Yale critics. Central to this critique is the ambivalent relationship between deconstructive criticism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Criticism--radical self-criticism--is a central means through which the difficult facts of human community come to recognition, and Melville argues for criticism as an activity intimately bound to the ways in which we do and do not belong in time and in community. Derrida's achievement has been to find a new and necessary way to assert that the task of philosophy is criticism; the task of literary criticism is to assume the burden of that achievement. Stephen Melville is an assistant professor of English at Syracuse University, and Donald Marshall is a professor of English at the University of Iowa.

This book brings together a distinguished group of scholars from several generations of feminists, asking them to reflect on the history and identity of feminism. Explores feminism in history and the conflict within feminism.

Examinations of Francis Ponge's texts on Jean Fautrier's “Hostage Paintings,” Jack Whitten's Memorial Paintings, and Banksy's auction stunt Love is in the Bin. This book contains three case studies on very different artists, analyzing their work through their respective historical contexts: the writer Francis Ponge (1899–1988) and his seminal text on Jean Fautrier's “Hostage Paintings” from 1943; visual artist Jack Whitten's (1939–2018) Memorial Paintings and Banksy's notorious auction stunt Love is in the Bin from 2018. Examining all three artistic propositions from a value-theoretical point of view, Graw finds Ponge's text on Fautrier to be “doubly materialist” insofar as it (seemingly) reveals its own material conditions while simultaneously grasping the specific materiality of Fautrier's paintings; suggests that the indications of value in Whitten's painting to be more indirect; and reveals Banksy's value reflections to have a very different generational thrust. Gaw shows that Ponge's text is full of value-reflexive insights but that Ponge himself is an ambivalent figure. She finds that the dedication of Whitten's paintings inscribes them in a system of exchange. And, finally, the deliberate aesthetic meagerness of Banksy's Love Is in the Bin points to an emptiness at the heart of value. Institut für Kunstkritik series

"This book explores the ways in which the present post-aesthetic art affects economics, politics, science, communication, social media, and everyday life"--

Madness, sexuality, power, knowledge—are these facts of life or simply parts of speech? In a series of works of astonishing brilliance, historian Michel Foucault excavated the hidden assumptions that govern the way we live and the way we think. The Archaeology of Knowledge begins at the level of "things aid" and moves quickly to illuminate the connections between knowledge, language, and action in a style at once profound and personal. A summing up of Foucault's own methadological assumptions, this book is also a first step toward a genealogy of the way we live now. Challenging, at times infuriating, it is an absolutey indispensable guide to one of the most innovative thinkers of our time.

What is the contemporary relationship between art and thought,