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The Aesthetics of Uncertainty
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The Aesthetics of Uncertainty Hardback - 2008

by Janet Wolff

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From the publisher

Feminism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and Marxism, among other critical approaches, have undermined traditional notions of aesthetics in recent decades. But questions of aesthetic judgment and pleasure persist, and many critics now seek a "return to aesthetics" or a "return to beauty."

Janet Wolff advances a "postcritical" aesthetics grounded in shared values that are negotiated in the context of community. She relates this approach to contemporary debates about a committed politics similarly founded on the abandonment of certainty. Neither universalist nor relativist, the "aesthetics of uncertainty" provides a discourse on beauty that contemporary critics can engage with and offers a basis for judgment that is committed to assigning value to works of art.

Wolff explores her position through a range of topics: the question of beauty in relation to feminist critique; the problematic status of twentieth-century English art, visual representations of the Holocaust, Jewish identity as portrayed by the artist R. B. Kitaj, refugee artists and modernism in 1940s Britain, and the nature and appeal of imagistic thinking in sociology. She addresses the desire for certainty and the timeliness of doubt and concludes with a meditation on the intersection of aesthetics and ethics, arguing that ethical issues are very much implicated in aesthetic discourse.

Details

  • Title The Aesthetics of Uncertainty
  • Author Janet Wolff
  • Binding Hardback
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 200
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Columbia University Press, New York
  • Publication date 2008-09
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Bibliography, Dust Cover, Illustrated, Index, Table of Contents
  • ISBN 9780231140966 / 0231140967
  • Weight 0.9 lbs (0.41 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.1 x 6.2 x 0.9 in (20.57 x 15.75 x 2.29 cm)
  • Category Philosophy
  • Library of Congress subjects Aesthetics, Art - Philosophy
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2008008542
  • Dewey Decimal Code 111.85

About the author

Janet Wolff is professor emerita in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester. She is the author of The Social Production of Art; Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art; Feminine Sentences: Essays on Women and Culture; Resident Alien: Feminist Cultural Criticism; and AngloModern: Painting and Modernity in Britain and the United States.

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The Aesthetics of Uncertainty (Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts)
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The Aesthetics of Uncertainty (Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts)
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The Aesthetics of Uncertainty (Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts)

by Wolff, Janet

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The Aesthetics of Uncertainty
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The Aesthetics of Uncertainty

by Wolff, Janet

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9780231140966 / 0231140967
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The Aesthetics of Uncertainty
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The Aesthetics of Uncertainty

by Janet Wolff

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9780231140966 / 0231140967
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