A Violent Embrace: Art and Aesthetics after Representation [Paperback]

Instead of asking questions about the symbolic meaning or underlying truth of a work of art, ren?e c. hoogland is concerned with the actual work that it does in the world (whether intentionally or not). Why do we find ourselves in tears in front of an abstract painting? Why do some cartoons of the prophet Muhammad generate worldwide political outrage? What, in other words, is the compelling force of visual images, evenor especiallyif they are nonfigurative, repulsive, or downright ugly? Rather than describing, analyzing, and interpreting artworks, hoogland approaches art as an event that obtains on the level of actualization, presenting retellings of specific artistic events in the light of recent interventions in aesthetic theory, and proposing to conceive of the aesthetic encounter as a potentially disruptive, if not violent, force field with material, political, and practical consequences.

REN?E C. HOOGLAND is an associate professor of English at Wayne State University and the author of Elizabeth Bowen: A Reputation in Writing and Lesbian Configuration. She is the editor of Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts.

Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations INTRODUCTION Visuality, Cultural Literacy, and the Affective Turn Artistic Activity: Dialogism, Aesthesis and Corporeality Violent Becomings: From the informe and the Abject to Uncontrollable Beauty Neo-Aesthtics and the Study of the Arts of the Present The Groundless Realities of Art Photography The Ruse of the Ruins, or: Detroits Nonreal Estate Visualizing the Face: Face Value and d?visage CONCLUSION Lines of Flight and the Emergence of the New Notes Bibliography Index