Maps and Mirrors: Topologies of Art and Politics (Philosophy, Literature And Culture)

__Maps and Mirrors__ explores the links and gaps between the aesthetic and the political at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Testing the major voices of aesthetic and literary theory, it raises important questions about the implicit political contexts and commitments of thinkers from Kant to de Man. Taken together the essays provide a tour of the complexities and richness of contemporary modes of critique. Contents 5 Acknowledgments 7 Introduction Historicity and Ideologization 9 Part 1 Maps 41 Figura Preserves History (in) Ajar 48 Gadamer’s Aesthetics in Practice in Wer bin Ich und wer bist Du? 56 Structure, Flow, and Balance in Montaigne’s Essay “Of Idleness” 68 Engendering Aesthetics Sublimity, Sublimation, and Misogyny in Burke and Kant 80 Part 2 Mirrors 101 The Hermeneutical Relevance of Kant’s Critique of Judgment 108 The Mirror and the Dagger Nietzsche and the Danger of Art 123 Heidegger’s Leap 143 Awakening Negativity The Genesis of Aesthetics in the Critique of Judgment 170 Part 3 Morphologies 193 Lyotard’s Politics of the Sentence 199 The Problem of Truth-Content (Wahrheitsgehalt) in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory 216 The Unknown Masterpiece 225 “Prediction and Perspective” Textuality and Counterhegemonic Culture in Antonio Gramsci and Julia Kristeva 262 Part 4 Movements 279 Paul de Man and the Rhetorical Tradition 287 “Death Is the Mother of Beauty” Aesthetics, Politics, and History in Gadamer 297 From the Lighthouse The Promise of Redemption and the Possibility of Legal Interpretation 315 Aesthetic Truth Production or “Letting Be” 344 Bibliography 359 Notes on Contributors 379

Maps and Mirrors explores the links and gaps between the aesthetic and the political at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Testing the major voices of aesthetic and literary theory, it raises important questions about the implicit political contexts and commitments of thinkers from Kant to de Man. Taken together the essays provide a tour of the complexities and richness of contemporary modes of critique.

The essays in this collection explore the links and gaps between the aesthetic and the political at the intersection of philosophy and literature. They do so by interrogating voices of aesthetic and literary theory, raising questions about the political contexts and commitments of thinkers.