Panorama: Philosophies of the Visible (Textures: Philosophy, Literature, Culture)

The new electronic age has seen a radical transition from book to screen, a development which has obscured the fact that it is not what we see which matters but how we see what we see. We live in a time when the visible needs to be retheorised. "Panorama" presents a broad analysis of philosophies of the visible in art and culture, particularly in painting, film, photography, and literature. The work of key philosophers - Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas, Barthes, Blanchot, Foucault, Bataille, Derrida, Lyotard and Deleuze - is examined in the context of visibility, expressivity, the representational and the postmodern. The contributors are: Zsuzsa Baross, Robert Burch, Alessandro Carrera, Dana Hollander, Lynne Huffer, Volker Kaiser, Reginald Lilly, Robert S. Leventhal, Janet Lungstrum, Ladelle McWhorter, Ludwig Nagl, Anne Tomiche, James R. Watson, and Lisa Zucker. Contents......Page 6 General Introduction: Between the Visible and the Expressive: An In-visible Exchange......Page 8 Part One: Postmodern Visions......Page 14 Introduction: Transgressing the Kantian Sublime......Page 16 1 Rephrasing the Visible and the Expressive: Lyotard’s “Defense of the Eye” from Figure to Inarticulate Phrase......Page 20 2 Visibility, “Bild,” and “Einbildungskraft”: Derrida, Barthes, Levinas......Page 34 3 Puncturing Genres: Barthes and Derrida on the Limits of Representation......Page 47 Part Two: Beyond Representational Thinking......Page 54 Introduction: While Illustrating......Page 56 4 Blanchot’s Gaze and Orpheus’s Singing: Seeing and Listening in Poetic Inspiration......Page 58 5 Foucault and the Disappearance of the Visible Subject......Page 68 Part Three: Expressions and the Limits of Philosophy......Page 82 Introduction: Desire, Displacement, and Laughter......Page 84 6 Frames of Visibility: Si(gh)ting the Monstrous......Page 87 7 Francis Bacon, the Philosopher’s Painter, and the Logic of Sensation......Page 111 8 Bataille’s Erotic Displacement of Vision: Attempts at a Feminist Reading......Page 130 9 Luce Irigaray’s Specular Mother: Lips in the Mirror......Page 141 Part Four: Filming the (In)Visible......Page 152 Introduction: And Images Ending......Page 154 10 Expressionist Towers of Babel in Weimar Film and Architecture......Page 156 11 Rewiring the Oedipal Scene: Image and Discursivity in Wim Wenders’s Journey Until the End of the World......Page 168 Part Five: Critiques of Contemporary Image Culture......Page 178 Introduction: Beyond a Paradigm......Page 180 12 Imagism and the Ends of Vision: Pound and Salomon......Page 182 13 Mediums of Freedom in Photogrammic Frames: Some Exposures of Bound Transcendence......Page 198 Epilogue: The Paradox of Philosophy’s Gaze......Page 214 Abbreviations......Page 223 Notes......Page 227 C......Page 255 H......Page 256 M......Page 257 R......Page 258 V......Page 259 Z......Page 260 Bibliography......Page 261 Acknowledgements......Page 265 Contributors......Page 266 Editor......Page 268 This book examines the work of key philosophers - Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Irigaray, Levinas, Barthes, Blanchot, Fouault, Bateille, Derrida, Lyotard and Deleuze. Their work is examined in the context of visibility, expressivity, the representational and the postmodern