Philistine Controversy Pa

by Beech,Dave

• ISBN13: 9781859843741
• ISBN10: 1859843743
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-17
• Publisher: VERSO

Summary

In this fascinating study, Dave Beech and John Roberts develop what theycall a 'counter-intuitive' notion of the philistine, claiming that what thephilistine tells us about cultural division and exclusion is more persuasivethan the theories of the popular and the 'otherly-cultured' in cultural studiesand postmodernism. The 'counter-intuitive' philistine, they contest, returnsthe cultural debate to the problems of the persistence of power, privilege andsymbolic violence. Asserting that the relations between power and art have beenuntheorized in recent studies, Beech and Roberts find their critical resourcesin the least likely place: not in the 'best of things', but in that which has'no proper place'. The book also includes several in-depth responses to the Beech and Robertsthesis by leading scholars in the field of cultural theory, together with theauthors' replies to their critics.

Author Biography

John Roberts is Professor of Art and Aesthetics at the University of Wolverhampton. His books include The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday; The Philistine Controversy (with Dave Beech), Philosophizing the Everyday, and The Necessity of Errors. He is also a contributor to Radical Philosophy, Oxford Art Journal, Historical Materialism, Third Text, and Cabinet magazine. He lives in London.

Malcolm Bull is a theorist and art historian who teaches at Oxford. His books include Seeing Things Hidden, The Mirror of the Gods, and Anti-Nietzsche. He is on the editorial board of New Left Review and writes for the London Review of Books.

Esther Leslie is a lecturer in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, London. She is the author of Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism and sits on the editorial boards of Historical Materialism, Radical Philosophy and Revolutionary History.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	v
The Philistine Controversy: Introduction	1	(12)
Stewart Martin
Part 1: The New Left Review debate
Spectres of the Aesthetic	13	(35)
Dave Beech
John Roberts
The Ecstasy of Philistinism	48	(25)
Malcolm Bull
Confessions of a 'New Aesthete': A Response to the 'New Philistines'	73	(30)
Andrew Bowie
Against Voluptuous Bodies: Of Satiation Without Happiness	103	(22)
J. M. Bernstein
Tolerating Impurities: An Ontology, Genealogy and Defence of Philistinism	125	(36)
Dave Beech
John Roberts
Another Third Way?	161	(14)
Andrew Bowie
Part 2: Philistine Modes of Attention
The Sadeian Aesthetic: A Critical View	175	(26)
Noel Burch
Philistines and Art Vandals Get Upset	201	(27)
Esther Leslie
When Art Works Crack(le)	228	(27)
Gail Day
The Legions of the Blind: The Philistine and Cultural Studies	255	(17)
Malcolm Quinn
The Philistine and the Logic of Negation	272	(28)
Dave Beech
John Roberts
Notes on Contributors	300	(1)
Index	301