In Praise of Nonsense

by Hiebert, Ted

• ISBN13: 9780773539747
• ISBN10: 0773539743
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-06-28
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ

Summary

Mobilizing an array of scholars and contemporary artists, this study examines postmodern thinking through the lenses of identity and visual culture. Speculative, critical, and always creative in its approach, In Praise of Nonsense focuses on theories of disappearance, irony, and nonsense, where the pleasures of the imaginary give rise to artistic inspiration. When truth is unhinged, so is falsity, and all artistic thinking is called into question. Ted Hiebert takes on the ambitious project of holding postmodernism accountable for its own conclusions while also considering how those conclusions might still be given philosophical and artistic form.

Author Biography

Ted Hiebert is assistant professor of interdisciplinary arts at the University of Washington, Bothell.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Preface	p. 3
Technologies of Disappearance	p. 13
Willful Alienation	p. 20
Prosthetic Phenomenology	p. 37
Vacuous Being	p. 53
Technologies of Ironic Appearance	p. 69
Playing Dead	p. 77
Fantasies of Trauma	p. 92
Perspectival Roadkill	p. 110
Technologies of Nonsense	p. 131
Becoming-Rorschach	p. 140
Photographing Vampires	p. 162
Metaphysical Laziness	p. 186
Postscript	p. 206
Notes	p. 215
Bibliography	p. 225
Index	p. 233
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