Abolition and the critical turn

Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Marjorie Levinson

Chapter 2 studies the relationship between historicism and Romanticism. It locates the two between Enlightenment materialism, on one side, and Marxian historical and dialectical materialism, on the other. In so doing, it isolates a paradox of materialism—namely, its production of the very concepts that undo it. These include the ideas of knowing as dissociated conceptual activity, and consciousness as absolute negativity. Romanticism and historicism, it is argued, represent solutions to a common problem—a claim defended through a reading of Wordsworth’s sonnet “The world is too much with us.” In considering how we position ourselves in relation to past literature, the chapter evaluates the choices between contemplation and empathy, knowledge and power, blame and defense. As such, it represents the first move in a self-critical turn on the new historicist method that had shaped the author’s—and part of the field’s—work in the previous decade.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Paul Ingram

Abstract Theodor Adorno’s philistine functions as the other of art, or as the ideal embodiment of everything that the bourgeois aesthetic subject is not. He insists on the truth-content of the derogation, while recognising its unjust social foundation, and seeking to reflect that tension in a self-critical turn. His model of advanced art is negatively delimited by the philistinism of art with a cause and the philistinism of art for enjoyment, which represent the poles of the aesthetic and the social. The philistine is also the counterpart to the connoisseur, with the interplay between them pointing to his preferred approach to aesthetics, in which an affinity for art and alienness to it are combined without compromise. However, Adorno fails to realise fully the critical potential of the philistine as the immanent negation of art and aesthetics.


2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Gedro ◽  
Joshua C. Collins ◽  
Tonette S. Rocco
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Gabriel Solis

Ethnomusicology has often had an ambivalent relationship with technology: we owe our discipline to mid-twentieth-century developments in recording technology. Nevertheless there is a strong counter-modern streak that characterizes ethnomusicologists as a group. This essay investigates the reasons for ethnomusciologists’ mistrust of certain kinds of music technology and interprets ambivalence as a mode of critical engagement. It surveys turning points in the field from comparative musicology to the critical turn and from the critical turn to the new digital humanities. I conclude that digital humanities needs ethnomusicological ambivalence in the form of critical engagement. Good data analytics needs a skeptical view from the vantage point of music scholars and contextual knowledge-bearers in the cultures of study.


2019 ◽  
pp. 14-17
Author(s):  
B. E. Nosenok

Cultural studies as a humanities researcher takes the place of an expert. The relevance of this topic is due to the lack of development of the issues of “culture-based studies” in Ukrainian culturology. There is a lack of translated into French or Ukrainian languages of French sources published since 1975. French culturological science, which developed after 1975, is almost not represented in Ukrainian culturology. The present stage of the development of French historiography, which lies at the heart of cultural history, and cultural studies, is associated with increased attention to social knowledge. This stage is characterized by the deployment of a “critical turn”, which proceeds from the following principles: the interdisciplinary approach, the significance of cultural expertise, the severity of publications and the multiplicity of their forms, multidisciplinarity. The “critical turn” affects the following spheres of knowledge: la Culturologie, les Études culturelles, les Sciences de la Culture. The article substantiates the relevance of the use of the concept of “culture-based studies” to the definition of processes that are unfolding within the framework of French humanities and are associated exclusively with the theoretical formations in the context of the social sciences. The purpose of the article is to outline a map of culture-based studies in the field of French humanitaristics. The methodology of the article is based on the application of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to research in the field of culturology. Also, methodological developments in the field of “critical turn” and the achievements of the sociological circle and the interdisciplinary discussion club “Eranos” were applied. The scientific novelty of the article is to substantiate the appropriateness of the use of the concept of “culture-based studies” on the definition of processes that are unfolding within the framework of French humanitaristics and relate exclusively to theoretical formations in the context of social sciences. This concept to the field of Ukrainian culturology is introduced for the first time. Also, for the first time, the place and forms of culturology in French humanities were clarified. Conclusions. Working with a source base and methodology is one of the points that are compulsory on the way to the solution of the tasks, the main of which is the formation of the body of fundamental works for French history (including the history of culture) and historiography of the period since 1975 year to the present day. On the basis of this building, there is the prospect of building an alternative national cultural history project addressed to the vector of the French historiographical, historical-anthropological and cultural-related issues in the field of social knowledge. The article presents the arguments why it is appropriate to use the concept of “culture-based studies” in the context of conducting research in relation to French humanitaristics, in particular, the modern period of its development.


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