The Aesthetics of Solidarity

The Aesthetics of Solidarity PDF

Author: Nichole M. Flores

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2021-07-01

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1647120926

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Focusing on Latine theological aesthetics and Catholic social thought, Nichole M. Flores builds a framework for interpreting religious symbols in our contemporary democratic life and shows how we can create a community where members stand in solidarity with those from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds.

The Aesthetics of Solidarity

The Aesthetics of Solidarity PDF

Author: Nichole M. Flores

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1647120918

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"Latinx Catholics have used Our Lady of Guadalupe as a symbol in democratic campaigns ranging from the United Farm Workers movement to the Chicano movement to the movement for just immigration reform. In diverse ways, these groups use Guadalupe's symbol and narrative to make claims about justice in society's basic structures (law, policy, institutions, for example) while seeking to generate greater participation and representation in US democracy. Yet, Guadalupe is illegible within a liberal political framework that seeks to protect society's basic structures from religious encroachment by relegating religious speech, practices, and symbols to the realm of the background culture. In response to this problem, religious ethicists have argued for expansions of the liberal framework that would make religious language, arguments, and practices communities legible within a pluralistic society without capitulating to anti-democratic modes of governance that undermine pluralism. What remains unexplored is the way that the aesthetic dimensions of particular religious traditions can be engaged toward cultivating a more participatory democracy that invites substantive contributions to society's common life from religious people and communities. Instead, in conversation with political liberalism, Latinx theological aesthetics, and Catholic social thought, The Aesthetics of Solidarity examines the use of particular religious symbols to make democratic claims and generate greater participation and presence in the life of US democracy. After evaluating liberalism's capacity for constructive engagement with religion toward strengthening democratic participation, the project employs Latinx theological aesthetics and Catholic social thought to offer a constructive framework for interpreting religious symbols in the context of a religiously pluralistic and participatory democratic life"--

Theological Fragments

Theological Fragments PDF

Author: Rubén Rosario Rodríguez

Publisher: Presbyterian Publishing Corp

Published: 2023-05-23

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1646983335

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The swelling ranks of religious "nones"—those who do not identify with any particular religious tradition—have demonstrated that traditional Christian apologetics set on delivering a universally accepted, objectively verifiable system that proves the truth and superiority of Christian belief has failed. Turned off by organized Christianity’s hypocrisy and politics of intolerance, millennials and Generation Z have rejected such domineering forms of reasoning aimed at winning converts through logical argument. Not only is this misguided missional strategy, argues Rubén Rosario Rodríguez, but it’s grounded in bad theology as well. The propositional truth claims imply that if you accept the argument, you must accept the Christian faith too. Instead of this triumphalist understanding of Christian truth, Rosario argues for a broken and contrite Christian theology that can help make sense of a fractured world. Realizing that fragments of truth are often all we have, he points out that the search for the truth of God and the self will most often be found while engaged in the struggle for justice. Theological Fragments is not another set of strategies for how to win back millennials. Rather, it provides a foundational theological vision necessary to the work of inviting the "nones" to hear the gospel afresh.

The Art of Resistance

The Art of Resistance PDF

Author: Colette Braeckman

Publisher: Verbrecher Verlag

Published: 2020-02-04

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 3957324424

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The Golden Books are a joint project by NTGent and the Berlin publisher Verbrecher Verlag. It is a series comprising programme articles on theatre, aesthetics and politics as well as background pieces on projects by NTGent. A series on both the theory and the practice of an engaged theatre of the future. The Art of Resistance is the fourth volume in this series. It gathers speeches, essays, interviews and manifestos, written and performed by artists, activists, journalists and lawyers. How can we practice solidarity? Fight an unjust system of imperialism and neoliberal capitalism? Give a voice to the unheard? With contributions from Colette Braeckman, Luanda Casella, Maria Lucia Cruz Correia, Aminata Demba, Douglas Estevam da Silva, Heleen Debeuckelaere, Beatrice Delvaux, Ulrike Guerot, Dalilla Hermans, Prince Kihangi, Daniel Lima, Robert Menasse, Ogutu Muraya, Yoonis Osman Nuur, Brunilda Pali, Milo Rau, Hendrik Schoukens, Yvan Sagnet, Lara Staal, Terreyro Coreografico / Daniel Fagus Kairoz, Marc-Antoine Vumilia, Harald Welzer, Veridiana Zurita. All texts in english.

Life as Art

Life as Art PDF

Author: Zachary Simpson

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2012-09-27

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0739179314

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Life as Art brings the resources of contemporary aesthetics since Nietzsche to bear on the problems of how one integrates the aesthetic emphases of meaning, liberation, and creativity into one’s daily life. By linking together the aesthetic and ethical accounts of critical theorists, phenomenologists, and existentialists into a coherent view on the artful life, Life as Art shows the ways in which much of contemporary Continental theory has been concerned with alternative ways of constructing one’s own life. Seen as a unified phenomenon, life as art signifies an active attempt to create a life which bears the resistance, openness, and creativity found in artworks.

The Political Power of Visual Art

The Political Power of Visual Art PDF

Author: Daniel Herwitz

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-04-08

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1350182397

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Visual art has a ubiquitous political cast today. But which politics? Daniel Herwitz seeks clarity on the various things meant by politics, and how we can evaluate their presumptions or aspirations in contemporary art. Drawing on the work of William Kentridge, drenched in violence, race, and power, and the artworld immolations of Banksy, Herwitz's examples range from the NEA 4 and the question of offense-as-dissent, to the community driven work of George Gittoes, the identity politics of contemporary American art and (for contrast with the power of visual media) literature written in dialogue with truth commissions. He is interested in understanding art practices today in the light of two opposing inheritances: the avant-gardes and their politicization of the experimental art object, and 18th-century aesthetics, preaching the autonomy of the art object, which he interprets as the cultural compliment to modern liberalism. His historically-informed approach reveals how crucial this pair of legacies is to reading the tensions in voice and character of art today. Driven by questions about the capacity of the visual medium to speak politically or acquire political agency, this book is for anyone working in aesthetics or the art world concerned with the fate of cultural politics in a world spinning out of control, yet within reach of emancipation.

The Art of Solidarity

The Art of Solidarity PDF

Author: Jessica Stites Mor

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2018-10-17

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 147731640X

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The Cold War claimed many lives and inflicted tremendous psychological pain throughout the Americas. The extreme polarization that resulted from pitting capitalism against communism held most of the creative and productive energy of the twentieth century captive. Many artists responded to Cold War struggles by engaging in activist art practice, using creative expression to mobilize social change. The Art of Solidarity examines how these creative practices in the arts and culture contributed to transnational solidarity campaigns that connected people across the Americas from the early twentieth century through the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. This collection of original essays is divided into four chronological sections: cultural and artistic production in the pre–Cold War era that set the stage for transnational solidarity organizing; early artistic responses to the rise of Cold War polarization and state repression; the centrality of cultural and artistic production in social movements of solidarity; and solidarity activism beyond movements. Essay topics range widely across regions and social groups, from the work of lesbian activists in Mexico City in the late 1970s and 1980s, to the exchanges and transmissions of folk-music practices from Cuba to the United States, to the uses of Chilean arpilleras to oppose and protest the military dictatorship. While previous studies have focused on politically engaged artists or examined how artist communities have created solidarity movements, this book is one of the first to merge both perspectives.

Aesthetics of the Commons

Aesthetics of the Commons PDF

Author: Felix Stalder

Publisher:

Published: 2021-01-20

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9783035803457

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What do a feminist server, an art space located in a public park in North London, a so-called pirate library of high cultural value yet dubious legal status, and an art school that emphasizes collectivity have in common? They all demonstrate that art plays an important role in imagining and producing a real quite different from what is currently hegemonic, and that art has the possibility to not only envision or proclaim ideas in theory, but also to realize them materially. Aesthetics of the Commons examines a series of artistic and cultural projects--drawn from what can loosely be called the (post)digital--that take up this challenge in different ways. What unites them, however, is that they all have a double character. They are art in the sense that they place themselves in relation to (Western) cultural and art systems, developing discursive and aesthetic positions, but, at the same time, they are operational in that they create recursive environments and freely available resources whose uses exceed these systems. The first aspect raises questions about the kind of aesthetics that are being embodied, the second creates a relation to the larger concept of the commons. In Aesthetics of the Commons, the commons are understood not as a fixed set of principles that need to be adhered to in order to fit a definition, but instead as a thinking tool--in other words, the book's interest lies in what can be made visible by applying the framework of the commons as a heuristic device.

Imperfect Solidarities

Imperfect Solidarities PDF

Author: Madhumita Lahiri

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2020-11-15

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0810142686

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A century ago, activists confronting racism and colonialism—in India, South Africa, and Black America—used print media to connect with one another. Then, as now, the most effective medium for their undertakings was the English language. Imperfect Solidarities: Tagore, Gandhi, Du Bois, and the Global Anglophone tells the story of this interconnected Anglophone world. Through Rabindranath Tagore’s writings on China, Mahatma Gandhi’s recollections of South Africa, and W. E. B. Du Bois’s invocations of India, Madhumita Lahiri theorizes print internationalism. This methodology requires new terms within the worldwide hegemony of the English language (“the global Anglophone”) in order to encourage alternate geographies (such as the Global South) and new collectivities (such as people of color). The women of print internationalism feature prominently in this account. Sonja Schlesin, born in Moscow, worked with Indians in South Africa. Sister Nivedita, an Irish woman in India, collaborated with a Japanese historian. Jessie Redmon Fauset, an African American, brought the world home to young readers through her work as an author and editor. Reading across races and regions, genres and genders, Imperfect Solidarities demonstrates the utility of the neologism for postcolonial literary studies.

Revolutions Aesthetic

Revolutions Aesthetic PDF

Author: Max Weiss

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2022-06-28

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13: 1503631966

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The November 1970 coup that brought Hafiz al-Asad to power fundamentally transformed cultural production in Syria. A comprehensive intellectual, ideological, and political project—a Ba'thist cultural revolution—sought to align artistic endeavors with the ideological interests of the regime. The ensuing agonistic struggle pitted official aesthetics of power against alternative modes of creative expression that could evade or ignore the effects of the state. With this book, Max Weiss offers the first cultural and intellectual history of Ba'thist Syria, from the coming to power of Hafiz al-Asad, through the transitional period under Bashar al-Asad, and continuing up through the Syria War. Revolutions Aesthetic reconceptualizes contemporary Syrian politics, authoritarianism, and cultural life. Engaging rich original sources—novels, films, and cultural periodicals—Weiss highlights themes crucial to the making of contemporary Syria: heroism and leadership, gender and power, comedy and ideology, surveillance and the senses, witnessing and temporality, and death and the imagination. Revolutions Aesthetic places front and center the struggle around aesthetic ideology that has been key to the constitution of state, society, and culture in Syria over the course of the past fifty years.