Category: Aesthetics and Literary Theory
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Unanchored Reason: Gaston Bachelard and Surrealist Philosophy.
Works Reviewed. Kotowicz, Zbigniew. Gaston Bachelard: A Philosophy of the Surreal. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. 212 pages. It was with some sadness that I recently learned that Zbigniew Kotowicz had died, not long after I had begun reading his book on Gaston Bachelard. Sadness that he would never again put pen to with the warmth and wit …
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Song Phenomena: Various Approaches to Understanding Song.
Works Reviewed. Jean Nicolas De Surmont. From Vocal Poetry to Song: Towards a Theory of Song Objects. Translated by Anastasija Ropa . Stuttgart, Germany: ibidem Press, 2017. The vocalized song, among the most ubiquitous of cultural objects, is also one whose form remains remarkably undefined and insufficiently researched. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate…
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Refiguring Thought: Aesthetic Reflections.
Works reviewed: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,2012.pp 593. This is the inaugural essay for this site of, hopefully, Useful Illusions. The rest of what is gathered here is the detritus of a previous project. That project was poetically characterized by a phrase, “closing time…