Philosophy of Art & Aesthetics

Filmmaker and Philosopher

Robbie Goh, National University of Singapore, Singapore Underlying Christopher Nolan’s staggering commercial success with Hollywood blockbusters like The Dark Knight and Inception is a darker sensibility that questions the veracity of human knowledge, the allure of appearance over reality and the latent disorder in contemporary society. This appreciation of the sinister owes a huge debt to modern philosophers such as Nietzsche, Freud and Derrida. Taking a thematic approach to Nolan’s oeuvre, Robbie Goh examines the director’s postmodern inclinations. For Goh, Nolan is a ‘reluctant postmodernist’. His films reflect the cynicism of the modern world but, with their representation of heroic moral triumphs, they also resist it.

UK December 2021 • US December 2021 • 224 pages PB 9781350139978 • £19.99 / $26.95 • HB 9781350139961 • £65.00 / $90.00 ePub 9781350139992 • £17.99 / $23.44 ePdf 9781350139985 • £17.99 / $23.44 Series: Philosophical Filmmakers • Bloomsbury Academic The Politics of Contemporary Art Collections

Nizan Shaked, California State University, USA Critically analyzing contemporary art collections and the value form, Nizan Shaked shows why the nonprofit system is unfit to administer our common collections, and offers solutions for diversity reform and redistributive restructuring. A history of how private collections were turned public gives context. Since the late Renaissance, private collections legitimized the prince's right to rule, and later, with the great revolutions, display consolidated national identity. But the rise of the American museum reversed this and re-privatized the public collection. A materialist description of the museum as a model institution of the liberal nation state reveals constellations of imperialist social relations.

UK December 2021 • US December 2021 • 224 pages PB 9781350045767 • £21.99 / $29.95 • HB 9781350045750 • £65.00 / $90.00 ePub 9781350045781 • £19.79 / $26.05 ePdf 9781350045774 • £19.79 / $26.05 Bloomsbury Academic

Andean Aesthetics and Anticolonial Resistance

A Cosmology of Unsociable Bodies

Omar Rivera, Texas A&M University, USA From pre-Columbian Inca stone architecture to 21st-century Andean photography and painting, Omar Rivera uncovers a lineage of conceptions of cosmologies as they have been expressed aesthetically in Andean philosophical traditions. In doing so, he manifests a conception of the cosmos that is organized according to elemental orders and that underlies social forms. Connecting pre-Columbian cosmologies with contemporary thinkers such as María Lugones, Linda Martín Alcoff and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Rivera's original approach introduces us to the living, evolving and aesthetic alternatives to coloniality of power and of knowledge, overhauling our understanding of decolonial theory.

UK November 2021 • US November 2021 • 240 pages • 10 bw illus HB 9781350173750 • £85.00 / $115.00 ePub 9781350173774 • £76.50 / $100.32 ePdf 9781350173767 • £76.50 / $100.32 Series: Bloomsbury Studies in World Philosophies • Bloomsbury Academic

Bodies, Behaviors, and Adornment

The Peacock's Tale

Marilynn Johnson, Florida International University, USA Drawing on evolutionary theory and philosophy to think about art, beauty, and aesthetics, Marilynn Johnson explores first how the ways we use our bodies are similar — yet at other times different — to animals. She then examines the work of evolutionary theorists, philosophers of language, and cultural theorists to explore both natural and non-natural meanings of bodies and clothes, and how both systems of meaning signify relevant information to other humans. As well as considering how the body can express natural meanings, Johnson shows that how we dress could negatively influence the way our bodies are read.

UK December 2021 • US December 2021 • 256 pages HB 9781350104259 • £85.00 / $115.00 ePub 9781350104273 • £76.50 / $100.32 ePdf 9781350104266 • £76.50 / $100.32 Bloomsbury Academic

Rethinking Dwelling

Heidegger, Place, Architecture

Jeff Malpas, University of Tasmania, Australia Over the last twenty years, Jeff Malpas’ research has involved his engagement with architects and other thinkers around the issues of place, architecture and landscape, and particularly the way these practitioners have used the work of Heidegger. In Rethinking Dwelling, Malpas rethinks these issues in a way that is directly informed by an understanding of human relation to place. Engaging with a range of architectural and design concerns, including the relation between building and memory and the idea of authenticity in architecture, this book departs from the traditional phenomenological focus and provides a new ontological assessment of landscape and architecture.

UK August 2021 • US August 2021 • 304 pages • 20 bw illus HB 9781350172913 • £85.00 / $115.00 ePub 9781350172920 • £76.50 / $100.32 ePdf 9781350172937 • £76.50 / $100.32 Bloomsbury Academic

The Philosophy of Susanne Langer

Embodied Meaning in Logic, Art and Feeling

Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin, King's College London, UK This book is a comprehensive study of one of the most insightful and fertile but also one of the most neglected and misunderstood philosophers of art of the twentieth century, Susanne Langer. It provides a much-needed explanation of how Langer’s philosophy was shaped by four seminal sources: her mentors Henry Sheffer and Alfred North Whitehead and the European philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Shedding new light on Langer as an American philosopher whose innovative thought crosses the customary boundaries between analytic and European philosophy, this book confirms why she continues to have relevance today.

UK April 2021 • US April 2021 • 400 pages PB 9781350254039 • £28.99 / $39.95 Previously published in HB 9781350030558 ePub 9781350030589 • £26.09 / $35.17 ePdf 9781350030572 • £26.09 / $35.17 Bloomsbury Academic