The Life and Death of Images : Exchanges on Art and Culture

Posted on September 05 2016

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The Life and Death of Images : Exchanges on Art and Culture │Edited by Diarmuid Costello , Edited by Dominic Willsdon , Contributions by Howard Caygill , Contributions by W. J. T. Mitchell , Contributions by Griselda Pollock , Contributions by Noel Carroll , Contributions by Adrian Piper , Contributions by Jay M. Bernstein , Contributions by Judith Butler , Contributions by Thierry De Duve

From the 1970s to the early-1990s, the discourse surrounding aesthetics largely disappeared from the study of art history, theory and cultural studies. Claims for the aesthetic value of art-works were thought of as elitist and politically regressive. The 1990s witnessed a return to aesthetics, but one that stressed the independent claims of beauty, in reaction to its perceived suppression by ethical and political imperatives. However, beauty is just one aspect of the aesthetic. In recent years, increasing attention has been given to the ways in which aesthetics and ethics are intertwined. In a series of paired essays and responses, a group of the English-speaking world's most distinguished thinkers consider this 'new' aesthetics, demonstrating its cross-disciplinary relevance in terms accessible to a non-specialist readership.