Statues: The Second Book of Foundations

ISBN-13: 9781472530318 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 224 str.

Michel Serres; Randolph Burks

Opis

In this first English translation of one of his most important works, Michel Serres presents the statue as more than a static entity: for Serres it is the basis for knowledge, society, the subject and object, the world and experience. Serres demonstrates how sacrificial art founded and still persists in society and reflects on the centrality of death and the statufied dead body to the human condition.Each section covers a different time period and statuary topic, ranging from four thousand years ago to 1986; from Baal, the paintings of Carpaccio, and the Eiffel Tower, to Rodin's The Gates of Hell, the Challenger disaster and the literature of Maupassant, La Fontaine and Jules Verne. Expository, lyrical, fictionalized and hallucinatory, Statues plays with time and place, history and story in order to provoke us into thinking in entirely new ways.Through mythic and poetic meditations on various kinds of descent into the underworld and new insights into the relation of the subject and object and their foundation in death, Statues contains great treasures and provocations for philosophers, literary critics, art historians and sociologists.

Recenzje

It is a great cause for celebration that Statues is at last available to English readers ... The book shows Serres at his audacious, restlessly inventive best, while Randolph Burks's translation catches brilliantly the tiptoe lightness of Serres's philosophical hopscotch and the gnarled gravity of his rhythms of thought. Steven Connor, Professor of English, University of Cambridge, UK

Spis treści

1. January 28, 1986 At 11:39 And 74 Seconds Later2. Recent Memories3. Before the War4. Around 19005.1883-18846. During the Grand Siècle7. Quattrocento8. About the Year 33 of our Era10. Zero11. Fifth Century before Christ12. Four Millennia Ago13. UndatedIndex

O autorze

Michel Serres was Professor in the History of Science at Stanford University, USA and a member of the Académie Française, France. A renowned and popular philosopher, he was a prize-winning author of essays and books, such as The Five Senses (2008), Genesis (1995), and Biogée (2013). Randolph Burks is a philosopher specializing in phenomenology and philosophies of the body and nature. He has translated several works by Michel Serres, included Biogea, Variations on the Body and The Hermaphrodite (forthcoming).