Cecilia Sjoholm

Doing Aesthetics with Arendt: How to See Things - Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts Cecilia Sjoholm

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Table of Contents: Introduction1. Sensing Space: Art and the Public Sphere2. The Work of Art3. The Encroachment of Others4. Tensions of Law: Tragedy and the Visibility of Lives5. Comedy in the Dark: Arendt, Chaplin, and Anti-SemitismNotesBibliographyIndexReview Quotes: With its insistent references to the spaces of appearances and new beginnings, to judgment and narrative, and to perspectives and plurality, Hannah Arendt's philosophy is thoroughly and emphatically structured by aesthetic categories, which no reader could have failed to notice. Bringing these categories--and some new ones: the sense of 'realness' and the 'sounding' of the language of love--into orderly, pointed, and illuminating focus, Cecilia Sj?holm has compellingly and beautifully constructed for us Arendt's unwritten aesthetics. By allowing Arendt's aesthetic doctrine to so perspicuously come into view, Sj?holm has placed us all in her debt.--J. M. Bernstein, New School for Social ResearchReview Quotes: Cecilia Sj?holm provides an original and provocative reinterpretation of the difficult and controversial philosophical issues in Hannah Arendt's studies, such as embodiment, realness, appearance, judgment, and the role of sense experience. "Doing Aesthetics with Arendt" is written with admirable clarity, elegance, and a sense of its own unique voice.--Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, author of "Feminist Aesthetics and the Politics of Modernism"Biographical Note: Cecilia Sj?holm is professor of aesthetics at S?dert?rn University. Her research focuses on issues in phenomenology and aesthetics, with a particular emphasis on the history of aesthetics and its relation to politics. Her books include "Regionality/Mondiality: Perspectives on Art, Aesthetics, and Globalization" (with Charlotte Bydler);" Kristeva and the Political"; and "The Antigone Complex: Ethics and the Invention of Feminine Desire."Review Quotes: In addition to filling a significant hole in existing scholarship, "Doing Aesthetics with Arendt" performs a powerful double gesture with far-reaching consequences. The double entendre of the title means both cultivating an account of aesthetics in which there appeared to be none and, perhaps more fundamentally, transforming the aesthetic apertures that pre-conceptually determine how a body of work appears. Cecilia Sj?holm has truly done what appeared impossible by "doing aesthetics" with Arendt.--Gabriel Rockhill, author of "Radical History and the Politics of Art"

Contributor Bio:  Sjoholm, Cecilia Cecilia Sjoholm is Associate Professor in the Program of Aesthetics at South Stockholm University College, Sweden.