Sublime Objects Research Articles

Speech(lessness), Negative Pleasure, and the Sublime Objects of Suburbia in Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School

Speech(lessness), Negative Pleasure, and the Sublime Objects of Suburbia in Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School

Burke’s understanding of the sublime

The subject of this article is an interpretation and clarification of one part of Edmund Burke?s aesthetic thought that refers to his understanding of the aesthetic experience of the sublime. For Burke, the sublime is one of the two most important forms of aesthetic experience, besides the beautiful. The intention of this article is to introduce and explain the crucial moments of Burke?s aesthetic viewpoint on our experience of the sublime. In accordance with this, the first chapter of the article is an analysis of the passion that belongs to self-preservation. The second chapter examines Burke?s explanation of the state of the soul that is caused by the sublime objects. The third chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the material causes or sensible qualities of the sublime objects. The last chapter of the article is an interpretation of his physiological explanation that is supposed to offer a specific insight as to why do the sensible qualities of the objects cause the sublime and how do they affect the human nervous system.

Adela Pineda Franco's Steinbeck and Mexico: A Cinematographic Gaze in the Era of United States Hegemony

Adela Pineda Franco's Steinbeck and Mexico: A Cinematographic Gaze in the Era of United States Hegemony

Kant’s Deduction of the Sublime

AbstractIn the third Critique, Kant collapses his deduction of the universal validity of judgements of sublimity into his exposition of such judgements, a decision called into question by commentators. I defend Kant on this score, explaining how the exposition of judgements of sublimity serves as their deduction. Kant’s key move is his claim that natural objects are not, strictly speaking, sublime. I argue that ideas of reason, on Kant’s view, are the only truly sublime objects and show how this allows him to establish that the imaginations of all observers operate in the same way in experiences of sublimity.

A Surrealist Writer’s Diary of a Twenty-One-Month Anthropological Expedition

A Surrealist Writer’s Diary of a Twenty-One-Month Anthropological Expedition

The Sublime Objects of Affectivity: Shoes, Vampires, and Colors in Park Chan-wook's Thirst

The ending of Park Chan-wook's film Thirst (Pakjwi, 2009) shows a pair of shoes left behind after the wind sweeps away the two burning bodies of vampire lovers. Worn-out, leathered, and of a brown color resembling the tone of the sunset or the soil, the shoes fall to the ground from the female vampire's crumbling feet—one shoe at a time—as her body dissolves into the air. Right after this patient, painful observation, the film cuts to the end credits. Considering the size of the screen in any theater in an urban city, this huge close-up on the shoes must be…

EXQUISITE CORPSES AND OTHER BODIES IN THE ELECTRA PLAYS

Abstract This essay explores the dynamics that surround the figuring and staging of bodies in the Electra plays – especially dead bodies, but also living ones that are represented as approximate and / or proximate to corpses. Interacting with such bodies intensifies agony and transport for characters and audiences alike, both of which affects plunge toward sublimity. At the same time the strongly gendered familial dynamics of pivotal scenes inflect the emotional shudder that attends them with a psychic recoil, as mothers haunt sons and sisters seek to lie down with brothers or other ‘wrong’ objects of affection. Focusing on how Orestes and especially Electra position themselves in relation to these bodies, the essay argues that they operate as sublime and uncanny objects, attracting the living into confrontation with their perverse pleasures and stimulating aesthetic and affective reactions that are central to tragic mimesis.

The sublime objects of education policy: quality, equity and ideology

Quality and equity are touchstones of education policy in the twenty-first century in a range of global contexts. On the surface, this seems fitting: after all, who could object to more quality and greater equity in education? Yet what do we mean by quality and equity, and how are they related? This paper draws on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to argue that not only are quality and equity far more complex than education policy formulations typically imply, but also that despite their elevated place in policy debates they remain elusive, serving as sublime objects that function as sites for the investment of desire, while simultaneously covering over and compensating for the ultimate impossibility of a complete and harmonious society. The paper argues that it is a result of their occupying this empty place, and through their holding out the (illusive) promise of enjoyment, rather than as a consequence of their specific or intrinsic content, that sublime objects such as equity and quality exert their particular ideological force.

English Renaissance literature and contemporary theory: sublime objects of theology

English Renaissance literature and contemporary theory: sublime objects of theology

Crafting beauty in modern Japan: celebrating fifty years of the Japan Traditional Art Crafts Exhibition

Japan has a long tradition of superb art-craft skills in many media - ceramics, textiles, lacquerware, metals, wood and bamboo, dolls, cut gold-leaf inlay, glass, cloissone. Indeed, the respect for the beauty of the objects created, the materials and techniques, is embedded in Japanese social attitudes and culture. This stunning book, published to coincide with an exhibition at the British Museum, presents some of the best art-crafts to have been produced in Japan over the last fifty years. The pieces illustrated also represent the finest examples submitted to the annual Japan Art Crafts Association exhibition since its inauguration in 1954 - an open, competitive exhibition that has become the major showcase for modern decorative arts. A number of the artists featured are 'Living National Treasures': the holders of special craft skills, as designated by the Japanese government. Some of the works are traditional in form or function; others are infused with modern beauty. Today, many of the craft artists feel it is their duty to improve on the techniques handed down from their forefathers and to apply them to the creation of new works that fill the needs of a contemporary society - sublime objects for a new era. Japan has the oldest ceramic culture in the world. Contemporary ceramic culture is deeply interwoven with local traditions. Textile art is perhaps the most compelling of all Japanese art forms and historically has always been at the cutting edge of design. Lacquer is the most time consuming and technically difficult of the arts in East Asia, but it has miraculous visual and textural properties and is perhaps the most prized of all the craft media. Recently, there has been a growth in new styles of expression in metal and this represents some of the most daring work in decorative arts in Japan today. Wood and bamboo are venerated materials in Japan, closely integrated into daily life. Bamboo in particular has gained a cult status and is collected widely outside Japan. Appearance of movement within the glass is highly important and surface texture, rather than uniformity, is privileged. New types of Japanese glass design are at the forefront of innovation.

The Geography Simulator: Plamen Dejanoff / Planets of Comparison

July 01 2019 The Geography Simulator: Plamen Dejanoff / Planets of Comparison Mihnea Mircan Mihnea Mircan Mihnea Mircan is a curator based in Bucharest, Romania, working at the National Museum of Contemporary Art and freelance. He recently organized Sublime Objects, Works from the collections of FRAC Grand Est and the Romanian participation at the 2007 Venice Biennial. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Mihnea Mircan Mihnea Mircan is a curator based in Bucharest, Romania, working at the National Museum of Contemporary Art and freelance. He recently organized Sublime Objects, Works from the collections of FRAC Grand Est and the Romanian participation at the 2007 Venice Biennial. Online Issn: 2572-7338 Print Issn: 1091-711X © 2007 Mihnea Mircan2007Mihnea Mircan Thresholds (2007) (34): 46–53. https://doi.org/10.1162/thld_a_00227 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Mihnea Mircan; The Geography Simulator: Plamen Dejanoff / Planets of Comparison. Thresholds 2007; (34): 46–53. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/thld_a_00227 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsThresholds Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2007 Mihnea Mircan2007Mihnea Mircan Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Slavoj Žižek: A Critical Introduction

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: something retroactive and some anticipation Zizek's sublime objects Mapping this book Some indivisible reminders 1. Yugoslavia - to Slovenia The perfection of the state Brotherhood and unity The Slovene springs 2. Enlightenment - with Hegel The thing with Hegel Revolutionary fracture Redemptive closure 3. Psychoanalysis - from Lacan The disappearing subject The object of analysis Clinic of the world 4. Politics - repeating Marx Against the rules of the game Community and enmity Did somebody say Marxism? 5. Culture - acting out Zizek's just desserts Asymmetry: machine, object, application The wrong man Notes and references Bibliography Index

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This article proposes to explore various aspects of the sublime as they might be encountered on a journey around that paradigmatic experience of sublime oxymoron, the ring road. In common with more conventional sublime objects, it can elude our perceptual and imaginative grasp while providing exhilarating transport. Although the arguments used to push through the construction of ring roads are usually made on highly rationalized grounds and according to the logic of a systematizing thought, and although acceptable behavior on the ring road is clearly set out in highway legislation and codes, it will be suggested here that ring roads might also provide an instance where the experience of our designed environment can open up to different readings, thus broadening the ways in which the ring road might figure both as a site of experience and in thought. Although the ring road is usually off-limits for any architectural discussion, it will be suggested below that an examination of this limit case can have some relevance for the ways in which the experience of more conventional architectural settings is accounted for.

Addressing the sublime: space, mass representation, and the unpresentable

Mass representations of the sublime use apostrophe as a mode of address that normalizes a moment of expected failure of discourse. Regardless of whether a viewer experiences “sublimity,” mass representations of what is supposedly beyond discourse embody the expected limits of communication, aestheticizing conditions of impossibility for discourse, and thereby constituting a space wherein the humanist subject may become a recognizable self in a public sense. Constituting a relationship between the spectator as human and the sublime objects as greater than human, a mass reproduced sublime thus helps establish discursive spaces of humanism. Although the aesthetics of the sublime can be exceptionally varied, the essay applies these ideas to popular Ansel Adams photographs, which illustrate the problems of attempting to represent the unrepresentable and the invocation of a particular kind of subjectivity as a commonplace.