TY - BOOK ID - 103639806 TI - The Sense of Semblance PY - 2012 SN - 0823245403 0823245438 0823250318 0823250776 9780823245406 9780823250318 9780823250776 9780823245437 PB - New York, NY DB - UniCat KW - Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), and the arts KW - Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), and the arts. KW - Adorno. KW - Bäcker. KW - Celan. KW - German/Austrian literature. KW - Holocaust. KW - Lanzmann. KW - Spiegelman. KW - aesthetics. KW - film. KW - graphic novel. KW - memorials. KW - Arts and the Holocaust KW - Arts UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:103639806 AB - "Holocaust artworks intuitively must fulfill at least two criteria: artistic (lest they be merely historical documents) and historical (lest they distort the Holocaust or become merely artworks). The Sense of Semblance locates this problematic within philosophical aesthetics, as a version of the conflict between aesthetic autonomy and heteronomy, and argues that Adorno's dialectic of aesthetic semblance describes the normative demand that artworks maintain a dynamic tension between the two. The Sense of Semblance aims to move beyond familiar debates surrounding postmodernism by demonstrating the usefulness of contemporary theories of meaning and understanding, including those from the analytic tradition. Pickford shows how the causal theory of names, the philosophy of tacit knowledge, the analytic philosophy of quotation, Sartre's theory of the imaginary, the epistemology of testimony, and Walter Benjamin's dialectical image can help explicate how individual artworks fulfill artistic and historical desiderata. In close readings of Celan's poetry, Holocaust memorials in Berlin, the quotational artist Heimrad Backer, Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah, and Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus, Pickford offers interpretations that, in their precision, specificity, and clarity, inaugurate a dialogue between contemporary analytic philosophy and contemporary art. The Sense of Semblance is the first book to incorporate contemporary analytic philosophy in interpretations of art and architecture, literature, and film about the Holocaust"-- ER -