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Secular criticism is a term invented by Edward Said to denote not a theory but a practice that counters the tendency of much modern thinking to reach for a transcendentalist comfort zone, the very space philosophy wrested away from religion in the name of modernity. Using this notion as a compass, this book reconfigures recent secularism debates on an entirely different basis, by showing (1) how the secular imagination is closely linked to society’s radical poiesis, its capacity to imagine and create unprecedented forms of worldly existence; and (2) how the space of the secular animates the desire for a radical democratic politics that overturns inherited modes of subjugation, whether religious or secularist.Gourgouris’s point is to disrupt the co-dependent relation between the religious and the secular—hence, his rejection of fashionable languages of postsecularism—in order to engage in a double critique of heteronomous politics of all kinds. For him, secular criticism is a form of political being: critical, antifoundational, disobedient, anarchic, yet not negative for negation’s sake but creative of new forms of collective reflection, interrogation, and action that alter not only the current terrain of dominant politics but also the very self-conceptualization of what it means to be human.Written in a free and combative style and given both to close readings of texts and to gazing off into the broad horizon, these essays cover a range of issues—historical and philosophical, archaic and contemporary, literary and political—that ultimately converge in the significance of contemporary radical politics: the assembly movements we have seen in various parts of the world in recent years. The secular imagination demands a radical pedagogy and unlearning a great many established thought patterns. Its most important dimension is not battling religion per se but dismantling theological politics of sovereignty in favor of radical conditions for social autonomy.

Literature --- Secularism in literature. --- Criticism. --- Religion and literature. --- Criticism --- Evaluation of literature --- Literary criticism --- Rhetoric --- Aesthetics --- Literature and religion --- Philosophy. --- Technique --- Evaluation --- Moral and religious aspects --- Literature and philosophy --- Philosophy and literature --- Theory --- Sovereignty. --- autonomy. --- critique. --- democracy. --- poetics. --- political theology. --- radical politics. --- secularism.

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The years before World War I were a time of social and political ferment in Europe, which profoundly affected the art world. A major center of this creative tumult was Paris, where many avant-garde artists sought to transform modern art through their engagement with radical politics. In this provocative study of art and anarchism in prewar France, Patricia Leighten argues that anarchist aesthetics and a related politics of form played crucial roles in the development of modern art, only to be suppressed by war fever and then forgotten. Leighten examines the circle of artists-Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, František Kupka, Maurice de Vlaminck, Kees Van Dongen, and others-for whom anarchist politics drove the idea of avant-garde art, exploring how their aesthetic choices negotiated the myriad artistic languages operating in the decade before World War I. Whether they worked on large-scale salon paintings, political cartoons, or avant-garde abstractions, these artists, she shows, were preoccupied with social criticism. Each sought an appropriate subject, medium, style, and audience based on different conceptions of how art influences society-and their choices constantly shifted as they responded to the dilemmas posed by contradictory anarchist ideas. According to anarchist theorists, art should expose the follies and iniquities of the present to the masses, but it should also be the untrammeled expression of the emancipated individual and open a path to a new social order. Revealing how these ideas generated some of modernism's most telling contradictions among the prewar Parisian avant-garde, The Liberation of Painting restores revolutionary activism to the broader history of modern art.

Painting --- schilderkunst --- Art styles --- painting [image-making] --- History of civilization --- anno 1910-1919 --- anno 1900-1909 --- anno 1800-1899 --- Paris --- Painting, French --- Modernism (Art) --- Modernism (Aesthetics) --- Anarchism and art --- Art --- History --- Political aspects --- Vivelapeinture (Group of artists) --- Ziniars (Group of artists) --- Art, Modernist --- Modern art --- Modernism in art --- Modernist art --- Aesthetic movement (Art) --- Art, Modern --- Aesthetics --- Art, Occidental --- Art, Visual --- Art, Western (Western countries) --- Arts, Fine --- Arts, Visual --- Fine arts --- Iconography --- Occidental art --- Visual arts --- Western art (Western countries) --- Arts --- Art, Primitive --- art, history, paris, modernism, anarchism, avant-garde, radical politics, anarchist aesthetics, form, kees van dongen, maurice de vlaminck, frantisek kupka, juan gris, pablo picasso, abstract, political cartoons, salon paintings, social commentary, critique, freedom, individual, liberation, equality, caricature, cubism, collage, war, revolution, les demoiselles davignon, lart negre, colonialism, nonfiction.