May 7. Book Release – Regionality/Mondiality and Dis-orientations
Aesthetics, arthistory and philosophy at Södertörn University present an evening at Weld with release of two anthologies and talks with invited guests.
7pm – 7.45pm: Regionality/Mondiality. Perspectives on Art, Aesthetics and Globalization. Presentation and discussion with André Lepecki, Christina Kullberg, Charlotte Bydler (ed) and Cecilia Sjöholm (ed)
8pm – 8.45pm: Dis-orientations; Philosophy, Literature and the Lost Grounds of Modernity, Presentation and discussion with Tora Lane (ed), Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback (ed), Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Gustav Strandberg, Irina Sandomirskaja, all contributors to the volume.
The title of Regionality/Mondiality (Södertörn Studies in Aesthetics and Art) signals the regional dimension inherent in the globalization of the arts. Rejecting a comprehensive theory of globalization, the texts present world-views that share a keen awareness of their partialness. The texts discuss issues of translatability within the arts — ”transcreation”, as explored by André Lepecki, globalization and commodification. It has a special section on the work of Édouard Glissant, who offers an especially rich material for thinking of relations within wholes and parts, planetarity and situatedness. Apart from the participants of the discussion, contributors include: Michael Dash, John Drabinski, Martin Svensson Ekström, Anthony Gardner and Charles Green, Lisette Lagnado, Patricia Lorenzoni and Terry Smith.
Dis-orientations (Rowman Littlefield) contributes to a critique of the common understanding of modernity as an enlightened project that provides rational grounds for orientation in all aspects and dimensions of the world. An international team of contributors contend that the modern principles of foundation show in themselves rather how modernity is disorienting itself.
The book brings together discussions on the writings of philosophers who treat more systematically the questions of foundation and orientation, such as Kant, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Pascal, and Patočka, and studies of literary works that explicitly thematize this question, such as Novalis, Hölderlin, Beckett, Platonov, and Benjamin. This multi-disciplinary approach brings to the fore the paradox that modern figures of grounding and orientation unground and disorient and demonstrates a critical path to review current understandings of modernity and post-modernity.