MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 03654mam a2200457 a 4500
001 1716741
005 20220608220336.0
008 950427s1995 ilua b 001 0 eng
010 $a 95018527
020 $a0226772233 (cloth : alk. paper)
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm32510830
035 $9ALC1264CU
035 $a(NNC)1716741
035 $a1716741
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dOrLoB
050 00 $aBH39$b.S8146 1995
082 00 $a111/.85/09045$220
100 1 $aSteiner, Wendy,$d1949-$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n78006265
245 14 $aThe scandal of pleasure :$bart in an age of fundamentalism /$cWendy Steiner.
260 $aChicago :$bUniversity of Chicago Press,$c1995.
300 $axii, 251 pages :$billustrations ;$c24 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. 213-237) and index.
520 $aThe Scandal of Pleasure is a report from the battle-ground of contemporary culture, a landscape littered with the remains of vilified artworks and discredited orthodoxies. Caught between extremists of the right and the left, standing mutely by as culture wars rage, liberal defenders of art have failed to explain the special value of aesthetic experience. This book counters the rise of fundamentalist thinking about the arts with a liberal aesthetic for our times.
520 8 $aSteiner reminds us that aesthetic experience requires the ability to distinguish fiction from nonfiction, the figurative from the literal, the virtual from the real. But for fundamentalists, whether the Ayatollah Khomeini or Jesse Helms, such distinctions are meaningless; saying is doing, and a picture is no different from what it represents.
520 8 $aSuch literalism is at the root of the current uneasiness with difficult art; it threatens to undermine the entire basis of liberal thought and aesthetic experience.
520 8 $aWith patience and wit, Steiner uncovers the folly of this pervasive literalism. Art, she argues, is neither identical to reality nor isolated from it, but an imaginative realm tied to the world by acts of interpretation. To experience art, then, means to accept a paradox: we need not assent to a work in order to understand it, or be seduced by its ideology in order to take pleasure in it.
520 8 $aInstead, we participate in what Steiner calls "enlightened beguilement?" Yet pleasure and beguilement have tended to embarrass most academics. How, Steiner wonders, can liberal defenders of the arts ever expect to persuade a skeptical public if they deny or ignore the value of aesthetic experience?
520 8 $a. Writing to heal the breach between experts and the general public, Steiner offers a new critical vocabulary, one robust enough for an age when art is provocative and often deliberately confrontational. In an increasingly hostile political environment, her book is a necessary guide to understanding the current crisis in the arts.
650 0 $aAesthetics.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85001441
650 0 $aPhilistinism.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85100808
650 0 $aPleasure.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85103436
650 0 $aLiberalism.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85076443
650 0 $aAesthetics, Modern$y20th century.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85001474
650 0 $aReligious fundamentalism$vControversial literature.
852 00 $bglx$hBH39$i.S8146 1995
852 00 $bbar$hBH39$i.S8146 1995
852 00 $bmil$hBH39$i.S8146 1995
852 00 $bmil$hBH39$i.S8146 1995
852 00 $boff,leh$hBH39$i.S8146 1995