The Official World:

In his virtuosic new book noted cultural critic Mark Seltzer shows how suspense, as art form and form of life, depicts and shapes the social systems that organize our modern world. Modernity's predicament, Seltzer writes, is a society so hungry for reality that it cannot stop describing itself,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Seltzer, Mark (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Durham Duke University Press [2016]
Subjects:
Online Access:DE-1043
DE-1046
DE-859
DE-860
DE-473
DE-739
DE-858
Volltext
Summary:In his virtuosic new book noted cultural critic Mark Seltzer shows how suspense, as art form and form of life, depicts and shapes the social systems that organize our modern world. Modernity's predicament, Seltzer writes, is a society so hungry for reality that it cannot stop describing itself, and that makes for a world that continuously establishes itself by staging its own conditions. Employing the social theories of Georg Simmel, Erving Goffman, Niklas Luhmann, and Peter Sloterdijk, Seltzer shows how suspense novels, films, and performance art by Patricia Highsmith, Tom McCarthy, Cormac McCarthy, J. G. Ballard, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and others outline how we currently live and reveal the stress-points and mood-systems of the modern epoch. In its focus on social games, depictions of violent and explosive persons, along with its cast of artists, reporters, detectives, and others who observe and report and reenact, the suspense mode creates and recreates modern systems of action and autonomy, and defines the self-turned world's practices and aesthetics. By epitomizing a reflexive, self-legislating, and autonomous world, a suspense art with humans in the systems epoch provides the models and sets the rules for our modern, official world
Item Description:Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 25. Nov 2020)
Physical Description:1 online resource (288 pages) 14 illustrations
ISBN:9780822374459
DOI:10.1515/9780822374459