Symbolism 2020 : an international annual of critical aesthetics / edited by Rudiger Ahrens [and three others].

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Ahrens, Rudiger, editor.

Series:

Symbolism

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Symbolism--History.

Symbolism.

Signs and symbols.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (VIII, 260 p.)

Place of Publication:

Berlin : Walter de Gruyter GmbH, [1999]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This special anniversary volume of Symbolism explores the nexus between symbolic signification and the future from an interdisciplinary perspective. How, contributors ask, has the future been variously rendered in symbolic terms? How do symbols and symbolic reference shape our ideas of the future? To what extent are symbols constitutive of futures, and to what extent do they restrain communication about what is possible and the imagination of fundamental change? Moreover, how have symbolic practices shaped not only artistic representations of the future, but also scientific attempts at forecasting and modelling it? What, then, is the relevance of symbolism for negotiations of the future in cultural and academic production? In essays ranging from literary and film studies to the philosophy of art and ecological modelling, the volume seeks to lay groundwork in theorizing and historicising ‘symbols of the future’ as much as ‘the future of symbolism’.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Foreword from the Editors

Contents

Special Focus: Symbols of the Future. The Future of Symbolism

Introduction: Symbols of the Future. The Future of Symbolism

Symbol’s Risks: A Note on the Interrelationship of Art and the Use of Symbols

‘Symbolic Futures’ as Investment

On the Future Role of Symbols in Environmental Modelling

The Symbolization of the Female Body in Western Culture from Ancient Greece to the Transmodern Period

Genre and Utopia, or 48 Hrs. for the Future: Perspectives in Media Aesthetics

The Past Is Immutable: Technology’s Symbolism and the Future in Black Mirror

“Players and painted stage”: Symbolizing the Future in Shaw’s Back to Methuselah

Herzlian Matrix: Theme Parks, Promised Lands, and Simulacra

Reading the Future through the Past: Symbolism in Amitav Ghosh’s Anthropogenic Fiction

The Cyborg, Symbol of the Evolution of the Human, or The Human of the Future

“An ocean of thought”: AI, Robots, and Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me and People Like You (2019)

Book Reviews

Sarah C. Bishop. Undocumented Storytellers: Narrating the Immigrant Rights Movement

Sandra Dinter. Childhood in the Contemporary English Novel

Johannes Riquet. The Aesthetics of Island Space: Perception, Ideology, Geopoetics

Lyndsey Stonebridge. Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees

List of Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

3-11-071696-8

OCLC:

1226679555