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Living as Form - - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Living as Form - - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

A monumental, lavishly illustrated book that offers the first global portrait of a complex and definition-defying genre of cultural production. Over the past twenty years, an abundance of art forms have emerged that use aesthetics to affect social dynamics. These works are often produced by collectives or come out of a community context; they emphasize participation, dialogue, and action, and appear in situations ranging from theater to activism to urban planning to visual art to health care. Engaged with the texture of living, these art works often blur the line between art and life. This book offers the first global portrait of a complex and exciting mode of cultural production—one that has virtually redefined contemporary art practice. Living as Form grew out of a major exhibition at Creative Time in New York City. Like the exhibition, the book is a landmark survey of more than 100 projects selected by a thirty-person curatorial advisory team; each project is documented by a selection of color images. The artists include the Danish collective Superflex, who empower communities to challenge corporate interest; Turner Prize nominee Jeremy Deller, creator of socially and politically charged performance works; Women on Waves, who provide abortion services and information to women in regions where the procedure is illegal; and Santiágo Cirugeda, an architect who builds temporary structures to solve housing problems. Living as Form contains commissioned essays from noted critics and theorists who look at this phenomenon from a global perspective and broaden the range of what constitutes this form. Contributing authorsClaire Bishop, Carol Becker, Teddy Cruz, Brian Holmes, Shannon Jackson, Maria Lind, Anne Pasternak, Nato Thompson

DKK 220.00
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Form and Flow - Kian Goh - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Form and Flow - Kian Goh - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

An examination of urban climate change response strategies and the resistance to them by grassroots activists and social movements. Cities around the world are formulating plans to respond to climate change and adapt to its impact. Often, marginalized urban residents resist these plans, offering “counterplans” to protest unjust and exclusionary actions. In this book, Kian Goh examines climate change response strategies in three cities—New York, Jakarta, and Rotterdam—and the mobilization of community groups to fight the perceived injustices and oversights of these plans. Looking through the lenses of urban design and socioecological spatial politics, Goh reveals how contested visions of the future city are produced and gain power. Goh describes, on the one hand, a growing global network of urban environmental planning organizations intertwined with capitalist urban development, and, on the other, social movements that themselves often harness the power of networks. She explores such initiatives as Rebuild By Design in New York, the Giant Sea Wall plan in Jakarta, and Rotterdam Climate Proof, and discovers competing narratives, including community resiliency in Brooklyn and grassroots activism in the informal “kampungs” of Jakarta. Drawing on participatory fieldwork and her own background in architecture and urban design, Goh offers both theoretical explanations and practical planning and design strategies. She reframes the critical concerns of urban climate change responses, presenting a sociospatial typology of urban adaptation and considering the notion of a “just” resilience. Finally, she proposes a theoretical framework for designing equitable and just urban climate futures.

DKK 331.00
1

Event-Cities 4 - Bernard (bernard Tschumi Architects) Tschumi - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Event-Cities 4 - Bernard (bernard Tschumi Architects) Tschumi - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Tschumi introduces the “concept-form”: a concept generating a form, or a form generating a concept. Event-Cities 4 is the latest in the Event-Cities series from Bernard Tschumi, documenting recent built and theoretical projects in the context of his evolving views on architecture, urbanism, and design. Event-Cities C4 follows directly from the work of Event-Cities 3 , which examined the interaction of architectural content, concept, and context. This volume takes the interaction a step further, looking at a series of projects for which program or context are insufficient as a generative conceptual strategy, hence requiring a different approach. Tschumi has said, “Over the past years, there is one word I have almost never used, except in order to attack it: ''form.''” In Event-Cities 4 , Tschumi introduces the “concept-form”: a concept generating a form, or a form generating a concept, so that one reinforces the other. The concept may be programmatic, technological, or social. The form may be singular or multiple, regular or irregular. Concept-forms act as organizing devices or common denominators for the multiple dimensions of programs and their evolution over time, and drive the projects featured in this book. Highlights include master plans for a pair of media-based work spaces and cultural campuses in Singapore and Abu Dhabi; a major master plan for a financial center with 40,000 projected inhabitants in the Dominican Republic; the innovative Blue Residential Tower in New York City; a group of museums and cultural buildings in France, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and South Korea; a pedestrian bridge in France; and a “multi-programmatic” furniture piece, the TypoLounger. The book contains more than twenty of the Tschumi firm''s recent projects, showcasing the most current and forward-looking designs of one of the world''s leading architectural practices.

DKK 169.00
1

The Image of the City - Kevin Lynch - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

The Image of the City - Kevin Lynch - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city''s form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city''s image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

DKK 314.00
1

The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture - Pier Vittorio Aureli - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture - Pier Vittorio Aureli - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Architectural form reconsidered in light of a unitary conception of architecture and the city. In The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture , Pier Vittorio Aureli proposes that a sharpened formal consciousness in architecture is a precondition for political, cultural, and social engagement with the city. Aureli uses the term absolute not in the conventional sense of “pure,” but to denote something that is resolutely itself after being separated from its other. In the pursuit of the possibility of an absolute architecture, the other is the space of the city, its extensive organization, and its government. Politics is agonism through separation and confrontation; the very condition of architectural form is to separate and be separated. Through its act of separation and being separated, architecture reveals at once the essence of the city and the essence of itself as political form: the city as the composition of (separate) parts. Aureli revisits the work of four architects whose projects were advanced through the making of architectural form but whose concern was the city at large: Andrea Palladio, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Étienne Louis-Boullée, and Oswald Mathias Ungers. The work of these architects, Aureli argues, addressed the transformations of the modern city and its urban implications through the elaboration of specific and strategic architectural forms. Their projects for the city do not take the form of an overall plan but are expressed as an “archipelago” of site-specific interventions.

DKK 277.00
1

Studies in Tectonic Culture - Kenneth Frampton - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Studies in Tectonic Culture - Kenneth Frampton - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Composed of ten essays and an epilogue that trace the history of contemporary form as an evolving poetic of structure and construction, the book''s analytical framework rests on Frampton''s close readings of key French and German, and English sources from the eighteenth century to the present. Kenneth Frampton''s long-awaited follow-up to his classic A Critical History of Modern Architecture is certain to influence any future debate on the evolution of modern architecture. Studies in Tectonic Culture is nothing less than a rethinking of the entire modern architectural tradition. The notion of tectonics as employed by Frampton—the focus on architecture as a constructional craft—constitutes a direct challenge to current mainstream thinking on the artistic limits of postmodernism, and suggests a convincing alternative. Indeed, Frampton argues, modern architecture is invariably as much about structure and construction as it is about space and abstract form. Composed of ten essays and an epilogue that trace the history of contemporary form as an evolving poetic of structure and construction, the book''s analytical framework rests on Frampton''s close readings of key French and German, and English sources from the eighteenth century to the present. He clarifies the various turns that structural engineering and tectonic imagination have taken in the work of such architects as Perret, Wright, Kahn, Scarpa, and Mies, and shows how both constructional form and material character were integral to an evolving architectural expression of their work. Frampton also demonstrates that the way in which these elements are articulated from one work to the next provides a basis upon which to evaluate the works as a whole. This is especially evident in his consideration of the work of Perret, Mies, and Kahn and the continuities in their thought and attitudes that linked them to the past. Frampton considers the conscious cultivation of the tectonic tradition in architecture as an essential element in the future development of architectural form, casting a critical new light on the entire issue of modernity and on the place of much work that has passed as "avant-garde." A copublication of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies and The MIT Press.

DKK 428.00
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The Typographic Medium - Kate Brideau - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

The Typographic Medium - Kate Brideau - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

An innovative examination of typography as a medium of communication rather than part of print or digital media. Typography is everywhere and yet widely unnoticed. When we read type, we fail to see type. In this book, Kate Brideau considers typography not as part of "print media" or "digital media" but as a medium of communication itself, able to transcend the life and death of particular technologies. Examining the contradiction between typographic form (often overlooked) and function (often overpowering), Brideau argues that typography is made up not of letters but of shapes, and that shape is existentially and technologically central to the typographic medium.After considering what constitutes typographic form, Brideau turns to typographic function and how it relates to form. Examining typography''s role in both the neurological and psychological aspects of reading, she argues that typography''s functions exceed reading; typographic forms communicate, but that communication is not limited to the content they carry. To understand to what extent the design and operations of the typographic medium affect the way we perceive information, Brideau warns, we must understand the medium''s own operational logic, embodied in the full diversity of typographic forms.Brideau discusses a range of topics--from intellectual property protection for typefaces to Renaissance and Enlightenment ideal letterforms--and draws on a wide variety of theoretical work, including phenomenological ideas about comprehension, German media archaeology, and the media and communication theories of Vilém Flusser and others. Hand-drawn illustrations of typographic forms accompany the text.

DKK 435.00
1

Built on Sand - Etienne Guyon - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Built on Sand - Etienne Guyon - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Explaining the science contained in a simple assembly of grains—the most abundant form of matter present on Earth. Granular media—composed of vast amounts of grains, consolidated or not—constitute the most abundant form of solid matter on Earth. Granular materials assemble in disordered configurations scientists often liken to a bag of marbles. Made of macroscopic particles rather than molecules, they defy the standard scheme of classification in terms of solid, liquid, and gas. Granular materials provide a model relevant to various domains of research, including engineering, physics, and biology. William Blake famously wished “To See a World in a Grain of Sand”; in this book, pioneering researchers in granular matter explain the science hidden behind simple grains, shedding light on collective behavior in disordered settings in general. The authors begin by describing the single grain with its different origins, shapes, and sizes, then examine grains in piled or stacked form. They explain the packing fraction of granular media, a crucial issue that bears on the properties displayed in practical applications; explore small-scale deformations in piles of disordered grains, with particular attention to friction; and present theories of various modes of disorder. Along the way, they discuss such concepts as force chains, arching effects, wet grains, sticky contacts, and inertial effects. Drawing on recent numerical simulations as well as classical concepts developed in physics and mechanics, the book offers an accessible introduction to a rapidly developing field.

DKK 219.00
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In the Images of Development - Tridib Banerjee - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

In the Images of Development - Tridib Banerjee - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

The urban legacy of the Global South since the colonial era and how sustainable development and environmental and social justice can be achieved. Remarkably little of the expansive literature on development and globalization considers actual urban form and the physical design of cities as outcomes of these phenomena. The development that has shaped historic transformations in urban form and urbanism—and the consequent human experiences—remains largely unexplored. In this book, Tridib Banerjee fills this void by linking the idea of development with those of urbanism, urban form, and urban design, focusing primarily on the contemporary cities in the developing world—the Global South—and their intrinsic prospects in city design. Further, he examines the endogenous possibilities for the future design of these cities that may address growing inequality and the environmental crisis. Banerjee deftly traces the urban legacy of the Global South from the beginning of the colonial era, closely examining the economic, political, and ideological forces that influenced colonial and postcolonial development, drawing from relevant experiences of different cities in the developing world and discussing the arguments for the historic parity of these cities with their Western counterparts. Finally, Banerjee considers essential notions of future city design that are grounded in the critical challenges of sustainable development, equity, environmental and social justice, and diversity, and how such outcomes can be achieved. This book serves as the opening of a long overdue conversation among design, development, and planning scholars and practitioners, and those interested in the urban development of the Global South.

DKK 425.00
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Play Matters - Miguel (associate Professor Sicart - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Play Matters - Miguel (associate Professor Sicart - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Why play is a productive, expressive way of being human, a form of understanding, and a fundamental part of our well-being. What do we think about when we think about play? A pastime? Games? Childish activities? The opposite of work? Think again: If we are happy and well rested, we may approach even our daily tasks in a playful way, taking the attitude of play without the activity of play. So what, then, is play? In Play Matters , Miguel Sicart argues that to play is to be in the world; playing is a form of understanding what surrounds us and a way of engaging with others. Play goes beyond games; it is a mode of being human.We play games, but we also play with toys, on playgrounds, with technologies and design. Sicart proposes a theory of play that doesn’t derive from a particular object or activity but is a portable tool for being—not tied to objects but brought by people to the complex interactions that form their daily lives. It is not separated from reality; it is part of it. It is pleasurable, but not necessarily fun. Play can be dangerous, addictive, and destructive.Along the way, Sicart considers playfulness, the capacity to use play outside the context of play; toys, the materialization of play—instruments but also play pals; playgrounds, play spaces that enable all kinds of play; beauty, the aesthetics of play through action; political play—from Maradona''s goal against England in the 1986 World Cup to the hactivist activities of Anonymous; the political, aesthetic, and moral activity of game design; and why play and computers get along so well.

DKK 204.00
1

The Second Digital Turn - Mario (professor Carpo - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

The Second Digital Turn - Mario (professor Carpo - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

The first digital turn in architecture changed our ways of making; the second changes our ways of thinking. Almost a generation ago, the early software for computer aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) spawned a style of smooth and curving lines and surfaces that gave visible form to the first digital age, and left an indelible mark on contemporary architecture. But today''s digitally intelligent architecture no longer looks that way. In The Second Digital Turn , Mario Carpo explains that this is because the design professions are now coming to terms with a new kind of digital tools they have adopted—no longer tools for making but tools for thinking. In the early 1990s the design professions were the first to intuit and interpret the new technical logic of the digital age: digital mass-customization (the use of digital tools to mass-produce variations at no extra cost) has already changed the way we produce and consume almost everything, and the same technology applied to commerce at large is now heralding a new society without scale—a flat marginal cost society where bigger markets will not make anything cheaper. But today, the unprecedented power of computation also favors a new kind of science where prediction can be based on sheer information retrieval, and form finding by simulation and optimization can replace deduction from mathematical formulas. Designers have been toying with machine thinking and machine learning for some time, and the apparently unfathomable complexity of the physical shapes they are now creating already expresses a new form of artificial intelligence, outside the tradition of modern science and alien to the organic logic of our mind.

DKK 209.00
1

The Beauty of Games - Frank Lantz - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

The Beauty of Games - Frank Lantz - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

How games create beauty and meaning, and how we can use them to explore the aesthetics of thought. Are games art? This question is a dominant mode of thinking about games and play in the twenty-first century, but it is fundamentally the wrong question. Instead, Frank Lantz proposes in his provocative new book, The Beauty of Games , that we think about games and how they create meaning through the lens of the aesthetic. We should think of games, he writes, the same way we think about literature, theater, or music—as a form that ranges from deep and profound to easy and disposable, and everything in between. Games are the aesthetic form of interactive systems, a set of possibilities connected by rules of cause and effect.In this book, Lantz analyzes games from chess to poker to tennis to understand how games create beauty and evoke a deeper meaning. He suggests that we think of games not only as hyper-modern objects but also as forms within the ancient context of artistic production, encompassing all of the nebulous and ephemeral qualities of the aesthetic experience.

DKK 201.00
1

The Monster Leviathan - Aaron Betsky - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

The Monster Leviathan - Aaron Betsky - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Visionary proposals for a mythic and strange architecture—or anarchitecture—through which we can imagine other and better worlds. Lurking under the surface of our modern world lies an unseen architecture—or anarchitecture. It is a possible architecture, an analogous architecture, an architecture of anarchy, which haunts in the form of monsters that are humans and machines and cities all at once; or takes the form of explosions, veils, queer, playful spaces, or visions from artwork and video games. In The Monster Leviathan , Aaron Betsky traces anarchitecture through texts, design, and art of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, and suggests that these ephemeral evocations are concrete proposals in and of themselves. Neither working models nor suggestions for new forms, they are scenes just believable enough to convince us they exist, or just fantastical enough to open our eyes. The Monster Leviathan gives students and lovers of architecture, as well as those hoping to construct a better, more sustainable, and socially just future, a set of tools through which they can imagine that such other worlds are possible. As Betsky eloquently articulates, anarchitecture already exists and does not exist at all. It is the myth of building, and all we have to do is find it.

DKK 354.00
1

Language Is Gesture - G. David Mcneill - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Language Is Gesture - G. David Mcneill - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

A new way of viewing language, as a dynamic mode of meaning-making of which gesture is a fundamental part. When David McNeill began his work on gesture more than forty years ago, language and the action of speaking were regarded as separate realms. But language, says McNeill in Language Is Gesture, is dynamic and gesture is fundamental to speaking. Central to his conception of language, and distinct from linguistic analysis, is what McNeill calls the “growth point,” the starting point of making thought and speech one. He uses the term “gesture–speech unity” to refer to the dynamic dimension of adding gesture to speaking. It is the growth point that achieves this unity, whereby thought is embedded in gesture and speech at the same time. Gesture is the engine of language. It is foundational to speaking, language acquisition, the origin of language, animal communication, thought, and consciousness. Gesture is global and synthetic and brings energy; speech is linear and segmented and brings cultural standards. The growth point is a snapshot of an utterance at its beginning psychological stage, the starting point of unifying thought and speech. Growth points create gesture–speech unity by synchronizing a bundle of linguistic features with a gesture that carries the same meaning. This gesture–speech unity is a form of thought, a unique form of cognition.

DKK 438.00
1

Understanding Deep Learning - Simon J.d. Prince - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Understanding Deep Learning - Simon J.d. Prince - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

An authoritative, accessible, and up-to-date treatment of deep learning that strikes a pragmatic middle ground between theory and practice. Deep learning is a fast-moving field with sweeping relevance in today’s increasingly digital world. Understanding Deep Learning provides an authoritative, accessible, and up-to-date treatment of the subject, covering all the key topics along with recent advances and cutting-edge concepts. Many deep learning texts are crowded with technical details that obscure fundamentals, but Simon Prince ruthlessly curates only the most important ideas to provide a high density of critical information in an intuitive and digestible form. From machine learning basics to advanced models, each concept is presented in lay terms and then detailed precisely in mathematical form and illustrated visually. The result is a lucid, self-contained textbook suitable for anyone with a basic background in applied mathematics. - Up-to-date treatment of deep learning covers cutting-edge topics not found in existing texts, such as transformers and diffusion models - Short, focused chapters progress in complexity, easing students into difficult concepts - Pragmatic approach straddling theory and practice gives readers the level of detail required to implement naive versions of models - Streamlined presentation separates critical ideas from background context and extraneous detail - Minimal mathematical prerequisites, extensive illustrations, and practice problems make challenging material widely accessible - Programming exercises offered in accompanying Python Notebooks

DKK 870.00
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London Couture and the Making of a Fashion Centre - Michelle Jones - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

London Couture and the Making of a Fashion Centre - Michelle Jones - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

How design collaboration, networks, and narratives contributed to the establishment of a recognized English couture industry in the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1930s and 1940s, English fashion houses, spurred by economic and wartime crises, put London on the map as a major fashion city. In this book, Michelle Jones examines the creation of a London-based couture industry during these years, exploring how designer collaboration and the construction of specific networks and narratives supported and shaped the English fashion economy. Haute couture—the practice of creative made-to-measure womenswear—was widely regarded as inherently French. Jones shows how an English version emerged during a period of economic turbulence, when a group of designers banded together in a collective effort to shift power within the international fashion system. Jones considers the establishment of this form of English design practice, analyzing the commercial, social, and political factors that shaped the professional identity of the London couturiers. She focuses on collaborative activity that supported this form of elite, craft-based fashion production—from the prewar efforts of the Fashion Group of Great Britain to the wartime establishment of the Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers, modeled loosely after French fashion’s governing body, the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. It was these collective efforts by couturiers that established and sustained London’s place as an internationally recognized center for creative fashion.

DKK 291.00
1

Catalog Design Progress, facsimile edition - Ladislav Sutnar - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Catalog Design Progress, facsimile edition - Ladislav Sutnar - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

A meticulously created facsimile edition of a classic work on design by the progenitor of today’s information design. Long before the internet and its vast stores of information in digital form, information in analog form needed to be organized so that it was legible and accessible. One designer who revolutionized the presentation of printed information was modernist pioneer Ladislav Sutnar (1897–1976). In 1950, Sutnar and architect K. Lonberg-Holm published Catalog Design Progress, a guide to modernizing the design of printed materials through typographic simplicity, compositional ingenuity, and navigational devices that signal the logical flow of information. This meticulously created facsimile of the original book illustrates and enacts Sutnar’s ideas, making clear their continuing influence on graphic design. In the book, Sutnar contrasts his design style with the conglomeration of text and pictures that characterized earlier printed material. He identifies and illustrates visual features, including typography, pictures and charts, and covers, and shows how the arrangement and organization of visual units allows information to flow smoothly. For this edition, the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Art and Design at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic, has carefully recreated the original, with redrawn figures, retouched photos, re-typeset texts, five-color printing, and spiral binding. A separate reader’s guide by celebrated design historian Steven Heller accompanies the book. Both book and guide are packaged in a slipcase.

DKK 486.00
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Dubcon - Milena Popova - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Dubcon - Milena Popova - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

How the treatment of sexual consent in erotic fanfiction functions as a form of cultural activism. Sexual consent is--at best--a contested topic in Western societies and cultures. The #MeToo movement has brought public attention to issues of sexual consent, revealing the endemic nature of sexual violence. Feminist academic approaches to sexual violence and consent are diverse and multidisciplinary--and yet consent itself is significantly undertheorized. In Dubcon , Milena Popova points to a community that has been considering issues of sex, power, and consent for many years: writers and readers of fanfiction. Their nuanced engagement with sexual consent, Popova argues, can shed light on these issues in ways not available to either academia or journalism. Popova explains that the term "dubcon" (short for "dubious consent") was coined by the fanfiction community to make visible the gray areas between rape and consent--for example, in situations where the distribution of power may limit an individual''s ability to give meaningful consent to sex. Popova offers a close reading of three fanfiction stories in the Omegaverse genre, examines the "arranged marriage" trope, and discusses the fanfiction community''s response when a sports star who was a leading character in RPF (real person fiction) was accused of rape. Proposing that fanfiction offers a powerful discursive resistance on issues of rape and consent that challenges dominant discourses about gender, romance, sexuality, and consent, Popova shows that fanfiction functions as a form of cultural activism.

DKK 292.00
1

The Dialectics of Seeing - Susan Buck Morss - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

The Dialectics of Seeing - Susan Buck Morss - Bog - MIT Press Ltd - Plusbog.dk

Walter Benjamin''s magnum opus was a book he did not live to write. In The Dialectics of Seeing , Susan Buck-Morss offers an inventive reconstruction of the Passagen Werk, or Arcades Project, as it might have taken form. Working with Benjamin''s vast files of citations and commentary which contain a myriad of historical details from the dawn of consumer culture, Buck-Morss makes visible the conceptual structure that gives these fragments philosophical coherence. She uses images throughout the book to demonstrate that Benjamin took the debris of mass culture seriously as the source of philosophical truth. The Paris Arcades that so fascinated Benjamin (as they did the Surrealists whose "materialist metaphysics" he admired) were the prototype, the 19th century "ur-form" of the modern shopping mall. Benjamin''s dialectics of seeing demonstrate how to read these consumer dream houses and so many other material objects of the time — from air balloons to women''s fashions, from Baudelaire''s poetry to Grandville''s cartoons—as anticipations of social utopia and, simultaneously, as clues for a radical political critique. Buck-Morss plots Benjamin''s intellectual orientation on axes running east and west, north and south—Moscow Paris, Berlin-Naples—and shows how such thinking in coordinates can explain his understanding of "dialectics at a standstill." She argues for the continuing relevance of Benjamin''s insights but then allows a set of "afterimages" to have the last word.

DKK 531.00
1