In The Psychologizing of Modernity, Mark Jarzombek examines the impact of psychology on twentieth-century aesthetics. Analysing the interface between psychology, art history and avant-gardist practices, he also reflects on the longevity of the myth of aesthetic individuality as it infiltrated not only avant-garde art, but also history writing. The principal focus of this study is pre-World War II Germany, where theories of empathy and Entartung emerged; and post-war America, where artists, critics and historians gradually shifted from their reliance on psychology (...) to philosophy, and, most recently, to theory. Included are discussions of writers such as Heinrich Wölfflin, Ludwig Volkmann, John Dewey, Vincent Scully and Richard Arnheim, among others. The Psychologizing of Modernity is a broad and erudite study of the evolution of modern aesthetic thinking in the fields of art and architectural history. (shrink)

The attempt by the digital forces to ‘naturalize’ the digital and thus to make it one with our ontology raises a whole host of issues about how to identify the Self. The multi-pronged process of naturalization are driven by a particular dynamic: the ‘more’ of data. Data is not a static pile of information, but only works within strategies of accumulation. Businesses and academe have bought into this strategy – addicted to its potential for control – in ways that make (...) it impossible to see ‘an outside’. This ‘more’ is, however, hardly foolproof, and is in fact designed around a wide range of fallibilities – some visible, but most not - that are also now part of the new natural. The resultant dialectic is unstable and as it operates to re-engineer our sense of Self it faces its own destiny. (shrink)