An investigation of the eidetic and transcendental phenomenological reductions as productive (and not merely descriptive) activities, Hence as a praxis generative of meaning. The eidetic reduction is a metaphoric system, Describing the movement from topos to tropes: the primal ontological structure is found to be that of distortion, Of a "coherent deformation," a breaking of forms, Which maintains the phenomenological horizon's openness. This founds a theory of decentered being, Ex-Centric subjectivity, And an anti-Ideologic critique.

Resource added for the Landscape Horticulture Technician program 100014.

Perverse Desire and the Ambiguous Icon analyzes the limits of the applicability of psychoanalytic theory to aesthetic discourse, and in doing so expands the range of non-normative paradigms of spectatorial identification and sexual identity. These considerations are based on the epistemological premises that the ideal seldom coincides with the empirical, and that identification is always partial, fragmented, heterogeneous, mixed, such that total identification would be tantamount to delirium. The imagination is but the ephemera of partial objects torn from culture and (...) history, the transgression by fragmentation of a contemporary cosmos all too unified and all too controlled to admit the most singular, and idiosyncratic, phantasms of our desires. Thus we must posit an aesthetics where theory and interpretation are juxtaposed to, or traced above, the effects of the passions, where a muscular contraction or spasm is worth as much as a concept. It is here, at the fragile limit between iconophilia and iconoclasm, that the ironies and exigencies of poetic justice reside. (shrink)

In this original work of cultural criticism, Allen S. Weiss explores the meaning of radio to the modern imagination.

A thorough history of the involvement of Australia's Northern Territory in World War II. Includes photos, extensive notes and bibliography.

Possession Trance and Dramatic Perversity Dionysus arrives as a stranger, enigmatic, disquieting, contagious, spreading an epidemic of mania leading to ...

The following conclusions have been reached: The phenomenological concept of the "horizon" calls into question both the traditional philosophical concepts of Truth and Being, and it provides the basis for a new, non-hierarchical and non-ideological ontology. On the basis of the new ontology that Merleau-Ponty founds, the ontology of the "Flesh," Merleau-Ponty's thought provides the basis for a strong hermeneutic tool for the critique of ideological systems. Such a critique is not merely a linguistic technique; it is equally based upon (...) a nascent libido theory, which attempts to relate the linguistic and libidinal levels of experience into a unified hermeneutic of human existence. Thus Merleau-Ponty was a precursor of the contemporary French libido theorists, but without falling into the reductionistic error which is often committed by them. Merleau-Ponty did not reduce all existence to either the linquistic or libidinal level, but rather understood language and the body to be each other's significative horizon. Thus Merleau-Ponty's later work serves as both an existential hermeneutic of existence and a critique of ideology, while simultaneously helping to inaugurate the most recent trends of French thought. ;The methodological considerations of this dissertation are based upon the fact that Merleau-Ponty's philosophy was a nexus of existentialism, phenomenology and structuralism, as well as being what I wish to show is one of the foundations of post-structuralist libido theory. Thus all of these styles of philosophizing and their ontological implications must be traced out as they apply to Merleau-Ponty's later writing. Primarily, this dissertation is an analysis of one primary source: the working notes to the incomplete text of The Visible and the Invisible. Yet this interpretation must be effected in the light of Merleau-Ponty's previous works, and the texts that influenced him, and it must especially clarify the lineage of those texts that were subsequently influenced by him. But this textual analysis is combined with phenomenological analyses which are intended to provide examples that support the ontological claims that are made. ;This dissertation is an attempt to interpret the working notes to Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible, and to evolve a general theory of interpretation based upon his insights. Specifically, the problem is that of the conciliation of the two major trends of contemporary French philosophy, linguistic analysis and libido theory, which at many points offer mutually exclusive interpretations of existence. I attempt to show how Merleau-Ponty provided an ontology which took into consideration both of these problematics, an ontology which bears as its central, but itself problematic term, the "Flesh." His new ontology of the Flesh is based upon the ontological implications of the classical phenomenological concept of the "horizon," which refers to the indistinct, implicit areas of the perceptual and conceptual fields, and which necessitates a radical reinterpretation of previous philosophy. (shrink)

Unnatural Horizons presents a selective history of the last five centuries of landscape architecture at the intersection of poetics and science, rhetoric and technology, and philosophy and politics. It investigates the relations between garden aesthetics and metaphysics, discussing issues similar to those raised by Weiss's critically acclaimed Mirrors of Infinity. The Western garden has always served as a setting for music, dance, theater, sculpture, and architecture, as well as the minor arts of meditative contemplation and erotic seduction. The history of (...) landscape architecture is therefore inextricable from the histories of the other arts, and must be studied from an interdisciplinary and polycultural point of view. Some of the topics included in this book are the influence of neo-Platonic philosophy on the Italian Renaissance garden, erotic fantasies and the 18th-century libertine garden, the contrast between Thoreau's romantic notion of virgin nature and changes in perception due to increasing speed and mechanization, and the limits of landscape architecture as art form in 20th-century gardens. (shrink)