In Without Criteria, Steven Shaviro proposes and explores a philosophical fantasy: imagine a world in which Alfred North Whitehead takes the place of Martin Heidegger. What if Whitehead, instead of Heidegger, had set the agenda for postmodern thought? Heidegger asks, "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" Whitehead asks, "How is it that there is always something new?" In a world where everything from popular music to DNA is being sampled and recombined, argues Shaviro, Whitehead's question is the truly urgent one. Without Criteria is Shaviro's experiment in rethinking postmodern theory, especially the theory of aesthetics, from a point of view that hearkens back to Whitehead rather than Heidegger. In working through the ideas of Whitehead and Deleuze, Shaviro also appeals to Kant, arguing that certain aspects of Kant's thought pave the way for the philosophical "constructivism" embraced by both Whitehead and Deleuze. Kant, Whitehead, and Deleuze are not commonly grouped together, but the juxtaposition of them in Without Criteria helps to shed light on a variety of issues that are of concern to contemporary art and media practices.

Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics (Technologies of Lived Abstraction)

Politics & Social Sciences

Shaviro, Steven

Philosophy

Mit Pr

A Deleuzian reading of Whitehead and a Whiteheadian reading of Deleuze open the possibility of a critical aesthetics of contemporary culture.In Without Criteria, Steven Shaviro proposes and explores a philosophical fantasy: imagine a world in which Alfred North Whitehead takes the place of Martin Heidegger. What if Whitehead, instead of Heidegger, had set the agenda for postmodern thought? Heidegger asks, “Why is there something, rather than nothing?” Whitehead asks, “How is it that there is always something new?” In a world where everything from popular music to DNA is being sampled and recombined, argues Shaviro, Whitehead's question is the truly urgent one. Without Criteria is Shaviro's experiment in rethinking postmodern theory, especially the theory of aesthetics, from a point of view that hearkens back to Whitehead rather than Heidegger. In working through the ideas of Whitehead and Deleuze, Shaviro also appeals to Kant, arguing that certain aspects of Kant's thought pave the way for the philosophical “constructivism” embraced by both Whitehead and Deleuze.Kant, Whitehead, and Deleuze are not commonly grouped together, but the juxtaposition of them in Without Criteria helps to shed light on a variety of issues that are of concern to contemporary art and media practices.

MIT Press]

Explores the ways in which Blanchot and Bataille have influenced post-structuralist and deconstructionist critics. The book suggests that a critic should be a ventriloquist, taking his cues from the author's words.

Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

University Press of Florida

Digital Music Videos (Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture)

Music videos today sample and rework a century’s worth of movies and other pop culture artifacts to offer a plethora of visions and sounds that we have never encountered before. As these videos have proliferated online, they have become more widely accessible than ever before. In Digital Music Videos, Steven Shaviro examines the ways that music videos interact with and change older media like movies and gallery art; the use of technologies like compositing, motion control, morphing software, and other digital special effects in order to create a new organization of time and space; how artists use music videos to project their personas; and how less well known musicians use music videos to extend their range and attract attention. Surveying a wide range of music videos, Shaviro highlights some of their most striking innovations while illustrating how these videos are creating a whole new digital world for the music industry.

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Rutgers University Press

Music videos today sample and rework a century’s worth of movies and other pop culture artifacts to offer a plethora of visions and sounds that we have never encountered before.    As these videos have proliferated online, they have become more widely accessible than ever before. In Digital Music Videos, Steven Shaviro examines the ways that music videos interact with and change older media like movies and gallery art; the use of technologies like compositing, motion control, morphing software, and other digital special effects in order to create a new organization of time and space; how artists use music videos to project their personas; and how less well known musicians use music videos to extend their range and attract attention.   Surveying a wide range of music videos, Shaviro highlights some of their most striking innovations while illustrating how these videos are creating a whole new digital world for the music industry.  

In 'The Cinematic Body', Steven Shaviro proposes a radical new approach to film viewing. Moving between Jerry Lewis and Andy Warhol, between Fassbinder's gay sex icons and George Romero's flesh-eating zombies, 'The Cinematic Body' cuts across disciplinary boundaries and seeks to engage new currents in critical thought. Shaviro radically critiques the Lacanian model currently popular in film theory and film studies, arguing that model's obsessive emphasis on the phallus, castration anxiety, sadistic mastery, ideology, and the structure of the signifier. In this groundbreaking volume, Shaviro effectively communicates a sense of the inescapable ambivalences and intensities of contemporary culture, ultimately affirming a thoroughly postmodern sensibility CONTENTS: Film Theory and Visual Fascination: Appendix - Deleuze and Guttari's Theory of Sexuality * Contagious Allegories: George Romero * Comedies of Abjection: Jerry Lewis * Bodies of Fear: David Cronenberg * Masculinity, Spectacle, and the Body of 'Querelle' * Warhol's Bodies * A Note on Bresson * Conclusions

Cinematic Body (Volume 2) (Theory Out Of Bounds)

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Univ. of Minnesota Press

Connected, or What It Means to Live in the Network Society

Connected is made up of a series of mini-essays - on cyberpunk, hip-hop, film noir, Web surfing, greed, electronic surveillance, pervasive multimedia, psychedelic drugs, artificial intelligence, evolutionary psychology, and the architecture of Frank Gehry, among other things. Shaviro argues that our strange new world is increasingly being transformed in ways, and by devices, that seem to come out of the pages of science fiction, even while the world itself is becoming a futuristic landscape. The result is that science fiction provides the most useful social theory, the only form that manages to be as radical as reality itself. Connected looks at how our networked environment has manifested itself in the work of J. G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, K. W. Jeter, and others. Shaviro focuses on science fiction not only as a form of cultural commentary but also as a prescient forum in which to explore the forces that are morphing our world into a sort of virtual reality game. Original and compelling, Connected shows how the continual experimentation of science fiction, like science and technology themselves, conjures the invisible social and economic forces that surround us.

Computers & Technology

Certification

In the twenty-first century, a network society is emerging. Fragmented, visually saturated, characterized by rapid technological change and constant social upheavals, it is dizzying, excessive, and sometimes surreal. In this breathtaking work, Steven Shaviro investigates popular culture, new technologies, political change, and community disruption and concludes that science fiction and social reality have become virtually indistinguishable. Connected is made up of a series of mini-essays-on cyberpunk, hip-hop, film noir, Web surfing, greed, electronic surveillance, pervasive multimedia, psychedelic drugs, artificial intelligence, evolutionary psychology, and the architecture of Frank Gehry, among other topics. Shaviro argues that our strange new world is increasingly being transformed in ways, and by devices, that seem to come out of the pages of science fiction, even while the world itself is becoming a futuristic landscape. The result is that science fiction provides the most useful social theory, the only form that manages to be as radical as reality itself. Connected looks at how our networked environment has manifested itself in the work of J. G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, K. W. Jeter, and others. Shaviro focuses on science fiction not only as a form of cultural commentary but also as a prescient forum in which to explore the forces that are morphing our world into a sort of virtual reality game. Original and compelling, Connected shows how the continual experimentation of science fiction, like science and technology themselves, conjures the invisible social and economic forces that surround us.

The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism (Volume 30) (Posthumanities)

From the rediscovery of Alfred North Whitehead’s work to the rise of new materialist thought, including object-oriented ontology, there has been a rapid turn toward speculation in philosophy as a way of moving beyond solely human perceptions of nature and existence. Now Steven Shaviro maps this quickly emerging speculative realism, which is already dramatically influencing how we interpret reality and our place in a universe in which humans are not the measure of all things. 
The Universe of Things explores the common insistence of speculative realism on a noncorrelationist thought: that things or objects exist apart from how our own human minds relate to and comprehend them. Shaviro focuses on how Whitehead both anticipates and offers challenges to prevailing speculative realist thought, moving between Whitehead’s own panpsychism, Harman’s object-oriented ontology, and the reductionist eliminativism of Quentin Meillassoux and Ray Brassier.
The stakes of this recent speculative realist thought—of the effort to develop new ways of grasping the world—are enormous as it becomes clear that our inherited assumptions are no longer adequate to describe, much less understand, the reality we experience around us. As Shaviro acknowledges, speculative realist thought has its dangers, but it also, like the best speculative fiction, holds the potential to liberate us from confining views of what is outside ourselves and, he believes, to reclaim aesthetics and beauty as a principle of life itself. 
Bringing together a wide array of contemporary thought, and evenhandedly assessing its current debates, The Universe of Things is an invaluable guide to the evolution of speculative realism and the provocation of Alfred North Whitehead’s pathbreaking work.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Shaviro, Steven. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Shaviro, Steven

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Shaviro, Steven. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics (Technologies of Lived Abstraction)

Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics (Technologies of Lived Abstraction)

Passion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory

Digital Music Videos (Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture)

Digital Music Videos (Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture)

Cinematic Body (Volume 2) (Theory Out Of Bounds)

Connected, or What It Means to Live in the Network Society

Connected, or What It Means to Live in the Network Society

The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism (Volume 30) (Posthumanities)

The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism (Volume 30) (Posthumanities)