Creation and the Function of Art: Technē, Poiesis and the Problem of Aesthetics

Description

Returning to the Greek understanding of art to rethink its capacities, Creation and the Function of Art focuses on the relationship between technē and phusis (nature). Moving away from the theoretical Platonism which dominates contemporary understandings of art, this book instead reinvigorates Aristotelian causation. Beginning with the Greek topos and turning to insights from philosophy, pure mathematics, psychoanalysis and biology, Jason Tuckwell re-problematizes technē in functional terms. This book examines the deviations at play within logical forms, the subject, and upon phusis to better situate the role of the function in poiesis (art). In so doing, Tuckwell argues that art concerns a genuinely creative labour that cannot be resolved via an ontological or epistemological problem, but which instead constitutes an encounter with the problematic. As such, technē is shown to be a property of the living, of intelligence coupled to action, that not only enacts poiesis or art, but indicates a broader role for creative deviation in nature. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction: Re-Problematizing the Greek Topos 1. Functions and Models: Art and Knowledge 1.1 Functions and problems 1.2 Mathematical functions 1.3 Functions in art 1.4 The inaugural Greek topos: Art, creation and nature 1.5 Meaning and creation 1.6 The overwhelming excess of insuperable indigence 2. The Re-Problematization of Technē: Subjects and Praxis 2.1 Techne I: Immanence, praxis and intelligibility 2.2 Technē II: Functional properties 2.3 Technē and the function of subjectivity 2.4 Freud, Lacan and the re-orientation of epistēmē 2.5 Technē and the agency of art 3. Deviant Technē: Phusis and –jet 3.1 Technē and technology: Agency and artifice 3.2 Technē III: General functional schematic 3.3 Deviation and evolution 3.4 Technē IV: Schema for human subjects 3.5 Technē and deviation 4. The Function of Art: Creation and Poiesis 4.1 Poiesis I: Making and creating 4.2 The disciplinary structure of the field of art 4.3 Poiesis II: Creative and productive poiesis in the work of art 4.4 Technē to technē Conclusion: Art and Nature Notes Bibliography Index