NotsNots is a virtuoso exploration of negation and negativity in theology, philosophy, art, architecture, postmodern culture, and medicine. In nine essays that range from nihility in Buddhism to the embodiment of negativity in disease, Mark C. Taylor looks at the surprising ways in which contrasting concepts of negativity intersect. In the first section of this book, Taylor discusses the question of the "not" in the religious thought of Anselm, Hegel, Derrida, and Nishitani. In the second part, he analyzes artistic efforts "to figure not" in the work of artists Arakawa and Madeline Gins, architect Daniel Libeskind, pop artist David Sallee, and pop icon Madonna. The final section consists of a deeply personal and scientifically informed chapter that discusses the workings of negativity in immunology and illness. Taylor's essays work toward a sense of the not as unnameable as it is irrepressible—an "unthinkable third" that falls between being and nonbeing. Bringing together concerns that span Taylor's early investigations of Hegel and Kierkegaard and recent studies of art and architecture, Nots is an important contribution by one of the most original and distinctive voices now writing on the American scene. Religion and Postmodernism series |
Contents
List of Illustrations xi | |
Saving Not 96 | |
Not Architecture 122 | |
Forget Not 166 | |
Francis Galton Specimens of Composite Portraiture 217 | |
DNA replication 233 | |
Antigenantibody relation 242 | |
T lymphocyte 243 | |
3435 Killer Tcell destroying a tumor 245 | |
Islet of Langerhans in the rat 247 | |
Antigenic mimicry 250 | |
Syringe 254 | 4 |
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Common terms and phrases
absence absolute ADVERTEASING affirmation altarity Anselm's antibodies antigen appears Arakawa and Gins Arakawa and Madeline architecture argues artists autoimmune avoid speaking becomes Berlin betrayal body cells Christ communication concept creates cybernetic Daniel Libeskind David Salle deconstruction denegation Derrida dialectical difference disease drawing E. T. A. Hoffmann Edmond Jabès empty ethical everything existence force G.W.F. Hegel Hegel Heidegger Heidegger's images impossible insists Jacques Derrida Jewish khora Kierkegaard killer T-cell language logic Madeline Gins Madonna means modern moral Museum negation negative theology never Nietzsche nihilism Nishitani object ontological argument organism original painting perceiving perception philosophy play possible postmodern present promise proof question realized relation religion remains repressed resistance Reversible Destiny secret simply singular space structure sunyata teleological teleological argument things thought tion trace trans translation turn unavoidable unity universal void wall words write