Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity

Abstract

Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity offers a radical new interpretation of Heidegger's later philosophy, developing his argument that art can help lead humanity beyond the nihilistic ontotheology of the modern age. Providing pathbreaking readings of Heidegger's 'The Origin of the Work of Art' and his notoriously difficult Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), this book explains precisely what postmodernity meant for Heidegger, the greatest philosophical critic of modernity, and what it could still mean for us today. Exploring these issues, Iain D. Thomson examines several postmodern works of art, including music, literature, painting and even comic books, from a post-Heideggerian perspective. Clearly written and accessible, this book will help readers gain a deeper understanding of Heidegger and his relation to postmodern theory, popular culture and art.

Ethno/Graphic Storytelling: Communicating Research and Exploring Pedagogical Approaches through Graphic Narratives, Drawings, and Zines

“…Published serially between 1986 and 1987, Watchmen offers an extended meditation on the meaning of justice in a world where the threat of nuclear annihilation overshadows individual acts of heroism. Called a “deconstructivist superhero comic” by philosopher Iain Thomson (), the moral ambiguity of Moore's characters and his gritty reimagining of the 1980s United States offered students a host of avenues to apply the theories they had encountered in earlier weeks.…”

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“…According to Martin Heidegger, taking such a subject/object dichotomy as a point of departure will lead us to fundamentally mischaracterise the prevalent engagement in the everyday world in which we are usually unrefl ectively immersed. He diagnoses this as being the result of a prevalent modern worldview, attempting to establish mastery and control over an unruly world (Thomson, 2011). As a consequence of this radical split the human is considered a passive receptor of raw sensory data, who fi lls in the gaps through accumulation of knowledge in a chaotic environment where structure is imposed on the world by building an internal model (Clarke, 2005, p. 22;Ingold, 2011, p. 282).…”

From modernity to the Anthropocene: ecology and art in the age of asymmetry

“…Iain Thomson writes: “Heidegger's defining hope for art … is that works of art could … help usher in a new understanding of the being of entities, a literally “post‐modern” understanding of what it means for an entity to be” (Thomson ; see ). Non‐human beings are what have finally pushed us into this understanding.…”