Fragility describes the condition of a world subject to flux, and in which order is only ever con... more Fragility describes the condition of a world subject to flux, and in which order is only ever contingent. So pervasive is fragility to existence that it arguably constitutes an existential modality. Fragility is both promising and threatening: it indicates the possibility for change, yet this possibility also places the prevailing order at risk. To come to grips with fragility it becomes necessary to move from an abstract account of the dialectic of order and disorder to its concrete manifestation. Literature, it is argued, constitutes a powerful medium through which to investigate fragility and, particularly, the fragile future: not only is it able to stage sophisticated explorations of biological, social, economic, political and aesthetic situations of fragility, but its codes, media and genres are themselves subject to the fragilities they seek to represent. Addressing a range of themes, the articles gathered here collectively attest to the power of literature to bear witness to the fragile future. Beginning with the precarity of the present, they proceed to examine transitional sequences, and to investigate the way in which literature often adopts the tactic of looking back in order to look forward. A number of articles are concerned with ecological fragility, or with apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic themes, exposing the fragile relation between human knowledge, technology and the physical world.The fragile future is also a reality with which the literary humanities must grapple in its disciplinary dimension, staging a difficult negotiation between the antifragility and expansive logic of neoliberalism, and the fragility and critical facility of what remains of humanistic discourse.
Quantity underpins contemporary existence. This point is convincingly argued by Badiou and a host... more Quantity underpins contemporary existence. This point is convincingly argued by Badiou and a host of thinkers writing in his wake. The present piece proposes that the minimalist aesthetic offers us remarkable insight into this quantitative ontology, in particular through the technique of modular repetition as exemplar to different types of counting or calculation. The additive and subtractive patterns of such repetition recognise their own formative procedures as fundamentally quantitative, exemplifying the difficult relationship between counting, telos, and identity. The music of Philip Glass, the writing of Samuel Beckett and Robert Lax, and the sculpture of Sol LeWitt furnish us with poignant examples in this regard.
This chapter argues that a contemporary resurgence of realism rests on what might seem little mor... more This chapter argues that a contemporary resurgence of realism rests on what might seem little more than an intuitive observation: that what is Real is contingently so and that this contingent existence unfolds in a time which is irreversible. Tracing the temporal ambiguity which an aesthetic experience of Piano Phase effects - the inability precisely to determine beginning or ending, forward or backward direction - the chapter further argues that Reich's composition effects an evental distension, an apparent stretching of the event from within its own emergence. Despite the tension that may result from Reich's phasing - a tension the author associates here with the sublime - the temporal trajectories of Piano Phase exist in non-coercive relation to each other and the listening subject. They expose a vulnerability at the heart of contemporary experience that seems intimately tied to the constitutive complexity of our human organismic experience. Keywords: evental distension; modalities of time; resurgent realism; Steve Reich's Piano Phase
In this brief set of responses to the five challenging and insightful articles gathered above und... more In this brief set of responses to the five challenging and insightful articles gathered above under the banner Security Studies and American Literary History, I draw attention to what I regard as a particularly pressing area for future research on the relation between security and literary studies: the distinction of security from securitization and the implications this has for the constitution and lived experience of contemporary subjectivity. My contention is that there is a diminishing relation between the secure subject and the securitized subject. A critical poetics of securitization capable of exposing this growing rift with greater clarity thus constitutes a significant program for the broad field of literary studies. It also potentially provides the means for contesting the internal logic and relations between concepts such as vulnerability, fragility, and precarity on the one hand, and of adaptation, resilience, and robustness on the other. Indeed, a critical poetics of securitization further promises to shed light on the techniques and technologies of neoliberalism as dominant paradigm, drawing particular attention to its implication for the constitution of contemporary political subjectivity.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Risking the Future exposes a tension at the heart of contemporary thinking aroun... more CALL FOR PAPERS
Risking the Future exposes a tension at the heart of contemporary thinking around risk and its effects, and in particular the role of risk in either blocking or facilitating access to possible futures. On the one hand, the phrase is cautionary, a reminder that the future is at risk and that risks have to be calculated and managed to avoid or learn to live within catastrophic circumstances. On the other hand, the phrase is hopeful, a recognition that a certain type of risk is necessary to generate a speculative opening to a future worth living. In this way, although risk manifests in complex historical and contemporary patterns across the economic, legal, ecological, social, cultural, aesthetic and political spheres, it is most urgently felt where the exercise and effects of power are tied to potential loss and gain, and where these losses and gains shape the lives of those least able to resist them. In this light, rethinking the relation of risk and futurity suggests a tension between the calculation, management and adoption of risk on one hand, and what it actually means to live a life at risk on the other. For those living in fragile circumstances – situations in which race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion and poverty intersect in ways that render existence itself radically vulnerable; situations in which it is increasingly difficult to avoid or resist political instability, conflict, economic precarity, health crises, and ecological catastrophe – the question of risk exists at a very different intensity, and has very different implications than it does for individuals, groups and even whole societies who regard risk principally in terms of its calculation, distribution and management undertaken to guarantee continued flourishing, often in the very systems that place the vulnerable at risk.
This is the draft version of the first half of a chapter from my forthcoming monograph on minimal... more This is the draft version of the first half of a chapter from my forthcoming monograph on minimalist aesthetics, A Theory of Minimalism, that will be published later in 2016, and that reframes a great deal of canonical minimalism from a transhistorical and philosophical perspective. This chapter re-examines the disputed phenomenon of "holy minimalism" across various media, and in particular in relation to transhistorical ascetic practice and some of its consequences for aesthetics. The second half of the chapter (not included here) examines the relation of minimalism to theurgy and ritual practice in greater detail. As is perhaps implicit in this provisional title, "The Other Austerity," I make only brief mention of austerity politics and economics. Although I expand on this elsewhere, my view here is that aesthetic austerity reveals, albeit indirectly, how contemporary conceptions of austerity disingenuously appropriate concepts and turn them to a strategic purpose radically different from their historical usage, or their horizons as revealed in aesthetics practice.
This is an extended version (by approx 3000 words) of an essay which will be published in the for... more This is an extended version (by approx 3000 words) of an essay which will be published in the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to the English Short Story. I respectfully ask that any references/citations be made to the published version when it appears.
Final and fairly extensively amended versions of min&quantity paper:
Quantity underpins contemp... more Final and fairly extensively amended versions of min&quantity paper:
Quantity underpins contemporary existence. This point is convincingly argued by Badiou and a host of thinkers writing in his wake. The present piece proposes that the minimalist aesthetic offers us remarkable insight into this quantitative ontology, in particular through the technique of modular repetition as exemplar to different types of counting or calculation. The additive and subtractive patterns of such repetition recognise their own formative procedures as fundamentally quantitative, exemplifying the difficult relationship between counting, telos, and identity. The music of Philip Glass, the writing of Samuel Beckett and Robert Lax, and the sculpture of Sol LeWitt furnish us with poignant examples in this regard.
Fragility describes the condition of a world subject to flux, and in which order is only ever con... more Fragility describes the condition of a world subject to flux, and in which order is only ever contingent. So pervasive is fragility to existence that it arguably constitutes an existential modality. Fragility is both promising and threatening: it indicates the possibility for change, yet this possibility also places the prevailing order at risk. To come to grips with fragility it becomes necessary to move from an abstract account of the dialectic of order and disorder to its concrete manifestation. Literature, it is argued, constitutes a powerful medium through which to investigate fragility and, particularly, the fragile future: not only is it able to stage sophisticated explorations of biological, social, economic, political and aesthetic situations of fragility, but its codes, media and genres are themselves subject to the fragilities they seek to represent. Addressing a range of themes, the articles gathered here collectively attest to the power of literature to bear witness to the fragile future. Beginning with the precarity of the present, they proceed to examine transitional sequences, and to investigate the way in which literature often adopts the tactic of looking back in order to look forward. A number of articles are concerned with ecological fragility, or with apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic themes, exposing the fragile relation between human knowledge, technology and the physical world.The fragile future is also a reality with which the literary humanities must grapple in its disciplinary dimension, staging a difficult negotiation between the antifragility and expansive logic of neoliberalism, and the fragility and critical facility of what remains of humanistic discourse.
Quantity underpins contemporary existence. This point is convincingly argued by Badiou and a host... more Quantity underpins contemporary existence. This point is convincingly argued by Badiou and a host of thinkers writing in his wake. The present piece proposes that the minimalist aesthetic offers us remarkable insight into this quantitative ontology, in particular through the technique of modular repetition as exemplar to different types of counting or calculation. The additive and subtractive patterns of such repetition recognise their own formative procedures as fundamentally quantitative, exemplifying the difficult relationship between counting, telos, and identity. The music of Philip Glass, the writing of Samuel Beckett and Robert Lax, and the sculpture of Sol LeWitt furnish us with poignant examples in this regard.
This chapter argues that a contemporary resurgence of realism rests on what might seem little mor... more This chapter argues that a contemporary resurgence of realism rests on what might seem little more than an intuitive observation: that what is Real is contingently so and that this contingent existence unfolds in a time which is irreversible. Tracing the temporal ambiguity which an aesthetic experience of Piano Phase effects - the inability precisely to determine beginning or ending, forward or backward direction - the chapter further argues that Reich's composition effects an evental distension, an apparent stretching of the event from within its own emergence. Despite the tension that may result from Reich's phasing - a tension the author associates here with the sublime - the temporal trajectories of Piano Phase exist in non-coercive relation to each other and the listening subject. They expose a vulnerability at the heart of contemporary experience that seems intimately tied to the constitutive complexity of our human organismic experience. Keywords: evental distension; modalities of time; resurgent realism; Steve Reich's Piano Phase
In this brief set of responses to the five challenging and insightful articles gathered above und... more In this brief set of responses to the five challenging and insightful articles gathered above under the banner Security Studies and American Literary History, I draw attention to what I regard as a particularly pressing area for future research on the relation between security and literary studies: the distinction of security from securitization and the implications this has for the constitution and lived experience of contemporary subjectivity. My contention is that there is a diminishing relation between the secure subject and the securitized subject. A critical poetics of securitization capable of exposing this growing rift with greater clarity thus constitutes a significant program for the broad field of literary studies. It also potentially provides the means for contesting the internal logic and relations between concepts such as vulnerability, fragility, and precarity on the one hand, and of adaptation, resilience, and robustness on the other. Indeed, a critical poetics of securitization further promises to shed light on the techniques and technologies of neoliberalism as dominant paradigm, drawing particular attention to its implication for the constitution of contemporary political subjectivity.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Risking the Future exposes a tension at the heart of contemporary thinking aroun... more CALL FOR PAPERS
Risking the Future exposes a tension at the heart of contemporary thinking around risk and its effects, and in particular the role of risk in either blocking or facilitating access to possible futures. On the one hand, the phrase is cautionary, a reminder that the future is at risk and that risks have to be calculated and managed to avoid or learn to live within catastrophic circumstances. On the other hand, the phrase is hopeful, a recognition that a certain type of risk is necessary to generate a speculative opening to a future worth living. In this way, although risk manifests in complex historical and contemporary patterns across the economic, legal, ecological, social, cultural, aesthetic and political spheres, it is most urgently felt where the exercise and effects of power are tied to potential loss and gain, and where these losses and gains shape the lives of those least able to resist them. In this light, rethinking the relation of risk and futurity suggests a tension between the calculation, management and adoption of risk on one hand, and what it actually means to live a life at risk on the other. For those living in fragile circumstances – situations in which race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion and poverty intersect in ways that render existence itself radically vulnerable; situations in which it is increasingly difficult to avoid or resist political instability, conflict, economic precarity, health crises, and ecological catastrophe – the question of risk exists at a very different intensity, and has very different implications than it does for individuals, groups and even whole societies who regard risk principally in terms of its calculation, distribution and management undertaken to guarantee continued flourishing, often in the very systems that place the vulnerable at risk.
This is the draft version of the first half of a chapter from my forthcoming monograph on minimal... more This is the draft version of the first half of a chapter from my forthcoming monograph on minimalist aesthetics, A Theory of Minimalism, that will be published later in 2016, and that reframes a great deal of canonical minimalism from a transhistorical and philosophical perspective. This chapter re-examines the disputed phenomenon of "holy minimalism" across various media, and in particular in relation to transhistorical ascetic practice and some of its consequences for aesthetics. The second half of the chapter (not included here) examines the relation of minimalism to theurgy and ritual practice in greater detail. As is perhaps implicit in this provisional title, "The Other Austerity," I make only brief mention of austerity politics and economics. Although I expand on this elsewhere, my view here is that aesthetic austerity reveals, albeit indirectly, how contemporary conceptions of austerity disingenuously appropriate concepts and turn them to a strategic purpose radically different from their historical usage, or their horizons as revealed in aesthetics practice.
This is an extended version (by approx 3000 words) of an essay which will be published in the for... more This is an extended version (by approx 3000 words) of an essay which will be published in the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to the English Short Story. I respectfully ask that any references/citations be made to the published version when it appears.
Final and fairly extensively amended versions of min&quantity paper:
Quantity underpins contemp... more Final and fairly extensively amended versions of min&quantity paper:
Quantity underpins contemporary existence. This point is convincingly argued by Badiou and a host of thinkers writing in his wake. The present piece proposes that the minimalist aesthetic offers us remarkable insight into this quantitative ontology, in particular through the technique of modular repetition as exemplar to different types of counting or calculation. The additive and subtractive patterns of such repetition recognise their own formative procedures as fundamentally quantitative, exemplifying the difficult relationship between counting, telos, and identity. The music of Philip Glass, the writing of Samuel Beckett and Robert Lax, and the sculpture of Sol LeWitt furnish us with poignant examples in this regard.
CALL FOR PAPERS
In recent years vulnerability has emerged as a key concept in navigating the co... more CALL FOR PAPERS
In recent years vulnerability has emerged as a key concept in navigating the complex, uncertain and unstable ecologies that mark the interaction of human and non-human actors. Derived from the Latin word vulnus or wound, vulnerability describes a range of situations in which individual subjects, communities, and other material or conceptual configurations are susceptible to threat or harm of one kind or another. In this sense, vulnerability describes a situation of heightened intensity, an intensity which correlates with the precariousness of the situation itself. In addition, it is important to recognize that vulnerability is relational: it decentres the stability of our self-relation even as it calls us to new types of ethical and political relation to one another; it recasts our ecological relation to the world at large. Vulnerability manifests in terms of unpredictable interdependencies and radical co-emergences, providing a means of reexamining both historical and contemporary asymmetries of power, the inequalities to which these give rise and through which they are sustained. It generates the impetus for forging new tools of resistance and conceptualizing new routes to resilience, recognizing that to address vulnerability critically does not only involve intervention on behalf of that which is vulnerable, but also a recognition of the value of vulnerability in itself.
Risking the Future exposes a tension at the heart of contemporary thinking around risk and its ef... more Risking the Future exposes a tension at the heart of contemporary thinking around risk and its effects, and in particular the role of risk in either blocking or facilitating access to possible futures. On the one hand, the phrase is cautionary, a reminder that the future is at risk and that risks have to be calculated and managed to avoid or learn to live within catastrophic circumstances. On the other hand, the phrase is hopeful, a recognition that a certain type of risk is necessary to generate a speculative opening to a future worth living. In this way, although risk manifests in complex historical and contemporary patterns across the economic, legal, ecological, social, cultural, aesthetic and political spheres, it is most urgently felt where the exercise and effects of power are tied to potential loss and gain, and where these losses and gains shape the lives of those least able to resist them. In this light, rethinking the relation of risk and futurity suggests a tension between the calculation, management and adoption of risk on one hand, and what it actually means to live a life at risk on the other. For those living in fragile circumstances – situations in which race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion and poverty intersect in ways that render existence itself radically vulnerable; situations in which it is increasingly difficult to avoid or resist political instability, conflict, economic precarity, health crises, and ecological catastrophe – the question of risk exists at a very different intensity, and has very different implications than it does for individuals, groups and even whole societies who regard risk principally in terms of its calculation, distribution and management undertaken to guarantee continued flourishing, often in the very systems that place the vulnerable at risk.
By interrogating the terms and concepts most central to cultural change, Future Theory interrogat... more By interrogating the terms and concepts most central to cultural change, Future Theory interrogates how theory can play a central role in dynamic transition. It demonstrates how entangled the highly politicized spheres of cultural production, scientific invention, and intellectual discourse are in the contemporary world and how new concepts and forms of thinking are crucial to embarking upon change.
Containing substantial essays by numerous leading thinkers in the broad fields of critical and cultural theory, Future Theory is built around five key concepts – change, boundaries, ruptures, assemblages, horizons – examined by leading international thinkers to build a vision of how theory can be applied to a constantly shifting world.
About A Theory of Minimalism
The explosion of minimalism into the worlds of visual arts, music a... more About A Theory of Minimalism
The explosion of minimalism into the worlds of visual arts, music and literature in the mid-to-late twentieth century presents one of the most radical and decisive revolutions in aesthetic history. Detested by some, embraced by others, minimalism's influence was immediate, pervasive and lasting, significantly changing the way we hear music, see art and read literature.
In The Theory of Minimalism, Marc Botha offers the first general theory of minimalism, equally applicable to literature, the visual arts and music. He argues that minimalism establishes an aesthetic paradigm for rethinking realism in genuinely radical terms. In dialogue with thinkers from both the analytic and continental traditions – including Kant, Danto, Agamben, Badiou and Meillassoux – Botha develops a constellation of concepts which together encapsulate the transhistorcial and transdisciplinary reach of minimalism.
Illustrated by a range of historical, canonical and contemporary minimalist works of different media, from the caves of early Christian ascetics to Samuel Beckett's late prose, Botha offers a bold and provocative argument which will equip readers with the tools to engage critically with past, present and future minimalism, and to recognize how, in a culture caught between the poles of excess and austerity, minimalism still matters.
Table of contents Acknowledgements Preface
1. Intermittency: On the Transhistoricism of Minimalism 2. Encounters: On the Politics of Minimalism 3. Objecthood: On the Materialism of Minimalism 4. The Real: On the Persistence of Minimalism 5. Quantity: On the Radicality of Minimalism 6. Austerity: On the Lessness of Minimalism 7. Minimum: On the Extremes of Minimalism
Illustrations Notes Bibliography Index
Reviews “In lucid prose, Marc Botha lays out his persuasive case for a special status for minimalism. He describes it as an aesthetic movement capable of ceaselessly and intermittently returning aesthetics to its most radical roots, based on the dual principles of the 'infinitesimal' and the 'parsimonious.' I found Botha's authorial voice to be strong and trustworthy.” – Graham Harman, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles, USA,
“More than just a work about minimalism, this is a highly innovative contribution to aesthetics, critical theory and current debates around the ontology of art in general.” – Christopher Norris, Distinguished Research Professor, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University, UK,
“Based on the principle of “the least possible and the least necessary,” Botha's lucid and convincing interpretation of minimalism is wide ranging and all-encompassing. Building on canonical works of minimalist art, music, and literature, he argues for a mode of thinking, doing, and making that reaches as far back as the seventeenth century and extends to fields as diverse as ethics, economics, sociology, and politics.” – Frances Colpitt, Deedie Potter Rose Chair of Art History, Texas Christian University, USA,
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Papers by Marc Botha
Risking the Future exposes a tension at the heart of contemporary thinking around risk and its effects, and in particular the role of risk in either blocking or facilitating access to possible futures. On the one hand, the phrase is cautionary, a reminder that the future is at risk and that risks have to be calculated and managed to avoid or learn to live within catastrophic circumstances. On the other hand, the phrase is hopeful, a recognition that a certain type of risk is necessary to generate a speculative opening to a future worth living. In this way, although risk manifests in complex historical and contemporary patterns across the economic, legal, ecological, social, cultural, aesthetic and political spheres, it is most urgently felt where the exercise and effects of power are tied to potential loss and gain, and where these losses and gains shape the lives of those least able to resist them. In this light, rethinking the relation of risk and futurity suggests a tension between the calculation, management and adoption of risk on one hand, and what it actually means to live a life at risk on the other. For those living in fragile circumstances – situations in which race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion and poverty intersect in ways that render existence itself radically vulnerable; situations in which it is increasingly difficult to avoid or resist political instability, conflict, economic precarity, health crises, and ecological catastrophe – the question of risk exists at a very different intensity, and has very different implications than it does for individuals, groups and even whole societies who regard risk principally in terms of its calculation, distribution and management undertaken to guarantee continued flourishing, often in the very systems that place the vulnerable at risk.
Quantity underpins contemporary existence. This point is convincingly argued by Badiou and a host of thinkers writing in his wake. The present piece proposes that the minimalist aesthetic offers us remarkable insight into this quantitative ontology, in particular through the technique of modular repetition as exemplar to different types of counting or calculation. The additive and subtractive patterns of such repetition recognise their own formative procedures as fundamentally quantitative, exemplifying the difficult relationship between counting, telos, and identity. The music of Philip Glass, the writing of Samuel Beckett and Robert Lax, and the sculpture of Sol LeWitt furnish us with poignant examples in this regard.
Risking the Future exposes a tension at the heart of contemporary thinking around risk and its effects, and in particular the role of risk in either blocking or facilitating access to possible futures. On the one hand, the phrase is cautionary, a reminder that the future is at risk and that risks have to be calculated and managed to avoid or learn to live within catastrophic circumstances. On the other hand, the phrase is hopeful, a recognition that a certain type of risk is necessary to generate a speculative opening to a future worth living. In this way, although risk manifests in complex historical and contemporary patterns across the economic, legal, ecological, social, cultural, aesthetic and political spheres, it is most urgently felt where the exercise and effects of power are tied to potential loss and gain, and where these losses and gains shape the lives of those least able to resist them. In this light, rethinking the relation of risk and futurity suggests a tension between the calculation, management and adoption of risk on one hand, and what it actually means to live a life at risk on the other. For those living in fragile circumstances – situations in which race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion and poverty intersect in ways that render existence itself radically vulnerable; situations in which it is increasingly difficult to avoid or resist political instability, conflict, economic precarity, health crises, and ecological catastrophe – the question of risk exists at a very different intensity, and has very different implications than it does for individuals, groups and even whole societies who regard risk principally in terms of its calculation, distribution and management undertaken to guarantee continued flourishing, often in the very systems that place the vulnerable at risk.
Quantity underpins contemporary existence. This point is convincingly argued by Badiou and a host of thinkers writing in his wake. The present piece proposes that the minimalist aesthetic offers us remarkable insight into this quantitative ontology, in particular through the technique of modular repetition as exemplar to different types of counting or calculation. The additive and subtractive patterns of such repetition recognise their own formative procedures as fundamentally quantitative, exemplifying the difficult relationship between counting, telos, and identity. The music of Philip Glass, the writing of Samuel Beckett and Robert Lax, and the sculpture of Sol LeWitt furnish us with poignant examples in this regard.
In recent years vulnerability has emerged as a key concept in navigating the complex, uncertain and unstable ecologies that mark the interaction of human and non-human actors. Derived from the Latin word vulnus or wound, vulnerability describes a range of situations in which individual subjects, communities, and other material or conceptual configurations are susceptible to threat or harm of one kind or another. In this sense, vulnerability describes a situation of heightened intensity, an intensity which correlates with the precariousness of the situation itself. In addition, it is important to recognize that vulnerability is relational: it decentres the stability of our self-relation even as it calls us to new types of ethical and political relation to one another; it recasts our ecological relation to the world at large. Vulnerability manifests in terms of unpredictable interdependencies and radical co-emergences, providing a means of reexamining both historical and contemporary asymmetries of power, the inequalities to which these give rise and through which they are sustained. It generates the impetus for forging new tools of resistance and conceptualizing new routes to resilience, recognizing that to address vulnerability critically does not only involve intervention on behalf of that which is vulnerable, but also a recognition of the value of vulnerability in itself.
Containing substantial essays by numerous leading thinkers in the broad fields of critical and cultural theory, Future Theory is built around five key concepts – change, boundaries, ruptures, assemblages, horizons – examined by leading international thinkers to build a vision of how theory can be applied to a constantly shifting world.
The explosion of minimalism into the worlds of visual arts, music and literature in the mid-to-late twentieth century presents one of the most radical and decisive revolutions in aesthetic history. Detested by some, embraced by others, minimalism's influence was immediate, pervasive and lasting, significantly changing the way we hear music, see art and read literature.
In The Theory of Minimalism, Marc Botha offers the first general theory of minimalism, equally applicable to literature, the visual arts and music. He argues that minimalism establishes an aesthetic paradigm for rethinking realism in genuinely radical terms. In dialogue with thinkers from both the analytic and continental traditions – including Kant, Danto, Agamben, Badiou and Meillassoux – Botha develops a constellation of concepts which together encapsulate the transhistorcial and transdisciplinary reach of minimalism.
Illustrated by a range of historical, canonical and contemporary minimalist works of different media, from the caves of early Christian ascetics to Samuel Beckett's late prose, Botha offers a bold and provocative argument which will equip readers with the tools to engage critically with past, present and future minimalism, and to recognize how, in a culture caught between the poles of excess and austerity, minimalism still matters.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
1. Intermittency: On the Transhistoricism of Minimalism
2. Encounters: On the Politics of Minimalism
3. Objecthood: On the Materialism of Minimalism
4. The Real: On the Persistence of Minimalism
5. Quantity: On the Radicality of Minimalism
6. Austerity: On the Lessness of Minimalism
7. Minimum: On the Extremes of Minimalism
Illustrations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Reviews
“In lucid prose, Marc Botha lays out his persuasive case for a special status for minimalism. He describes it as an aesthetic movement capable of ceaselessly and intermittently returning aesthetics to its most radical roots, based on the dual principles of the 'infinitesimal' and the 'parsimonious.' I found Botha's authorial voice to be strong and trustworthy.” – Graham Harman, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles, USA,
“More than just a work about minimalism, this is a highly innovative contribution to aesthetics, critical theory and current debates around the ontology of art in general.” – Christopher Norris, Distinguished Research Professor, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University, UK,
“Based on the principle of “the least possible and the least necessary,” Botha's lucid and convincing interpretation of minimalism is wide ranging and all-encompassing. Building on canonical works of minimalist art, music, and literature, he argues for a mode of thinking, doing, and making that reaches as far back as the seventeenth century and extends to fields as diverse as ethics, economics, sociology, and politics.” – Frances Colpitt, Deedie Potter Rose Chair of Art History, Texas Christian University, USA,