The Empire of Non-Sense: Art in the Technological Society - Hardcover

Jacques Ellul; Introductory Essays By Samir Younés & David Lovekin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 190650640X ISBN 13: 9781906506407

Publisher: Papadakis, 2014

Synopsis

Translated into English for the first time, Jacques Elluls ground-breaking Empire of Non-Sense analyses the relation between technology, art, rationality and human freedom. Many modern artists and architects continue to imagine and build the world technologically. Their beliefs remain firmly rooted in their assumption that the liberating forces of technology freed them from previous artistic traditions while making available vast means of production and a plethora of materials. All artistic traditions were seemingly put aside by the paintings of Cézanne, the poetry of Baudelaire and the architecture of Le Corbusier. Behind this apparent freedom French critic Jacques Ellul, author of the classic The Technological Society, found an absolute slavery. The artist was the handmaiden of technology, a relation the artist no longer understood, like other citizens of technological culture. Artists acclaimed their unbridled individualism while being intensely determined by the forces of technological culture. Ellul examines this process in modern art from the beginning of the 20th century where the sense of art its meaning and embodiments is reduced to non-sense. Elluls study is in the tradition of Guy Debords The Society of Spectacle and Theodor Adornos Aesthetic Theory but moves significantly beyond their Marxist perspectives that were, from Elluls view, co-opted by technique.

About this title

Review:

'Ellul is the most important philosopher of technology, a world of tactics, management, and gadgets without connection to a transcendent reality. It is the hollow cave of Plato and of Polyphemus without the presence of Socrates or Odysseus. The excellent translation of this seminal work gives further access to the impressive library of Ellul's thought.' --Donald Phillip Verene, Chandler Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy at Emory University

'We have been waiting for over thirty years for Jacques Ellul's Empire of Non-Sense to be available in English translation. With Samir Younés and David Lovekin s skillful introductory essays, Empire rewards our wait in full. Artists, architects, technologists, historians of art, cultural analysts, and thoughtful people everywhere will find this volume among the most challenging and insightful in this decade.' --David W. Gill, Professor of Ethics, Gordon-Conwell, and President of the International Jacques Ellul Society

--Professor Mark Miodownik, Author of Stuff Matters and regular contributor to BBC2 s Science Club

'We have been waiting for over thirty years for Jacques Ellul's Empire of Non-Sense to be available in English translation. With Samir Younés and David Lovekin s skillful introductory essays, Empire rewards our wait in full. Artists, architects, technologists, historians of art, cultural analysts, and thoughtful people everywhere will find this volume among the most challenging and insightful in this decade.' --David W. Gill, Professor of Ethics, Gordon-Conwell, and President of the International Jacques Ellul Society

'Many have tried and failed to write engaging and compelling books about nanotechnology. Forbes and Grimsey succeed because they take the reader on a tour of the highlights, and in their company it is like visiting an exquisite grotto: compelling, mysterious and extremely beautiful. If you don't come away from this book feeling intellectually exhilarated, then you need to stay in more.' --Professor Mark Miodownik, Author of Stuff Matters and regular contributor to BBC2 s Science Club

About the Author:

Jacques Ellul (19121994) was a French sociologist, historian of legal institutions, lay minister, philosopher and educator. From 1947 onward, he taught history, sociology and law at the Université de Bordeaux. In his long scholarly career, Ellul wrote forty books and eight hundred essays.

About this edition

• Publisher: Papadakis
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 190650640X
• ISBN 13: 9781906506407
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 168