This book offers an alternate approach to aesthetic anthropology through an inquiry into the work of 5 contemporary artists. The author shifts traditional ideas of aesthetic experience and the creative act away from the faculty of the imagination towards the faculty of cogitation, suggesting a new "anthropology of cogitation" that is underwritten by a general, artistic intelligence.The book draws from three interconnected resources: the vital "ecology of mind," theorized by anthropologist Gregory Bateson; the salutary play in intermediary "potential spaces," advocated by British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott; and the virtus cogitativa found in the oeuvre of Ibn Rushd (Latin Averroes), the 12th century rationalist thinker known for innovating Aristotelian psychology and science of the soul.By opening a new dialogue between anthropology, art history, and philosophy, Tarek Elhaik examines image-work, ethical demands, and aesthetic struggles of his interlocutors, the artists Adrian Piper, Anna Maria Maiolino, Mathias Goeritz, Mounir Fatmi, and Silvia Gruner.

Book Information
ISBN 9781350168824
Author Tarek Elhaik
Format Hardback
Page Count 224
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd