Durkheim, the Durkheimians, and the Arts

Published by Berghahn Books 2013

Durkheim, the Durkheimians, and the Arts

Edited by: Alexander Tristan Riley , William Watts Miller and <a>W. S. F. Pickering</a>

In the series Publications of the Durkheim Press

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780857459183

Overview
Contents

About this book

Using a broad definition of the Durkheimian tradition, this book offers the first systematic attempt to explore the Durkheimians’ engagement with art. It focuses on both Durkheim and his contemporaries as well as later thinkers influenced by his work. The first five chapters consider Durkheim’s own exploration of art; the remaining six look at other Durkheimian thinkers, including Marcel Mauss, Henri Hubert, Maurice Halbwachs, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Leiris, and Georges Bataille. The contributors—scholars from a range of theoretical orientations and disciplinary perspectives—are known for having already produced significant contributions to the study of Durkheim. This book will interest not only scholars of Durkheim and his tradition but also those concerned with aesthetic theory and the sociology and history of art.

Author / Editor information

Alexander Tristan Riley is Professor of Sociology at Bucknell University. With the aid of the late Philippe Besnard, he edited the war correspondence of Robert Hertz, Un ethnologue dans les tranchées. He is the author of Godless Intellectuals?: The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred Reinvented (Berghahn Books, 2010) and currently he is contemplating a book on literary autobiography, cultural sociology, and the writing of Michel Leiris.

William Watts Miller is editor of Durkheimian Studies/Etudes Durkheimiennes and a member of the board of the British Centre for Durkheimian Studies. He has published extensively in the field, collaborated in translations, and is a member of the team producing a new critical edition of Durkheim's Complete Works. His most recent book is A Durkheimian Quest: Solidarity and the Sacred (Berghahn Books, 2012).

W. S. F. Pickering (1922-2016) was a retired Lecturer in sociology from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1991, he helped found the British Centre for Durkheimian Studies in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford.

Alexander Tristan Riley is Professor of Sociology at Bucknell University. With the aid of the late Philippe Besnard, he edited the war correspondence of Robert Hertz, Un ethnologue dans les tranchées. He is the author of Godless Intellectuals?: The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred Reinvented (Berghahn Books, 2010) and currently he is contemplating a book on literary autobiography, cultural sociology, and the writing of Michel Leiris.

Reviews

“The strengths of the book are the featuring of the diversity of the [Durkheim] tradition and the many lines linking broadly Durkheimian themes to current work on the arts… [It] illustrates powerfully how Durkheimian concepts live with us today and how we can benefit by comparisons with this rich tradition. Read and be inspired.” · American Journal of Sociology

“The triumvirate editors have put together an imaginative set of authors, representing different generations, who have already made important contributions to recent Durheimiana.” · Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie

“…offers readers a tour of twentieth-century French intellectual history by one of the finest Durkheimian scholars writing today. At the heart of the book is Durkheim’s concept of the sacred. Yet despite the seemingly familiar starting point, Riley’s book sparkles with creative ideas, intriguing concepts, and introductions to a broad class of characters. Riley is not a historian of ideas but a sociologist and social theorist. Consequently, he frames the telling of this history with key theoretical categories, which help order a broad range of material…Part of the book’s (mystic) charm is its comprehensive and suggestive nature.” · Sociology of Religion

“…an important volume of original thinking that will make a significant contribution, both to a new understanding of Durkheim/Durkheimianism and to the sociological understanding of art… The contributors are true, world-renowned experts in Durkheim and his school and his legacy.” · Jeff Alexander, Yale University

“The essays are uniformly intensely learned and clearly written, which is a real feat in a book involving so many people.” · Howie Becker, author of Outsiders and Art Worlds

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction to Durkheim, the Durkheimians, and the Arts Alexander Riley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1 Total Aesthetics: Art and The Elemental Forms William Watts Miller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
Chapter 2 Durkheim, the Arts, and the Moral Sword W.S.F. Pickering Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
Chapter 3 Durkheim and Festivals: Art, Effervescence, and Institutions Jean-Louis Fabiani Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
Chapter 4 The Power of Imagination and the Economy of Desire: Durkheim and Art Pierre-Michel Menger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
Chapter 5 Dostoevsky in the Mirror of Durkheim Donald A. Nielsen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
Chapter 6 Durkheim, L’Année sociologique, and Art Marcel Fournier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
Chapter 7 Marcel Mauss on Art and Aesthetics: The Politics of Division, Isolation, and Totality Michèle Richman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
Chapter 8 Too Marvelous for Words . . . Maurice Halbwachs, Kansas City Jazz, and the Language of Music Sarah Daynes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	154
Chapter 9 Total Art: The Influence of the Durkheim School on Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Reflections on Art and Classification Stephan Moebius and Frithjof Nungesser Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
Chapter 10 Sex, Death, the Other, and Art: The Search for Mythic Life in the Work of Michel Leiris Alexander Riley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
Chapter 11 Apophasis in Representation: Georges Bataille and the Aesthetics and Ethics of the Negative S. Romi Mukherjee Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Chapter 12 Acéphale/Parsifal: Georges Bataille contra Wagner Claudine Frank Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	258
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 320
Keywords: Sociology; Anthropology (General); Cultural Studies (General)

eBook

Published: August 1, 2013
ISBN: 9780857459183