Skip to main content
University of California Press

Beyond Recognition

Representation, Power, and Culture
by Craig Owens (Author), Scott Bryson (Editor), Barbara Kruger (Editor), Lynne Tillman (Editor), Jane Weinstock (Editor), Simon Watney (Introduction by)
Paperback
Price: $36.95 / £31.00
Publication Date: Sep 1994
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 386
ISBN: 9780520077409
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Request an Exam or Desk Copy(opens in new window)RightsLink(opens in new window)Read an Excerpt(opens in new window)
Recommend to your Library (PDF)(opens in new window)Rights and Permissions

About the Book

Perhaps more than any other recent writer, Craig Owens explored the relations among the discourses of contemporary art, sexuality, and power. His familiarity with the New York art world and its practitioners in the 1970's and 1980's makes his writing an unparalleled guide to one of the most riveting periods of contemporary culture.

Table of Contents

Preface 
Craig Owens: "The Indignity of Speaking for Others" by Simon Watney 
      
PART I • TOWARD A THEORY OF POSTMODERNISM 
Einstein on the Beach: The Primacy of Metaphor 
Photography en abyme 
Detachment: from the parergon 
Earthwords 
The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism 
The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism, Part 2 
Representation, Appropriation, and Power
Sherrie Levine at A&M Artworks 
Allan McCollum: Repetition and Difference 
From Work to Frame, or, Is There Life After "The Death of the Author"? 

PART II • SEXUALITY/POWER
 Honor, Power, and the Love of Women 
 William Wegman's Psychoanalytic Vaudeville 
 The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism 
 The Medusa Effect, or, The Specular Ruse 
 Posing 
 Outlaws: Gay Men in Feminism 

PART III • CULTURES
 Politics of Coppelia 
 Sects and Language 
 The Critic as Realist 
 "The Indignity of Spe'aking for Others": An Imaginary Interview 
 The Problem with Puerilism 
 Analysis Logical and Ideological 
 Improper Names 
 Interview with Craig Owens by Anders Stephanson 
 The Yen for Art 
 Global Issues 

PART IV • PEDAGOGY
 Postmodern Art 1971-1986 
 Bibliography: Contemporary Art and Art Criticism 
 Seminar in Theory and Criticism
 Bibliography: The Political Economy of Culture 
 Visualizing AIDS 
 Course Bibliography on Visual AIDS 
 Bibliography 
 Index