Exploring the interplay between scientific knowledge and other forms of understanding, this book presents a cohesive perspective on the nature of the self and belief systems. It delves into profound questions about existence and the possibility of miracles, challenging conventional views and encouraging readers to reconsider their understanding of knowledge and reality.
Sex, Art, and Audience responds to and discusses issues raised by ballet, modern dance, and non-Western performances during the 1980s and 1990s. The essays examine the subject of gender and sexuality in performances, the relationship of the dance performance to its audience, and the important but puzzling fact that dance, alone amongst art forms, lacks a reproducible text. In addition, these essays consider the development of classical style in the works of modern choreographic masters such as George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Paul Taylor, and Merce Cunningham. Through its five chapters, Sex , Art, and Audience develops an aesthetic stance of contextual dance is most productively seen in its place among other art forms, and the arts collectively as a constituent, if distinct, part of our lives as a whole.
The works of Modernism (ca. 1910-1930), in the last years of our century, tend to be treated as mere facts, mines for history and biography. In fact the Modernist work, whether of literature, philosophy, film, or dance, is a radical and potentially powerful entity. Fleming analyzes the works of Modernist artists as actions in the world, processes rather than static objects, that mediate between the artist and the world. Among the more striking analyses is a reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus as a Modernist drama.
Literary theory of the twentieth century in the Anglo-American tradition forms a coherent whole, dividing into discrete clusters. This theory is riddled with purely logical problems inherent in its enterprise, resulting from the fact that Modernist theory develops as an offshoot of Romanticism. Such fundamental flaws, or discontents, afflict all Modernist theory, from Russian Formalism through Structuralism and Deconstruction. The problems of Modernist theory cannot be solved; at most we can resolve to take theory in a new direction.