The Move Beyond Form: Creative Undoing in Literature and the Arts Since 1960

The Move Beyond Form focuses on works of art, music, literature, and film since 1960 that convey meaning through a creative undoing of form. Mary Joe Hughes suggests that cultural production of this time period conceived the world not so much as a series of separate entities, including art objects, but as an endless maze of relations and interconnections. By focusing attention on the in-between spaces, these works were able to provide nuance and meaning to a way of thinking that is difficult to demonstrate through language alone. This original study exposes the interrelationships in postmodernism, a perspective that is particularly relevant to contemporary culture, including globalization, electronic technology, and the echo chambers of the media.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: A Tale of Competing Critical Narratives 1. The Move Beyond Form in Context 2. Transforming Space over Time: The Visual Arts 3. Musical Interplay: Tan Dun's The Map and other Examples 4. Refusing Self-Containment: Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year 5. Dissolving Boundaries, Exposing Webs 6. Echoing Spaces Beyond the Boundaries 7. Hybrid Zones in the Mirror Arcade: The Receding Real 8. Traversing Medial Spaces Beyond the Ending 9. ReMaking

About the Author :
Mary Joe Hughes is the Assistant Director of the Arts and Sciences Honors Program and Adjunct Professor of the Humanities at Boston College, USA.

Review :
'A sophisticated and engaging work that makes a significant contribution to the field of contemporary aesthetics and critical theory.' - Christopher A. Dustin, Professor of Philosophy, College of the Holy Cross 'In this book Mary-Joe Hughes shows how our post-sixties culture bears witness to a dramatic dissolution of boundaries - between form and content, author and reader, text and world. Challenging the postmodern cult of Theory the author lets works of art - music, film, painting and literature - speak for themselves, while remaining critically conversant with the philosophies of Derrida and Levinas. The book makes a powerful plea for creative interconnection over cynical conflation, for inventive hybridity over consumerist confusion, citing contemporary works from Coetzee and Calvino to Peter Weir and Yo-Yo Ma. The author convinces by a combination of intellectual audacity, critical integrity and deep imagination.' - Richard Kearney, Charles Seelig Chair of Philosophy, Boston College