Idolatry: Nietzsche, Blake, Poussin
dal 5/5/2010 al 5/5/2010
Segnalato da
5/5/2010
Idolatry: Nietzsche, Blake, Poussin
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
A lecture by W. J. T. Mitchell
William John Thomas Mitchell's lecture at KW Institute for Contemporary Art aims at a diagnosis of the return of idolatry and its 'evil twin', iconoclasm, in contemporary global political culture, and especially in the contemporary tendency to conceive of war in religious, Manichean terms, as a struggle between Good and Evil. Working through the transvaluations of the idolatry/iconoclasm complex in the philosophy of Nietzsche and the paintings of William Blake, the lecture stages a re-reading of Nicholas Poussin's classic 'scenes of idolatry' in The Adoration of the Golden Calf and The Plague at Ashdod. The lecture concludes with a return to contemporary scenarios of ethnic cleansing in the war for possession of the 'holy land' of Israel-Palestine. The lecture is moderated by Jan Soeffner (Center for Literary and Cultural Research, Berlin). William John Thomas Mitchell is professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago.