© Columbia University Press
The Aesthetics of Uncertainty
September, 2008
Cloth, 200 pages, 20 illus.
ISBN: 978-0-231-14096-6
$34.50
/ £24.00
"Janet Wolff writes with admirable lucidity, especially notable in a field where textual murkiness is not uncommon. She is a very disciplined writer, combining a remarkable economy of means with elegance." — Bernie Gendron, professor of philosophy, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
"The Aesthetics of Uncertainty addresses the social discourse of beauty organized around feminist-materialist responses to visual art produced in twentieth-century England. Perhaps the most significant contribution of this fascinating volume is Janet Wolff's detailed and varied consideration of the dialectics of 'kalliphobia' (hostility to beauty). Her point is to 'save' beauty-in part, not least, from its devotees-by locating aesthetic judgments not in ahistorical universals but in the material historicity of communities." — Richard Leppert, Regents Professor and Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota
"Janet Wolff is one of our most judicious and insightful guides to the relationship between art and society. In The Aesthetics of Uncertainty she zeroes in on the key dilemmas of contemporary theory, including questions of beauty, value, and judgment, and makes a compelling case for a postcritical aesthetics." — Rita Felski, University of Virginia, author of Uses of Literature