Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Couple of pencil underlining could be erased. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> In what I have come to think of as the theatricality of Socratic ventriloquism I examine various facets of ventriloqual relationships that utilize the notion of ecstasis in investigating the diverse character of Socrates in several of Plato’s texts. As conversation is the central performative in the ventriloquist’s act I examine its role in the writings of Stanley Cavell – conversation as a way of giving art a kind of life through use that annexes or expands basic interpretation. Conversation allows art to yield its gifts in personal non-essential ways of understanding but also in ways that are among the most important but undervalued relationships we have with art. Like ventriloqual dummies artworks gain a character that takes on an independence from its makers and to an extent from the art world that gave it life. Ventriloquism is illusion without deception – a truly deceived audience would undermine the nature of the act. In this respect the act of the ventriloquist parallels one of the more time-honored philosophical oppositions appearance and reality the general distinction of a double-leveled world-view. Philosophers have tended to foreground the atypical in our sense- perceptual experience of the world the illusion of mirage for example in order to gain insight into more everyday non-deceptive but apparent phenomena such as the house in the distance or the table at which they are seated. As an act of illusion that lets the auditors in on the trick ventriloquism presents its knowing audience with a double-aspect: the ventriloquist’s act can be seen as two performers engaged in conversation and as a performer speaking to him/herself often with the act’s cleverness being a slippage between the two modes and objusts of understanding. (LL)