Name: Good Entertainment: A Deconstruction of the Western Passion Narrative (Untimely Meditations)
Price: 13.49 GBP
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Author: Byung-Chul Han
ISBN: 9780262537506

portada Good Entertainment: A Deconstruction of the Western Passion Narrative (Untimely Meditations)

Type

Physical Book

Author

Byung-Chul Han

Translated by

Adrian Nathan West

Publisher

MIT Press

Year

2019

Language

English

Pages

144

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

17.3 x 11.4 x 1.3 cm

Weight

0.16 kg.

ISBN13

9780262537506

Synopsis "Good Entertainment: A Deconstruction of the Western Passion Narrative (Untimely Meditations)"

A philosopher considers entertainment, in all its totalizing variety―infotainment, edutainment, servotainment―and traces the notion through Kant, Zen Buddhism, Heidegger, Kafka, and Rauschenberg.In Good Entertainment, Byung-Chul Han examines the notion of entertainment―its contemporary ubiquity, and its philosophical genealogy. Entertainment today, in all its totalizing variety, has an apparently infinite capacity for incorporation: infotainment, edutainment, servotainment, confrontainment. Entertainment is held up as a new paradigm, even a new credo for being―and yet, in the West, it has had inescapably negative connotations. Han traces Western ideas of entertainment, considering, among other things, the scandal that arose from the first performance of Bach's Saint Matthew's Passion (deemed too beautiful, not serious enough); Kant's idea of morality as duty and the entertainment value of moralistic literature; Heidegger's idea of the thinker as a man of pain; Kafka's hunger artist and the art of negativity, which takes pleasure in annihilation; and Robert Rauschenberg's refusal of the transcendent. The history of the West, Han tells us, is a passion narrative, and passion appears as a killjoy. Achievement is the new formula for passion, and play is subordinated to production, gamified. And yet, he argues, at their core, passion and entertainment are not entirely different. The pure meaninglessness of entertainment is adjacent to the pure meaning of passion. The fool's smile resembles the pain-racked visage of Homo doloris. In Good Entertainment, Han explores this paradox.

Byung-Chul Han

(Author)

View Author's Page

Byung-Chul Han (Seúl, Corea del Sur, 1959) estudió Filosofía en la Universidad de Friburgo y Literatura alemana y Teología en la Universidad de Múnich. En 1994 se doctoró por la primera de dichas universidades con una tesis sobre Martin Heidegger. Tras su habilitación dio clases de filosofía en la universidad de Basilea, desde 2010 fue profesor de filosofía y teoría de los medios en la Escuela Superior de Diseño de Karlsruhe y desde 2012 es profesor de Filosofía y Estudios culturales en la Universidad de las Artes de Berlín. Es autor de más de una decena de títulos, la mayoría de los cuales se han traducido al castellano en Herder Editorial.

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