"A magical masterpiece."-Robert Ardrey. A chronicle of the author's search for a civilization "reduced to its most basic expression."

When Claude Lévi-Strauss passed away in 2009 at age 100, France celebrated the life and contributions of not only a preeminent anthropologist, but one of the defining intellectuals of the 20th century. Just as Freud had shaken up the antiquarian discipline of psychiatry, so had Lévi-Strauss revolutionized anthropology, transforming it from the colonial-era study of “exotic” tribes to one consumed with fundamental questions about the nature of humanity and civilization itself.Remark...

THE EYES OF THE SKINFirst published in 1996, The Eyes of the Skin has become a classic of architectural theory. It asks the far-reaching question why, when there are five senses, has one single sense – sight – become so predominant in architectural culture and design? With the ascendancy of the digital and the all-pervasive use of the image electronically, it is a subject that has become all the more pressing and topical since the first edition’s publicati...

This searing critique of participatory art—from its development to its political ambitions—is “an essential title for contemporary art history scholars and students as well as anyone who has . . . thought, ‘Now that’s art!’ or ‘That’s art?’” (Library Journal)Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take pa...

Helene Cixous is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant and innovative contemporary thinkers. Published here in English for the first time Helene Cixous, Rootprints is an ideal introduction to Cixous's theory and her fiction, tracing her development as a writer and intellectual whose remarkable prespicacity and electrifying poetic force are known world-wide.Unprecedented in its form and content this collection breaks new ground in the theory and practice of auto/biography. C...

The increasing popularity of bande dessinee, or French-language comic strip, means that it is being established on university syllabuses worldwide. Reading Bande Dessinee provides a thorough introduction to the medium and in-depth critical analysis with focus on contemporary examples of the art form, historical context, key artists, and themes such as gender, autobiography and postcolonial culture. Miller's groundbreaking book demonstrates exactly why bande dessinee is considered to be a v...

With the perspective of a walker moving through a fluid landscape of neighbourhoods and eras Sherry Simon experiences Montreal as a voyage across languages. She traces an evocative history of literary passages across familiar sites - the mythical boulevard Saint-Laurent Mile End Mont Royal - as she follows adventurous cultural translators such as Malcolm Reid A.M. Klein and Pierre Anctil and contemporary writer-translators such as Gail Scott Erin Moure Jacques Brault Nicole Brossard and Emile...

Why are we sometimes unable to remember events, places and objects? This concise overview explores the concept of 'forgetting', and how modern society affects our ability to remember things. It takes ideas from Francis Yates classic work, The Art of Memory, which viewed memory as being dependent on stability, and argues that today's world is full of change, making 'forgetting' characteristic of contemporary society. We live our lives at great speed; cities have become so enormous that they...

In The Postmodern Animal, Steve Baker explores how animal imagery has been used in modern and contemporary art and performance, and in postmodern philosophy and literature, to suggest and shape ideas about identity and creativity. Baker cogently analyses the work of such European and American artists as Olly and Suzi, Mark Dion, Paula Rego and Sue Coe, at the same time looking critically at the constructions, performances and installations of Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Bourgeois,...

The work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari has been inspirational for architects and architectural theorists in recent years. It has influenced the design work of architects as diverse as Greg Lynn and David Chipperfield, and is regularly cited by avant-gardist architects and by students, but usually without being well understood.The first collaboration between Deleuze and Guattari was Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, which was taken up as a manifesto for the...

Whether exploring the intimate recollections which make up the artist's own life history or questioning the way the gallery and museum present public memory, contemporary art, it would seem, is haunted by the past. "Contemporary Art and Memory" is the first accessible survey book to explore the subject of memory as it appears in its many guises in contemporary art. Looking at both personal and public memory, Gibbons explores art as autobiography, the memory as trace, the role of the archiv...

Reviewing the use of natural light by architects in the era of electricity, this book aims to show that natural light not only remains a potential source of order in architecture, but that natural lighting strategies impose a usefully creative discipline on design.Considering an approach to environmental context that sees light as a critical aspect of place, this book explores current attitudes to natural light by offering a series of in-depth studies of recent projects and the par...