Book presentation: Hypermodernity and Visuality
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) by Peter R. Sedgwick, Cardiff University
Date: Monday 8 July 2019
Time: 18.00
Venue: Faculty of Arts Library, University of Malta
'This book engages with the question of making sense of seeing in today’s technologically dominated world. It does so by exploring the notion of the ‘hypermodern’, a term which is used to capture the drive in contemporary culture to achieve ever greater speed and efficiency. The volume draws principally on the thought of Paul Virilio and Friedrich Nietzsche. The text’s key argument is that destabilizing tendencies, which become increasingly evident in hypermodern culture, spring from its having a dual character. This duality turns on hypermodernity’s uncomfortable, unstable and possibly unsustainable relation to its own past. The volume engages with this dual character in a unique way. Its discussions are prefaced by poems and photographic images which together frame and permeate the text’s arguments and analyses.' (From the Publisher’s description)
Dr Peter R. Sedgwick is Reader in Philosophy and Director of Postgraduate Studies at the School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University. He is the author of Descartes to Derrida: An Introduction to European Philosophy (Blackwell, 2001), Nietzsche’s Economy (Palgrave, 2007), Nietzsche: The Key Concepts (Routledge, 2009) and Nietzsche’s Justice (McGill-Queen’s, 2013), and editor of Nietzsche: A Critical Reader (Blackwell, 1995). Dr Sedgwick has served as an external examiner for undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at the Department of Philosophy, University of Malta.