ABSTRACT

In the course of its long and tumultuous history the sublime has alternated between spatial and temporal definitions, from its conceptualization in terms of the grandeur and infinity of Nature (spatial), to its postmodern redefinition as an "event" (temporal), from its conceptualization in terms of our failure to "cognitively map" the decentered global network of capital or the rhizomatic structure of the postmetropolis (spatial), to its neurophenomenological redefinition in terms of the new temporality of presence produced by network/real time (temporal). This volume explores the place of the sublime in contemporary culture and the aesthetic, cultural, and political values coded in it. It offers a map of the contemporary sublime in terms of the limits—cinematic, cognitive, neurophysiological, technological, or environmental—of representation.

chapter |41 pages

Editor’s Introduction

chapter 4|14 pages

Of Fake and Real Sublimes

chapter 5|15 pages

“Black and Glittering”

The Inscrutable Sublime

chapter 7|11 pages

Recentering the Sublime

Cognitive and Neuropsychological Approaches

chapter 10|11 pages

From Diagrams to Deities

Evoking the Cosmological Sublime

chapter 11|11 pages

Feeling Not at Home in the Twenty-First-Century World

The Sublime in Contemporary Environmental Aesthetics

chapter 13|11 pages

Magnificent Disasters

Sublime Landscapes in Post-Millennial Cinema

chapter 15|13 pages

The Birds and the Bees