{"title":"Andrew Spira","description":"\u003cp\u003eAndrew Spira’s work explores the intricate intersections of \u003cem\u003eselfhood, identity,\u003c\/em\u003e and the human experience, inviting readers to contemplate how we understand and construct our inner worlds. His books, including titles like \u003cem\u003eForeshadowed\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Invention of the Self,\u003c\/em\u003e delve into profound philosophical and psychological themes with clarity and insight.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRooted in \u003cstrong\u003ephilosophy and psychology\u003c\/strong\u003e, Spira’s writing challenges and enriches the reader's perspective on consciousness and the nature of being. These thoughtful texts offer a compelling journey through ideas that shape our cultural and personal identities within the broader landscape of arts and culture.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"simulated-selves-by-andrew-spira-9781350298163","title":"Simulated Selves","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe notion of a personal self took centuries to evolve, reaching the pinnacle of autonomy with Descartes’ ‘I think, therefore I am’ in the 17th century. This \u003cem\u003epersonalisation\u003c\/em\u003e of identity thrived for another hundred years before it began to be questioned, subject to the emergence of broader, more inclusive forms of agency. \u003cem\u003eSimulated Selves: The Undoing Personal Identity in the Modern World\u003c\/em\u003e addresses the ‘constructed’ notion of personal identity in the West and how it has been eclipsed by the development of new technological, social, art historical and psychological infrastructures over the last two centuries.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhile the provisional nature of the self-sense has been increasingly accepted in recent years, \u003cem\u003eSimulated Selves\u003c\/em\u003e addresses it in a new way—not by challenging it directly, but by observing changes to the environments and cultural conventions that have traditionally supported it. By narrating both its dismantling and its incapacitation in this way, it records its \u003cem\u003eundoing\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLike \u003cem\u003eThe Invention of the Self: Personal Identity in the Age of Art\u003c\/em\u003e (to which it forms a companion volume), \u003cem\u003eSimulated Selves\u003c\/em\u003e straddles cultural history and philosophy. Firstly, it identifies hitherto neglected forces that inform the course of cultural history. Secondly, it highlights how the self is not the self-authenticating abstraction, only accessible to introspection, that it seems to be; it is also a cultural and historical phenomenon. Arguing that it is by engaging in cultural conventions that we subscribe to the process of identity-formation, the book also suggests that it is in these conventions that we see our self-sense—and its transience—best reflected.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBy examining the traces that the trajectory of the self-sense has left in its environment, \u003cem\u003eSimulated Selves\u003c\/em\u003e offers a radically new approach to the question of personal identity, asking not only ‘how and why is it under threat?’ but also ‘given that we understand the self-sense to be a constructed phenomenon, why do we cling to it?’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47000742723820,"sku":"9781350298163","price":62.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/20893913482668.jpg?v=1763301705"},{"product_id":"the-invention-of-the-self-by-andrew-spira-9781350298170","title":"The Invention of the Self","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis book is an examination of personal identity, exploring both who we think we are, and how we construct the sense of ourselves through art. It proposes that the notion of personal identity is a psycho-social construction that has evolved over many centuries. While this idea has been widely discussed in recent years, Andrew Spira approaches it from a completely new point of view.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRather than relying on the thinking subject's attempts to identify itself consciously and verbally, it focuses on the traces that the self-sense has unconsciously left in the fabric of its environment in the form of non-verbal cultural conventions. Covering a millennium of western European cultural history, it amounts to an ‘anthropology of personal identity in the West’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFollowing a broadly chronological path, Spira traces the self-sense from its emergence from the collectivity of the medieval Church to its consummation in the individualistic concept of artistic genius in the 19th century. In doing so, it aims to bridge a gap that exists between cultural history and philosophy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRegarding cultural history (especially art history), it elicits significances from its material that have been thoroughly overlooked. Regarding philosophy, it highlights the crucial role that material culture plays in the formation of philosophical ideas. It argues that the sense of personal self is as much revealed by cultural conventions—and as a cultural convention—as it is observable to the mind as an object of philosophical enquiry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47000789123308,"sku":"9781350298170","price":62.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/20893983482668.jpg?v=1763305012"},{"product_id":"foreshadowed-by-andrew-spira-9781789145359","title":"Foreshadowed","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen Kasimir Malevich's \u003cem\u003eBlack Square\u003c\/em\u003e was produced in 1915, no-one had ever seen anything like it before. And yet it does have precedents. In fact, over the previous 500 years, several painters, writers, philosophers, scientists and censors—each working independently towards an absolute statement of their own—alighted on the form of the black square or rectangle, as if for the first time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eForeshadowed\u003c\/em\u003e explores the resonances between Malevich's \u003cem\u003eBlack Square\u003c\/em\u003e and its precursors, showing how a 'genealogical' thread binds them together into an intriguing, and sometimes quirky, sequence of modulations. Andrew Spira's book examines how each predecessor both 'foreshadows' Malevich's work and, paradoxically, throws light on it, revealing layers of meaning that are often overlooked but which are as relevant today as ever.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"NewSouth Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47470637678828,"sku":"9781789145359","price":44.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781789145359-foreshadowed.jpg?v=1775223345"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/andrew-spira.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}