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Podcast: New Books in Performing Arts
Episode: Steve Dixon, "Cybernetic-Existentialism: Freedom, Systems, and Being-for-Others in Contemporary Arts and Performance" (Routledge, 2020)
Description: Like the transdiscipline of cybernetics, the philosophical movement known as Existentialism rose to prominence in the decade following World War II, was communicated to the general public by a handful of charismatic evangelizers who, for a time, became bona fide celebrities in popular culture, generated much excitement and innovation on university campuses across Europe, the Americas and beyond, and, in subsequent decades, seemed to fade to the periphery of intellectual discourse with some declaring both movements dead and others keeping the faith in small circles of committed artists, scholars, and practitioners. Along the way, both movements have found some...