Quotational Practices: Repeating the Future in Contemporary Art

(Paperback)

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Patrick Greaney reopens the debate about quotation and appropriation, shifting away from nave claims about the death of the author. In interpretations of art and literature from the 1960s to the present, Quotational Practices shows how artists and writers use quotation not to undermine authorship and originality, but to answer questions at the heart of twentiethcentury philosophies of history.

Reviews

"Patrick Greaneys argument that we might understand history as a sort of utopian subjunctive is provocative and perfectly pitched. This is the kind of book the most ambitious critic aspires to write."Craig Dworkin, author of No Medium

"In this groundbreaking and provocative study of the practice of quotation at the heart of contemporary conceptual writing and art, Patrick Greaney challenges the view that the use of quotation spells the end of authorship, of the individual voice. On the contrary, he argues, quotation must be understood in its historical function, its questioning of the pasts unrealized possibilitiespossibilities for the present and even the future. Laying to rest once and for all the notion that citing the texts of others is little more than inspired plagiarism, Greaney provides a fascinating study of a philosophical practice that he calls, after Foucault, the frugal lyricism of quotation."Marjorie Perloff, author of Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century

Author Bio

Patrick Greaney is associate professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is author of Untimely Beggar: Poverty and Power from Baudelaire to Benjamin (Minnesota, 2008).