The Self-Deceiving Muse

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 The Self-Deceiving Muse

2 Illusionism and the Self-Deceiving I

3 Learning from Self-Deception

4 Being Out of Character / Normativizing Self-Deception

5 Picturing Self-Deception

6 Spelling Out the Viewer

7 Shameless Self-Deception

Notes

Bibliography

Index

“Raising the scandalous proposition that the ’self-deceiver’ should be seen less as the condemnable antagonist of Reason than as the perpetrator of the active imagination that gives rise to genuine aesthetic experience, Singer tests his claim with a series of brilliant arguments grounded in literary, philosophical, and art studies extending from familiar classics—Parmigianino, Tintoretto, Flaubert, and Hegel—to such moderns as Jeff Wall, Bill Viola, Gerhard Richter, and Peter Greenaway. The Self-Deceiving Muse should add significantly to contemporary debate on the relations between reason, aesthetics, and ethics in a language thoroughly conversant with recent critical theory.”

—Josef Chytry, University of California, Berkeley, and California College of the Arts