Unflattening

Unflattening

Unflattening

  • Format: Paperback | 208 pages
  • Dimensions: 191 x 260 x 25.4mm | 793.79g
  • Publication date: 20 Apr 2015
  • Publisher: Harvard University Press
  • Publication City/Country: Cambridge, Mass, United States
  • Language: English
  • Illustrations note: 164 pages of illustrations
  • ISBN10: 0674744438
  • ISBN13: 9780674744431
  • Bestsellers rank: 29,717

The primacy of words over images has deep roots in Western culture. But what if the two are inextricably linked, equal partners in meaning-making? Written and drawn entirely as comics, Unflattening is an experiment in visual thinking. Nick Sousanis defies conventional forms of scholarly discourse to offer readers both a stunning work of graphic art and a serious inquiry into the ways humans construct knowledge.

Unflattening is an insurrection against the fixed viewpoint. Weaving together diverse ways of seeing drawn from science, philosophy, art, literature, and mythology, it uses the collage-like capacity of comics to show that perception is always an active process of incorporating and reevaluating different vantage points. While its vibrant, constantly morphing images occasionally serve as illustrations of text, they more often connect in nonlinear fashion to other visual references throughout the book. They become allusions, allegories, and motifs, pitting realism against abstraction and making us aware that more meets the eye than is presented on the page.

In its graphic innovations and restless shape-shifting, Unflattening is meant to counteract the type of narrow, rigid thinking that Sousanis calls "flatness." Just as the two-dimensional inhabitants of Edwin A. Abbott's novella Flatland could not fathom the concept of "upwards," Sousanis says, we are often unable to see past the boundaries of our current frame of mind. Fusing words and images to produce new forms of knowledge, Unflattening teaches us how to access modes of understanding beyond what we normally apprehend.

More Books:

Keeping Company
Language: en
Pages: 181
Authors: Amanda Kearney
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-12-29 - Publisher: Routledge

This book offers up a study of relational modalities in a moment of increasingly vexed identity politics. It takes inspiration from the art of keeping company,
Qualitative Inquiry
Language: en
Pages: 252
Authors: Lynn Butler-Kisber
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-04-16 - Publisher: SAGE

Qualitative inquiry is not merely a research method or a series of analytic steps, but a holistic process that challenges the age-old qualitative/quantitative d
Thoughtful Images
Language: en
Pages: 369
Authors: Thomas E. Wartenberg
Categories: Art
Type: BOOK - Published: 2023 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

"Thoughtful Images: Philosophy Illustrated is the first systematic investigation of how artists throughout the ages have illustrated philosophical texts, ideas,
The Palgrave Handbook of Intermediality
Language: en
Pages: 1254
Authors: Jørgen Bruhn
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2024-01-02 - Publisher: Springer Nature

This handbook provides an extensive overview of traditional and emerging research areas within the field of intermediality studies, understood broadly as the st
Symbolism 16
Language: en
Pages: 391
Authors: Rüdiger Ahrens
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-10-10 - Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Essays in this special focus constellate around the diverse symbolic forms in which Caribbean consciousness has manifested itself transhistorically, shaping ide
Theory and Applications of Formal Argumentation
Language: en
Pages: 227
Authors: Elizabeth Black
Categories: Computers
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-03-05 - Publisher: Springer

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on the Theory and Applications of Formal Argumentation, TAFA 2017, held in Melb
Gender Matters in Global Politics
Language: en
Pages: 456
Authors: Laura J. Shepherd
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2022-11-28 - Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Gender Matters in Global Politics is a comprehensive textbook for advanced undergraduates studying politics, international relations, development and similar co
Automated Deduction -- CADE-23
Language: en
Pages: 519
Authors: Nikolaj Bjørner
Categories: Computers
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-07-12 - Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Automated Deduction, CADE-23, held in Wrocław, Poland, in July/August 20
How to Critique Authoritarian Populism
Language: en
Pages: 520
Authors:
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-02-15 - Publisher: BRILL

How to Critique Authoritarian Populism: Methodologies of the Frankfurt School offers a comprehensive introduction to the techniques used by the early Frankfurt
The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies
Language: en
Pages: 704
Authors: Frederick Luis Aldama
Categories: Comics & Graphic Novels
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-04-01 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

Comic book studies has developed as a solid academic discipline, becoming an increasingly vibrant field in the United States and globally. A growing number of d