the miracle of analogy is the first of a two-volume reconceptualization of photography. it argues that photography originates in what is seen, rather than in the human eye or the camera lens, and that it is the world's primary way of revealing itself to us. neither an index, representation, nor copy, as conventional studies would have it, the photographic image is an analogy. this principle obtains at every level of its being: a photograph analogizes its referent, the negative from which it is generated, every other print that is struck from that negative, and all of its digital "offspring."

photography is also unstoppably developmental, both at the level of the individual image and of medium. the photograph moves through time, in search of other "kin," some of which may be visual, but others of which may be literary, architectural, philosophical, or literary. finally, photography develops with us, and in response to us. it assumes historically legible forms, but when we divest them of their saving power, as we always seem to do, it goes elsewhere.

the present volume focuses on the nineteenth century and some of its contemporary progeny. it begins with the camera obscura, which morphed into chemical photography and lives on in digital form, and ends with walter benjamin. key figures discussed along the way include nic phore ni pce, louis daguerre, william fox-talbot, jeff wall, and joan fontcuberta.

in the last half-century ludwig wittgenstein's relevance beyond analytic philosophy, to continental philosophy, to cultural studies, and to the arts has been widely acknowledged.

wittgenstein's tractatus logico-philosophicus was published in 1922 - the annus mirabilis of modernism - alongside joyce's ulysses, eliot's the waste land, mansfield's the garden party and woolf's jacob's room. bertolt brecht's first play to be produced, drums in the night, was first staged in 1922, as was jean cocteau's antigone, with settings by pablo picasso and music by arthur honegger. in different ways, all these modernist landmarks dealt with the crisis of representation and the demise of eternal metaphysical and ethical truths. wittgenstein's tractatus can be read as defining, expressing and reacting to this crisis. in his later philosophy, wittgenstein adopted a novel philosophical attitude, sensitive to the ordinary uses of language as well as to the unnoticed dogmas they may betray. if the gist of modernism is self-reflection and attention to the way form expresses content, then wittgenstein's later ideas - in their fragmented form as well as their "ear-opening" contents - deliver it most precisely.

understanding wittgenstein, understanding modernism shows wittgenstein's work, both early and late, to be closely linked to the modernist geist that prevailed during his lifetime. yet it would be wrong to argue that wittgenstein was a modernist tout court. for wittgenstein, as well as for modernist art, understanding is not gained by such straightforward statements. it needs time, hesitation, a variety of articulations, the refusal of tempting solutions, and perhaps even a sense of defeat. it is such a vision of the linkage between wittgenstein and modernism that guides the present volume.

in this book, jaime rodr guez matos proposes the "formless" as a point of departure in thinking through the relationship between politics and time. thinking through both literary and political writings around the cuban revolution, rodr guez matos explores the link between abstract symbolic procedures and various political experiments that have sought to give form to a principle of sovereignty based on the category of representation. in doing so, he proposes the formless as the limit of modern and contemporary reflections on the meaning of politics while exploring the philosophical consequences of a formless concept of temporality for the critique of metaphysics.

rodr guez matos takes the writing and thought of jos lezama lima as the guiding thread in exploring the possibility of a politicity in which time is imagined beyond the disciplining functions it has had throughout the metaphysical tradition--a time of the absence of time, in which the absence of time no longer means eternity.

the spectators, also known as moral weeklies, were an important magazine genre which came into being in the early 18th century and which shaped european identity by developing the strategies of critical journalism and by popularizing the ideas and values of the age of enlightenment. investigating modes of storytelling in the spectators is an important starting point for a paradigmatic investigation of our historical, cultural and philosophical evolution since the enlightenment and the impact of these magazines on issues of identity in today's europe. in this collection on, we present a series of contributions which study english, french, spanish, italian, german, dutch, czech, polish and danish-norwegian periodicals.