Durkheim, the Durkheimians, and the Arts

Alexander Tristan Riley is Professor of Sociology at Bucknell University. With the aid of the late Philippe Besnard, he edited the war correspondence of Robert Hertz, Un ethnologue dans les tranchees. He is the author of Godless Intellectuals?: The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred Reinvented (Berghahn Books, 2010) and currently he is contemplating a book on literary autobiography, cultural sociology, and the writing of Michel Leiris. William Watts Miller is editor of Durkheimian Studies/Etudes Durkheimiennes and a member of the board of the British Centre for Durkheimian Studies. He has published extensively in the field, collaborated in translations, and is a member of the team producing a new critical edition of Durkheim's Complete Works. His most recent book is A Durkheimian Quest: Solidarity and the Sacred (Berghahn Books, 2012). W.S.F. Pickering taught sociology in Canada from 1958 to 1966 and then at Newcastle-upon-Tyne until he retired in 1987. Although his original interest was in the sociology of religion, he later turned to the work of Durkheim. In 1975 he published Durkheim on Religion (Routledge) and in 1984 Durkheim's Sociology of Religion: Themes and Theories (Routledge). He has also contributed to and helped produce other books on Durkheim and his followers. In 1991, he helped found the British Centre of Durkheimian Studies, of which he is the General Secretary.

• Introduction Alexander Riley Chapter 1. Total Aesthetics: Art and The Elemental Forms W. Watts Miller Chapter 2. Durkheim, The Arts, and the Moral Sword W.S.F. Pickering Chapter 3. Durkheim and Festivals: Art, Effervescence, and Institutions Jean-Louis Fabiani Chapter 4. The Power of Imagination and the Economy of Desire: Durkheim and Art Pierre-Michel Menger Chapter 5. Dostoevsky in the Mirror of Durkheim Donald Nielsen Chapter 6. Durkheim, L'Annee sociologique, and Art Marcel Fournier Chapter 7. Marcel Mauss on Art and Aesthetics: The Politics of Division, Isolation, and Totality Michele Richman Chapter 8. Too Marvelous for Words...: Maurice Halbwachs, Kansas City Jazz, and the Language of Music Sarah Daynes Chapter 9. Total Art - The Influence of the Durkheim School on Claude Levi-Strauss's Reflections on Art and Classification Stephan Moebius and Frithjof Nungesser Chapter 10. Sex, Death, the Other, and Art: The Search for Mythic Life in the Work of Michel Leiris Alexander Riley Chapter 11. Apophasis in Representation: Georges Bataille and the Aesthetics and Ethics of the Negative S. Romi Mukherjee Chapter 12. Acephale/Parsifal: Georges Bataille contra Wagner Claudine Frank Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index

" - an important volume of original thinking that will make a significant contribution, both to a new understanding of Durkheim/Durkheimianism and to the sociological understanding of art - The contributors are true, world-renowned experts in Durkheim and his school and his legacy." * Jeff Alexander, Yale University "The essays are uniformly intensely learned and clearly written, which is a real feat in a book involving so many people." * Howie Becker, author of Outsiders and Art Worlds