Leonhard Emmerling has worked as an art historian in different capacities: as curator and director of art institutions in Germany and New Zealand; as teacher at art academies in Auckland, Düsseldorf, and Munich; and as advisor and director for the Goethe-Institut. His most recent publication is Aesthetics: What For?. Parnal Chirmuley is associate professor at the Centre of German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

• FOREWORD by W.J.T. MitchellINTRODUCTION – A HISTORY OF NULLITIESCREATION FROM NOTHINGNESSTHE REJECTION OF THE WORLDThe history of the word „idiot”Revaluation of valuesThe abolition of timeFOOLSThe ship of fools – Sebastian BrantPraise of folly – Erasmus of RotterdamOpicinus de Canistris and Hugo van der GoesJURODIVYJON SOME FILMS OF ANDREJ TARKOVSKITHE IDIOT IN THE ASYLUMTHE REDEEMERTHE IDIOT REVOLTINGArt of ForgettingIllness as motive and projective stimulusArt of the Mentally IllACTIONISM, FLUXUS AND POPPerformance of regressionCriticism and ShamanismCynismIndiffernce and subversionPUNKPrecursorsPunk, Industrial and Geniale DilletantenTHE PRESENCE OF THE IDIOT

“[A] thorough account of the development of Western aesthetic theory toward a poetics of purposelessness.”