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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
The Aesthetic And Its Resonances: A Reply To Kathleen M. Higgins, Carolyn Korsmeyer, And Mariana Ortega, Monique Roelofs
The Aesthetic And Its Resonances: A Reply To Kathleen M. Higgins, Carolyn Korsmeyer, And Mariana Ortega, Monique Roelofs
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
This essay offers replies to the critical commentaries on The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic presented by Kathleen M. Higgins, Carolyn Korsmeyer, and Mariana Ortega. The essay shows how the probing questions and criticisms that the three commentators raise bring out details in the framework of relationality, address, and promises through which the book theorizes the aesthetic.
Performing Politics, Troy R.E. Paddock
Performing Politics, Troy R.E. Paddock
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Walter Benjamin’s observation that fascism turns politics into aesthetics is, by now, a well-worn idea. This article argues that Benjamin’s critique of politics can apply just as much to the modern democratic politics of the United States. Borrowing from Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, and Carl Schmitt, this article suggests that modern political discourse in the United States does not follow the classical liberal ideal of rational discourse in the marketplace of ideas within the public sphere. Instead, contemporary politics has become spectacle where images and slogans replace thought and debate in a 24/7 news cycle and political infotainment programs. The result …
Politics And Aesthetics: Partitions And Partioning In Contemporary Art, Jonathan Owen Clark, Joao Lima Duque
Politics And Aesthetics: Partitions And Partioning In Contemporary Art, Jonathan Owen Clark, Joao Lima Duque
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Jacques Rancière defined the “distribution of the sensible” as the effect of a type of aesthetico-political decision-making that creates a partitioning of the realm of the perceivable in relation to both art and society. The artworld itself constructs its own particular types of curatorial partitioning: between “art” and “non-art,” between “dominant, residual, and emergent,” and between “mainstream” and “periphery.” This essay examines certain “boundary effects” that develop as a result of the act of the partitioning itself and closely examines what arguably are two new categories in contemporary art: “crossover” and “interventionist.” Both categories have a certain relationship to a …
Atopia & Aesthetics. A Modal Perspective, Yves Millet
Atopia & Aesthetics. A Modal Perspective, Yves Millet
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Living in an era where global exchanges of forms and ideas are the norm raises some questions about the status of artistic practices. To explore these questions, we use Roland Barthes’ notion of atopia and the complementary yet related notion of Neutral on which Barthes commented in his later years. Atopia highlights the fact that rather than viewing current artistic activities as searches for homogenous identity, we need to view them as belonging to plural communities of practices offering modal and qualitative distinctions. We suggest that adopting this perspective sheds light on the capacity of any individual to act creatively …
Crafty Entanglements: Knitting And Hard Distinctions In Aesthetics And Political Theory, Kate M. Daley
Crafty Entanglements: Knitting And Hard Distinctions In Aesthetics And Political Theory, Kate M. Daley
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Many theoretical writings on aesthetics and politics rely on hard distinctions between what is and is not art, and what is and is not political. In this article, I draw on the work of theorists, knitters, and fiber artists to argue that hand knitting provides a lens through which to unsettle some of these distinctions. I illustrate some of the ways in which aesthetic theory relies on hard distinctions between art and not-art and politics and not-politics, with particular focus on the work of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Rancière. I explain how knitting is often seen as falling clearly outside …
Musical Formalism And Political Performances, Jonathan A. Neufeld
Musical Formalism And Political Performances, Jonathan A. Neufeld
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Musical formalism, which strictly limits the type of thing any description of the music can tell us, is ill-equipped to account for contemporary performance practice. If performative interpretations are in a position to tell us something about musical works—that is if performance is a kind of description, as Peter Kivy argues—then we have to loosen the restrictions on notions of musical relevance to make sense of performance. I argue that musical formalism, which strictly limits the type of thing any description of the music can tell us, is inconsistent with Kivy's quite compelling account of performance. This shows the difficulty …
Aesthetic Appreciation, Ethics, And 9/11, Emmanouil Aretoulakis
Aesthetic Appreciation, Ethics, And 9/11, Emmanouil Aretoulakis
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
There have been numerous critical articles on what really happened on the otherwise beautiful morning of 11 September 2001. Beyond doubt, the bulk of the critical responses to the terrorist attacks focused on the ethical and humanitarian, or rather the unethical and inhumane implications of the atrocious act, leaving no room for any philosophical reflection on the potential assessment or reception of the event from the perspective of art and aesthetics. The few years that have gone by since 2001 have provided us with some a sense of emotional detachment from the horror of that day, a detachment that may …
From Aesthetics To Politics: Rancière, Kant And Deleuze, Katharine Wolfe
From Aesthetics To Politics: Rancière, Kant And Deleuze, Katharine Wolfe
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
What does politics have to do with aesthetics? Surely, both politics and aesthetics are concerned with imagining, envisioning, and even creating, yet aren't the kinds of things these fields of inquiry imagine, envision and create greatly disparate? Jacques Rancière argues that what is at stake in politics, just as it is in aesthetics, is the distribution of the sensible, and that politics happens not only through the disruption of a certain aesthetic organization of sense experience but through the eruption of a distinct aesthetics. Here I elaborate the Kantian foundation for Rancière's conception of the kind of aesthetics that politics …