Some Relations between Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics in Contemporary Art in Times of Crisis

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-27
Author(s):  
Maria Elena Ramos ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Ideal Sphere ◽  
Aesthetic Ideas ◽  
Aesthetic Structure ◽  
The Ideal

The inclusion of ethics and politics into artistic creation process is for many contemporary creators/artists an essential motivation while they consciously act in an aesthetic space polluted with the realities of a world in crisis. Art, which produces visible and sensible forms, can reveal aesthetic ideas and fundaments through aesthetic objects: drawing, video-installing or poem/poetry. And artists can make someone feel with their creations—whether these are beautiful, sublime, tragic, or ironic—ethical contentions violated by human action or the exertion/exercise of political power. Works of art that are not only guided by the categories signed by beauty, because in artistic languages, violence and suffering also make/create form. And times of crisis are the ideal sphere/dimension for an art that gives a vivid way of seeing/watching the uncertainty, the perversion, the terrible. In bringing these philosophical—ethical, aesthetic and political—topics, I do it from an approach that departs form artistic creations and curatorial research. I try to penetrate the narrow thread between an ethical topic and the plastic form in which it incarnates/embodies itself, or between a political action and the aesthetic structure of language as a creative, expressive consequence.

scholarly journals Second Nature and the Sonic Sublime

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 178-196
Author(s):  
Miranda Stanyon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Second Nature ◽  
Michel De Certeau ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Point Of Departure

Like other spaces of the Enlightenment, the sublime was what Michel de Certeau might have called “a practiced place.” Its rhetorical commonplaces, philosophical terrains, and associated physical environments were cultivated, shaped, and framed by human action and habit. But can the sublime—epiphanic, quasi-spiritual, unmasterable, extraordinary—ever really become a habit? Is it possible, even natural, to become habituated to sublimity? Taking as its point of departure the Aristotelian claim that “habit is a second nature,” this article explores the counterintuitive relationship between habit and the sublime. It focuses not on that eighteenth-century “cultivar,” the natural sublime, but on sonic sublimity, exploring on one hand overwhelming sounds, and on the other a conceptualization of sound itself as a sublime phenomenon stretching beyond audibility to fill all space. As this exploration shows, both the sublime and habit were seen as capable of creating a second nature, and prominent writers connected habit, practice, or repetition to the sublime. Equally, however, there are points of friction between the aesthetic of the sublime and philosophies of habit, especially in the idea that habit dulls or removes sensation. This is a prominent idea in Félix Ravaisson's landmark De l'habitude (1838), a text currently enjoying renewed attention, and one that apparently stems from Enlightenment attempts to explain sensation, consciousness, and freedom. Similar concerns inform the eighteenth-century sublime, yet the logic behind the sublime is at odds with the dulling of sensation. The article closes by touching on the reemergence of “second nature” in contemporary art oriented toward the sublime, and on the revisions of Enlightenment nature this involves.

scholarly journals (DIS)AGREEMENT OF THE POLITICAL AND THE AESTHETICAL IN PHILOSOPHY OF JACQUES RANCIИRE

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
The Political ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Masses

The article analyses Jacques Rancière’s theory of paradoxical interconnection between politics and aesthetics in contemporary culture. Author argues that Rancière’s theory belongs to the trend in modern philosophy, which develops the concept of autonomy of political referring back to Karl Schmitt, while Rancière’s theory of art is based on the concept of autonomy of the aesthetical, and represents politics and aesthetics as two modes of sensuality, or, in terms of Rancière, ‘the distribution of the sensual’. In this context, Rancière understands the connection between aesthetics and politics not in the sense of the ‘aesthetisation of politics’ inherent to the ‘age of the masses’, compromised by great totalitarian projects, but as a special sensual regime, which, according to Rancière, coincides with the regime of democracy as an absolute anomaly of power. Rancière’s thesis that the political, starting from antiquity, is being displaced and depoliticized by the so called post-politics as promise of a tolerant, rational post-ideological consensus and post-democracy, or ‘democracy without demos’, is considered in the context of Rancière’s analysis of contemporary art. As alternative to modern forms of depoliticisation and rational consensus, Rancière proposes the formation of new type of rationality - rationality of disagreement or dissensus, as type of paradoxical rationality that correlates with the paradoxicality of really political action as unpredictable/ impossible. The purpose of modern art, as well as modern politics, is, according to Rancière, to create unpredictable and undecidable aesthetic gap that provides for the effect of new sensibility and consonance in affect or ‘community of equals’ that implements the principle of equality here and now.

Finding Elusive Resonances Across Cultures and Time

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Gerald C. Cupchik ◽  
Despina Stamatopoulou ◽  
Siying Duan
Keyword(s):  
Hierarchical Model ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Social World ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Autonomous Agent ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Six Dynasties ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter is about meaningful connection in media entertainment in relation to the concept of resonance during an era of social and technological acceleration. A hierarchical model is proposed with a desire for pleasure at the concrete foundation and an aesthetic appreciation of meaning at the more abstract and universal level. This range of experience is examined in the context of Greek and Chinese thinking about resonance. For Ancient Greeks, resonance describes interpretative and expressive events where concrete bodily and immersive practices shape experiences that may have ethical and sociopolitical effects. In Plato, it branched into (1) passive reception that mirrors a copy and offers no direct access to truth but might merely condition a person or (2) a communion that reveals the ideal. Aristotle stressed the dynamics of resonance in theater to build a relatively autonomous agent who appreciates and reflects on ways that causes affect human action in the social world. In the Chinese part of this chapter, we examine scholarship related to the concept of resonance during the Six Dynasties period (220–589 CE) as well as its intellectual roots from Confucianism and Daoism. Major issues explored include: the function of resonance in artistic creation and appreciation as well as its social function from a Confucian perspective; the method that helps people experience resonance with nature or cosmos from a Daoist perspective; and finally, the concept of vital energy across the cosmos which facilitates the more profound experience of resonance.

scholarly journals The aesthetics of political resistance: On silent politics

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 072551362110351
Author(s):  
Katariina Kaura-aho
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Effective Resistance ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Meaning ◽  
Political Subversion

This article analyses the aesthetics of silent political resistance by focusing on refugees’ silent political action. The starting point for the analysis is Jacques Rancière’s philosophy and his theorisation of the aesthetics of politics. The article enquires into the aesthetic meaning of silent refugee activism and interprets how refugees’ silent acts of resistance can constitute aesthetically effective resistance to what can be called the ‘speech system’ of statist, representative democracy. The article analyses silence as a political tactic and interprets the emancipatory meaning of silent politics for refugees. It argues that refugees’ silent acts of political resistance can powerfully affect aesthetic, political subversion in prevailing legal-political contexts.

Adorno’s Philistine: the Dialectic of Art and its Other

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Paul Ingram
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Critical Potential ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Critical Turn ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Theodor Adorno’s philistine functions as the other of art, or as the ideal embodiment of everything that the bourgeois aesthetic subject is not. He insists on the truth-content of the derogation, while recognising its unjust social foundation, and seeking to reflect that tension in a self-critical turn. His model of advanced art is negatively delimited by the philistinism of art with a cause and the philistinism of art for enjoyment, which represent the poles of the aesthetic and the social. The philistine is also the counterpart to the connoisseur, with the interplay between them pointing to his preferred approach to aesthetics, in which an affinity for art and alienness to it are combined without compromise. However, Adorno fails to realise fully the critical potential of the philistine as the immanent negation of art and aesthetics.

Mystery in the poetics of romantic tragedy genre (“The Spaniards” by Mikhail Lermontov)

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-81
Author(s):  
E. V. Golovenkina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Mikhail Lermontov ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Loss Of A Child ◽  
Moral Choices ◽  
Ideal Sphere ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Tragic Conflict

This paper focuses on the role of the poetics of mystery in the formation of the romantic trag-edy genre. “The Spaniards” by Mikhail Lermontov is considered as a characteristic example of this genre, manifesting “melodramatization” of tragedy and tendency towards genre-generic synthesis. The action of “The Spaniards” is based on events related to the sphere of the mysterious, which are exceptional in life and common in melodrama. Central to the plot is the motif of the loss of a child. The secret of Fernando’s birth and “ignobility” form the con-flict and organize two storylines (love and family) and two (everyday life – melodramatic, and existential – tragic) levels of conflict. Mystery also plays an important role in revealing the inner world and expressing the romantic ideal of the hero. The ability to comprehend the mysterious, to pass beyond human experience and logic is not only the motivation of his ac-tions, but it also connects the hero with the ideal sphere. The study examines how the charac-ters’ anticipation of the “terrible” motivates their moral choices. Analyzing the interaction of lyrical motifs, the author suggests the motif of mystery as important for implementing the main (tragic) conflict, unlike melodrama, where the functions of mystery are plot-forming, stimulating the spectator’s interest and maximizing the dramatic tension. Mystery in the plot and the lyrical concept of the tragedy contributes to the understanding of the essence of the romantic conflict, has a suggestive impact on the audience, and deepens the psychologism.

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE: EAST AND WEST STUDIES

2021 ◽  
Vol 02 (09) ◽  
pp. 8-14
Author(s):  
Aziza Komilovna Akhmedova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Professional Ethics ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Ideal ◽  
The Ideal

The article analyzes the results of the research on the representation of the aesthetic ideal through the image of the ideal hero in two national literatures. For research purposes, attention was paid to highlighting the category of the ideal hero as an expression of the author's aesthetic views. In Sinclair Lewis’s “Arrowsmith” and Pirimkul Kodirov's “The Three Roots”, the protagonists artistically reflect the authors' views on truth, virtue, and beauty. In these novels, professional ethics is described as a high noble value. The scientific novelty of the research work includes the following: in the evolution of western and eastern poetic thought, in the context of the novel genre, the skill, common and distinctive aspects of the creation of an ideal hero were revealed by synthesis of effective methods in world science with literary criteria in the history of eastern and western literary studies, in the example of Sinclair Lewis and Pirimkul Kodirov.

The Non-time of Lived Experience

2016 ◽  
Vol 136 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-95
Author(s):  
André Lepecki
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Aesthetic

This essay analyzes the approach of Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (1937–80) to what he called “the problem of color.” Oiticica’s conceptual-aesthetic pursuits between 1959–65 offered a renewed onto-political conceptualization of notions of time, particularly of the “liveness” of inert matters and of the “thingness” of participation. His notion of “vivência estética” (the lived experience of the aesthetic) bridged supposed gaps between performance and objecthood while offering a redefinition of what constitutes political action and what constitutes artistic matter.

Working-Class Writing and the Use Value of the Literary

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (4) ◽  
pp. 932-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonali Perera
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Use Value ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Greenwich Meridian ◽  
Country Culture ◽  
The Aesthetic

Formal preoccupations, which is to say specifically literary concerns, appear in small literatures only in a second phase, when an initial stock of literary resources has been accumulated and the first international artists find themselves in a position to challenge the aesthetic assumptions associated with realism and to exploit the revolutionary advances achieved at the Greenwich meridian.—Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters“In our country culture has become so complex, this complexity is reflected in our literature. It takes a certain level of education to understand our novelists. The ordinary man cannot understand them …” … And she reeled off a list of authors, smiling smugly. It never occurred to her that these authors had ceased to be of any value whatsoever to their society—or was it really true that an extreme height of culture and the incomprehensible went hand in hand?—Bessie Head, A Question of Power (first ellipsis in orig.)ON WHAT BASIS ARE SELECT TRADITIONS OF LITERARY INTERNATIONALISM RECOGNIZED AS WORLD LITERATURE AND OTHERS DEEMED MERELY historical, relics of nostalgic Marxism or of resolved debates on aesthetics and politics? According to recent influential formulations, world literature is writing that in original or translated form circulates outside the author's country of origin. But what of traditions of literary internationalism, like those of working-class writing, that reverse and displace practical, utilitarian propositions to ask, instead, in more abstract terms, what is the use value of the literary? Bessie Head's A Question of Power poses a challenge to practical definitions. What of literary texts that have global currency but aren't of “any value whatsoever to their society”?

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document