Suchergebnisse

Surveys the major aesthetic concepts within the writings of Fredric Jameson, especially Marxism and Form (1971), The Political Unconscious (1981), & Late Marxism: Adorno, or the Persistence of the Dialectic (1990). The influence of both Georg Lukacs & Theodor W. Adorno on Jameson's theoretical system is noted. Also examined are key philosophical assumptions as well as the historical context behind Jameson's suggestion that the aesthetic approaches of both Lukacs & Adorno may prove to be "two distinct & equally indispensable moments of the hermeneutic process itself.". 42 References. AA

Excerpt from the introduction by Peter McNeil: (pp. xxiv-xxv) The anthology concludes with a provocative essay by Daniel Koch, "Training the Aesthetics". Koch, who has written a masterful PhD analyzing the architectural space of Åhléns department store, Stockholm City, aims to investigate "the matter of consumption choices, and to raise the question of how expert judgement communicates with and within populist quality judgement". He argues that "one of the primary roles of retail architecture is that of performing aesthetic training, or perhaps education in taste". Using wide-ranging theory drawn from art theory, philosophy, spatial theory and literature, Koch argues that a series of profound staging effects are enacted in entering a department store. Fashion is interrogated as akin to representative art, a subject that requires "inherent rarity and value – suggesting taste". His is a useful corrective to the idea that fashion is democratic today. Not at all, suggests Koch. The perusal and acquisition of fashion still operates within a system not dissimilar to entering a gallery space. Although the "bazaar" still exists, much contemporary fashion gains its charge from being displayed in austere spaces in to which untrained consumers can enter but not engage. In an important link back to Ane Lynge-Jorlén's essay on niche magazine readership, Koch resists the cliché of shop as gallery or cathedral space. Rather, he focuses upon the products themselves: "it is figured first as a subject rather than a practice, and it is presented with a disinterest as to how the real clothes look, and especially how they would look in a "normal" situation. Presentation constantly takes forms reminiscent of both popular or high art practices". In a strong statement that brings together the many strands contained in this book, Koch's comment will conclude our anthology: "Meaning is relative to other spaces as well as other systems of meaning, such as the mediation of fashion through magazines, advertising, television and online ...

This paper proposes a radical re-examination of the foundations of modern aesthetics. It urges that we replace the tradition of eighteenth century aesthetics, with its insistence on disinterestedness and the separateness of the aesthetic, and its problematic oppositions, such as the separation of sense from cognition. In their place it appeals to a more process-oriented, pluralistic account, one that takes note of varying cultural traditions in aesthetics, that recognizes the aesthetic as a complex of many forces and factors, and that considers the aesthetic as part of a complexity of values, including moral, practical, social, and political ones. It urges, further, an aesthetic-based criticism, not only of the arts, but of culture and knowledge. Central to this account is the idea of aesthetic engagement, which not only recognizes and extends the many connections of and in aesthetic experience, but invites our total involvement as active participants. ; This paper proposes a radical re-examination of the foundations of modern aesthetics. It urges that we replace the tradition of eighteenth century aesthetics, with its insistence on disinterestedness and the separateness of the aesthetic, and its problematic oppositions, such as the separation of sense from cognition. In their place it appeals to a more process-oriented, pluralistic account, one that takes note of varying cultural traditions in aesthetics, that recognizes the aesthetic as a complex of many forces and factors, and that considers the aesthetic as part of a complexity of values, including moral, practical, social, and political ones. It urges, further, an aesthetic-based criticism, not only of the arts, but of culture and knowledge. Central to this account is the idea of aesthetic engagement, which not only recognizes and extends the many connections of and in aesthetic experience, but invites our total involvement as active participants.

"Aesthetics of Equality is a theoretical and compositional intervention into the problem of equality. While some of the analysis is concerned with contemporary issues, the book is a primarily a work of political theory and a guide to aesthetic methods, focused on how one can conceive equality issues critically through conceptual engagements with diverse artistic genres: literature, film, music, photography, and architecture. Beginning with the question, "what one can contribute to equality issues by being attentive to aesthetic form in a variety of artistic genres that challenge institutionalized accounts of history," the book proceeds to implement answer by extracting political problematics with analyses of the compositional structures of the textual objects of analysis in the chapter's diverse inquiries. While aesthetic strategies are a main concern in the investigation, it is also shaped by commitments to some substantive political concerns, particularly an attentiveness to persons and voices that tend to be civically invisible The assembled chapters demonstrate the way critical approaches to a variety of media genres make visible and audible the persons and groups that are excluded or disqualified from access to livable domestic space and civic participation. The subject matter is temporally extensive, ranging from ancient Israel and Egypt in the Old Testament's Genesis chapter through the early and later ethno-histories of California and Texas and geographically broad, with chapters on diverse cities: New York, Paris, Istanbul, Los Angeles, and fictional Texas and Mexican border cities"--

This Element argues that aesthetics broadly conceived plays a significant role in Wittgenstein's philosophy. It traces a continuous line of thought pertaining to a non-conceptual form of encounter with reality and contributes to Wittgenstein's understanding of language and the method of philosophy throughout his career.

In re-igniting a familiar debate about the balance between state security and individual privacy, the revelations of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have have stalled on matters of regulation and reform, which treat secrecy, securitisation and surveillance largely in procedural terms. This article seeks to interrupt the containment strategies of communicative capitalism/democracy evident in these debates by configuring secrets as subject to and the subject of radical politics rather than regulation. Its premise is that we might be better able to form a radical political response to the 'Snowden event' by situating the secret within a distributive regime and imagining what collectivities and subjectivities the secret makes available. Through a consideration of artworks by Trevor Paglen and Jill Magid – which help us to stay with the secret as secret, rather than foregrounding the more individualistic notion of privacy or moving too quickly towards revelation and reform – the article turns from a hermeneutics of the secret towards an aesthetics of the secret. Considered as a Rancièrean 'distribution of the sensible', a delimitation of space, time, the visible, the sayable, the audible, and political experience, this aesthetics can help us to imagine a politics of the secret not bound to policy and legalities.

What is the relevance of organizing knowledge in distinct conceptual fields when everything has become cultural with no distinct areas anymore? Is, for example, Western traditional aesthetics as an autonomous cognitive discipline always relevant in the age of multiculturalism? This essay argues, albeit controversially, that the perspective of socalled cultural studies has opened new doors by adopting a more radically pluralistic and inclusive approach – one whereby aesthetic categories are thought in terms of cultural practices. Despite the many defects of such culture-related studies – such as their eclecticism, lack of scientific rigor, or methodological unreliability – the challenges of today's multicultural society demand that we pay more attention at all levels to the roles played by difference and dialogue with otherness. This includes overcoming any form of ethnocentricity in our cognitive cultural disciplines; incorporating new topical horizons, whether economic, political or social; and rethinking the very nature of value, meaning and way of life.