In this time of increasing international involvement, one cannot but be struck by the fact of sharply different traditions concerning art and its practice.3 Recognizing that the arts are a salient part of every culture may lead us to wonder about their features and may make us curious about how and why the arts of other cultures differ from what we find more familiar. Perhaps we hope that the arts will offer us some insight into different cultures and their distinctive (...) worlds. This, then, is in part an essay in comparative aesthetics. Numerous examples of diverse artistic practices evoke our curiosity. Many of those I shall cite here are environmental and this is deliberate, for environments are a pervasive and powerful material embodiment of cultural practice and sensibility. They provide salient and inescapable evidence of this influence, and they bridge the distance sometimes assumed to lie, quite wrongly, in my opinion, between material culture and its artistic manifestations. (shrink)

This study explores Nietzsche's political education as a means of understanding his wider political thought. Incorporating biographical details of Nietzsche's own education, it outlines the course of political education that Nietzsche recommends as an antidote to the crisis in Western European culture. Heilke begins by examining Nietzsche's formulation of this crisis, especially his conceptions of "Romantic Pessimism," "Socratism," and Christianity. For Nietzsche, only a properly ordered education could resolve the problem of how one can transform a society whose fundamental (...) class='Hi'>cultural and political premises one rejects. Through education Nietzsche sought to establish a new political and social system founded upon the principles of tragedy and grounded in the aesthetic tradition of German Romanticism. Nietzsche's Tragic Regime focuses on Nietzsche's political philosophy until his resignation from his post as professor in 1876, with attention also to the later writings. (shrink)

I examine three themes central to Denis Dutton’s philosophy of art. To understand the artworks of non-Western cultures, we must understand how to identify what artistic category these works in fact belong to. Though the perceived properties of a work of art do not seem to change when it is revealed to be a forgery, there is a reason why forgeries are “artistic crimes.” In both cases, a “work of art” is not simply the object produced (the painting, for example), (...) but rather the contextualized performance undertaken by the artist that brings about the finished product. (shrink)

This paper describes an experimental course in the preparation of art teachers. The goal of the course was to engage final-year art students in thinking about the fundamental questions in aesthetic education and in considering various views of their roles as teachers of art. The classes presented a dialogue between two teachers: a philosopher of art and an artist. We discussed the social justification of art, the place of art in education and more generally the portrayal of visual culture in (...) philosophical thought. The bibliography for the course comprised a list of basic texts in aesthetic education, from Friedrich Schiller to Nelson Goodman. In class we linked the range of philosophical views examined to the artistic exploration of themes (mainly in contemporary and local art). The course also incorporated guest speakers who presented their own projects relating to different meeting points of art and education, including social-activist artists, curators, philosophers of education and school architects. The article presents the rationale for the course, its method and a sample of its content. (shrink)

Aesthetic desire and distaste prime everyday life in surprising ways. The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic casts much-needed light on the complex mix of meanings our aesthetic activities weave into cultural existence. Anchoring aesthetic experience in our relationships with persons, places, and things, Monique Roelofs explores aesthetic life as a multimodal, socially embedded, corporeal endeavor. Highlighting notions of relationality, address, and promising, this compelling study shows these concepts at work in visions of beauty, ugliness, detail, nation, ignorance, and (...) cultural boundary. Unexpected aesthetic pleasures and pains crop up in sites where passion, perception, rationality, and imagination go together but also are in conflict. Bonds between aesthetics and politics are forged and reforged. Cross-disciplinary in outlook, and engaging the work of theorists and artists ranging from David Hume to Theodor W. Adorno, Frantz Fanon, Clarice Lispector, and Barbara Johnson, The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic lays open the interpretive web that gives aesthetic agency its vast reach. (shrink)

Decolonizing aesthetics requires a philosophical reexamination of art and cultural representation to address ethical conflicts and the legacy of colonial biases. This study explores the suppression and marginalization perpetuated by colonial aesthetics, with a focus on gender, race, and cultural diversity. Drawing on postcolonial theories, the research highlights the disparities and systemic exclusions within artistic traditions, advocating for decolonized practices that restore and celebrate suppressed cultural expressions. Case studies such as Indigenous Futurism and exhibitions promoting (...) the art of formerly colonized communities illustrate the practical application of decolonization efforts. Using primary data analyzed through Smart PLS software, the study examines correlations and causal relationships between decolonization initiatives and shifts in aesthetic valuation. The findings reveal both challenges and opportunities in dismantling colonial legacies, emphasizing the role of art education, public workshops, and community engagement in fostering awareness and inclusivity. Artists and institutions play a pivotal role in promoting decolonized aesthetics by addressing historical biases and amplifying marginalized voices. Decolonization emerges as an ongoing ethical and cultural practice aimed at dismantling colonial power structures in art and aesthetics, ensuring a more equitable representation of global artistic traditions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Divine and Artistic Ideal:Ideas and Insights for Cross-Cultural Aesthetic EducationMing Dong Gu (bio)IntroductionPeople in different cultural traditions would praise an excellent work of art as a masterpiece that has attained the status of the divine. This is a practice inherited from the ancient past. In high antiquity, when people did not have sufficient knowledge of artistic creation, they attributed creative inspirations and superb art to gods. (...) In ancient Greece people believed that all the arts were created by the Muses, daughters of the supreme god Zeus.1 Accordingly, they viewed divine creation as the highest order of representation and used the divine as the yardstick to measure artistic excellence. In early Greek thought Plato, through the mouth of Socrates, praised Homer as "the best and most divine of all."2 Citing the exquisite lyric poetry by Tynnnichs of Chalcis as evidence, he declared, "the god would show us, lest we doubt, that these lovely poems are not of man or human workmanship, but are divine and from the gods, and that the poets are nothing but interpreters of the gods, each one possessed by the divinity to whom he is in bondage."3In the Chinese tradition similar ideas existed from high antiquity. In early Chinese thought there is a parable in Zhuangzi's (369–286 BC) philosophical writing. It narrates how a skillful carpenter was commissioned by a king to make an ornate music stand. When the stand was finished, people, struck by the life likeness of the carved birds and animals on the stand, believed that he was able to make such superb art work because he was endowed with the divine power of gods.4 In literary criticism Yan Yu (fl. 1180-1235), a literary theorist whose views have exerted a lasting impact on Chinese poetry and poetics, proclaimed the divine to be the ultimate standard for [End Page 88] the poetic art: "There is only one ultimate achievement in poetry: it is called 'entering the divine.' When poetry enters the domain of the divine, it has reached its perfection and limit. Nothing can be added to it!"5 In other traditions, if people want to pass the highest praise for an excellent work of art, a simple exclamation, "That is divine!" would be sufficient.Thus, across cultures art has been related to the divine. Without reference to it, aesthetic conceptions of art and artistic creation would not be what they are today. This is because in many traditions the divine used to be viewed as the ultimate aesthetic ideal, and aesthetics is full of notions, ideas, and concepts related to it, without which artistic criticism and aesthetic education would be in a much impoverished state. The divine in art, however, is a slippery category in aesthetics that has been intuitively explored since high antiquity. In this article I will examine some critical and theoretical data on the divine, divine creation, and divine spirit in artistic representation from the Chinese and Western traditions and explore how the Chinese and Western traditions employ ideas of the divine for artistic conceptions and aesthetic education. On the basis of comparison and contrast, I will try to obtain some rational insights into the relationship between artistic creation and the divine in terms of logical analysis. Finally, I will make some efforts to reconceptualize the insights drawn from both traditions and explore to what extent the divine is still relevant to present-day aesthetics, how an aesthetic ideal may be conceived according to ideas of the divine in artistic representation, and in what ways an artwork may be considered to have entered the divine realm of the artistic ideal.God, Nature, and the Artistic IdealDespite vast differences in aesthetic conceptions, we can observe a discernable movement in the Chinese and Western notions of the divine in art from theistic and intuitive characterization to rational and logical conceptualization. This movement is characterized by a shift in emphasis from a personal god to impersonal nature, and from divine creator to human creator. Chinese and Western traditions started with a similar concern: What is the aesthetic ideal in artistic representation? Both traditions believe that the artistic ideal is... (shrink)

The subject of the aesthetic has returned to cultural and literary debates with a vengeance. The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies is a timely and authoritative collection of essays that analyze the role of aesthetics in American and British cultural studies, and reflect on its recuperation in the field. Contains first-rate, original essays that analyze the role of aesthetics in American and British cultural studies, and reflect on its recuperation in the field. Contributors are (...) leading scholars, internationally based. Includes substantial introductory material by the editor. (shrink)

The Aesthetics of Stealth proposes a cultural analysis as well as a political theory of stealth in its various aesthetic articulations.

The primary aim of research is to explore the complex relationships in the digital era between technology, culture, aesthetics, and values. This investigation digs deeply into the underlying philosophical underpinnings of our digital environment, going beyond superficial interpretations. The research negotiates the tricky territory where technology and culture collide by drawing on concepts from philosophy, sociology, and cultural studies. For measuring, the research study, used E-Views software and generated results, including descriptive statistics, unit root test analysis, co-integration analysis, (...) and histogram analysis. The investigation starts with investigate at digital aesthetics and how it might influence how people see beauty and usefulness in the digital sphere. Digital aesthetics are demonstrated to encapsulate cultural narratives and societal ideals through everything from immersive experiences to minimalist interfaces. The main emerging theme is ethical considerations, which invites critical thought on algorithmic prejudice, privacy, and spying. The research pushes readers to think about the moral ramifications of technical decisions by challenging the ideals ingrained in technological systems. The research goes beyond personal ethics to include more general cultural norms and societal values issues. It has been demonstrated that digital technologies alter societal conceptions of identity, community, and human flourishing, forcing society to reconsider the future it hopes to build. Overall, research found that technology philosophy provides a framework for moral analysis and cultural criticism, enabling people and society to wisely and preemptively negotiate the challenges of the digital era. Through the adoption of a technological philosophy rooted in critical analysis and cultural sensitivity, readers are encouraged to envisage and work towards a digital future that is more equitable, kind, and loving. (shrink)

Cultural factors are operating in the aesthetic experience of pictorial realism, occurring in a transcultural manner, and their effects are salient in beholder’s affective reaction correlated with perceptual-cognitive operation. This paper aims to demonstrate this hypothesis, by developing two analytical tools that might explain the anti-hedonic valence of Hong Taeyong, an eighteenth-century Korean literatus’ aesthetic experience of a Western religious fresco depicting the Lamentation of Christ in a Jesuit Catholic church in Beijing. First, a complex multifold conflict between «actual (...) affect» and culturally modeled «ideal affect», operating simultaneously in his visual experience, might be translated into a highly negative valence of his global affective state. Second, the variance of processing fluencies at different levels would have made his global processing operation less fluid, and it might play a role in his negative affective valence, since the affect is inherent in processing fluency signal. (shrink)

[About the book] In this book the editors brought together outstanding articles concerning intercultural aesthetics. The concept ‘Intercultural aesthetics’ creates a home space for an artistic cross-fertilization between cultures, and for heterogeneity, but it is also firmly linked with the intercultural turn within Western and non-Western philosophy. The book is divided into two parts, yet one can sense a clear unity throughout the whole book. This unity is related to the underlying subject that the different authors, each in (...) their own way and from their own background, try to reveal. They use related, and overlapping terms such as ‘the suchness of things’, ‘dancing and shaping lives’, ‘presenting a meaning beyond words, presenting the unpresentable, experiencing’, in order to bring to our awareness the genuine importance of the non-conceptual, next to the conceptual. Several authors moreover take on a reflective, and at times even a self-reflective stance, pointing to the intrinsic relation between cultural aesthetics and ethics, making this book unique in its kind. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Aesthetic Handicap Thesis The Cultural Experience Argument Aesthetic Properties and Cultural Context Authenticity and Appropriation Authentic Appropriation Cultural Experience and Subject Appropriation Appropriation and the Authentic Expression of a Culture.

Aesthetics originated in ancient India as a descriptive account of the drama which was meant for both entertainment and education of the mass. If the drama was a mass medium, aesthetics — its account — represented the mass culture. Philosophical thinking, rigorous ethical practices and the dramatic art had a common aim — experience of the Reality as a whole. The difference was that while the first two were accessible to only a few elite or intellectuals, the third (...) one was meant for all. The mass was experiencing the representation of Reality in the drama by a dehghtful emotional response. The sensibihty necessary for such response was technically called "like-heartedness" which was also a necessary qualification for a healthy social life. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

The public release of datasets on the internet by government agencies, environmental scientists, political groups and many other organizations has fostered a social practice of data visualization. The audiences have expectations of production values commensurate with their daily experience of professional visual media. At the same time, access to this data has allowed visual designers and artists to apply their skills to what was previously a field dominated by scientists and engineers. The ‘aesthetic turn’ in data visualization has sparked debates (...) between the new wave and older more scientifically grounded schools of thought on the topic. Sonification is not as well known or commonly practiced as visualization. But sound is a naturally affective, aesthetic and cultural medium. The extension of the aesthetic turn to sonification could transform this field from a scientific curiosity and engineering instrument into a popular mass medium. This paper proposes that a design approach can facilitate an aesthetic turn in sonification that integrates aesthetics and functionality by dissolving divisions between scientific and artistic methods. The first section applies the design perspective to the definition of sonification by replacing the linguistic concept of representation with non-verbal concept of functionality. The next section describes applications of the TaDa design method that raised aesthetic issues particular to sonification practice. The final section proposes a pragmatic aesthetics that distinguishes sonification from the auditory sciences and sonic arts. A design perspective may lead to a future where the general public tunes into pop sonifications for listening enjoyment as well as useful information about the world. (shrink)

An encounter with a large object may induce feelings of fear, awe, attraction, and more. But it is not simply the physical dimensions of an object that account for our sense that something is "big." Big Culture is a study of large objects and images that works to identify the qualities and effects of bigness. In doing so, David Wittenberg offers a philosophical proposal for reconceptualizing the problem of magnitude. The book explores examples of bigness that are simultaneously familiar and (...) singular in the cultural landscape, such as skyscrapers, atomic bomb explosions, and cinematic special effects. From these examples, Wittenberg postulates a new aesthetics of magnitude that is better able to account for the special role that bigness plays in our everyday perception of objects and images. Big Culture argues that bigness is a more primal, a more absolute, and even a more violent or erotic encounter with the objective world than the scalar relativism that tends to characterize our lives. Ultimately, Wittenberg insists that bigness comes before scale, even before size itself. (shrink)

This book critically analyses the "mutual illuminations" between literature, religion, architecture, films, performative arts, paintings, woodworks, memes and masks cutting across time and space. In architecture for example, the eventual success of a project depends on the harmony between physical sciences and aesthetics, design and planning, knowledge of building material, the local climate, and awareness of cultural sensibilities. This volume affirms that aesthetics and arts are deeply linked through existential issues of who I am. The essays in (...) this volume present diverse discursive structures showcasing the in-between spaces between various art forms and mediums, such as, architecture, literature and memory, Kafka in SoHo; Kafka and Bernhard, Kirchner's woodcuts; pictorial and stage representations of E.T.A Hoffmann, Hesse's fairy tales; translations of Pañcatantra; Nietzsche, ritual arts and face masks; martyrdom in La chanson de Roland, Goethe and Hafiz, Indian thought in Martin Buber; Rhythms of the 'Third' across cultures; Dadaism and contemporary memes This book examines these sublime linkages in a comparative and interdisciplinary way. Engaging and intersectional, this volume will appeal to students and scholars of arts and aesthetics, literature, philosophy, architecture, sociology, translation studies and readers who are interested in cultural, intertextual, intermedial, and comparative studies. (shrink)

Offering an alternative mode of visual cultural analysis to the prevalent discursive model, this book proposes to situate analysis of Image within 'formal' analyses of culture experience. Specifically, the discussion draws on theories of affective aesthetics with the view of addressing the sensual form of culture (i.e. 'cultural form'). Therefore, the volume puts forward a mode of formalist analysis in visual cultural research which takes purchase on the idea of 'cultural form.' A continuum of formalist (...) attention between Image analysis (visual media, industrial design) and probing of 'cultural forms' establishes the theoretical underpinning of the book. These concepts are expounded through a case study which looks at formal experimentations and debates arising from 1960s avant-garde artistic practices in London. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, art historian and critic Sven Lütticken focuses on aesthetic practice in a rapidly expanding cultural sphere. He analyzes its transformation by the capitalist cultural revolution, whose reshaping of art's autonomy has wrought a field of afters and posts. In a present moment teeming with erosions - where even history and the human are called into question - 'Cultural revolution: aesthetic practice after autonomy' reconsiders these changing values, for relegating such notions safely to (...) the past betrays their possibilities for potential today. Lütticken discusses practices that range from Black Mask to Subversive Aktion, from Krautonomy to Occupy, from the Wet Dream Film Festival in the early 1970s to Jonas Staal's recently established New World Academy. Within these pages Scarlett Johansson meets Paul Chan, Walid Raad, and Hito Steyerl, and Dr. Zira from Planet of the Apes mingles with the likes of Paul Lafargue and Alexandre Kojève. (shrink)

An artistic discussion on the critical potential of African American expressive culture In a major reassessment of African American culture, Phillip Brian Harper intervenes in the ongoing debate about the “proper” depiction of black people. He advocates for African American aesthetic abstractionism—a representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its essentially artificial character. Maintaining that realist representation reaffirms the very social facts that it might have been understood to challenge, Harper contends that abstractionism shows (...) up the actual constructedness of those facts, thereby subjecting them to critical scrutiny and making them amenable to transformation. Arguing against the need for “positive” representations, Abstractionist Aesthetics displaces realism as the primary mode of African American representational aesthetics, re-centers literature as a principal site of African American cultural politics, and elevates experimental prose within the domain of African American literature. Drawing on examples across a variety of artistic production, including the visual work of Fred Wilson and Kara Walker, the music of Billie Holiday and Cecil Taylor, and the prose and verse writings of Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, and John Keene, this book poses urgent questions about how racial blackness is made to assume certain social meanings. In the process, African American aesthetics are upended, rendering abstractionism as the most powerful modality for Black representation. (shrink)

Resumen: La concepción estética en la pintura tradicional china es un concepto esencial en el antiguo pensamiento estético chino y sirve como criterio estético supremo perseguido en la creación pictórica clásica. Los artistas utilizan obras únicas para mostrar la concepción estética en la pintura tradicional china, destacando así los rasgos distintivos de la pintura china. Este artículo realiza un análisis genealógico de la concepción artística en la pintura tradicional china y lo combina con símbolos culturales específicos para su interpretación, con (...) el objetivo de desvelar las ideas filosóficas y los conceptos culturales concentrados en la pintura tradicional china. (shrink)

​This book gathers research and writings that reflect on traditional and current global issues related to art and aesthetics, gender perspectives, body theories, knowledge and learning. It illustrates these core dimensions, which are bringing together philosophy, tradition and cultural studies and laying the groundwork for comparative research and dialogues between aesthetics, Chinese philosophies, Western feminist studies and cross-cultural thought. Pursuing an interdisciplinary approach, the book also integrates philosophical enquiries with cultural anthropology and contextual studies. As (...) implied in the title, the main methodologies are cross-cultural and comparative studies, which touch on performances in art and aesthetics, social existence and education, and show that philosophical enquiries, aesthetical representation and gender politics are simultaneously historical, living and contextual. The book gathers a wealth of cross-cultural reflections on philosophical aesthetics, gender existence and cultural traditions. The critical thinking within will benefit undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in the area of comparative philosophies. It blends academic rigor with personal reflection, which is a critical practice in feminist philosophy itself. (shrink)

Cywydd Ffarwelio Rhys MERERID HOPWOOD Mae awr i fwynhau miri, y mae awr mi wn am hwyl cwmni, ond nawr, yn ein dathliad ni, mae un na fynnaf mo'ni. ...

The object of the study is one of the significant manifestations of classical Chinese aesthetics - kunqu opera. The subject of the study is the foundations of the formation of this aesthetics in terms of both material and spiritual cultural practices, as well as to investigate its cultural centripetal role in the context of modern society. The relevance of the study is determined by the novelty of the approach, which involves examining the spiritual imagery of Kunqu (...) opera through the prism of analysing its material basis and interpreting the interaction between ‘materiality’ and ‘object form’ in the process of creating Kunqu opera. In addition, the relationship between Kunqu opera and Chinese classical aesthetics is explored. The aim of this study is to deeply analyse Kunqu opera as an important element of traditional Chinese culture in order to understand the extent to which Kunqu embodies the Chinese aesthetic tradition. A variety of methods including literature analysis, case study, historical and literary research. The article is divided into three main parts: the first part focuses on the material level, arguing that the physical presence in Kunqu opera serves as an important support for the formation of the performance system; the second part reveals how the material components of the performance infiltrate the spiritual aesthetic, while the formation of the opera's aesthetics is influenced by Chinese philosophical thought and lyrical culture, using comparative analysis; the final part emphasises the cultural independence and the cultural identity of the opera's performers. The results of the study demonstrate that classical Chinese aesthetics act as the ‘spiritual core’ of Kunqu opera, reflecting traditional Chinese values, ethics and philosophy, which in turn influences the structure of the works, performance style, music and text requirements, as well as plot moves and stage design. (shrink)

The book explores the forbidden feelings of beauty, admiration, or satisfaction before instances of terror and human pain from eighteenth-century natural disasters to twenty-first-century terrorist destruction. It explores the fascination felt by the subject witnessing major disasters directly or in a mediated fashion. Emmanouil Aretoulakis' makes the challenging proposition that there is, paradoxically, an ethics in the aesthetic appraisal of terror.

The ArgumentThis article uses the history of early sound recording technology in the united States between 1878 and 1915 to show how published discourse contributed to the way the talking machine was defined and situated as a commercially viable product. Comparing the published accounts of Edison's phonograph and Berliners gramophone in popular scientific articles between 1878 and 1896 illustrates that technological advances in sound recording technology take on important cultural meanings. Critical to these meanings is the way in which (...) the technological “fidelity” is linguistically transformed into an aesthetic quality, projected and interpreted within demonstrable values of musical culture. Beginning in 1902, the Victor Talking Machine Company, formed to market the gramophone, took advantage of these cultural meanings to claim a technological advantage over Edison's cylinder recorder. Whose voice was recorded became part of the claim to technological superiority. The Victor Company succeeded in capitalizing “Culture” by promoting their recordings of opera stars like Enrico Caruso as technologically and culturally faithful to live musical performance and as a democratically available access to a privileged lifestyle. Thus did the Victor Company use a terrier and a tenor to legitimate their talking machine as an American musical instrument. (shrink)

Brings together essays on the philosophy of art in which a philosophical theory of aesthetic judgment is tested and developed through its application to particular examples. Each essay approaches, from its own field of study, what Roger Scruton argues to be the central problems of aesthetics -- what is aesthetic experience, and what is its importance for human conduct? The book is divided into four parts. The first contains a resume of modern analytical aesthetics, which also serves as (...) an introduction to subsequent chapters. It also includes an essay that reviews current theories of literary criticism. The second part is devoted to musical aesthetics and contains the theoretical core of the work. Here Scruton describes the contours of aesthetic understanding, and defends the view that the object of aesthetic experience is inherently significant, even when it has no "content" that can be described in propositional terms. He rebuts the view that music is representational, and in the third part goes on to propose a theory of representation whereby to refute the suggestion that photography is a representational art. This third section also contains a study of film. The final part comprises essays relating aesthetic judgment to the understanding of culture, humor, and design. It covers many subjects, including the prose works of Samuel Beckett and the architecture of Leninism. The essays in this book form parts of a single intellectual enterprise, which is to give analytical foundations to the criticism of literature, visual art, music, and culture. (shrink)

I offer an analysis of the role of aesthetic value in the formation of cultural memory. More specifically, I examine how cultural memory is formed through cultural artifacts that embody a connection to the past via aesthetic means. My approach is motivated by artifacts from small-scale preindustrial societies, which make it apparent that aesthetic values, rather than being pursued for their own sake alone, enhance other functions, such as maintaining cultural identity and bringing the past into (...) the present. I focus on rock art painting from the Kimberley, Australia, and effigies animated during rituals in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea to argue that, to play a significant role in the formation of cultural memory, aesthetic value must be aligned with implicit conceptions of time which inform the production of artifacts mediating cultural memory. This argument has implications for understanding differences in apprehending memory values and aesthetic values across cultural domains. (shrink)

In this paper I intend to present a preliminary account of the development and sources of aesthetic perception and cuhural identity of the people of Nepal. The paper consists mainly of two sections. In the first section I have tried to explore our country's topographical, sociocultural, historical and religious perspectives which provided the background scenario and basis for the development of the emerged cultural and aesthetic picture. The second section tries to show how the aesthetic sense finds an expression (...) in Nepalese cultural identity. At the very outset, I would hke to submit to this august gathering that the views expressed in this regard are based on my own personal experience and observations, and that they need to be confirmed with further studies in this field. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Aesthetics of Cultural StudiesPaul DuncumThe Aesthetics of Cultural Studies, edited by Michael Bérube. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005, 208 pp., $26.95 paper, $67.95 cloth.This new anthology of ten chapters and a chapter-length introduction by the editor is primarily intended to act as a corrective to the view that cultural studies is uninterested in aesthetics. Contributors argue that while some cultural studies (...) scholars have given this impression, either abandoning the term "aesthetics" or explicitly rejecting the tradition of philosophical aesthetics, cultural studies has been, from its origins in England in the early 1960s, deeply concerned with aesthetic issues. Cultural studies is properly understood, contributors argue, as being born out of a desire to extend aesthetic considerations to a wider range of artifacts and experiences than had hitherto been allowable within the modernist philosophical tradition of aesthetics derived from Kant. Contributors deal with many debates within the field of cultural studies—unsurprisingly mostly to do with turf wars within universities—but I will focus here specifically on what they have to say about aesthetics, though I cannot do justice to the multiplicity of views developed by different authors.Since contributors are primarily from North America, where cultural studies has mainly taken root in the English departments of universities, the cultural form most commonly discussed is literature. Exceptions include David Sanjek's chapter, which focuses on popular music, and Steven Rubio's chapter, which deals playfully with phenomenological intertextuality between classical music and popular cartoons. Most of the issues addressed by contributors also apply to other traditional arts, though not, I will argue below, to many contemporary forms of popular cultural experience.Contributors are especially concerned to defend themselves against charges that, in Rorty's view, cultural studies equates to "expressions of political resentment clothed in jargon," or in George Levine's characterization of this position, as "seeing the text as a kind of enemy to be arrested," where the text is reduced to context and the truth of art is denied in favor of the truth of politics (as cited in Rita Felski's chapter). For such critics, cultural studies equates with ideology critique and represents the death of aesthetics. Not so, according to each of these authors. John Frow, for example, argues that from its inception it was not aesthetics per se that cultural studies objected to but the then normative discourse of aesthetics that was positioned above politics.Several authors are concerned to establish the credentials of cultural studies as a unique way of approaching culture and not just any running together of culture and politics. Felski complains of a "semantic drift," which sees cultural studies mischaracterized and condemned for sins that rightly belong to other fields.Complicating a search for the uniqueness of cultural studies, however, is Jonathan Sterne's contribution in what seems a significantly revisionist position. He claims that in cultural studies culture has had to carry too heavy a burden. Culture has been a conduit to politics, he argues; studying culture has been a way of studying politics by other means, and he suggests that sometimes culture can simply be enjoyed for its own sake and not subject to analysis. David Shumway, too, at times just wants to enjoy culture. In the everyday course of living this is surely right, though it is hardly at the center of the scholarly cultural studies' enterprise. As other contributors argue, cultural studies has always seen the need for striking a balance between aesthetics and [End Page 113] ideology. Sterne's unease with cultural studies for seeing aesthetics primarily in instrumental terms—a way of getting at politics—nevertheless serves as a corrective to the idea that cultural studies scholars have a hard time understanding pleasure.Most contributors acknowledge the influence of Raymond Williams—as well they might—and several cite, even at length, from the chapter "Aesthetic and Other Situations" from his 1977 book Marxism and Literature.1 Here Williams succinctly laid out the theoretical framework for many of the authors of this anthology. It is worth considering some of the key threads of Bérube's book through the prism of this chapter.Williams begins by making aesthetics problematic... (shrink)

Contemporary analytic aestheticians have little interest in the old paradigm of expression theory. They observe that expression theorists tend to locate the essence of art in the externalization of emotion, and they argue persuasively that this tendency is unfortunate. Then they consign expression theorists like Dewey; Collingwood, and Croce to the dustbin of history. This dismissive posture has become standard in aesthetics, for some good reasons. But at least in the case of Dewey, the reasons don't apply. The burden (...) of my dissertation is to make a case for this claim. ;While Dewey does help himself to the vocabulary of expressionism in Art as Experience, he uses it to make arguments less appropriate to a fin-de-siecle expression theorist than to a contemporary cultural critic. He never claims that art is essentially the expression of emotion; he doesn't even agree that emotion is what's expressed in art. His account of expression in art is about the production and reproduction of culture by means of individual agency. It is what Charles Taylor calls expressivism, not expressionism. ;My interpretation of Dewey's aesthetics diverges radically from the one in Alan Tormey's The Concept of Expression, which has become a kind of controlling precedent for the analytic approach to expressionism. I avoid and reject Tormey's reading by locating Dewey's musings on expression in the broader contexts of his conception of the aesthetic, his pragmatist philosophical system, and the tradition of expressivist thought that includes Hamann, Herder, Hegel and Marx. Proceeding in this way not only reveals certain motivations and themes that would otherwise remain obscure, but also highlights certain insights that point toward new, more culturally grounded modes of aesthetic theorizing. I try to recover Dewey's work as a step toward this new aesthetics, an approach that I call, following Cornel West, prophetic aesthetics. (shrink)

Subjunctive Aesthetics argues for the importance of ecocritical approaches within Mexican Studies. This monograph engages with established and up-and-coming Latin American ecocritical scholars who argue that Latin America offers an important corrective to Anglocentric approaches to the Anthropocene by foregrounding colonialism and empire.

How can aesthetic enquiry contribute to the study of visual culture? There seems to be little doubt that aesthetic theory ought to be of interest to the study of visual culture. For one thing, aesthetic vocabulary has far from vanished from contemporary debates on the nature of our visual experiences and its various shapes, a fact especially pertinent where dissatisfaction with vulgar value relativism prevails. Besides, the very question ubiquitous in the debates on visual culture of what is natural and (...) what is acquired in our visual experiences has been a topic in aesthetics at least since the Enlightenment. And last but not least, despite attempts to study visual culture without employing the concept of art, there is no prospect of this central subject of aesthetic theory ebbing away from visual studies. The essays compiled in this volume show a variety of points of intersection and involvement between aesthetics and visual studies; some consider the future of visual art, some the conditions and characteristics of contemporary visual aesthetic experience, while others take on the difficult question of the relation between visual representation and reality. What unites them is their authors' willingness to think about contemporary visual culture in the conceptual frame of aesthetics. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophical aesthetics, art history, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Those who know anything about black history and culture probably know that aesthetics has long been a central concern for black thinkers and activists. The Harlem Renaissance, the Negritude movement, the Black Arts Movement, and the discipline of Black British cultural studies all attest to the intimate connection between black politics and questions of style, beauty, expression, and art. And the participants in these and other movements have made art and offered analyses that wrestle with clearly philosophical issues. (...) In _A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics_, I propose to identify and explore the most significant philosophical issues that emerge from the aesthetic dimensions of black life. The book will consist of eight short chapters, each of which will discuss a complex of related themes and phenomena. Every chapter will begin with one or two illustrative real-world examples, and then use the complexities of these opening cases to introduce the relevant issues. Many people in several fields have explored various bits of the terrain that I’ll cover. But none has surveyed the entire terrain in the name of aesthetics, and none has conducted this survey from an explicitly philosophical perspective. Setting up the project in this way means that its main conclusions will come in two forms. One kind of conclusion will emerge from the way I frame the issues. The two most important points here are that the field of aesthetics ought to cover more than the study of western fine art, and that the field of black aesthetics allows and requires the sort of comprehensive and philosophical analysis that I’ll offer. Another set of conclusions will emerge from my treatment of the specific issues in each chapter. In each case the aim will be to defend, albeit briefly, some position on the major issues raised in each chapter. (shrink)

This work seeks to highlight that an understanding of aesthetic practices is essential to the analysis of politics and political processes. If today, aesthetics has become a rather overused term, referring to a variety of historical periods and groups, even states of being (love, melancholy...), nonetheless its relevance as a connecting agent between individual, state and society remains strong. Placing it as a central theme for understanding processes of domination, contestation and transversal links highlights the mobilization of spaces, bodies (...) and objects in a struggle for the exercise of power and the challenges to it. It is impossible to study historical shifts or systems of power without examining the mobilisation of aesthetic languages: of splendour and display, austerity, asceticism, minimalism or restraint. In this book the concern is with the dynamics between the custodians of aesthetics and the dissenters, with the moment, and with change over time. This book approaches contemporary politics through the aesthetics of power and its practices: from the more formal and regulated presence of state power in the public space in the form of official buildings, commemorative monuments, to the aestheticisation of sacrifice in politics and judicial spectacles. The studies presented here promise to lead us further to deepening our understanding of the dynamics of political spaces and the politics of the aesthetic in contemporary politics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:470 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of fundamental notions (e.g.,"creator" and "demiurge") are omnipresent. Sometimes even a confusion happens of Anaxagoras with Democritus when the "atom" is ascribed to Anaxagoras (p. 48). And the author does not seem to feel the fatal inadequacy of merely second-hand knowledge. While he in longura et latum argues with Aristotelian presentations and misrepresentations of Anaxagorean tenets, there is good reason for the suspicion that he (...) might never have read even one authentic sentence written by Anaxagoras himself. For those interested in general cultural history, this book, the religious diatribe of a modem Zoroastrian believer, is very worthwhile reading. For the historian of philosophy, itis of rather modest value. P-~LIX M. CLEVE New School for Social Research New York City The Esthetics of the Middle Ages. By Edgar De Bruyne. Trans. Eileen B. Hennessy. (New York: Frederick Uugar, 1969. Pp. viii+232. $6.50) This book has a very complex character. It is the English translation of a French work, L'Esth~tique du moyen dge,I which, in turn, is a one-volume abridged version by Edgar De Bruyne of his own original three-volume work, I~tudes d'Esth~tique M~di~vale.2 Thus, one may evaluate this book either as a translation or, presupposing the faithfulness and correctness of the translation itself,as a relatively short work by E. De Bruyne, or else in its relation to or as compared with the original three-volume work. I will confine myself here to the lattertwo considerations.3 First, considering this book in comparison with the three-volume original work, one of the principal writings of De Bruyne and one of the most significant contemporary contributions to the history of medieval aesthetics, we can find both quantitative and qualitative differences between the original work and its abridged version. The quantitative difference is considerable. While the abridged work, at least in its English translation, is less than a quarter of a thousand pages in length, the original work includes altogether 1,224 pages 4 and is thus more than five times longer than thc translated abridged version of it. The qualitative or methodological difference is at least equally great. In the original work, each of the three volumes deals primarily with the various medieval authors of aesthetic works and doctrines in a chronological order.5 In contrast, the contents of the translated abridged version follow a topical arrangement with chronology playing only a subordinate role, if any at all, within Louvain. L'InstitutSupdrieur de Philosophic, 1947. Brugge: De Tempel, 1946. s I have had no access to the abridged French original. 9 Vol. I, xiv+370; II, x-{-420; III,x-F400. 9 VoL I: Boethius to Erigena; II. "L'l~poque Romane," from the Carolingian period to the schools of Chartres and St. Victor; and Ill:the thirteenthcentury, from St. Bernard to Duns Scotus. BOOK REVIEWS 471 each topic. The six chapters are entitled, "'The Sources," "The Fundamental Principles," "Various Esthetic Systems," "The Esthetic Experience," "Art," and "The Fine Arts." To this may be added a third difference that is the result of the first two differences. There is virtually neither any direct quotation from any author on any topic, nor a~y direct reference to texts in the works of medieval authors mentioned or discussed. While the quantitative difference in itself is understandable, since only a scholar specializing in this field would read over 1,200 pages on medieval aesthetics, and while the qualitative difference is perfectly justified in terms of an intelligent summary, the absence especially of direct references to discussed texts is, as will be shown below, deeply regxettable. So much for the relative consideration of this translated abridged work. Let us next consider the abridged work in itself in the form of a positive and a negative evaluation. Second, despite the relative brevity of the work, one finds this book extremely valuable both in terms of the quantity and the quality of the data it contains. As to quantity, De Bruyne manages to compress an enormous amount of information about medieval aesthetic thought into this book. The significance of this, to confine ourselves at this point only... (shrink)

The paper intends to bridge the existing gap between aesthetic knowledge and contemporary society. The first part focuses on the cultural turn in aesthetics, the roots of which can already be found in the English criticism of the eighteenth century. This enterprise is inspired by a methodology that regards aesthetics as a "meeting place" of many disciplines and varying cultural traditions. A second type of cultural turn is carried out by writers (e.g. Baudelaire): the target (...) of their polemic is the concept of aesthetic disinterestedness. According to them, the beautiful, instead, has to create the greatest interest because it is none other than the promise of happiness. However, the two different approaches are not so incompatible as seems at first sight. Finally, the text focuses on the New Age and the culture of performance, which, even if presenting opposite traits, have one thing in common: they translate at the empirical and factual level experiences that originally belonged to another sphere, namely the spiritual and the symbolic. (shrink)

Is it ever aesthetically permissible to engage in acts of cultural appropriation? This paper shows how recent work on aesthetic normativity can help answer this question. Drawing on the work of Lopes and McGonigal, I argue that in many cases those who engage in cultural appropriation act against their aesthetic reasons. Lopes and McGonigal advocate for externalist accounts of aesthetic reasons according to which whether or not an agent has an aesthetic reason to act depends on whether or (...) not their action will be an aesthetic achievement. Employing this framework, I argue that insofar as acts of cultural appropriation are seldom aesthetic achievements, many agents who engage in culturally appropriative aesthetic activities act against their aesthetic reasons. (shrink)

The Handbook of Latin American Environmental Aesthetics offers a comprehensive overview of Latin American aesthetic and conceptual production addressing the more-than-human environment at the intersection between art, activism, and critique. Fields include literature, performance, film, and other audiovisual media as well as their interactions with community activisms. Scholars who have helped establish environmental approaches in the field as well as emergent critical voices revisit key concepts such as ecocriticism, (post-)extractivism, and multinaturalism, while opening new avenues of dialogue with areas (...) including critical race theory and ethnicity, energy humanities, queer-*trans studies, and infrastructure studies, among others. This volume both traces these genealogies and maps out key positions in this increasingly central field of Latin Americanism, at the same time as they relate it to the environmental humanities at large. By showing how artistic and literary productions illuminate critical zones of environmental thought, articulating urgent social and material issues with cultural archives, historical approaches and conceptual interventions, this volume offers cutting-edge critical tools for approaching literature and the arts from new angles that call into question the nature/culture boundary. (shrink)

This paper presents an integrated framework applied towards the design and evaluation of a virtual museum of Byzantine art that combines the theorized fields of semiotics, virtual heritage (VH), and Byzantine art. A devised semiotic model, the case study semiosphere, synthesizes important principles from the theoretical background justifying the overall design and evaluation methodology. The approach presented has theoretical extensions to the understanding of the role technology plays in promoting a consummatory aesthetic experience for Byzantine art in virtual environments, complementing (...) the experience received from traditional Byzantine art media. Part A of the work presents the development of the semiotic foundation of the study prior to presenting the applied potential of the approach in design and evaluation of VH for Byzantine art, which appears in Part B. The final task of the proposed approach aims to support a meaningful interpretation, assisting in the promotion of the significance (value) of the virtual museum to potential interpreters/visitors. (shrink)