Our Aesthetic Categories

PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 948-958 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sianne Ngai
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Cultural Criticism ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Methodological Difficulties ◽  
The Way

The recent turn to aesthetics in literary studies has been embraced by some of its advocates as a polemical riposte to critique: a practice increasingly attacked from multiple directions but here specifically for doing artworks the disservice of reducing them to encryptions of history or ideology. But while the new or revived focus on pleasure (and, to a much lesser extent, displeasure)1 has been vaunted for the way in which it seems to circumvent the reduction of artworks to historical or ideological concepts, our aesthetic experience is always mediated by a finite if constantly rotating repertoire of aesthetic categories. Any literary or cultural criticism purportedly engaged with aesthetics needs to pay attention to these categories, which are by definition conceptual as well as affective and tied to historically specific forms of communication and collective life. But how does one read an aesthetic category? What kind of object is it, and what methodological difficulties and satisfactions does its analysis pose?

Haydn, meter, and listening in transition

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 141-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Grant
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Late Works ◽  
The Way

In recent years, music theorists and analysts have devoted a great deal of attention to the phenomenon of hypermeter, drawing some of their most representative examples from the late works of Haydn. Although this recent trend in analysis has shed much light on Haydn’s music, it has left questions of history distinct from the mode of listening it engages. This article argues that the way we understand conceptualizations of listening and aesthetic experience can greatly inform the way that we understand hypermeter and the question of style in history. Drawing on eighteenth-century theories of music and literature, it recontextualizes Haydn’s hypermetric style with respect to a larger world of aesthetic experience.

Gadamer’s Concept of Aesthetic Experience as a Possibility for the Orthodox Biblical Theology

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-407
Author(s):  
Zdenko Š Širka
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
New Material ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article finds its inspiration in the new interpretations of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, which underline the turn in his later period, and which focus on the conception of aesthetic experience as an experience of transcendence. The main thesis is that the understanding of artworks, as Gadamer describes them in contrast to the Kantian subjectification of aesthetics, can be paralleled with the way Orthodox biblical theology struggles to approach Holy Scripture in the context of Church and Tradition. The aim of this article is to bring new material to the growing reception of Gadamer among Orthodox scholars, and to initiate further discussion on the topic by showing the parallels and areas where this reception could continue.

Race, Criminal Justice, and Migration Control

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Migration Control ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Way

In an era of mass mobility, those who are permitted to migrate and those who are criminalized, controlled, and prohibited from migrating are heavily patterned by race. By placing race at the centre of its analysis, this volume brings together fourteen essays that examine, question, and explain the growing intersection between criminal justice and migration control. Through the lens of race, we see how criminal justice and migration enmesh in order to exclude, stop, and excise racialized citizens and non-citizens from societies across the world within, beyond, and along borders. Neatly organized in four parts, the book begins with chapters that present a conceptual analysis of race, borders, and social control, moving to the institutions that make up and shape the criminal justice and migration complex. The remaining chapters are convened around the key sites where criminal justice and migration control intersect: policing, courts, and punishment. Together the volume presents a critical and timely analysis of how race shapes and complicates mobility and how racism is enabled and reanimated when criminal justice and migration control coalesce. Race and the meaning of race in relation to citizenship and belonging are excavated throughout the chapters presented in the book, thereby transforming the way we think about migration.

scholarly journals Image in Translated Novels from English into Persian

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Gholam-Reza Parvizi
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Mind

The question of image in literary studies and in recent years in Translation Studies is one of the most problematic innature. In the present study an attempt was made to define the nature of translating linguistic constructions – evokingimages in the mind of reader – in English novels and their rendered versions in Persian translations. In this studyseven types of images (visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, kinesthetic and organic) in two English novelsand their rendered versions in Persian were analyzed based on two theoretical frameworks, the first one is Jiang’sImage-Based Model to Literary Translation (2008) by which the nature of translation of images were examined andthe other is Chesterman’s translation strategies (1997) which help to systematize translation strategies adopted bytranslators in rewriting the images in English novels. The results have shown that in most of the cases the images thatare intended by original author have been changed in the translations, and the aesthetic experience of the ST reader isdifferent from that of the TT reader.

Biblical Criticism and the Challenge of Postmodernism

1995 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Terence J. Keegan
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

AbstractPostmodernism involves recognizing that the objective certitude sought by modern scientific and humanistic methods is not possible. Deconstruction paved the way for postmodernism in literary studies, but it is most evident in the work of some reader-response critics. Many reader-response critics utilize the indeterminacy of postmodern insight but are hesitant to accept its subjectivist implications. Biblical scholars tend to prefer methods that yield verifiable results, but some have successfully used postmodern approaches. Christian scholars, though committed to an idea of transcendence to which postmodernism seems to deny access, can still profitably use postmodern approaches but must be prepared to deal with such questions as inspiration and the relation of scholarship to the Church.

scholarly journals Who’s Afraid of the Audience? Digital and Post-Digital Perspectives on Aesthetics

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lotte Philipsen
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Practical Analysis ◽  
The Way

This article analyses how works of art that make use of or refer to digital technology can be approached, analysed, and understood aesthetically from two different perspectives. One perspective, which I shall term a ‘digital’ perspective, mainly focuses on poetics (or production) and technology when approach- ing the works, whereas the other, which I shall term a ‘post-digital’ perspective, focuses on aesthetic experience (or reception) when approaching the works. What I tentatively and for the purpose of practical analysis term the ‘digital’ and the ‘post-digital’ perspectives do not designate two different sets of concrete works of art or artistic practice and neither do they describe different periods.[1] Instead, the two perspectives co-exit as different discursive positions that are concretely ex- pressed in the way we talk about aesthetics in relation to art that makes use of and/or refers to digital technology. In short: When I choose here to talk about a digital and a post-digital perspective, I talk about two fundamentally different ways of ascribing aes- thetic meaning to (the same) concrete works of art. By drawing on the ideas of especially Immanuel Kant and Dominic McIver Lopes, it is the overall purposes of this article to ana- lyse and compare how the two perspectives understand the concept of aesthetics and to discuss some of the implications following from these understandings. As it turns out, one of the most significant implications is the role of the audience. 

scholarly journals Falsification of content: decadence and simplification as the extreme forms of internal protest of the heroines of M. V. Krestovskaya’s novella “The Outcry”

Litera ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 56-74
Author(s):  
Anna Kharitonova
Keyword(s):  
Russian Literature ◽  
The Body ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
New Type

This article examines novella by Maria Krestovskaya “The Outcry” (1900) in the context of reception of the phenomenon of decadence in Russian literature of turn of the XIX – XX centuries. This novella by the mostly forgotten writer, who in her works refers mostly to the female topics (love, family, and profession), is currently of particular interest from the perspective of reflection of cultural trends of that time. A “typical female story” about the unhappy marriage, aimed against the power of money, insincerity and lack of freedom, puts decadence to the forefront of narration as a cultural emblem of the era, revealing the inner motifs and mechanism, which led one of the heroines to an ostentatiously decadent behavior. A contrasts form of protest against the bourgeois world in the novella is the ideology of simplification. The scientific novelty of the conducted research is defined by paucity of research on the works of M. V. Krestovskaya, and absence of special works within the modern literary studies dedicated to her writing heritage. The author’s contribution consists in introduction of novella “The Outcry” into the extensive Russian-European cultural and historical-literary context, as well as its analysis from the perspective of worldview trends and aesthetic influences of the late XIX – early XX centuries. The research proves that this text, which is not the only resort of M. V. Krestovskaya to a new type of here of the “end of century”, can be justifiably attributed to the body of work devoted to the heroes-decadents.

Structuralism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lundell ◽  
Vincent P. Pecora
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Widespread Application ◽  
Language Functions ◽  
Structural Linguistics ◽  
Universal Truth ◽  
Intellectual Movement ◽  
The Way

Structuralism, generally described, is a twentieth-century intellectual movement associated with linguistic studies in Europe, despite its vast applicability and many adherents. An initial aim of structural linguistics was to investigate – in greater detail than previously – the way language functions as a network of signification. Structuralism’s goal also typically derives from the question of whether universal truth can be revealed in this network in ways that define the constitution of thought. Structuralism focused on the whole of language, the ‘structure’ of the totality, over its individual parts or their historical development. The principles of Structuralism and its later transformations found widespread application outside of linguistics, particularly in anthropology, sociology, literary studies, semiotics, film, musicology, psychology, and philosophy.

Listening, Touching, Meaning: On Translating Musical Experience, Answering the Call of Art, and Aesthetic Subjectivity in Baudelaire and Proust

2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 597-614
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Chamber Music ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Blank Space ◽  
Absolute Music ◽  
Dramatic Music ◽  
The Way

Abstract This essay examines the way Baudelaire and Proust respond to music in terms of trying to account for being ‘touched’ or ‘struck’ by it. I contrast dramatic music, as it figures in Baudelaire’s writing on Wagner, with the newly emergent notion of ‘absolute music’, as it manifests itself in the fictitious chamber music of Vinteuil in Proust’s novel. The essay thereby demonstrates how emptying music of referential meaning allows writers to fill up that blank space with a verbal reply to the call of music, which itself becomes an act of aesthetic creation. Such an approach to listening, which emerged in the nineteenth century, still resonates with contemporary accounts by scholars working between musicology and literary studies, and shapes their account of aesthetic subjectivity.

African American Scholars and the Margins of DH

PMLA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-158
Author(s):  
Howard Rambsy II
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Graduate Study ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Marginal Status ◽  
The Way

Let's Cut to the Chase: African American Scholars Occupy the Margins of this Expansive Realm Known as Digital Humanities. Do well-intentioned people want more diversity in DH? Sure, they do. Do black folks participate in DH? Of course, we do. But we've witnessed far too many DH panels with no African American participants or with only one. We've paid close attention to where the major funding for DH goes. Or, we've carefully taken note of who the authors of DH-related articles, books, and bibliographies are. We've studied these things closely enough to realize who resides in prime DH real estate and who doesn't. We could speak defiantly about our marginal status the way Toni Morrison once did when she quipped, “I'm gonna stay out here on the margin, and let the center look for me” (87). Yaasss!At the same time, though, it's worth thinking about some of the reasons why African American scholars dwell on the margins of the DH field. The processes by which we pursue graduate study and become participants in the field of African American literary studies account for why we are slow or reluctant to embrace DH. There's also the matter of segregation—our persistent exclusion from projects and opportunities that are ostensibly open to all but invariably involve primarily white scholars. Immersion in the field of African American literary studies and conversations with senior and emergent scholars reveal some of the reasons why we stand so far from the center of the DH community.

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