scholarly journals The co-optation of sensibility and the subversion of beauty

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Arnold Berleant
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Sense Experience ◽  
Political Criticism ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Sensibility ◽  
Mass Marketing ◽  
Ethical Significance

The aesthetic analysis of everyday life has developed an important body of work whose significance extends beyond the academy. Because of its ubiquity in experience, aesthetic sensibility has many manifestations, both overt and concealed. This paper examines some largely hidden ways in which taste and aesthetic judgment, which are manifested in sense experience, have been subtly appropriated and exploited. I identify and describe such procedures as the cooptation (or appropriation) of aesthetic sensibility, a phenomenon that has consequences damaging to health, to society, and to environment. These practices are a form of negative aesthetics that distorts and manipulates sensible experience in the interest of mass marketing and political control. Such practices have great ethical significance and carry social and political implications that suggest another role for aesthetics, a critical one: aesthetics as an instrument of emancipation in social analysis and political criticism.

scholarly journals Propositions for the Aesthetic Continuity of Urban Landscapes

SAGE Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402094185
Author(s):  
Hyejung Chang
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Shared Environment ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Irreversible Loss ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Ethical Significance

While many global societies have undergone radical transformations, places have suffered from the irreversible loss of public memory. The value of continuity in the urban landscape has gradually declined due to the culture of “avant-gardism.” This article explores the enduring values necessary for human cohabitation and aesthetic qualities inherent in the rapidly changing urban environments of today. It draws attention to the ethical significance of continuity as the whole notion of “place” hinges, and argues that the experience of urban continuity in everyday life is an intrinsic and instrumental factor for our sense of identity, well-being, and belonging. Continuity, as predicated on human existence, is essential for the evolutionary, ecological, cognitive, cultural, and spiritual experience of the shared environment. The proposed dimensions of an aesthetic continuity are intended to provide a normative and pragmatic framework useful for application to placemaking in ever-changing urban environments.

George Eliot’s Promise of More

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Auyoung
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Adam Bede ◽  
Mill On The Floss ◽  
Literary Description ◽  
The Aesthetic

This chapter recovers the aesthetic significance of a reader’s mediated relation to the objects and experiences represented in realist fiction. When George Eliot’s intrusive narrators in Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Middlemarch cue readers to form impressions that are as distinct as possible, they expose the indeterminacy that persists in the most concrete passages of literary description, alerting us to the limits of how much we can ever know about a fictional world. By drawing on the aesthetics of indeterminacy advanced by Edmund Burke, this chapter reveals that Eliot’s commitment to narratives of disillusionment exists in tension with a surprisingly Romantic aversion to finitude, and that literary realism enchants ordinary things by freeing them from the solidity and determinacy they possess in everyday life.

scholarly journals Educación Física para el desarrollo de la consciencia: Una propuesta pedagógica  (Physical Education for the development of consciousness: A pedagogical proposal)

Retos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelio Águila
Keyword(s):  
Physical Education ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Awareness ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Pedagogical Action ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Educational Field ◽  
Epistemological Basis

 En este ensayo se presenta una propuesta pedagógica en educación física dirigida a favorecer un aprendizaje significativo transferible a la vida cotidiana y una mayor consciencia social, a partir de la integración de mindfulness (consciencia plena) como base onto-epistemológica. Para ello, en la primera parte, se analiza el concepto de mindfulness desde su naturaleza esencial según la perspectiva budista, que integra sus fundamentos morales y sus implicaciones políticas. Asimismo, se critica el uso de mindfulness en el ámbito educativo como una mera técnica, para, a partir de ahí, defender las posibilidades de su inclusión como esencia onto-epistemológica de la acción pedagógica. En la segunda parte, se desarrollan los principios de esta propuesta de educación física enfocada a la expansión de la consciencia no condicionada del ser humano: una educación física orientada al crecimiento personal y moral, que estimule la participación política y contribuya a la transformación social.  Abstract: In this essay, a pedagogical proposal in physical education is presented aimed at promoting meaningful learning transferable to everyday life and greater social awareness, based on the integration of mindfulness as an onto-epistemological basis. For this, in the first part, the concept of mindfulness is analyzed from its essential nature according to the Buddhist perspective, which integrates its moral foundations and its political implications. Likewise, the use of mindfulness in the educational field is criticized as a mere technique, in order to, from there, defend the possibilities of its inclusion as an onto-epistemological essence of pedagogical action. In the second part, the principles of this proposal of physical education focused on the expansion of the unconditional consciousness of the human being are developed: a physical education oriented to personal and moral growth, which stimulates political participation and contributes to social transformation.

scholarly journals Human Rights at Stake: Shirley Jackson’s Social and Political Protest in “The Lottery”

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Zaid Ibrahim Ismael ◽  
Sabah Atallah Khalifa Ali
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
World War ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Political Criticism ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Social Custom ◽  
American Author ◽  
The One

Nowhere is American author Shirley Jackson’s (1916-1965) social and political criticism is so intense than it is in her seminal fictional masterpiece “The Lottery”. Jackson severely denounces injustice through her emphasis on a bizarre social custom in a small American town, in which the winner of the lottery, untraditionally, receives a fatal prize. The readers are left puzzled at the end of the story as Tessie Hutchinson, the unfortunate female winner, is stoned to death by the members of her community, and even by her family. This study aims at investigating the author’s social and political implications that lie behind the story, taking into account the historical era in which the story was published (the aftermath of the bloody World War II) and the fact that the victim is a woman who is silenced and forced to follow the tradition of the lottery. The paper mainly focuses on the writer’s interest in human rights issues, which can be violated even in civilized communities, like the one depicted in the story. The shocking ending, the researchers conclude, is Jackson’s protest against dehumanization and violence.

scholarly journals Romantyczne wędrówki Polaków po Szwajcarii Saskiej

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 149-175
Author(s):  
Ewa Grzęda
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Language ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Spatial Imagination ◽  
Aesthetic Sensibility ◽  
The 19Th Century

Romantic wanderings of Poles across Saxon SwitzerlandThe history of Polish tourism in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains as well as the literary and artistic reception of the landscape and culture of Saxon Switzerland have never been discussed in detail. The present article is a research reconnaissance. The beginnings and development of tourism in the region came in the late 18th and early 19th century. The 1800s were marked by the emergence of the first German-language descriptions of Saxon Switzerland, which served as guidebooks at the time. From the very beginning Poles, too, participated in the tourist movement in the area. The author of the article seeks to follow the increasing interest in Saxon Switzerland and the appearance of the first descriptions of the region in Polish literature and culture. She provides a detailed analysis of Polish-language accounts of micro-trips to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains by Andrzej Edward Koźmian, Stanisław Deszert, Antoni Edward Odyniec, Klementyna Hoffman née Tańska and a poem by Maciej Bogusz Stęczyński. As the analysis demonstrates, in the first half of the 19th century Poles liked to visit these relatively low mountains in Central Europe and tourism in the region is clearly part of the history of Polish mountain tourism. Thanks to unique aesthetic and natural values of the mountains, full of varied rocky formations, reception of their landscape had an impact of the development of the aesthetic sensibility of Polish Romantics. Direct contact with nature and the landscape of Saxon Switzerland also served an important role in the shaping of spatial imagination of Polish tourists, encouraging them to explore other mountains in Europe and the world, including the Alps. On the other hand thanks to the development of tourist infrastructure in Saxon Switzerland, facilitating trips in the region and making the most attractive spots available to inexperienced tourists, micro-trips to the Elbe Sandstone Mountains marked an important stage in the development of mountain tourism on a popular-recreational level. Polish-language accounts of trips to Saxon Switzerland from the first half of the 20th century are a noteworthy manifestation of the beginnings of Polish travel literature.

Hearing the Contradictions: Aesthetic Experience, Music and Digitization

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-302
Author(s):  
Nancy Weiss Hanrahan
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
The World ◽  
Digital Environments ◽  
The Aesthetic

If, as Susan Buck-Morss (2003) suggests, aesthetic experience is an occasion for “making critical judgments about not only cultural forms but social forms of our being-in-the-world,” or if it is linked, in David Hesmondhalgh’s (2013) account, to the possibilities of collective flourishing, potential changes in the nature of that experience merit critical attention. This article reflects on the ways in which these social or ethical dimensions of the aesthetic experience of music are affected by digitization. It moves from a discussion of aesthetic experience as a form of encounter that refers to a common world, to consideration of recent work in music sociology that engages themes that emerge from that discussion: aesthetic judgment, and the question of difference and commonality. With illustrations from focus group interviews, I suggest that the quantization associated with digital environments is altering the cultural form of aesthetic judgment, just as personalization is changing the meaning of “difference” in this context. The essay is intended as a disclosive critique that takes as its primary object not the world observable through thick description or hermeneutic interpretation of actual cultural practice, but a world evoked through critical reflection on its actual and potential constellations of meaning.

Between Ethics and Aesthetics – Reception of Genetic Information and Narrative Experience

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 144-144
Author(s):  
Raphaël Pfeiffer ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Genetic Information ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Suicide Attempts ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Ethical Reasoning ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Negative Feelings

"In a clinical context, the communication of genetic information is an event that can give rise to unexpected situations for health professionals. Several empirical studies have shown that, despite being presented with “good” presymptomatic test results, some patients develop negative feelings, depression, which can in extreme cases lead to suicide attempts. Here, genetic information takes full meaning when considered in a personal narrative. In this presentation, we would like to look at the specificities of this narrative experience in the light of works on the aesthetics of everyday life, with a particular focus on the works of John Dewey. For Dewey, the aesthetic experience is possible in all aspects of people’s daily lives, including clinical experience. In this case, “aesthetics” appears in the sensitive character of an experience rather than in a specific type of object. Through the examination of this thought, we will ask to what extent we can speak of an aesthetic experience when thinking of the communication of genetic information, and how this consideration can help ethical reasoning. We will begin by examining how the moment of the communication of genetic information to patients by the clinician can constitute a process of defamiliarization of everyday life. This will lead us to look at patients’ accounts of genetic information reception and to analyse how these appear to be more than mere testimonies about the experience of pathologies, but a means by which the patient is confronted with difficult experiences in order to reformulate them. "

Unspeakable Events

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Gikandi
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Standing ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
William Beckford ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Moment

This chapter presents two instances of how slave money shaped the moment of taste in both pragmatic and conceptual terms. It provides a substantive exploration of the cultural traffic between Britain and its colonial outposts in order to show how the experience of slavery was turned into an aesthetic object that was woven into the fabric of everyday life. It then seeks to connect slave money and the power and prestige of art by focusing on the aesthetic lives of William Beckford and Christopher Codrington, famous heirs to slave fortunes, who sought to remake their social standing through the patronage of art and the mastery of taste.

Feminist Aesthetics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Eaton
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Male Gaze ◽  
Canon Formation ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Female Nude ◽  
Inclusive Approach ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Feminist Aesthetics

This chapter summarizes central issues and themes in feminist philosophical aesthetics in the analytic tradition, although some continental figures are discussed. After introducing the interdisciplinary, intersectional and trans* inclusive approach that feminist aesthetics is starting to take, this essay discusses situatedness, artistic canon formation, humanism vs. gynocentrism, rewriting the philosophical canon, overcoming artworld biases, and the role of the aesthetic in systemic oppression. Specific topics to be discussed include the male gaze, the female nude, the concept of artistic genius, women’s artistic production, the purported universality of correct aesthetic judgment, the sex/gender distinction as it pertains to aesthetics and the arts, and body aesthetics.

Locating Classical Music in Culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Anna Bull
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Musical Institutions ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Aesthetic

This chapter reframes existing research on classical music by putting it into dialogue with sociological understandings of class and gender to outline what a social analysis of classical music should look like. This also lays the foundations for theorizing more widely how music might be analysed in relation to class, an urgent theoretical intervention at a time of increasing economic inequality within many nation-states. It asks, how are musical institutions, practices, and aesthetics shaped by wider conditions of economic inequality, and in what ways might music enable and entrench such inequalities or work against them? The chapter argues for understanding music and inequality through a multi-scalar approach that examines how sociocultural discourses and practices can be traced within musical practices, and how such practices can then be heard in the aesthetic that they create.

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