The Esthetic of Excess and the Excess of Esthetic

Abstract

Excluded from the philosophical logos, excess can even be seen to be the “subject” of literature. From the epic poem and the platonic divine furor to the baroque esthetic, and from romanticism to Freudian sublimation, a line can be drawn together with a theory of artistic genesis as arising out of limit experiences: excess is the mark of an encounter with a real which overpowers the signifier. The birth of the esthetic in of itself, conceived of in Baumgarten's terms, arises out of the consideration of literature and art as testifying to a truth of the confused and of the singular, inaccessible to logical reasoning in so far as it exceeds the capacity of the concept.