Aesthetic Assumptions Research Articles

Palimpsestuous Fragmentation in James Cahill’s Tiepolo Blue

ABSTRACT This paper delves into James Cahill’s debut novel, Tiepolo Blue (2022), as an updating of postmodern gay novels like Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker-Prize winner The Line of Beauty (2004). To prove the postness of Tiepolo Blue, some aspects will be addressed. First of all, the novel revises the relation between ethics and aesthetics, for Don, the protagonist, is able to overcome the aporia that blocks many of Hollinghurst’s main characters. In this sense, Kristeva’s concept of the abject is meaningful because Don shifts from the horror of encountering an “abject” piece of art to embracing the Dionysian. Likewise, the article moves from postmodernist intertextuality. For Dillon, the palimpsest is a relational event that conjures up former and new texts on a palimpsestuous surface. Pentimenti, a similar concept referring to the different layers on canvas, are also addressed as long as Tiepolo Blue is set in the world of art. In this conflict between the surface and the subterranean of palimpsests and pentimenti, the protagonist eventually chooses the underworld. This he does by rearranging his aesthetic assumptions and welcoming a fragmented version of art. In this process of middle-age awakening, he loiters London and its layers in a Felliniesque fashion.

Pessimistic aesthetics and the re-valuation of guilty pleasures: on the moral and metaphysical significance of escapism

ABSTRACT There is a previously unrecognized coupling which underlies the Western evaluation of aesthetic experiences. By and large, we are taught that for our aesthetic pleasures to have any “value” (i.e. to be good) they must do more than merely entertain, distract, or delight. Instead, they should confront us with some “truth” about the nature of our existence and/or guide us to some “reality” concerning the state of our world. This paper asks: 1) whence this prejudice concerning the value of our aesthetic experiences? 2) What metaphysical and ethical assumptions underlie this epistemological standard? And, finally, 3) how might our expectations concerning the nature and value of aesthetic experiences alter if these assumptions are called into question, as they are, for example, by contemporary metaphysical pessimism? This paper uses the concept of “guilty pleasures” as a site to expose the history of our Western assumptions concerning the evaluation of aesthetic experiences and to explore how a pessimistic revaluation of reality might change our analysis of what comprises “good” art. To this end, this paper traces the origins of our aesthetic assumptions in the West, shows how these assumptions continue to influence our aesthetic expectations today, exposes the hidden metaphysical premises, which underly those expectations, and explores why and how we might call these premises into question through a pessimistic revaluation of existence. All of these supports, in the end, a critical reassessment of the status and value our so-called “guilty pleasures.”

Intersubjectivity and alterity in the works of Kant

In her text ‘Intersubjectivity and Alterity in Kant’, Marita Rainsborough addresses the question of intersubjectivityand alterity in Kant in its epistemological, ethical, aesthetic and political dimensions and notes that Kantian theorems such ase.g. ‘pluralism’, ‘extended mode of thought’, ‘unsociable sociability’, ‘public sphere’, ‘world public sphere’, ‘sensus communis’,‘publicity’, ‘hospitality’ as well as basic epistemological, ethical and aesthetic assumptions offer fundamental starting points forunderstanding Kant with regard to the aspects of intersubjectivity and alterity, whereby the intrasubjective dimension mustbe thought of as connected to the intersubjective dimension. Intersubjectivity turns out to be anchored in different areas andat different levels in Kant’s philosophy, but remains an inter-subjectivity. The otherness of the Other also has its place in this.However, it becomes clear that although Kant does justice to the otherness of the Other from the approach on the theoreticallevel, but not in his evaluative categorisations and hierarchisations that can often be found. One must join Kant in thinkingbeyond Kant.

Portret bohaterki lirycznego cyklu Дурнушка Siemiona Nadsona w świetle inspiracji literackich

The subject of research in this article is Semyon Nadson’s informal lyrical cycle Дурнушка. The research method is the classic analysis of poems. The aim of the work was to show the most important, in my opinion, sources of literary inspirations that influenced the formation of the image of the lyrical heroine of the cycle. Inspiration from the romantic tradition comes to the fore (including ideal female characters embodying physical and spiritual beauty, themes of loneliness, alienation, conflict with society, unrequited love). The great realistic Russian prose of the 19th century also left a clear mark, from which the writer drew themes of social injustice, beauty, suffering, the motif of an unhappy childhood, family, and the role of women in society. Nadson creatively used the types of literary heroes existing in Russian literature at that time, such as “Turgenev’s maidens”, “superfluous man” and representatives of the progressive youth of the 1860s. The socially engaged tradition of Nekrasov’s poetry was also close to him. Despite the variety of inspirations and literary influences affecting him, Nadson managed to retain the original element of his personality in his poetry, as well as the independence of poetic thought, which was expressed in questioning traditional aesthetic assumptions and attempts to interpret existing themes and motifs on his own.

As questões de estética e simetria e suas contribuições para o ensino das leis de Newton na formação inicial de professores de ciências

Este trabalho tem o objetivo de contribuir com a formação inicial dos professores de ciências por meio da investigação dos conceitos de estética e simetria e de suas possíveis implicações para o ensino das leis de Newton, a partir da resposta da seguinte pergunta: como esses conceitos aparecem à medida que são ensinados aos licenciandos em ciências? Para isso, realizamos uma pesquisa bibliográfica e uma revisão historiográfica acerca dos conceitos de estética e simetria, com fontes secundárias, buscando identificar os pressupostos estéticos utilizados na fundamentação das leis de Newton. A partir daí, tendo-se como base as pesquisas sobre o cotidiano escolar, desenvolvemos uma abordagem didática, que considerou as bases estéticas e simétricas da mecânica newtoniana, para uma disciplina de física do ensino superior de um curso de licenciatura em ciências. Os dados foram colhidos por meio de produções textuais, gravações de aulas e anotações em diários de bordo. A análise foi feita a partir de categorizações e inferências, seguindo o método de análise de conteúdo. Os resultados sugerem que as concepções estéticas e simétricas são altamente influenciadas pelos sentidos e que, ao explicitá-las, o ensino das leis de Newton adquire consistência e novos significados juntamente aos estudantes. Do destaque dessa pesquisa, pretendeu-se contribuir com a discussão de como algumas dessas concepções influenciam a compreensão dos professores acerca dos conceitos e fenômenos físicos, bem como a compreensão da construção de uma física em que a construção humana mostra-se fundamental para a sua criação e consolidação.

Visagismo: a construção de um sorriso único - Relato de caso clínico.

Objetivo: Desta forma, o objetivo do presente trabalho é relatar um caso clínico de reabilitação oral estética baseado na integralização dos conceitos de visagismo, através de laminados cerâmicos. Metodologia: Partindo da permissão da paciente por meio do Termo de Consentimento Livre e Esclarecido (TCLE) em partilhar sua imagem para devido fim, o presente estudo trata de um relato de caso clínico de cunho analítico descritivo (Pereira et al., 2018), realizado em uma clínica particular na cidade de Maceió-AL. Relato de caso: Paciente C.A.S., gênero feminino, 30 anos, apresentou-se à clínica, insatisfeita com seu sorriso e como ele se harmonizava com sua face. Considerações Finais: O caso da paciente foi concluído de forma satisfatória atendendo aos seus objetivos e partindo dos pressupostos estéticos e de harmonia do sorriso pregados pela odontologia restauradora e estética e pelo visagismo. Sendo assim, quando bem planejado o tratamento odontológico associado aos recursos tecnológicos e a arte do visagismo confere ao paciente melhorias em seu convívio social, um sorriso único e que transmite valores humanos.

“Speak your word and break!”

Abstract By tracing an alternative aesthetics of decomposition and fragmentation, this article offers a new understanding of the literary and poetological strategies Knut Hamsun uses to create a disintegrating text cosmos wherein the idea of ‘creation out of nothing’ (creatio ex nihilo) is one key to artistic originality. The article explores the interdependence of different notions of decline and shows that the image of the (biblical) fall is particularly important to the poetics and aesthetic structure of Hamsun’s Hunger (Sult, 1890). Around 1900, ideas of wholeness crumble, a decomposition which is reflected in the well-established philosophical and anthropological experiments of Nietzsche, Bourget and Simmel. Taking some of their aesthetic assumptions as a point of departure, the present paper argues that Hamsun’s novel offers an aesthetic variation on the decline of unity-based concepts, ranging from the subject to religious belief as well as to traditional storytelling.

Visions of the Urban Green

The article investigates urban gardening in Turin with ethnography, historical analysis and photography, using both the authors’ photography and sources from social media and private archives. The authors collaborate to analyse ‘community’ gardening through a critical anthropological perspective which centres on the hegemonic power of aesthetic assumptions about the urban green. As a post-industrial, multicultural city, Turin illuminates the dialectic of gentrification vis-à-vis socioeconomic and cultural diversity, which is a crucial dynamic of many urban renewal trends towards ‘green cities’. We highlight the homogeneity of an aesthetic regime vis-à-vis the diversity of ‘skilled visions’ of social actors and its restraining effects on participatory governance. We contribute to ongoing debates in urban anthropology and visual studies, concerned with urban regeneration agendas in the de-industrializing cities of the Global North.

À procura da poesia em uma novela de Guimarães Rosa

A partir de alguns pressupostos estéticos da Análise Dialógica do Discurso (ADD), este artigo discute o estatuto poético da obra de João Guimarães Rosa a partir de alguns discursos presentes na novela “Cara-de-Bronze”. Tomamos como base para nossas reflexões, em primeiro lugar, a impossibilidade de distinção entre a linguagem poética e a linguagem cotidiana, ideias caras ao Círculo de Bakhtin. Também recorremos a Bakhtin no que concerne ao objeto estético e suas relações inextricáveis com a vida, transfiguradas esteticamente para outro plano axiológico (plano dos valores). Propomos também neste artigo um esboço do que nomeamos de teoria dialógica da imagem poética.

Dimensões políticas e estéticas do trabalho de João das Neves

Este artigo abordará o processo de direção de João das Neves no que tange a formação de atores não profissionais. O foco de análise será “O Último Carro”, peça de grande projeção nos anos 1970. Participaram dela diversos sujeitos oriundos das classes populares e sem experiência em atuação. Investigou-se como o trabalho foi conduzido a partir de pressupostos políticos e estéticos encontrados ao longo da obra do diretor. 

Estética e simetria nas leis de Newton: uma análise de alguns livros didáticos usados na formação inicial de professores de física

Levando-se em consideração uma concepção de educação voltada para a promoção do ser humano, este trabalho destaca a busca das bases estéticas e simétricas dos fenômenos nas leis de Newton e como ou se essas bases estão presentes em alguns livros didáticos de física utilizados em cursos de licenciatura na área, de modo a propor uma reflexão sobre suas possíveis implicações para o ensino das leis de Newton. Essas bases, de natureza epistemológica, relacionadas à homogeneidade e isotropia do espaço e à irreversibilidade do tempo, são fundamentais para que se compreendam os seus três princípios fundamentais: conservação da quantidade de movimento linear, angular e da energia. Para tanto, realizamos uma pesquisa historiográfica acerca de tais conceitos na obra de diferentes pensadores, buscando identificar pressupostos estéticos possivelmente utilizados na fundamentação dessas leis. Esses primeiros resultados foram utilizados em uma segunda etapa da pesquisa na proposição de instrumentos de análise sobre tais conteúdos nos livros didáticos. A seguir, foram analisados cinco livros utilizados na formação de professores de física. Constatamos que os livros não discutem as leis de Newton na perspectiva dos conceitos de estética e simetria, apresentando uma versão naturalizada, linear e de caráter enciclopédico dos conceitos físicos referentes às leis de Newton, bem diferente do que propõem os autores que discutem estética e simetria.

(Lu)gu: Leguminosas que brilham no escuro: Desenvolvimento de um produto à base de leguminosas

A low consumption of pulses in Portugal, especially among the youngest population sector, and the lack of market availability of healthy products with legumes, led to the development of this project: materials, forms and interactions, coupled with social, ethical and aesthetic assumptions, in order to create a food experience with legumes, which is intended to stimulate every sense, but mostly taste and vision. Knowledge about and consumption of legumes were analysed and a visual and graphic study of commerce and online content was carried out using idea generation techniques, based on this creative process in design. Thus, the product developed is a cocoa “churro”, with toppings produced from leguminous plants that fluoresce under black light, a sweet snack, nutritionally balanced and very appealing to young people, aiming to stimulate the consumption of pulses.

On the Aesthetics and Working Process of Elena Mendoza’s Music Theatre

In this paper, I will address basic aesthetic assumptions of the music theatre of Berlin-based Spanish composer Elena Mendoza and will outline the strategies of her working process in which she combines traditional score writing with a collaborative approach known from contemporary theatre or dance. I will discuss these issues referring to her two major music theatre pieces: Niebla after the novel by Miguel de Unamuno (premièred in Dresden in 2007), and La Ciudad de las Mentiras based on four short stories by Juan Carlos Onetti premièred at the Teatro Real in Madrid in 2017. As co-author of these two pieces, I give insight into our collaboration and decision-making process. In so doing I write within the methodological framework of autoethnography and participant observation.

Kulturowy wymiar designu – między estetyzacją a odpowiedzialnością

When it comes to design, are aesthetic and ethical values oppositional to each other as they have been considered to be, or are they compatible and complementary? Design theorists and critics often distance themselves from aesthetic assumptions, focusing on ethical foundations and values based on duties towards another person (designer for the user) or responsibility. Alicja Głutkowska-Polniak However, aesthetic values are clearly inscribed in the field of design. Firstly, because design is related to the appearance (aestheticization of reality) – form, harmony, and proportion between elements – but also to manipulation or simulation (aestheticization of design). In design as a cultural area, values interpenetrate and, at the same time, are ethical, social and aesthetic in their form and contexts; the aesthetic values especially permeate everything. They are not isolated in any separate order but rather they combine with other types of values.

Introduction

The word “Anthropocene” appeared for the first time in printed form in 2000. It was introduced by the Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen and the U.S. limnologist Eugene Stoermer in a two-page paper jointly published in the issue number 41 of the IGBP Newsletter. They coined the neologism to express the idea shared by both that we have already entered a new unprecedented age in which our species has become a major geological agent.
 Since then, a veritable explosion in the number of publications dedicated to the concept has occurred. Taking in consideration only the data provided by Web of Science, until 2010 around 100 books and papers were published about the Anthropocene, in 2015 that number increased eightfold, and in the last three years again this number has doubled, making a total that goes beyond 2000 publications in less than two decades.
 Another thing to be noticed is the broadening of the discussion of the concept from the Geosciences (aiming at its explanation, i.e., at finding out if there is enough reliable evidence available for its formal incorporation in the scientific discourse) to the Social Sciences (seeking its understanding, that is, the uncovering of the historical reasons that led to its emergence and what political, economic, social and cultural consequences derive from it) and to the Humanities (attempting at a critique of its theoretical and practical implications). This is giving rise to the formation of the multidisciplinary field of the Anthropocene studies.
 The Anthropocene did not go unnoticed to the philosophers too, leading them to inquire its ontological, epistemological, moral and aesthetic assumptions and implications. Moreover, because it seems to be provoking a deep transformation of Philosophy itself, a sense of urgency to think it through is now arising in the wider philosophical community.
 With the purpose of producing a relevant contribution to the ongoing debate on the theme, within the 9th Braga Meetings on Ethics and Political Philosophy (BMEPP 9), between June 11 and 12, a special session with the title “Philosophical challenges of the Anthropocene” was organized. This dossier includes a selection of the best papers, from more than two dozen, delivered during that event.
 The first is authored by one of the keynote speakers of the BMEPP 9, Professor Darrel Moellendorf (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt), and has the title “Three Interpretations of the Anthropocene: Hope and Anxiety at the End of Nature”. We are very grateful to Professor Moellendorf for having had the generosity to offer us his text for publication in this dossier.
 In his paper he argues that there are three plausible interpretations, or attempts to make sense of the Anthropocene as an ongoing process: the Promethean, generating great expectations about our capacities to manage the planet; the destructive, provoking considerable anxiety regarding our environmental-civilizational destiny; and the inegalitarian, raising growing concern about our collective coexistence. According to him, any of them is equally plausible, and it is quite difficult to predict which trajectory the Anthropocene will take in the future.
 The second contribution, from Cláudia Toriz Ramos (Fernando Pessoa University), entitled “Ecopolitics and global security: from discourse to policies”, shows, with great clarity, how the ecopolitical discourse has been crafted, assimilated to public policies, and ultimately contributed to the development of international and global security policies that pay increasing attention to environmental sustainability and security in contemporary times.
 Bernhard Sylla (University of Minho) in “Anti-dualism in the discourse on the Anthropocene” carried out a thorough analysis and criticism of the more or less widely adopted claim among scholars of the “three cultures”, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities, that the recognition of the Anthropocene implies the obsolescence of philosophically entrenched dualisms, such as nature vs. culture, social system vs. ecological system, or subject vs. object, and the resulting need to overcome that way of thinking that is incapable of coping with the environmental challenges of today. Focusing on the criticism that Andrew Feenberg and Gernot Böhme addressed at Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour`s purported forms of anti-dualism, he argues that although valuable it is not sufficiently convincing.
 The last piece, “The cosmopolitan and environmental challenges of the idea of Europe in the age of the Antropocene”, penned by Bruno Rego (University of Minho), attempts a reassessment of the principles of classical contractualism and sketches a revamp of the idea of Europe for the 21st century in response to the problems triggered by the anthropogenic global environmental crisis. He also proposes that cities in the EU space can be thought of as cosmopolitan political agents and foster an effective socioecological contribution to the Anthropocene challenges.

Taking Oliphant Seriously: A Country Gentleman and his Family

Despite its apparently conventional form, despite its persistent working out of variations on the traditional marriage plot, and despite Margaret Oliphant’s excessive literary productivity, much of her work bends the dominant conventions of Victorian realist domestic fiction. Her self-conscious manipulation of conventional forms, like the Bildungsroman , significantly challenges reigning interpretations of Victorian realism, and points toward more radical formal changes that came with modernism. Focusing on one of her lesser known novels, A Country Gentleman and His Family , this essay examines how Oliphant both uses and modifies the dominant forms, largely by emphasizing the perspective of women inside conventionally male genres, challenging both moral and aesthetic assumptions.

Beyond Iconic Elusions: The Icon’s Excess in Eavan Boland’s Object Lessons and Poetry

This article argues that a clue to understanding a paradoxical ambivalence in Boland’s work: her wariness of “objectifying” something or someone for political or religious purposes, while at the same time she believes that attention to an object can indeed open up new ways of seeing. An understanding of the Eastern Orthodox theology of icons is both sympathetic to Boland’s aesthetic assumptions, and also contributes to the critical discussion of absences and presences in Boland’s poetry and prose. The article employs Jean Luc Marion’s phenomenological discussion of icons as it considers the processes whereby both reader and poet create and respond to an object’s “saturated” presence.

What are you looking at?: Staring down notions of the disabled body in dance

Abstract This article considers the display of the disabled body in dance performance. I use Heidi Latsky’s Five Open Mouths as an example of how staging physical otherness can be an act of provocation that reframes conventional perceptions of the disabled dancing body. I draw on cultural critic Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s construct of the ‘baroque stare’ as a prolonged and engaged visual encounter between seer and seen. Used productively in dance, this stare helps viewers recognize how they experience seeing and holds potential as a generative site for renegotiating social, cultural and aesthetic assumptions about the disabled body.

Reading 'The Monster': The Interpretation of Authorial Intention in the Criticism of Narrative Fiction

This book-length paper is a Brown University dissertation in American literature and literary theory. A theoretical analysis of the concept of authorial intention in narrative fiction, and of its structural and communicational implications, is followed by an in-depth examination of Stephen Crane's novella 'The Monster' (1898) as a case study in both structural analysis and critical controversy. The critical responses to this work are examined with regard to their ideological and aesthetic assumptions, thus showing the relevance of the model proposed and providing a detailed analysis of the way in which the meaning and structure of a text are interactionally constructed.

Nation and post-nationalism: the contemporary modernist films of Carlos Reygadas

Art cinema has been categorized as international in terms of its influences and reach. Set in opposition to Hollywood and to commercial cinema in general, art cinema simultaneously embodies the idea of the national and the international. It historically figures in discussions of high versus low art, commercial versus non-commercial, and international versus national cultural production. Recent scholarship on art cinema reconsiders the aesthetic, economic and geo-political assumptions of this category in response to its contemporary resurgence among filmmakers working in Taiwan, Iran, Mexico, Thailand, China, Japan and Hong Kong. This article considers two feature films of Mexican director Carlos Reygadas – Japón (2002) and Stellet Licht (2007) – as examples of contemporary art cinema, a category whose meaning is interrogated in relation to questions of nationalism and globalization as well as national histories of film aesthetics. Specifically, I ask how we might consider the relationship of modernist films to the concepts of the nation, national belonging and of national cinema in the context of post-nationalism through an analysis of Reygadas’ indebtedness to classical Mexican cinema.