Aesthetic Realism Research Articles

Analog fictions for the digital age: literary realism and photographic discourses in novels after 2000

Both realist, post-postmodernist aesthetics in the twenty-first century and the legacy of analog photography in its recent digital incarnation depend on an aesthetics of trust and a sense of contingent referentiality. Julia Breitbach's innovative study demonstrates how current photographic discourse may be used as an illuminating critical idiom for the analysis of recent forms of literary realism, thus proposing a photographic hermeneutics for the study of literature. Along with a thorough critical investigation of both fields, Breitbach offers a pioneering theoretical exploration of analog and digital photography based on recent thing theory, which she then applies to in-depth analyses of realist aesthetics in selected post-millennial novels by Don DeLillo, Michael Ondaatje, and Ali Smith, yielding fresh perspectives on the remediation between photography and literature in the twenty-first century. An original contribution to the study of contemporary Anglophone literatures with an interdisciplinary appeal, this study will be of interest especially to scholars and students in Anglophone literary studies, comparative literature, cultural studies, and media studies. Julia Breitbach is Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Constance, Germany.

To Witness Mimesis: The Politics, Ethics, and Aesthetics of Testimonial Theatre in Through the Wire

This paper examines an Australian “verbatim play” about asylum seekers, Through the Wire , in order to consider the relationship between realism and witnessing in the theatre. It argues that verbatim or testimonial theatre is better understood as a form of realism than as a form of documentary theatre, as is usually the case. Current scholarship in both theatre and trauma studies criticizes realist approaches principally on ethical grounds, without necessarily accounting for a play’s political effects. Through an analysis of Through the Wire ’s production and reception, I suggest that, while testimonial theatre may be ethically problematic, it can also be politically efficacious, precisely because of its realist aesthetics.

To Witness Mimesis: The Politics, Ethics, and Aesthetics of Testimonial Theatre inThrough the Wire

ABSTRACT:This paper examines an Australian “verbatim play” about asylum seekers, Through the Wire, in order to consider the relationship between realism and witnessing in the theatre. It argues that verbatim or testimonial theatre is better understood as a form of realism than as a form of documentary theatre, as is usually the case. Current scholarship in both theatre and trauma studies criticizes realist approaches principally on ethical grounds, without necessarily accounting for a play’s political effects. Through an analysis of Through the Wire’s production and reception, I suggest that, while testimonial theatre may be ethically problematic, it can also be politically efficacious, precisely because of its realist aesthetics.

Love Thy Fatherland as Thyself: Patriotism and Passing in Herman Bang

Love Thy Fatherland as ThyselfPatriotism and Passing in Herman Bang Olivia Gunn For, just as it is only by contact with the art of foreign nations that the art of a country gains that individual and separate life that we call nationality, so, by curious inversion, it is only by intensifying his own personality that the critic can interpret the personality and work of others, and the more strongly this personality enters into the interpretation, the more real the interpretation becomes, the more satisfying, the more convincing, the more true. (Wilde 2003, 1131)1 It might initially seem strange to label Herman Bang as a patriot given the cosmopolitanism of his biography, the persistent rhetorical marking of the homosexual as a threat to the nation, and the prevailing figure of the patriot as both masculine and sure. However, Bang’s concern for Denmark was persistent, and his varied remarks on the state of the nation reveal that cosmopolitanism is opposed to provincialism rather than to patriotism.2 For Bang, both patriotism and [End Page 183] cosmopolitanism turned on the theatrical or on a performance of the menneskelig (human) that is always marked by a degree of tragic contradiction and displacement. For the homosexual subject, cosmopolitanism was often linked to the practice of passing: a project of aesthetics (the art of acting) and of survival (the staging of queer life). Bang’s particular brand of patriotism was infused with a melancholy resignation and based in narratives of nederlaget (defeat); but if he insisted on his own queer exile, he also granted himself a critical perspective on—and love for—the nation via this exile. Perhaps most importantly, his treatment of the nation involved a subtle resistance to the formula that the nation equals the reproductive community. This article focuses on Bang’s self-representation, realist aesthetics, and theater theory, reading them in concert with questions of nation, exclusion, belonging, and passing. The queerness that permeates Bang’s aesthetics is located in the meeting place between his notions of self-exposure (a kind of stylized self-outing that is nonetheless realist) and his understanding of the non-reproductive subject’s relationship to the nation. Self-exposure in Bang is a passing that can never wholly succeed, a constant border crossing between the foreign and the familiar, an unmasking that requires a mask. His self-figuring as a patriotic servant of Denmark in letters to Peter Nansen, his introduction to the 1889 novel Tine, and his posthumously published essay on homosexuality, Gedanken zum Sexualitätsproblem (1922), reveal this (un)masking as a constant in his aesthetics. Importantly, I discuss Bang’s literary aesthetics in this article in order to better understand his broader aesthetics rather than to set up a reading of his fiction. As will be seen, when discussing the homosexual as a novelist and as an actor, Bang lays bare, without really intending to, a rift in realism that splits at the concept of the staged. Through a version of Oscar Wilde’s “curious inversion,” Bang critiques provincialism and the normative figure of the nationalist by both wielding and succumbing to his position as a stranger within. In much criticism on the literature of the Scandinavian modern breakthrough, Bang’s figure serves as a point of confluence for a variety of modern issues: his aesthetics of “Uro og Mangfoldighed” (1979, 14) [unrest and multiplicity], his depiction of non-reproductive subjects in literature, and his self-figuring or self-staging come together with contemporary European understandings of heredity and gender, and of the homosexual as member of a fundamentally cosmopolitan race: “den fransk-jødiskeuropæisk-unationale-radikal-fandenivoldsk-liderlige retning” [End Page 184] (Knudsen 2008, 173) [the French-Jewish-European-antinational-radical-devil-may-care-depraved trend]. Although his homosexuality was an open secret in Denmark, his own references were oblique, even in private correspondence: Jeg er altid sky for at tale om de Punkter i mine nærmestes Liv, hvor jeg ikke kan kende fuldstændigt. Forelskelsen er et af disse Punkter. Før jeg har set en af mine Bekendte beruset, ved jeg ikke, hvorledes han ter sig som fuld—hvordan Kærligheden laver Jer—hvad I...

Von einer poetik der drastik zum entwurf eines »Realismus der Globalisierung« am Beispiel der Romane von Terézia Mora

In light of this (not so) new century, there is good reason to consider the rise of a »realism of globalization«. As the former leading agent of modelling alternative worlds, the tradition of the realistic novel has long lost ground against the dominance of new, »visual novels« (i.e. The Wire) with their own approach towards realistic aesthetics. What is the role that literature can play in this transformative, mediatic field? Which originality can it claim? The objective of this (two part) study is to respond to these concerns by example. The case is made for two novels, Alle Tage (2004) and Der einzige Mann auf dem Kontinent (2009), by the German-Hungarian writer Terezia Mora, which might function as a showcase for the ways in which contemporary fiction responds to and contributes in shaping the discourse of globalization. The first part of this study is presented hereby.

Konsep “Nyari” dalam Ranah Estetika Pertunjukan Wayang Golek

ABSTRACTThis paper is a part (portion) of one topic of dissertation research by the author as a preparation for the final exams of doctoral program. The focus of the study in this paper is directed to study aspects of the aesthetic values of the elements contained in the puppet show as a puppeteer working area in performing his style. The aesthetic analytical theory which is used in this study is the concept of "Nyari" that may indicate the value or aesthetic qualities of an art work. The aesthetic reality that can be found in the form of a working of a puppet show as the result of the puppeteer creative manner, indicates the wealth of traditional values as a priceless source of artistic inspiration for the artists-creators.Keywords: Wayang Golek, concept of “Nyari”, performance working ABSTRAKTulisan ini merupakan sempalan (bagian) dari salah satu topik bahasan hasil penelitian disertasi yang penulis lakukan sebagai bahan persiapan menempuh ujian akhir program doktor. Fokus pengkajian pada tulisan ini diarahkan kepada aspek penelaahan nilai-nilai estetik yang terdapat pada unsur-unsur pertunjukan wayang golek sebagai aspek wilayah garap dalang dalam menyajikan gaya pertunjukannya. Pisau bedah analisis estetik yang dijadikan pemberangkatan pada pengkajian ini adalah konsep “nyari” yang dapat menunjukkan nilai atau kualitas estetik dari sebuah karya seni. Realitas estetik yang dapat dijumpai pada bentuk garap pertunjukan wayang hasil dari olah kreatif seorang dalang tersebut, mengindikasikan kekayaan nilai-nilai tradisi sebagai sumber inspirasi berkesenian bagi para seniman-kreator yang tak ternilaikan keberadaannya.Kata kunci: wayang golek, konsep “nyari”, dan garap pertunjukan

Faithful Mechanisms

A Bazinian commitment to cinematic realism, grounded as it is in the ontology of the photograph, sets up the aesthetic ambition of cinema as irreparably opposed to the structures and ambitions of high modernism – whether high modernism be taken to have its essence in formal experiment, medium specificity, or negation. Bazin himself licenses such an opposition, but the sense of a divide here is not his alone: there are structural and grammatical reasons why realism (photographic or otherwise) and modernism appear as incompatible. Yet however strong this opposition is – and however much he himself sometimes endorses it – Bazin equally offers us resources for closing the gap. In his distinction between aesthetic and psychological realism, his sense of the importance of automatism in cinema's significance, and finally in his insistence that true representation is achieved through poetry, Bazin uncovers a concept of realism as transformative, not transparent, fidelity. This idea of poetic, formalist realism allows for a tentative reconciliation between modernism and realism generally. However, it does so by giving up on a robust idea of photographic transparency as the basis of cinema's power, and thus threatens to efface its specificity as a medium. Stanley Cavell's redescription of medium as automatism helps uncover a Bazinian version of cinematic specificity, one which allows for cinema's appetite for realism without reducing that capacity to a mere inflexible fact of the medium.

Transgredience in Toward Debesija by Bronius Radzevičius

The aim of this article is to present the transgredience theory of Russian scientist Mikhail Bakhtin as a compromise of the traditional and postmodern views of literature. Traditional criticism, which here is defined as a metaphysical view of literature as a subject’s self-representation, rejects the postmodern idea of the subject’s death as nihilistic blather. On the contrary, the postmodern attitude denies the subject’s identity as a centre of literature. The theory of transgredience admits that subjectivity is not dead, but rejects it as a constant and finite identity. It makes it possible to join the traditional and postmodern attitudes.The first section deals with these aspects of transgredience. Such categories as time, space, author, hero, exteriority, and inner world are defined. It is stressed that the word man, which traditionally is understood as a subject of constant identity, in Bakhtin’s theory means the possibility to create that identity. This possibility becomes aesthetic reality only when an author—the principle of organizing language—exteriorizes and, through exteriorization, materializes experience in a hero. Exteriorization and the separation of man-authorhero are stressed as the main aspects of the theory of transgredience.The forms of transgredience that are expressed in Radzevičius’s novels are analyzed in the second section. The texts of this author come into the center of analysis because of their intensive correlations of experience and language. It is considered that the best way to present the theory of transgredience as a compromise of traditional and postmodern thought is to use it in an interpretation of the texts of those authors who not only join experience and language into an intense unity, but even feel the boundaries of representing experience through language. Radzevičius is one of those authors.Even though Lithuanian literary critics sees him as a master of creating unity between word and feeling, his texts, as a separate world which is governed by the rules of language, reveal that sometimes feeling absorbs language and novels becomes non-esthetic acts. Such situations are called disturbance of transgredience and have two directions: a) hero absorbs author and becomes an author of his own; b) author absorbs hero and makes him a figure of representing the ideology of the author as a living person. Both directions are described through analyses of certain novels.

Embodying the evictees of Asian Olympic cities: Video documentaries of demolition and relocation in seoul and Beijing

Preparations for the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and the Beijing Olympics in 2008 involved the large-scale demolition of dilapidated houses in the old towns of Seoul and Beijing and the forced relocation of their residents as the urban poor. Two activist video documentaries in South Korea and China, Kim Dong-won’s Sanggyedong Olympics (1988), Seoul, South Korea, Purn-yeongsang) and Ou Ning’s Meishi Street (2006), Beijing, China, Alternative Archive), bear witness to those detrimental effects that the urban transformation linked to the two cities’ hosting of the Olympics had on their communities. This article examines the ways in which the two film-makers used the capacities of video technology, such as spontaneity and portability, and the relative ease with which the amateur can access and handle it, to capture the truth of demolition and relocation in the observational, realist aesthetics, and to develop alternative modes of documentary subjectivity for representing the poor residents’ embodied knowledge and emotion. The use of an amateurish female voice-over in Sanggye-dong Olympics, and the casting of a male resident as an amateur documentarian who operates a video camera in Meishi Street testify to the extent to which video technology enabled the film-makers to develop the ‘participatory’ and ‘performative’ modes of documentary in which the residents could be empowered to speak for themselves. It is through the modes of subjectivity, this article argues, that the two political documentaries succeed in bringing into the public consciousness the interests and issues of the social actors who are neglected by the host countries’ official media and authorities.

Peripheral Realism, Millennial Capitalism, and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666

In Roberto Bolaño’s posthumous magnum opus, 2666, a type of peripheral realism in which realist aesthetics are impurely intermingled with the irreal is crucial to the novel’s registration of the uneven structural relations of capitalist modernity. This essay explores three layers of the novel’s conception of reality in the Mexican borderlands: first, the Ciudad Juárez femicides as objects of representation; second, the economic conditions underlying the systemic violence perpetrated against female maquiladora workers and the rift between labor and capital; and third, the relation of art to ideology and reality and the artist’s problematic role in representing either the murders or their structural causes. Deckard argues that 2666 is a “world-system novel” that reformulates realist aesthetics to interrogate the ideological nature of art and the limits of realism while encoding the conditions of millennial capitalism in the semiperiphery.

Matter-Reality in Cinema: Realism, Counter-Realism and the Avant-Gardes

The present text investigates the dialectics of reality and materiality in cin­ema theory and practice. It attempts an epistemological and meta-semiotic approach. Based on Louis Hjelmslev's model of sign-function, it reformu­lates both the haunting of cinema by reality and the avant-gardes' focus on materiality as problematising the relation of cinematic semiosis to the exo-semiotic [1] realm. It starts by laying down the philosophical background of the issues investigated. It then explores the epistemological and ethico-political parameters of the debate over aesthetic realism. Finally, it discusses avant-garde cinema's techniques of drawing attention to the expression-plane, attempting their provisional systematisation. It suggests that avant-garde interest in materiality constitutes a stance against the ideology of re­alism, proposing an alternative relation to reality. [1] Exo-semiotic means outside of the semiotic. For the exact use of the term exo-semiotic, as well as for the full analysis of the semiotic model on which this text is based, see Wallden, Reaching Toward the Outside: Saussure, Hjelmslev and Cinema Semiotics, in the present volume.

A silent revolution: ‘Image Theatre’ as a system of decolonisation

This article summarises the ways in which Image Theatre, a practice originally developed by Augusto Boal which continues to be developed in the hands of applied theatre practitioners and critical arts educators worldwide, can be used as a pedagogical and dramaturgical system of decolonisation at the level of communities and individuals. Through reference to two examples from my own work, I argue in this article that Image Theatre is a unique cultural practice that can be used to facilitate counter-discursive stories that are shaped by participants’ invitation to play in the space between aesthetic representation and social reality. In this way, Image Theatre may invoke an in-between space similar to the post-colonial concept of hybridity which offers educators a way of transforming and reinventing meaning as well as creating new strategies for decolonising practice.

Can Folk Aesthetics Ground Aesthetic Realism?

ABSTRACTWe challenge an argument that aims to support Aesthetic Realism by claiming, first, that sense is realist about aesthetic judgments because it considers that aesthetic judgments can be right or wrong, and, second, that because Aesthetic Realism comes from and accounts for aesthetics, it is the best aesthetic theory available. We empirically evaluate this argument by probing whether ordinary people with no training whatsoever in the subtle debates of aesthetic philosophy consider their aesthetic judgments as right or wrong. Having shown that the results do not support the main premise of the argument, we discuss the consequences for Aesthetic Realism and address possible objections to our study.1. Introduction1.1 The common sense argument a ground for Aesthetic Realism?Several arguments are used to support Aesthetic Realism. Among these, one consists in appealing to aesthetics, that is, to common-sense beliefs about aesthetic judgments, and more precisely to the fact that lay-persons are natural normativists.1Traditionally (at least since Kant), philosophers consider that aesthetic judgments possess at least the following features: aestheticism (i.e., aesthetic judgments ascribe aesthetic values to things, persons, and events) and (i.e., aesthetic judgments for universal validity in the sense that when one formulates an aesthetic judgment, she considers her judgment as being either correct or incorrect so that, in a contradictory aesthetic debate, each side believes that at most one of them is right). Philosophical theories according to which aesthetic judgments actually possess such correctness (or incorrectness) are normativist theories. Others, which hold that aesthetic judgments do not possess this feature, we call skeptic theories.2 The claim according to which aesthetic judgments possess normativity is thus equivalent to the claim that laypeople are normativist.As such, Aesthetic Realism is a normativist theory. Reference to and folk normativism in aesthetic judgments appears in an argument with two steps for Aesthetic Realism, which is summed up by Zangwill (2001).Both realism and non-realism are on a par as far as the experiential aspect of aesthetics is concerned. But when it comes to explaining the of aesthetic judgements, the realist is ahead [...] I conclude that folk aesthetics is thus realist. Whether or not the tacit folk metaphysical commitment to aesthetic facts or states of affair is justified is another matter, but our aesthetic judgments presuppose that metaphysics. What is not an option is holding some non-realist view, be it Humean, Kantian or dispositional, while we can unproblematically retain our ordinary practice of making aesthetic judgments.The first step states that laypeople are normativist when it comes to aesthetic judgments (or, to put it in different words, that is indeed a property of lay aesthetic judgments). Accordance with folk aesthetics is capital for Aesthetic Realism. Indeed, it is important for Aesthetic Realism not to conflict with ordinary judgments for two reasons. First, by doing so, it compels the concurrent theories (those which agree with Aesthetic Skepticism) to endorse the argumentative burden of proving that and explaining why laypeople are wrong. Second, it allows Realism to compensate for its metaphysical disadvantage. Indeed, Aesthetic Realism is more metaphysically demanding than Aesthetic Skepticism because the former appeals to aesthetic entities,3 whereas the latter does not. Thus, if it were shown that Aesthetic Realism conflicts with sense, then motivations for holding such a theory would be very thin because, in this case, Aesthetic Realism would be at the same time more metaphysically demanding and in need of an error theory.The purpose of the second step is to show that Aesthetic realism is the best theory available. …

HOW OLD! HOW NEW!: SOME NOTES ON SCHOENBERG'S PETRARCH SETTING FOR THE ‘SERENADE’, OP. 24

AbstractAs the first systematic 12-tone composition, the Petrarch movement from Schoenberg's Serenade has been associated with ‘newness’. Yet it has conservative features. Medieval notions of isomelody and isorhythm, as well as Renaissance concepts of paralleling a poem's prosody and emotional content, are here. Moreover, 12-tone composition itself is an evolution of ‘Chromatic Completion’ – a technique already flourishing in Haydn and Mozart. Ultimately, what matters most is Schoenberg's understanding of the aesthetics of love. To appreciate this, the essay makes use of the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism, founded by the great American poet and scholar Eli Siegel. Beauty, he taught, is ‘a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves’. And love, he explained, has an aesthetic basis: it is ‘proud need’. This essay indicates technical ways in which Schoenberg illustrates the truth of these concepts.

World Cinema: Realismus, Evidenz, Präsenz

ZusammenfassungDas Weltkino (in der Nachfolge des nationalen Kinos) hat sich seit jeher gegenüber Hollywood durch seinen grösseren Realismus abgegrenzt. Ob man an den italienischen Neo-Realismus denkt, den semi-dokumentarischen Cinéma Vérité-Stil der französischen Nouvelle Vague oder aber an den klinisch sondierenden psychologischen Realismus eines Ingmar Bergmann: unsere Vorstellung von einem »repräsentativen« oder »authentischen« Filmschaffen sind im Allgemeinen an irgendeine Form von realistischer Ästhetik gebunden. Gleichzeitig thematisiert das Weltkino gegenwärtig immer häufiger, dass wir im Kino des 21. Jahrhunderts nicht mehr länger unseren Augen trauen können. Während filmische Verfahren, wie etwa statische Kameraeinstellungen, Schärfentiefe oder Plansequenzen - alles traditionelle Kennzeichen für eine realistische Filmästhetik und für Techniken des filmischen Dokumentarismus - immer noch Verwendung finden, werden sie heute jedoch für andere Zwecke eingesetzt. Materialistische Kritiken des filmischen Realismus im klassischen Hollywood-Kino orientieren sich nicht mehr an einem Brecht'schen Verständ nis einer realistischen Ästhetik als Verfremdungseffekt, noch eifern sie dem politischen Realismus des »Third Cinema« der 1970er Jahre nach. Stattdessen scheinen diejenigen filmischen Techniken in den Vordergrund zu rücken, die in der Konstruktion kinematografischer Repräsentationen auf Elemente des Fantastischen und der Magie zurückgreifen, die von Geistergeschichten und spektralen Erscheinungen genährt werden. Diese Filme spielen mit linearen Zeitstrukturen, Erinnerungen und vertrauten chronologischen Ordnungen, und machen somit unweigerlich die (Sinnes-)Wahrnehmung selbst zum eigentlich zentralen Thema. Der Essay stellt theoretische und historische Zusammenhänge für die ästhetischen Transformationen innerhalb des Weltkinos vor, und diskutiert darüber hinaus am Beispiel von Filmen des koreanischen Regisseurs Kim Ki-Duk die konzeptionellen Verschiebungen in der Vorstellung von Realismus als Teil der ›Welterzeugung durch Bilder‹. Dies könnte schließlich auch dabei helfen, umstrittene Begriffe wie ›Evidenz‹, ›Authentizität‹ und (Zuschauer-)›Präsenz‹ zu klären.

A fotografia e o processo de construção social da memória

The photograph as a document is almost always linked to memory, a visual memory that portrays, re-signifies and re-contextualizes the social action of the look. In this sense the photographer is a social actor who, among other things, intrumentalizes the look by highlighting aesthetic realities in a field of particular perception that becomes public, particularly today in a post-conventional social context. This paper reflects on this process of post-conventional change in which visual culture is situated and in which photography and memory are increasingly involved, weaving new identities.Key words: photograph, memory, identity.

The Trinity River Plays (review)

Reviewed by: The Trinity River Plays Colleen Daniher The Trinity River Plays. By Regina Taylor. Directed by Ethan McSweeny. Dallas Theater Center and Goodman Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Chicago. 16 January 2011. The search for rootedness links the three plays that comprise Regina Taylor's The Trinity River Plays: Jarfly, Rain, and Ghoststory. Centered on the psychic and physical separation from and eventual return of Iris Spears to her family, Taylor's trilogy uses roots as a central metaphor to understand the cyclical yet sustaining role that family plays in the life of an individual. At a combined running time of over three hours, Taylor's digging spreads itself wide, but perhaps not deep enough. And yet, in its refusal to conceptualize "roots" beyond the myopic world of the Spears family unit, the trilogy speaks to a political present that is increasingly unwilling to address race as a framework that continues to structure everyday life, including the everyday experience of family relations. Set in the declining years of the civil rights and Black Power movements and in the long shadow of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's pathologizing condemnation of the black family in 1965, the Click for larger view View full resolution Karen Aldridge (Iris) in The Trinity River Plays. (Photo: Brandon Thibodeaux.) [End Page 642] Click for larger view View full resolution Karen Aldridge (Iris), Jacqueline Williams (Daisy), Jefferson A. Russell (Ray Earl), and Christiana Clark (Jasmine) in The Trinity River Plays. (Photo: Brandon Thibodeaux.) Goodman production staged a strange elision of race politics, even as it took the black matriarchal family as its central focus. What resulted was a production caught between performing a multigenerational story of black women's struggle and continued survival and insisting that this story transcend race. As staged by director Ethan McSweeny, this latest offering from Taylor, one of the nation's leading African American playwrights and performers, thus provoked critical reflection on the influence of colorblind thinking on contemporary African American theatre. The three plays follow Iris (Karen Aldridge) for seventeen years, from the morning of her seventeenth birthday in 1978 (Jarfly) to her return visit home to Oak Cliff, Dallas in 1995 (Rain). Upon the discovery of her mother Rose's diagnosis of terminal ovarian cancer, Iris's visit turns into an extended stay that carries over into the aftermath of her mother's passing (Ghoststory). Two major occurrences punctuate the extended narrative as it unfolds over the three plays: the rape of Iris by her uncle Ray Earl on her seventeenth birthday in Jarfly, and the aforementioned diagnosis of Iris's mother with advanced-stage ovarian cancer seventeen years later in Rain. The last play in the trilogy, Ghoststory, sees Iris reconcile with her ex-husband Frank, as well as come to terms with her mother's death with the help of her Aunt Daisy and cousin Jasmine. The seventeen-year chronology of the plays reflects the seventeen-year lifespan of the cicada, or jarfly, whose symbolic death and rebirth is mapped onto the "bug-eyed" Iris. Guided by Taylor's script, the Goodman production exhibited the realist aesthetics of the self-contained domestic drama; the set design by Todd Rosenthal was meticulously detailed, from the downstage garden in which Iris and Rose actually dig up soil, to the unanswered whistling kettle that signaled the decline of Iris's mother. This realism highlighted the almost tyrannical ordinariness with which Taylor and McSweeny imbued the Spears family. As necessitated by the physical environment, Aunt Daisy (Jacqueline Williams) was forever cooking or washing in the kitchen, while Rose (Penny Johnson Jerald) seemed to spend her days playing the piano and gardening. While the sustained focus on domestic rituals effectively established the Spears family as one "like any other," the relentlessness of the generic quotidian threatened to overshadow what was most compelling about the Goodman production—namely, the particular ways in which race informed the Spears family's relations and traumas. Indeed, the most moving moments of the evening occurred when the production engaged the cultural [End Page 643] specificity of its themes, as, for example, when the gospel rounds punctuating the scenic transitions sounded the bond among Iris, her mother, her cousin, and...

Aesthetic Norms and Institutional Reality

Aesthetic Norms and Institutional Reality

Leo Bersani, Terrence Malick’s Witt, and Henry James: A Future Past for Astyanax?

Leo Bersani’s A Future for Astyanax argues that Henry James’s fiction strains against the conventions of literary realism but does not successfully free itself from aesthetic realism’s ideological shortcomings. Despite Bersani’s consequent consignment of James to the cultural past, however, Bersani’s later writing, especially his analysis of the character of Witt in Terrence Malick’s film The Thin Red Line , suggests that Bersani might yet number James among the companions of Astyanax. It is possible to see in Bersani’s emphasis on Witt’s capacity for passively registering experience and being, penetrated by it, a potential for a closer convergence of James’s art with Bersani’s thought.

Poetic Legitimacy After 1848 Keller, Feuerbach, and the Mirror of Nature

This essay takes the epochal issue of political legitimacy and argues that it is mediated in a new way into the aesthetics of a writer on the cusp of a new epoch. In the age of restoration and Biedermeier the dominance of idealist poetics legitimized for writers like Gutzkow an ideal intellectual space, from which epistemologically authoritative standpoint their utopian critiques could be launched. Feuerbach destroyed that legitimation in his tracts on the essence of religion: there is no transcendental perspective, humanity mirrors nature, nature mirrors humanity. On this shifting foundation Keller's new realist aesthetics seek to reconstruct the epistemological authority of the writer by establishing an aesthetic of mirrorings found in the texts themselves. A range of mirroring motifs and structures are briefly described, the cognitive purpose of which is to disclose an emancipatory anthropological truth in contrasting similarities. Finally the mirror motif is identified and interpreted in the doll in Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe and in Pankraz's confrontation with the lion.