This book explores repetition in contemporary performance and spectatorship. It offers an impassioned account of the ways in which speech, movement and structures repeat in performances by Pina Bausch, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Lone Twin Theatre, Haranczak/Navarre and Marco Berrettini. It addresses repetition in relation to processes of desire and draws attention to the forces that repetition captures and makes visible. What is it in performances of repetition that persuades us to return to them again and (...) again? How might we unpack their complexities and come to terms with their demands upon us? While considering repetition in relation to the difficult pleasures we derive from the theatre, this book explores ways of accounting for such experience of theatre in memory and writing--back cover. (shrink)

Kierkegaard’s life-long interest in the theater is well documented and reflects the deep impact of Golden Age Denmark’s vibrant theatrical culture on his thinking. Kierkegaard has extensive and excellent criticism of performances and dramatic characters both famous and obscure. Additionally, Kierkegaard has the rare distinction among philosophers of having had aspects of his life and work continually put upon the stage. The key areas of his philosophical project that are considered here alongside his theatrical aesthetic are: repetition, reflection and (...) recollection as they bear upon the aesthetics of time, the dialectical relationship between theatrics and religious life, the pseudonymous authorship in theatrical frame, and the ethical imitation of prototype. In text, Kierkegaard works out dramaturgically the limits of the communication of inwardness. Hence by examining the deep engagement between Kierkegaard and the theater, one can entertain the notion that theatricality is aesthetically necessary for his project as a whole. (shrink)

Repetition dynamically shaped important modes of thought and action in early modern British and European cultures. The centrality and often problematic ambiguity of repetition as they converge in ritual, routine, and regime, however, are rarely assessed accurately because repetition is often dismissed as quaintly primitive or embarrassingly visceral. Ritual, Routine, and Regime is a collection of essays that reveals varied meanings given to and created by repetition from a range of disciplinary perspectives. The contributors reveal (...) class='Hi'>repetition at work in evolving definitions of the self and of the emotions, in political rhetoric used to assert a nation's history, in values ascribed to musical styles, in religious verse grounded in practices of prayer, in the aesthetics created by the poetry of work and by rhyme in general, in the recreation of British classics through French translations, and in the repeated but significantly varied sculpture of the portrait bust. Edited by Lorna Clymer, Ritual, Routine, and Regime juxtaposes early modern practices with twentieth- and twenty-first century theoretical accounts of the institutions of repetition. Providing a stimulating, new perspective on early modern culture, the collection describes repetition's often peculiar demands, its surprising gratifications, and its contested interpretations. (shrink)

From the Tin Pan Alley 32-bar form, through the cyclical forms of modal jazz, to the more recent accumulation of digital layers, beats, and breaks in Electronic Dance Music, repetition as both an aesthetic disposition and a formal property has stimulated a diverse range of genres and techniques. From the angles of musicology, psychology, sociology, and science and technology, Over and Over reassesses the complexity connected to notions of repetition in a variety of musical genres. The first edited (...) volume on repetition in 20th- and 21st-century popular music, Over and Over explores the wide-ranging forms and use of repetition - from large repetitive structures to micro repetitions - in relation to both specific and large-scale issues and contexts. The book brings together a selection of original texts by leading authors in a field that is, as yet, little explored. Aimed at both specialists and neophytes, it sheds important new light on one of the fundamental phenomena of music of our times. (shrink)

Recurrent, unvarying, and seemingly purposeless patterns of action and cognition are part of normal development, but also feature prominently in several neuropsychiatric conditions. Repetitive stereotyped behaviors can be viewed as exaggerated forms of learned habits and frequently correlate with alterations in motor, limbic, and associative basal ganglia circuits. However, it is still unclear how altered basal ganglia feedback signals actually relate to the phenomenological variability of RSBs. Why do behaviorally overlapping phenomena sometimes require different treatment approaches−for example, sensory shielding strategies (...) versus exposure therapy for autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder, respectively? Certain clues may be found in recent models of basal ganglia function that extend well beyond action selection and motivational control, and have implications for sensorimotor integration, prediction, learning under uncertainty, as well as aesthetic learning. In this paper, we systematically compare three exemplary conditions with basal ganglia involvement, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Parkinson’s disease, and autism spectrum conditions, to gain a new understanding of RSBs. We integrate clinical observations and neuroanatomical and neurophysiological alterations with accounts employing the predictive processing framework. Based on this review, we suggest that basal ganglia feedback plays a central role in preconditioning cortical networks to anticipate self-generated, movement-related perception. In this way, basal ganglia feedback appears ideally situated to adjust the salience of sensory signals through precision weighting of new sensory information, relative to the precision of predictions based on prior generated models. Accordingly, behavioral policies may preferentially rely on new data versus existing knowledge, in a spectrum spanning between novelty and stability. RSBs may then represent compensatory or reactive responses, respectively, at the opposite ends of this spectrum. This view places an important role of aesthetic learning on basal ganglia feedback, may account for observed changes in creativity and aesthetic experience in basal ganglia disorders, is empirically testable, and may inform creative art therapies in conditions characterized by stereotyped behaviors. (shrink)

This paper offers a reading of Guttierez Alea's film Memories of Underdevelopment ( Memorias del Subdesarrollos , 1968) using Jameson's notion of the 'homeopathic neutralization' of repetition through its very usage in the modernist work of art to assuage the alienation of industrial society. Before the reading of the film begins, however, I explore the motif of repetition in the work of a handful of the most important thinkers of the newly industrial society. I mobilize their insights on (...) different levels of being: sociological, biological, psychological, and aesthetic, in order to understand how Alea uses repetition of form and content to construct the film's protagonist as a metaphor for the counter-revolution. I conclude with thoughts about the heterogeneity of communist states, and the dialectical relationship between high culture and popular culture. I propose that this relationship is better seen as a continuum with two extreme poles, rather than as a binary switch. (shrink)

This article tries to make sense of the concept of repetition in Søren Kierkegaard’s works. According to Kierkegaard repetition is a temporal movement of existence. What is repetition and what is its meaning for human existence? In answering this question the Danish philosopher depicts repetition by comparing three different approaches to life. Throughout the article I try to develop a coherent argument on ‘the new philosophical category’by analysing the three types of repetition and their corresponding (...) human prototypes. I consider repetition a key concept in summarizing Kierkegaard’s theory of existence, where existence pictures the becoming of the human-self that follows several stages. Constantin Constantius’s repetition is an unsuccessful attempt, an aesthetic expression of human-life. The young lover’s repetition is spiritual, albeit not yet authentic, religious, but more poetic, even if he regains his self. Only Job’s repetition is an authentic movement of existence, an expression of a spiritual trial and of genuine faith. (shrink)

Peter Kivy is the author of many books on the history of art and, in particular, the aesthetics of music. This collection of essays spans a period of some thirty years and focuses on a richly diverse set of issues: the biological origins of music, the role of music in the liberal education, the nature of the musical work and its performance, the aesthetics of opera, the emotions of music, and the very nature of music itself. Some of (...) these subjects are viewed as part of the history of ideas, others as current problems in the philosophy of art. A particular feature of the volume is that Kivy avoids the use of musical notation so that no technical knowledge at all is required to appreciate his work. The essays will prove enjoyable and insightful not just to professionals in the philosophy of art and musicologists, or to musicians themselves, but also to any motivated general reader with a deep interest in music. (shrink)

A new theory of moral and aesthetic value for the age of remix, going beyond the usual debates over originality and appropriation. Remix—or the practice of recombining preexisting content—has proliferated across media both digital and analog. Fans celebrate it as a revolutionary new creative practice; critics characterize it as a lazy and cheap (and often illegal) recycling of other people's work. In Of Remixology, David Gunkel argues that to understand remix, we need to change the terms of the debate. The (...) two sides of the remix controversy, Gunkel contends, share certain underlying values—originality, innovation, artistic integrity. And each side seeks to protect these values from the threat that is represented by the other. In reevaluating these shared philosophical assumptions, Gunkel not only provides a new way to understand remix, he also offers an innovative theory of moral and aesthetic value for the twenty-first century. In a section called “Premix,” Gunkel examines the terminology of remix (including “collage,” “sample,” “bootleg,” and “mashup”) and its material preconditions, the technology of recording. In “Remix,” he takes on the distinction between original and copy; makes a case for repetition; and considers the question of authorship in a world of seemingly endless recompiled and repurposed content. Finally, in “Postmix,” Gunkel outlines a new theory of moral and aesthetic value that can accommodate remix and its cultural significance, remixing—or reconfiguring and recombining—traditional philosophical approaches in the process. (shrink)

What's aesthetically interesting or significant about electronic dance music? The first answer I consider here is that dancing is significant. Using literature on groove, dance and expression, I sketch an account of club dancing as expressive activity. I next consider the aesthetic achievements of DJs, introducing two conceptions of what they do. These thoughts lead to discussions of dance music's ontology. I suggest that the fundamental work of dance music is the mix and that mixes require their own ontology, distinct (...) from ontologies of recordings or improvisations. Finally, I explore two aspects of dance music's aesthetics: its connection with repetition and repetitiveness and its use of electronic sounds and technologies. I conclude with some speculative thoughts about the unique relation dance music bears to repetition and electronics. This article is Part II of two; in Part I, I consider the problem of defining dance music, via the framing question of authenticity. I explore history, genre, scenes and subcultures, and blackness. (shrink)

The current debate over aesthetic testimony typically focuses on cases of doxastic repetition — where, when an agent, on receiving aesthetic testimony that p, acquires the belief that p without qualification. I suggest that we broaden the set of cases under consideration. I consider a number of cases of action from testimony, including reconsidering a disliked album based on testimony, and choosing an artistic educational institution from testimony. But this cannot simply be explained by supposing that testimony is usable (...) for action, but unusable for doxastic repetition. I consider a new asymmetry in the usability aesthetic testimony. Consider the following cases: we seem unwilling to accept somebody hanging a painting in their bedroom based merely on testimony, but entirely willing to accept hanging a painting in a museum based merely on testimony. The switch in intuitive acceptability seems to track, in some complicated way, the line between public life and private life. These new cases weigh against a number of standing theories of aesthetic testimony. I suggest that we look further afield, and that something like a sensibility theory, in the style of John McDowell and David Wiggins, will prove to be the best fit for our intuitions for the usability of aesthetic testimony. I propose the following explanation for the new asymmetry: we are willing to accept testimony about whether a work merits being found beautiful; but we are unwilling to accept testimony about whether something actually is beautiful. (shrink)

In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze defines his transcendental empiricism as an “apodictic” aesthetics, by which he means a science not simply of the sensible, but of the being of the sensible. Yet, to the extent that the sensibility which is at stake in the Transcendental Aesthetics is a sensibility without sensation, Kantian aesthetics is not apodictic. Sensation is the only contact we have with the being of the sensible, namely that which is exterior with respect to (...) the interior of representation. But transcendental idealism is a subjectivism. Indeed, if one connects what Heidegger considers to be the greatest achievement of Kant’s Copernican revolution with the achievement that Kant held highest in this regard, then the two main precepts of Kant’s subjective phenomenalism fall into place. The first is that we cannot feel outside of us – this amounts to non-sensuous sensibility as transcendental idealism; the second is that we can feel inside – this amounts to non-sensuous sensibility as empirical realism. The aim of this article is to show how Kant's treatment of sensation prevented him from refuting Berkeley’s idealism. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that by considering Ludwig Wittgenstein's methods, we can better understand and appreciate Jonas Mekas's diary films. Based on Wittgenstein's notion of “aesthetic puzzlement”, I identify the main confusions encountered by the viewer upon watching Mekas's films, such as: 1) fragmentation; 2) persistent repetition; and 3) the importance placed on the everyday. I discuss three films – Walden (1969), Lost Lost Lost (1976), and As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (...) (2000) – and demonstrate that the aesthetic puzzlements within them may be dissolved by looking at the format of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (1953). Mekas's lifelong interest in filming the most mundane and domestic scenes can be understood as a puzzlement in itself: why not just admire the ordinary whilst living in it? Wittgenstein's thought experiment in Culture and Value helps us understand the aesthetic puzzlement of Mekas's interest in filming, remembering and presenting an extensive array of everyday activities, and also explains why the viewer can find the most mundane and domestic activities in his films remarkable. Additionally, I discuss how Mekas's diary films may be regarded as coming close to Wittgenstein's aesthetic ideal of art as being able to represent “life itself”. I aim to show how Mekas's cinematic practice places extreme importance on ordinary acts and offers a mode of thinking which echoes Wittgenstein's own views on philosophy. I conclude with a discussion of “nomadism”, a notion that elucidates the peculiar form of the works of both Wittgenstein and Mekas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 335-346 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Incunabula Ellen Dissanayake Incunabula n. pl. (f. L swaddling clothes, cradle): Early stages of development of a thing.Over the past thirty years, developmental psychologists have discovered remarkable cognitive abilities in young infants. Before these investigations, common pediatric wisdom accepted that apart from a few innate "reflexes"--for crying, suckling, clinging, startling--babies were pretty much tabulae rasae for their elders (...) to inscribe as they (and their cultures) decreed. Today, however, it is well established that newborns come into the world with decided preferences and motivations, so that one can speak intelligently of "neonatal" (or even "fetal") psychology. 1The demonstrable existence of inherent psychological capacities in newborns and infants has important implications for twenty-first-century literary theory, which--also over the past thirty years--has operated under the theoretical assumption that all knowledge and experience are mediated by culture and that there is therefore no "natural" psychological or emotional experience. Yet if, as infant psychology confirms, babies in every culture show the same or similar cognitive abilities and preferences and the same or similar motivations and emotional responses, it is necessary to modify the dogmatic assertion that all experience, including literary response, is socially constructed. Rather, adult psychology and experience grow from and build upon inborn motives and preferences. Literary theorists can no longer ignore contemporary knowledge in psychobiology, ethology, and evolutionary psychology that directly pertains to conceptualizing their subject.The innate capacities of newborns predispose them specifically for social and emotional interaction with others, not simply for soliciting [End Page 335] their physical care. For example, newborns prefer human faces to any other sight (high-contrast colors, cartoon characters, cute stuffed animals) and human voices to any other sound (soft music, tinkling bells, The Chipmunks). 2 They can imitate face, mouth, and hand movements and respond appropriately to another person's emotional expressions of sadness, fear, and surprise. 3 At birth, infants can estimate and anticipate intervals of time and temporal sequences and remember these temporal patterns, categorizing them both in time and space and in terms of affect and arousal. 4 By six weeks of age, these perceptual and cognitive abilities of normal infants permit them to engage with adult partners in complex communicative interchanges--the playful behavior that is commonly or colloquially called "babytalk."Babytalk is not the trival or inane pastime that it might superficially seem but, rather, a cradle in which nascent psychosocial capacities can emerge and be developed. Interestingly for literary theory, babytalk achieves these effects through fundamentally aesthetic means. Adult-infant engagements are noteworthy for their use of stylization (formalization or simplification), repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration in visual, vocal, and gestural modalities. I call these "aesthetic incunabula"--that is, sources (or early developmental stages) of the operations used by artists in all media to attract attention and to provoke and manipulate emotional response. The existence of sensitivities to such features in the first months of life suggests that humans are born with natural (innate, universal) predispositions for aesthetic engagement from which cultures and individuals can go on to create their myriad elaborated forms of artistic expression.Although babytalk varies in minor details among individuals and cultures, it can be described in all instances as a multimedia performance. That is, it contains not only "talk" (or the characteristic high-pitched, undulant, breathy, patterned, repetitive vocalizations with pauses called "motherese," "parentese," or "infant-directed speech"). Along with the utterances are peculiarly stereotyped, repetitive, and exaggerated facial expressions (such as widened eyes, uplifted eyebrows, sustained open mouth, and smiles), head movements (e.g., distinct bobs backwards, slow rhythmic nods, movement toward and away from the baby), and gestures (such as touching, stroking, and rhythmic pats) to which infants respond with their own vocal sounds and face and body movements and, in many societies, sustained mutual gaze.Babytalk is not only a performance, but a duet that incorporates both synchrony of behavior and alternation (or turn-taking)--activities that [End Page 336] are made possible by the infant's remarkable inborn sensitivity to temporal sequence and pattern. Microanalyses of videotaped interactions (at 24... (shrink)

Reflections on the relationship of aesthetics to politics tend to circle, almost compulsively, around a relatively stable set of conceptual oppositions, inherited from German philosophies of the late 18th century. This essay proposes an expansion of the theoretical terms of the debate by extending the field of transcendental aesthetics into the domain of historical temporalization. Fundamental art-historical categories may thereby be incorporated, philosophically transformed, into ‘aesthetics’ as forms of historical temporalization: avant-garde, modern, contemporary. The essay expounds two (...) theses, in particular: 1. The historical subsumption of the temporality of the avant-garde by the temporality of the modern: the modern stands to the avant-garde as the negation of its politics by the repetition of the new –‘the new as the ever–same’; 2. the historical subsumption of the temporality of the modern by ‘the contemporary’: the contemporary stands to the modern as the negation of the dialectical logic – and hence specifically developmentalist futurity – of the new by a spatially determined, but imaginary co-presencing. One effect of this latter subsumption, it is argued, is a particular, regressive ‘repetition of the national’, at the level of cultural representation, on the terrain of the global. (shrink)

Architecture is a content area in art education that is not much investigated by art educators. Even less addressed is Romanesque architectural style. Based on direct experiences of visiting hundreds of Romanesque churches in France, Italy, and Spain; many years of teaching design courses; and subsequent research and visual analyses of photos, the author discusses the aesthetic merits of Romanesque architecture through design principles: unity by repetition, variety and contrast, proportion, hierarchical forms, and articulation. Unity, variety, and contrast are (...) found in many modern design books, proportion, less so, but it was very important in the medieval period. Hierarchical forms and articulation are uniquely Romanesque. The author demonstrates that Romanesque builders possessed a great sense of design and creativity. (shrink)

In this paper I explore two distinct but related emphases in Deleuze's later philosophy, both on his own and in collaboration with Félix Guattari, having to do with literature. The first is the emphasis on the work of literature as an assemblage whereby the author constructs lines of flight in the pursuit of self-experimentation and self-transformation. The second is the rejection of metaphor across Deleuze's work. I use Difference and Repetition to chart the origins of these emphases, by unpacking (...) the metaphysics of language contained in Difference and Repetition. I first recount the basic structure of Deleuze's intensive ontology, before going on to discuss the way in which the ‘fundamental encounter’ forces thought to formulate Ideas, which, as they are transmitted through the subject, alter her nature. This self-transformation is tantamount to a kind of ‘death’, whereby one is continually explicated, but this explication implies the transcendental Other-structure at the end of Difference and Repetition, wherein the Other, through language, gives birth to ‘possible worlds’. I end with the development of an unexplored concept in Difference and Repetition, the loquendum, which is what must be spoken precisely because it is inexpressible, the purely intensive. Language comes closest to this intensive use in its aesthetic, poetic, literary modes whereby authors distort their own languages. (shrink)

Over the course of the past forty years, Ge;rard Genette’s work has profoundly influenced scholars of narratology, poetics, aesthetics, and literary and cultural criticism, and he continues to be one of France’s most influential theorists. The eighteen pieces in Essays in Aesthetics are of international interest because they are concerned either with universal aesthetic problems (the receiver’s relationship to an aesthetic object, abstract art, the role of repetition in aesthetics, genre theory, and the rapport between literature (...) and music) or with specific moments in the work of a well-known writer or artist (such as Stendhal, Proust, Manet, Pissarro, and Canaletto). Essays in Aesthetics contains a wealth of material related to the appreciation of beauty by one of the subtlest and most original minds working in aesthetics today. Genette knows the fine arts as well as he knows literature and as a result has innovative things to say to readers in that field as well as to philosophers and literary scholars. (shrink)

This paper shows that there is one and the same break in the artistic creative process of Robert Smithson and in the philosophical creative process of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. For Smithson it takes place between Site-Nonsite works and Earthworks . For Deleuze and Guattari it happens in the transition from Difference and Repetition to Anti- Oedipus . Smithson's break marks his abandoning of the institution in favour of an art of direct intervention, the Earthworks confronting one of (...) the most pressing political concerns of his time, the destruction of the earth. Deleuze and Guattari's break happens as they take us from a conceptual mapping of structures to a material machinery of production that allows thought to engage with real political processes. (shrink)

Does it make sense to refer to bird song - a complex vocalization, full of repetitive and transformative patterns that are carefully calculated to woo a mate - as art? What about a pack of wolves howling in unison or the cacophony made by an entire rain forest? Redefining music as "the art of possibly animate things," Musical Vitalities charts a new path for music studies that blends musicological methods with perspectives drawn from the life sciences. In opposition to humanist (...) approaches that insist on a separation between culture and nature--approaches that appear increasingly untenable in an era defined by human-generated climate change--Musical Vitalities treats music as one example of the cultural practices and biotic arts of the animal kingdom rather than as a phenomenon categorically distinct from nonhuman forms of sonic expression. The book challenges the human exceptionalism that has allowed musicologists to overlook music's structural resemblances to the songs of nonhuman species, the intricacies of music's physiological impact on listeners, and the many analogues between music's formal processes and those of the dynamic natural world. Through close readings of Austro-German music and aesthetic writings that suggest wide-ranging analogies between music and nature, Musical Vitalities seeks to both rekindle the critical potential of nineteenth-century music and rejoin the humans at the center of the humanities with the nonhumans whose evolutionary endowments and planetary fates they share. (shrink)

Pierre Hadot’s legacy is a vision of ancient philosophy not only as a system of abstract concepts and logical procedures but as a practical philosophical methodology. A key element of this interpretation is consideration of ancient philosophical practice as a series of spiritual exercises to improve one’s own life. The present paper aims to show, more humbly, that by highlighting the aesthetic dimension of the practice of gardening we can consider it part of the set of philosophically charged spiritual exercises. (...) Gardening supports the improvement of one’s own experience of the world through the meeting of different temporal experiences. The appropriation of such different temporal nuances in stark contrast to the accelerated pace of modern life, or periods of tiresome repetition, makes it possible to question one’s own rhythm in the world. In other words, I defend the thesis that horticulture can be considered therapeutic also from a philosophical perspective. (shrink)

One of the main characteristics of the contemporary aesthetic debate is the recovery of the concept of mimesis, as a dimension that is originally involved in the foundation of human culture and the processes of cultural learning. This is evident in the aesthetic reflection developed by Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf. For these two authors, mimesis is never a mere reproduction of the given reality, but always implies the production of the New, of the Other, of the different with respect (...) to the empirical world, i.e. to the existing categorical order of the world. In particular, Gebauer and Wulf underline the constitutive ambivalence of the notion of mimesis: on the one hand, it favors the processes of reification fueled by capitalist society and, on the other hand, it contributes to the affirmation of a critical and “utopian” instance that can counter “instrumental reason” and the primacy of identity. (shrink)

The paper proposes a reflection on mathematical beauty, considering the possibility of aesthetic qualities for formal language. Through a concise overview of the way this question is understood by some famous scientists and mathematicians, we turn our attention to Gian-Carlo Rota’s theoretical proposal: his reflections as a mathematician and philosopher offer a perspective, of phenomenological matrix, fruitful for looking at the question. Rota’s contribution allows us to focus on the role of competence, acquired through effort, sedimentation and habit of (...) class='Hi'>repetition, in cultivating the potential to recognise the aesthetic quality of formal language. Finally, we draw on some contributions from Gestalt theory, closely connected to twentieth-century phenomenology for chronological and conceptual reasons, applying the idea of gestalt wholeness to the mathematical product and proposing some reflections that may help to clarify some of the dynamics underlying the attribution of qualities of beauty to formulas or the detection of its lack. (shrink)

Beginning with an analysis of the notion of repetition as an essential factor shaping linguistic, logical, mathematical and scientific procedures some parallels are drawn between Psychoanalysis and Wittgensteinian Philosophy. The view is put forward that in the case of Freud's concept of neurosis as well as in Wittgenstein's concept of rule-following there is not just a monotonous and unvarying replay of one and the same content but rather a steady modification. Thus generating new moments again and again both in (...) Wittgenstein's procedure of philosophical investigation and in Freudian analysis the aesthetical becomes an important aspect. Finally ethical moments are considered in comparing suppression with Wittgenstein's statements on superficial philosophical theorizing. (shrink)

Beginning with an analysis of the notion of repetition as an essential factor shaping linguistic, logical, mathematical and scientific procedures some parallels are drawn between Psychoanalysis and Wittgensteinian Philosophy. The view is put forward that in the case of Freud's concept of neurosis as well as in Wittgenstein's concept of rule-following there is not just a monotonous and unvarying replay of one and the same content but rather a steady modification. Thus generating new moments again and again both in (...) Wittgenstein's procedure of philosophical investigation and in Freudian analysis the aesthetical becomes an important aspect. Finally ethical moments are considered in comparing suppression with Wittgenstein's statements on superficial philosophical theorizing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary EntertainmentTheodore GracykNeo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment, by Angela Ndalianis. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 2004, 323 pp., $34.95 cloth.Like the cliché about not judging a book by its cover, the prominence of the term "aesthetics" in a book's title is no indication of what one will find inside. Has the term become so elastic that it will now cover everything (...) cultural? Or is it the case, as in Angela Ndalianis's discussions of theme park rides and computer games, that the term applies to anything that has a parallel in earlier practices covered by this rubric? Ndalianis may be stretching it too far, for the book in question emphasizes parallels with baroque practices that predate Alexander Baumgarten's 1735 proposal to use "aesthetics" as the name of an emerging discipline concerned [End Page 115] with perception. We are alternately informed that the book explores the poetics, semiotics, and the "logic of contemporary media." But because Ndalianis holds that recent visual media involve a "specific system of perception" that arises from a "radical cultural transformation" (22-23), the term "aesthetics" may be as good as any other in conveying her purposes. For she is not concerned with artistic style—presumably the province of art historians. She is theorizing broadly about visual media by examining an assortment of media strategies found in the two eras and aims to identify their common "morphology" (19). Her sources are Fredric Jameson, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze rather than, say, Kendall Walton, Noël Carroll, or Gregory Currie.Ndalianis's main idea is that there is a strong but not exact parallel between our own times and the visual forms favored in the seventeenth century. (For Ndalianis, the baroque period stretches from 1492 to the 1680s.) The two epochs involve similar cultural sensibilities and artistic practices, so if we understand baroque art and visual media, we will better understand what is going on in contemporary media. In short, the framing assumption is Shelley's dictum that art is the expression of the spirit of its time. More specifically, the design of modern entertainment media is argued to be very similar to a wide range of baroque entertainment and representational practice. But the similarity is not due to either awareness or imitation of baroque style. Each "logically emerged as a result of systemic and cultural transformations" peculiar to its own time (17). The similar "logic" of each period is thus seen as evidence that there are parallels in the "general tendencies" and consequent "dominant cultural sensibilities" of the two periods (17-21). Because hindsight is more reliable than precognition, a backward glance at the baroque may help us to better grasp our own historical and cultural context.Having outlined these proposals in a lengthy introduction, Ndalianis offers five chapters, each devoted to a specific parallel. All five chapters share a similar strategy. A different aspect of neo-baroque communication is highlighted, and one type of baroque art or entertainment is compared and contrasted with its neo-baroque counterpart, with at least one neo-baroque example explored in considerable detail.The introduction focuses on Jurassic Park (both the film and the theme park ride). Chapter 1 focuses on neo-baroque "narrative strategies," as first Don Quixote and its sequel and then the palace at Versailles are compared to the various Alien films and comic books. The main focus is "serial" art as an outgrowth of capitalism, generating "an aesthetics of repetition" enriched by its "rampant self-reflexivity" (69). Chapter 2 shifts to the baroque love of labyrinthine structure, with its "enforced circuitousness, planned chaos, choice among paths, intricacy, complexity, and an invitation to the audience to engage reflexively" in exploring the labyrinth (84). Ndalianis's baroque case is Pietro de Cortona's elaborate painted ceiling for the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. The neo-baroque counterpart is the Doom video game and its sequel, Doom II. Inexplicably, for a book with numerous illustrations, there are no visuals to display Doom for those unfamiliar with such games. Chapter 3 examines baroque cartography as a background for discussing geographic discovery and colonization, leading to the neo-baroque... (shrink)

Art history on the edge : iconology, media, and visual culture -- Four fundamental concepts of image science -- Image science -- Image X text -- Realism and the digital image -- Migrating images : totemism, fetishism, idolatry -- The future of the image : Rancière's road not taken -- World pictures : globalization and visual culture -- Media aesthetics -- There are no visual media -- Back to the drawing board : architecture, sculpture, and the digital image -- (...) Foundational sites and occupied spaces -- Border wars : translation and convergence in politics and media -- Art X environment -- The historical uncanny : phantoms, doubles, and repetition in the war on terror -- The spectacle today : a response to retort -- Coda : for a sweet science of images. (shrink)

The essay examines the idea of ―biological space and time‖ found in Evan Thompson‘s Mind in Life and Gilles Deleuze‘s Difference and Repetition. Tracking down this ―new Transcendental Aesthetic‖ intersects new work done on panpsychism. Both Deleuze and Thompson can be fairly said to be biological panpsychists. That‘s what ―Mind in Life‖ means: mind and life are coextensive; life is a sufficient condition for mind. Deleuze is not just a biological panpsychist, however, so we‘ll have to confront full-fledged panpsychism. (...) At the end of the essay we‘ll be able to pose the question whether or not we can supplement Thompson‘s ―Mind in Life‖ position with a ―Mind in Process‖ position and if so, what that supplement means both for his work and for panpsychism. (shrink)

Spinoza’s concepts of wonder, the imitation of affects, cheerfulness, and devotion provide the basis for a Spinozist aesthetics. Those concepts from his Ethics, when combined with his account of rituals and festivals in the Theological-Political Treatise and his Political Treatise, reveal an aesthetics of social affects. The repetition of ritualised participatory aesthetic practices over time generates a unique ingenium or way of life for a social group, a singular style which distinguishes them from the general political body. (...) Ritual and the imitation of affects explain why specific styles of art are associated with consistent styles of bodily modifications, clothing, and affects. This paper claims, not that already similar people flock to the same art, but rather, that immersion in the same art is what produces their similarity. Art (especially in the immersive, festival-like experience of live performance) can generate the affect of devotion, which intensifies in-group love, temporarily blocks affects of sadness, and focusses one intently on the aesthetic experience due to devotion’s connection to wonder. Cheerfulness shows that, through variation of aesthetic objects, art can cause pleasure without risking excess. In addition, while politics’ central affect is sad fear, aesthetically-united groups are bound by joyful affects. (shrink)

As kendo continues to gain in international popularity, there are hopes for its adoption in the Olympic Games as an international competitive event, even while moves to further this aim have not necessarily occurred in Japan or elsewhere. One reason for the efforts to achieve a form of globalization of kendo different from Judo is the attempt to adhere to and preserve the unique concepts kendo, the sport embodies by remaining true to the forms of traditional Japanese culture. This is (...) epitomized by the importance given to zanshin (the combination of posture and fighting spirit after striking), one of the key concepts that constitute yuko-datotsu in kendo. Our purpose in this study is to discuss the intersubjective nature of the decisions regarding the conditions for point-scoring in competitive sports. In particular, we will focus on the aesthetics required for zanshin in kendo, focusing on the theory behind yuko-datotsu (point score), which will also considerably influence its international dissemination. Kendo is characterized from the perspective of western rationalism as an appreciation of form and rules of behavior referred to as formalism and, in this respect, it has unique characteristics differing from those of modern sports that are disseminated internationally. In martial arts, besides refinement and proficiency in the rules of behavior by rigidly adhering to form and rules of behavior and repetition, the aim is to transcend said form and the rules of behavior and embody the spiritual nature dwelling in the background. Kendo should remain traditional path and keep zanshin in the value of point (yuko-datotsu) for its virtue. Kendo has not yet developed into an international competitive sport, but it is in the process of traversing that Geido path as a Do for the purpose of character building through it. Throughout life, one should try to devote oneself to kendo with thought for the value of transcending form and the rules of behaviour, and embodying the spiritual nature of the sport that inheres in its background. That is why one may perceive an evident hesitation or indeed negativity regarding the possible internationalization or development as an Olympic event. (shrink)

In this elegant new study Galen Johnson retrieves the concept of the beautiful through the framework of Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetics. Although Merleau-Ponty seldom spoke directly of beauty, his philosophy is essentially about the beautiful. In Johnson’s formulation, the ontology of Flesh as element and the ontology of the Beautiful as elemental are folded together, for Desire, Love, and Beauty are part of the fabric of the world’s element, Flesh itself, the term at which Merleau-Ponty arrived to replace Substance, Matter, or (...) Life as the name of Being. Merleau-Ponty’s _Eye and Mind _is at the core of the book, so Johnson engages, as Merleau-Ponty did, the writings and visual work of Paul Cézanne, Auguste Rodin, and Paul Klee, as well as Rilke’s commentary on Cézanne and Rodin. From these widely varying aesthetics emerge the fundamental themes of the retrieval of the beautiful: desire, repetition, difference, rhythm, and the sublime. The third part of Johnson’s book takes each of these up in turn, bringing Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetic thinking into dialogue with classical philosophy as well as Sartre, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Deleuze. Johnson concludes his final chapter with a direct dialogue with Kant and Merleau-Ponty, and also Lyotard, on the subject of the beautiful and the sublime. As we experience with Rodin’s _Balzac_, beauty and the sublime blend into one another when the beautiful grows powerful, majestic, mysterious, and transcendent. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Biting the Bullet:The Ethics and Aesthetics of ViolenceJonathan AllenThe Bullet's Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia, by William Pfaff. New York. Simon & Schuster, 2004, 368 pp.Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sontag. New York, Picador, 2003, 131 pp.In the nineteenth century a broadly influential branch of Romantic philosophy insisted that goodness and beauty were intimately related. The goals of ethical and aesthetic education were taken to be (...) one and the same—the cultivation of the kalokagathos or "noble-and-beautiful" individual.1 This robust view of the relation between ethical and aesthetic education is now rarely defended; it was dealt a mortal wound by the inconvenient fact that highly cultured or Gebildete individuals have been implicated in the twentieth century's worst political crimes.This does not mean, however, that connections between ethical and aesthetic projects are no longer made. One such attempt to relate ethics and aesthetic—a bleak, somber, and deeply chastened attempt—is presented in the late Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others. In this small but dense book, Sontag assesses the hope that the reproduction of images, especially photographic images, of violence and atrocity might help to abolish war, or at least to play a role in combating genocide or the commission of gross violations of the laws of war. While she evidently wishes to find "an antidote to the perennial seductiveness of war," Sontag is doubtful that photography is equal to this moral burden.2Sontag's work concentrates on the aesthetic and ethical challenges that confront any attempt to convey the horrors of war to uninvolved observers. Her focus is thus trained on an attempt to exorcise what she refers to as the "seductiveness of war"; she is not primarily concerned to identify the source of war's allure (though she does have some interesting observations to make on the issue).3 William Pfaff, by contrast, is both repelled and fascinated by the modern embrace of violence. The Bullet's Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia offers an enthralling account of the intellectual and aesthetic forces that provoked the feverish modern love affair with violence and war. Pfaff is at least as doubtful as Sontag, however, that that love affair [End Page 100] is over and that we are in a position to forge a more pacific sensibility. Nevertheless, he insists that if we are to have the slightest hope of avoiding a full-scale repetition of the twentieth-century's "carnival of inhumanity," we need to understand the nature of its romance with violence.So how did that romance come about? The central theme of The Bullet's Song is the consequences of the loss of "chivalry." This, according to Pfaff, was a code that "held that what an individual or society could licitly do to another was limited by a morality linked to the essential values of Western civilization."4 Within this framework, it was expected that states would sometimes go to war with one another, but war was seen merely as an extreme means of settling disputes, not of eliminating entire societies or remaking the world. For individuals, war was presented as "a test of valor, rewarded by 'honor'"—in other words, it was seen as an occasion to test oneself in the light of a set of ideals of conduct that operated as constraints on permissible behavior in war.5 All of this came to a sticky end in the trenches of World War I, replaced by a morally nihilistic idea of total war. Pfaff claims that this moral vacuum proved intolerable to many individuals. They reacted in several different ways. Some attempted to construct "codes of individual transcendence" and "collective will," while others gave themselves over to "utopias based on historical fictions."6This is a very large story, and it is in fact too bulky for the confines of this book. First, it must be said that Pfaff fails to present his central claims clearly. He is unclear, for example, as to exactly what was lost with the destruction of the chivalric code, as well as what caused its destruction. At times, he seems to be suggesting that the rise of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Exegetic Study of the So-Called Proposition of Confucian AestheticsWang Yi (bio) and Xiaowei FuSince Wang Guowei and Cai Yuanpei introduced the concepts of aesthetics and aesthetic education, respectively, to China in the early twentieth century, there has been a strong tendency in many of the aesthetic discussions to examine ancient texts and materials using modern concepts of aesthetics. In particular, sentences with the character-word mei1 are (...) often sought in classical works and interpreted as speeches on or about beauty, which has led to frequent misunderstandings of the classical texts and of the ancient Confucian aesthetic theory.The most typical among these misunderstandings, we think, is the misinterpretation of one of Mencius's remarks on the goodness of human nature-"To possess these qualities of goodness fully is beautiful" (Chongshi zhiwei mei)2-as a representative statement of the Confucian aesthetic theory of "the union of the beautiful and good." Although it is not clear who was the first to put this interpretation forward, it is now widely accepted and almost unquestioned that the statement "Chongshi zhiwei mei" is the classical proposition of the Confucian aesthetic theory after countless repetitions by aestheticians and educationalists. And extended from this is the claim that "the union of the beautiful and good," or the union of the moral and beauty, is the traditional theory of Confucian aesthetic education.3 Finding it coincidentally in accordance with the idea of "the union of the beautiful and good" in both the Soviet and Greek philosophies, aesthetic educators are apt to admit that aesthetic education is included in moral education or aesthetic education is but one of the means of moral education; thus, aesthetic education cannot be an independent subject. [End Page 80]It is rather surprising that in spite of the wide interest in quoting this sentence, very little in the textual research and criticism has offered convincing proof that it is really Mencius's opinion about beauty or aesthetic theory and therefore-since he is the most influential Confucian educator and philosopher after Confucius-representative of the aesthetic theory of Confucianism.Actually, the proper analysis of the meaning of the word mei in this statement by Mencius has long been a controversial issue in Chinese history. There have been two main approaches: mei as an equivalent of shan (good/ goodness) and mei as a synonym with its modern Chinese counterpart. The former is taken by Zhao Qi,4 according to whom mei in this statement is a term used to explain a level of shan. This analysis is further developed by Sun Shi,5 who argues that mei is the third level of the six shan. Likewise, Yang Bojun,6 among other modern scholars, also considers mei an equivalent of shan. The latter approach, on the other hand, is pursued by Zhang Zai, Zhu Xi, Jiao Xun,7 and many modern aestheticians, who all interpret mei as "beauty" or "beautiful" in the aesthetic sense.The main interest of the present analysis is an attempt to decode the genuine meaning of the statement. With references to ancient dictionaries like Origin of Chinese Characters8 and exegetic works (from 206 bc to the modern times) of Mencius, this article attempts to contextualize mei in the original text and historical context in order to interpret the meaning of the sentence and the real intention of Mencius. In this way we hope to determine whether it can be regarded as the proposition of Mencius or the Confucian aesthetic theory of "the union of the beautiful and good."IIn the first part of this article we shall offer a contextual study of the sentence with reference to two of the ancient interpretations of the theme of the passage and the meaning of the character mei. By investigating the context of the sentence "Chongshi zhiwei mei" we argue that the theme of the passage is a discussion of the six levels of shan (goodness).The context of the sentence comes from a passage in Mencius (Jinxin part 2), which begins with Mencius talking with Haosheng Buhai about one of his disciples, Yue Zhengzi, who was reported to embark in a political career in the State... (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze's two-volume theory of film, _Cinema 1: The Movement-Image_ and _Cinema 2: The Time-Image_, have slowly been making an impact on Anglo-American film studies. The special issue of _Film-Philosophy_ on his work (vol. 5, 2001) and David Rodowick's excellent introduction, _Gilles Deleuze's Time Machine_ (1997), are just two signs, among many, of the growing interest in Deleuze's writings on cinema. His work has also inspired the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben to propose a new theory of film that significantly departs (...) from Deleuze. Agamben has developed a new theory of 'gestural cinema', arguing that '*the element of cinema is gesture and not image*'. [1] He has also argued that this new theory of gestural cinema means that cinema belongs, essentially, to the realm of ethics and politics, and not aesthetics. It is this new theory that I want to introduce. (shrink)

Noting that the ethological notion of «making special» (now also called «artification») has gained attention in several fields, including aesthetic philosophy, a brief history is presented of its origin and development over forty years. Its origin is traced to «proto-aesthetic» elements of interactions that evolved in Middle Pleistocene mothers and infants: simplification or formalization, repetition, exaggeration, elaboration, and manipulation of expectation. These operations upon visual, vocal, and gestural modalities were subsequently used by individuals and cultures in creating and responding (...) to their various arts. Artification is a broader human proclivity than «art». Unlike other notions of art it does not imply beauty or skill although in its motivation to mark importance, the ordinary is made extraordinary. In its emphasis on preverbal, presymbolic, pancultural, participative, affective, and affinitive aspects of aesthetic cognition and behavior, the artification hypothesis provides further directions to cognitivist and neuroscientific studies in contemporary philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

Kaum eine andere künstlerische Strategie prägte das Wertesystem der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts wie die Wiederholung. Sie lässt sich als wesentliches Moment ausmachen, neue Wahrnehmungsweisen zu ermöglichen, Kritik an Formen der Repräsentation zu üben und neuen Sinn zu produzieren. Der Band nimmt eine kritische Revision des Phänomens für die zeitgenössische Kunst vor und eröffnet anhand bildnerischer, skulpturaler, performativer, technisch-medialer wie auch kuratorischer Wiederholungen in der Kunst eine Perspektive auf die Wiederholung als Grundbegriff des Ästhetischen.

Against all expectations. The phenomenon of attention in aesthetic experienceThis paper aims to show how aesthetic experience, by the type of attention it requires, can lead us to consider sensitivity as a way to take care of the visible. Based on a reflection about the concept of repetition developed by Sören Kierkegaard, it is shown how attention is at the same time a manner to concern for oneself and to concern for the sensitive environment. The main thesis of this (...) article is that artistic creation can be considered as a privileged path to experiment in how far the expectation influences our perception of the sensitive. By inviting us to embrace a certain kind of presence, art works can as well be considered as an outstanding way of access to reality. (shrink)