File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9711, message 66


Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 22:54:17 -0800 (PST)
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: BHA: ABSENCE & AESTHETICS


As interesting as these interpretations of art works have been, it seems
that they all hang on the vaguely defined notion of "absence".  Aside from
the naming of absence and absenting of absences as the essence of
dialectics--a rather nebulous and poorly defended notion--I don't see much
of Bhaskar's ontology imported into these discussions.  One could use the
word "absence" or simply "dialectics" or "negation" and then riff off of
this basic notion, but such discussion hardly adds up to a structured or
methodological discussion of aesthetic or cultural questions.  So far
absence has been tied to Bloch's idea of utopian hopes.  At least this goes
a little bit of the way toward defining what art does.  I like to use C.L.R.
James's notion of the dialectic between the actual and the potential.  But
without further specifying the way that art addresses "absences", I can't
see much fecundity, let alone originality or profundity, in deploying the
naked notion of "absence" as a way of seriously approaching artistic and
cultural questions.  Surely there's got to be more than this.



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