Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 08:53:48 +0000 From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk> Subject: Re: Discours Figure - the aesthetic and the cultural Eric/all i am especially interested in the seperation suggested that aesthetics/culture should be considered seperately. But like anyone who arrived into these issues through structuralism, and post-structuralism especially the theory of ideology and the subject put forward by Screen, the willingness to seperate the two things is a difficult move to make and the resistance is great.... and nor is necessary to interpret Lyotard's postmodern sublime in that way for ... The "avant-garde task is to undo the spitirtual assumptions regarding time. The sense of the sublime is name of this dismantling..." (Lyotard) What comes after the 'modernist period' can only be know when there is an idea or concept that may be accompanied by a representation, a discourse that can be said and undestood to express it. The sublime however always ensuures that the connection, the link between the concept and the representation is thrown into dissarray. This is what confirms the sublime as the "witness to indeterminacy" in which thought is always a suspended judgement both in the history of representation or in which the common thought has become detached and ungrounded. The return to the sublime, which is always postmodern in the sense that Lyotard thinks of the postmodern, or if you wish our "modernity " raises the questions - when did the artistic expression of the sublime begin to appear ? when did art renounce representation ? I have no desire or need to repeat Lyotard's (his)tory of the sublime, but do think it is worthwhile to suggest that as Lyotard presents it: the experience of the sublime is external to history and that the (his)tory of philosophy is marked by the attempts to produce discourse adequate, just as the history of art is marked by attempts to represent it adequately. The central concept of the sublime is its indeterminacy, when we are face to face with an extraordinary object the subject is thrown into a crisis, an epistemological break that disrupts the human ability to conceptualise and relate the object to the human imagining. The sublime then is as Lyotyard suggests can only be thought without the aid of reason, for the human imagination cannot produce adequate representations. I think then that the sublime is precisely engaged with the aesthetic... One general point the central aspect of modernity, the enlightenment was the turning of art away from representational art (of the human and/or the divine) towards the micrological investigation and expermentation of art itself, the importance thus of FORM over content. regards s Eric wrote: >Steve wrote: > > >I surmise then that we are in agreement that the Kantian turn has the >unfortunate side effect of seeming to be unable to address the very >areas of work, (esp popular culture) which are most engaged in the >present. > >Steve, > >We are in agreement to the extent that a screwdriver can function as a >hammer. > >Without getting caught in the trap of high and low, I think the >aesthetic and the cultural are quite different categories, just as I >think Lyotard's formulation of the sublime tends to be more ontological >than aesthetic. > >What tends to drive culture today is a contradictory dynamic. On the one >hand, it aspires to art, meaning, gravitas, universal standards of >truth. On the other hand, it needs to discover and exploit viable >consumer markets, usually centered upon youth, that holy grail of the >corporation. It must be commercial and profitable, even as it lifts us >up. > >It claims to enlighten as it grovels to entertain. The recent Superbowl >afforded us an excellent example of culture in action. > >eric > >--- >Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. >Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). >Version: 6.0.524 / Virus Database: 321 - Release Date: 10/6/2003 > > > > --- StripMime Warning -- MIME attachments removed --- This message may have contained attachments which were removed. Sorry, we do not allow attachments on this list. --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- multipart/alternative text/plain (text body -- kept) text/html ---
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