An asynchronous dialogue on core ideas

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J Muu elektroninen julkaisu

Date

2022

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en

Pages

pages 103-111

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POPULAR INQUIRY: The Journal of the Aesthetics of Kitsch, Camp and Mass Culture, 6(2022):1

Abstract

I had the privilege of enjoying a dialogue with Arnold Berleant as we met during congresses on several occasions and by writing to each other on various questions throughout the years. All of these have been precious to me. On the occasion of his Festschrift, a new opportunity opens up in which I revise some of his ideas on aesthetic field, aesthetic disinterest, aesthetic engagement, and negativity along his career. Even if we both have focused on similar subjects and approached them through a pragmatist framework, our common starting point has taken each of us through very different paths. Berleant’s utopian views of aesthetics projected into the political somehow echo Frankfurt School’s emancipatory demand on the aesthetic, and I do hope he may be right. Although we may dream for a better world, whatever values and directions aesthetics takes requires us to underline its specificity well aware of political and ethical implications in which it is always already entangled with.

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Aesthetic Field, Aesthetic Disinterest, Aesthetic Engagement

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