Blackening Aesthetic Experience

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 79 (4):452–464 (2021)
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Abstract

Contemporary philosophy of art generally assumes that aesthetic experience is constituted by a certain ontological-phenomenological structure: the apprehension by a subject of an object. This article explores an underexamined critique of this philosophical model found within the black intellectual and artistic tradition. I will specifically focus on the version of this critique proposed by the similarly underexamined black philosophers Adrian Piper and Fred Moten. This critique, which I dub the subjectivizing concern, takes issue with the notion of ontological distance that I argue defines the subject-object model. I define ontological distance as the removal and alienation of the subject’s fundamental sense of self from that of so-called objects. The subjectivizing concern holds that this distance is not value neutral. Rather, the subject-object model is considered to be directly entwined with projects and practices of aesthetic and extraesthetic racism and antiblackness. After offering Piper’s own model of aesthetic experience—which she dubs catalysis—as an alternative, I propose three possible ways in which the subject-object model can be conceived as tied to antiblack racism.

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Author Profiles

Nicholas Whittaker
Harvard University
Nicholas Whittaker
CUNY Graduate Center

Citations of this work

On the Well-being of Aesthetic Beings.Sherri Irvin - forthcoming - In Helena Fox, Kathleen Galvin, Michael Musalek, Martin Poltrum & Yuriko Saito (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Mental Health and Contemporary Western Aesthetics. Oxford University Press.

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