Like most topics in aesthetics, that of genre is far from simple and for the literary critic has an uninviting air. The questions which arise from its consideration fall under two heads: first, what is a genre? and second, what does it contribute to our understanding of a work of art that we can describe it as belonging to this or that genre? A clear answer to either of these questions is not readily forthcoming: the literary critic who is content (...) to be a critic here very properly hesitates where the philosopher is perhaps inclined to go further. If he does so he will find that the two primary questions about genre have many ramifications, some of which may be suggested by a quotation from René Wellek and Austin Warren's book, Theory of Literature . They ask one question about genre and then re-phrase it: but as they re-phrase their original question it is quite transformed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 216-223 [Access article in PDF] Notes and Fragments Genre Fiction and "The Origin of the Work of Art" Nancy J. Holland I FIRST, A CONFESSION. Like, I suspect, many of my readers, I am an unpublished fiction writer. Unlike most of the closet fiction writers in academia, however, I write genre fiction. The question that immediately follows is how that writing is related to (...) the intellectual work I do in philosophy.This question, of course, is open to a broad range of answers, from the possibility that the two aren't related at all, to potential Freudian answers it might take years of therapy to unearth. Teaching informs one's life, however, as much as the reverse, and in teaching Martin Heidegger's "The Origin of the Work of Art" to my Metaphysics class last year, I began to understand at least one dimension of the appeal that writing genre fiction has for me as a philosopher.But first, let me explain what I mean by genre fiction. In what follows, I will be referring primarily to four forms of genre fiction that have clear roots in the nineteenth century in Western Europe and North America: two gender-segregated genres, the western and the romance, and two gender-marked genres, science fiction and detective novels. I will be comparing these to two other forms of "popular culture" that also developed in the nineteenth century and have, I would argue, similar relationships to the older, more "legitimate," more elite art forms which they closely resemble: photography 1 and popular music, [End Page 216] especially those forms of popular music such as ragtime, blues, jazz, and rock that are informed by the African-American experience in the United States. 2These "low brow" art forms all appear to have arisen out of the growth of the middle class in developing parts of the world during the nineteenth century and the correlative confluence of greater leisure, greater aggregate prosperity, and higher levels of education across a broader spectrum of society. Further, these art forms all combine the surface appearance of their respective "high brow" correlate arts with the reassurance of repetition that is the cornerstone of the folk arts with which they are also correlated. Each of these forms of popular culture balances itself, then, between a demand for more and more "works of art" (and/or class aspirations based on the appearance of such) and a demand for the familiar in a rapidly changing, materially challenging world.Thus, photography gives us a frozen and thereby purified visual reality, an icon of memory to which we can return at will. The truth it reveals is most often starker than that of folk painting and portraiture, but also gives the appearance of being free from the subjectivity of the artist. Great iconic photographs such as the kiss on V-E day, I have heard it said, become more real than the reality they encapsulated.Popular music similarly combines often amazing musical complexity (which is not unknown, although rarer, in western folk music) with the reassurance of a form that not only repeats itself within a song, but also between songs of the same genre. Thus, blues can be recognized by both the minor chords in its melodies and the characteristic rhyme pattern of its lyrics. Moreover, most western popular music, even to some extent free-form jazz, has a familiar and reassuring beginning-middle-end structure, both melodically and dynamically, that locates a listener immediately within the song's "story-arc." 3This same beginning-middle-end structure is one clear hallmark of genre fiction. Another is repetition. We all immediately know the plot of a detective novel or science fiction adventure: where it will begin, what the key stages of the story will be, and how it will end—not just happily, but with a specific form of reassuring outcome, be it the victory of well-intentioned intelligence over cunning evil or humanity's ability to survive even the most alien (and so most familiar) of threats. At... (shrink)

This paper describes and discusses overlapping interests and concerns of art and bioethics and suggests that bioethics would benefit from opening to contributions from the arts. There is a description of recent events in bioethics that have included art, and trends in art that relate to bioethics. The paper outlines art exhibits and performances within two major international bioethics congress programs alongside a discussion of the work of leading hybrid and bio artists who experiment with material (including their own bodies) (...) at the ambiguous intersections between art, bio art and bioethics. Their work seeks to engage audiences in challenging ethical precepts and assumptions about life and existence. We consider the response of art and social theorists and compare these with the responses of bioethicists to comparable cases in bioethics. We note divergent views within the arts and within bioethics in relation to some pivotal questions including questions about what limits, if any, can apply in particular cases and on what basis. This approach allows for a transfer of information and perspectives, challenges assumptions in both art and bioethics and opens up a space for future exchange and dialogue along the shifting borders between these genres. (shrink)

The genre to which an artwork belongs affects how it is to be interpreted and evaluated. An account of genre and of the criteria for genre membership should explain these interpretative and evaluative effects. Contrary to conceptions of genres as categories distinguished by the features of the works that belong to them, I argue that these effects are to be explained by conceiving of genres as categories distinguished by certain of the purposes that the works belonging to them (...) are intended to serve. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the exhibition and creative activities of representatives of the Juelan Society and figures of Soviet unofficial art – a comparative analysis allows us to see common points regarding the choice of artistic means and techniques, themes and motives, the fate of creative associations. The purpose of the article is to determine the similarities and differences of the process of the origin of unofficial art in China and Soviet Russia. The author's field of attention includes identifying (...) similarities in the choice of genre, composition, artistic means, as well as the semantic content of the images revealed in the works of artists. It is important for the disclosure of the topic to determine the features and common features in the organization of creative activity and communication between members of artistic associations. The study concluded that Chinese and Soviet figures of unofficial art rallied around small associations, "circles", clubs, societies, offering an alternative to the official and, from their point of view, regressive art view of independent creativity. The artists of the Juelan Society sought to instill a modernist vision in Chinese culture, and Soviet conformists decades later developed their own understanding of contemporary art. Their attempts had a strong influence on the work of Chinese painters of subsequent generations and became a phenomenon in the art of their countries, still have an impact on its development. Their ideas and creative findings are the sources of the processes that take place in the artistic worlds that cooperate in the field of culture of Russia and China. (shrink)

Suzanne Lacy introduced the term ‘New Genre Public Art’ (NGPA) to refer to art practices that depart from those traditional of public art (such as installing works in parks and plazas) and focus instead on the direct engagement of artists with audiences to deal with pressing socio-political issues. In this paper, I argue that some works of NGPA should be valued for the intellectual value grounded in their artistic features, not dissimilarly to works of conceptual art. In developing my argument, (...) I take distance from Vid Simoniti’s recent account of ‘Socially Engaged Art’, offer a thorough analysis of Thomas Hirschhorn’s Bataille Monument (2002) and Kathrin Bohm’s and Stefan Saffer’s Mobile Porch (1999), and submit that both such works qualify as good works of NGPA. (shrink)

The present studies investigate morality’s influence on aesthetics and one potential moderator of that influence: genre. Study 1 finds that people’s moral evaluation positively influence their aesthetic evaluation of an artwork. Study 2 and 3 finds that this influence can be moderated by the contextual factor of genre. These results broaden our understanding of the relationship between morality and aesthetics, and suggest that models of art appreciation should take into account morality and its interaction with context. [Unpublishable 2010-2017.].

Genre discourse is widespread in appreciative practice, whether that is about hip-hop music, romance novels, or film noir. It should be no surprise then, that philosophers of art have also been interested in genres. Whether they are giving accounts of genres as such or of particular genres, genre talk abounds in philosophy as much as it does the popular discourse. As a result, theories of genre proliferate as well. However, in their accounts, philosophers have so far focused (...) on capturing all of the categories of art that we think of as genres and have focused less on ensuring that only the categories we think are genres are captured by those theories. Each of these theories populates the world with far too many genres because they call a wide class of mere categories of art genres. I call this the problem of genre explosion. In this paper, I survey the existing accounts of genre and describe the kinds of considerations they employ in determining whether a work is a work of a given genre. After this, I demonstrate the ways in which the problem of genre explosion arises for all of these theories and discuss some solutions those theories could adopt that will ultimately not work. Finally, I argue that the problem of genre explosion is best solved by adopting a social view of genres, which can capture the difference between genres and mere categories of art. (shrink)

This essay brings psychoanalytic theory on trauma together with film and television criticism on rape narrative in an analysis of Michael Coel’s 2020 series I May Destroy You. Beyond the limited carceral framework of the police procedural, which dislocates the act of violence from the survivor’s history and context, Coel’s polyvalent, looping narrative metabolizes rape television’s forms and genres in order to stage and restage both trauma and genre again and anew. Contesting common conceptions of vulnerability and susceptibility that (...) prefigure a violent breach of autonomy, Coel’s series and her interviews about it invite an ethics of looking that embraces a curiosity in the unknowable and untreatable kernel of subjective experience and defies and resists a policing of the survivor’s thoughts and emotions. By emphasizing and exploring what psychoanalysis calls the “afterwardness” of trauma, Coel foregrounds her main character’s subjectivity prior to her victimization, widens the sphere of consequence beyond the victim and criminal justice system to the survivor’s larger community, and entreats that community to preserve a space for her to look and look again at everything, without judgment. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Desiderata for an Account of Genre Existing Accounts of Genre An Account of Genre Conclusion Notes References.

An adequate account of the nature of genre and of the criteria for genre membership is essential to understanding the nature of the various categories into which comics can be classified. Because they fail adequately to distinguish genre categories from other ways of categorizing works, including categorizations according to medium or according to style, previous accounts of genre fail to illuminate the nature of comics categories. I argue that genres are sets of conventions that have developed as means of (...) addressing particular interpretative and/or evaluative concerns, and have a history of co‐instantiation within a community, such that a work’s belonging to some genre generates interpretative and evaluative expectations among the members of that community. Genres are distinct from styles in consisting of conventions, and are distinct from media both in consisting of conventions and in generating interpretative and evaluative expectations. (shrink)

The definition of art is controversial in contemporary philosophy. Whether art can be defined has also been a matter of controversy. The philosophical usefulness of a definition of art has also been debated. -/- Contemporary definitions can be classified with respect to the dimensions of art they emphasize. One distinctively modern, conventionalist, sort of definition focuses on art’s institutional features, emphasizing the way art changes over time, modern works that appear to break radically with all traditional art, the relational properties (...) of artworks that depend on works’ relations to art history, art genres, etc. – more broadly, on the undeniable heterogeneity of the class of artworks. The more traditional, less conventionalist sort of definition defended in contemporary philosophy makes use of a broader, more traditional concept of aesthetic properties that includes more than art-relational ones, and puts more emphasis on art’s pan-cultural and trans-historical characteristics – in sum, on commonalities across the class of artworks. Hybrid definitions aim to do justice to both the traditional aesthetic dimension as well as to the institutional and art-historical dimensions of art, while privileging neither. (shrink)

Film is an art form with a language and an aesthetic all its own. Since 1979, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's Film Art has been the best-selling and widely respected introduction to the analysis of cinema. Taking a skills-centered approach supported by a wide range of examples from various periods and countries, the authors strive to help students develop a core set of analytical skills that will deepen their understanding of any film, in any genre. Frame enlargements throughout the text (...) enable students to view images taken directly from completed films, while an optional, text-specific tutorial CD-ROM helps clarify and reinforce specific concepts addressed in the text with the use of film clips. Building on these strengths, the ninth edition adds coverage of new technologies, updated examples, and references to the authors' acclaimed weblog to provide unparalleled currency and connect students with the world of cinema today. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I begin by considering the nature of philosophy understood as a genre of writing. I claim that genres are impure, porous, changing sites of inclusion and exclusion that are anything but natural kinds. Furthermore, I suggest that works of poetry, drama, painting, dance, and other arts may profitably be understood as works of philosophy and that philosophy itself may profitably be understood as an art, as performance work. I support this claim by an analysis of philosophy's canon as (...) historicist, expressivist, and self-consciously hybrid. I explicate the notion of hybridity in terms of crossings understood as encounters, resistance and opposition, and passing borders. I conclude by drawing parallels between philosophical notions of hybridity and political issues of identity, community, and outsiders. Throughout this article, I am concerned to do philosophy in a way or style consistent with the expressivist view of philosophy I present. (shrink)

En littérature comme en peinture, le brouillage des hiérarchies est aussi constant que leur formulation, tant l'acte créateur se confond avec leur transgression et leur déplacement. L'importance théorique des genres paraît disproportionnée au regard de leur influence réelle sur la création littéraire et artistique. En revanche, leur impact se fait bien plus ressentir sur la réception des oeuvres, car ils fournissent des critères de jugement et permettent d'instaurer dans le système des beaux-arts une manière d'ordre politique. La transgression des (...) hiérarchies est bien souvent involontaire, et quand elle est volontaire, elle apparaît comme un geste iconoclaste, mais ce geste lui-même n'est pas loin de devenir institutionnel. S'il est aujourd'hui banal d'étudier la transgression des frontières génériques, le présent volume interroge la fascination que les hiérarchies ont toujours exercée, envers et contre toute réalité, et la séduction paradoxale des genres mineurs"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Constructional approaches to genre model genre knowledge in terms of genre-based constructions. Like all constructions, these represent conventionalized pairings of meaning and form, of varying degrees of length and schematicity, whose pragmatic specifications include their association with a particular socio-cultural context. In this state-of-the-art article I review genre-related constructional work, discussing grammatical patterns that are licensed only in particular contexts, including conversational genres, as well as expressions that qualify as constructions simply on the basis of socio-cultural currency. The appropriateness (...) of constructional analysis for the language of genre derives from the definitional incorporation of discourse-pragmatic information in constructional descriptions and the possibility of relating genre-bound, idiosyncratic patterns to the rest of the constructions in a language through relations of inheritance. I further highlight the compatibility of Frame Semantics with the notion of genre and critically discuss the concept of conventionality as it applies to genre language. (shrink)

Most art is made by people with a well-developed concept of art and who are familiar with its forms and genres as well as with the informal institutions of its presentation and reception. This is reflected in philosophers’ proposed definitions. The earliest artworks were made by people who lacked the concept and in a context that does not resemble the art traditions of established societies, however. An adequate definition must accommodate their efforts. The result is a complex, hybrid definition: (...) something is art (a) if it shows excellence of skill and achievement in realizing significant aesthetic goals, and either doing so is its primary, identifying function or doing so makes a vital contribution to the realization of its primary, identifying function, or (b) if it falls under an art genre or art form established and publicly recognized within an art tradition, or (c) if it is intended by its maker/presenter to be art and its maker/presenter does what is necessary and appropriate to realizing that intention. Meanwhile, artworlds—historically developed traditions of works, genres, theories, criticism, conventions for presentation, and so on—play a crucial but implicit role in (b) and (c). They are to be characterized in terms of their origins. (shrink)

Genres inform our appreciative practices. What it takes for a work to be a good work of comedy is different than what it takes for a work to be a good work of horror, and a failure to recognize this will lead to a failure to appreciate comedies or works of horror particularly well. Likewise, it is not uncommon to hear people say that a film or novel is a good work, but not a good work of x (where (...) x is the genre of that work). A work can be good all things considered, but genre membership provides us with an additional set of evaluative criteria over and above those of the medium, which colors how we interpret and appreciate the work. Given this importance, it is not surprising that philosophers of art have been interested in providing an account of what, exactly, a genre is. Despite this interest, there is not widespread agreement about what it takes for something to be a genre, nor what kinds of considerations are relevant in determining whether a work is a member of that genre. Beyond this, we might also want to know to what degree we ought to consider genre in evaluating a work of art and why it should matter at all. Here, I explore the variety of recent theories that philosophers have taken up on the topic of genre and why we should ultimately think of genres as artistic practices rather than the alternatives. (shrink)

For sociologists, interpretations of cultural objects, whether grouped into genres or taken individually, are intermediate steps toward understanding more fully the contexts in which they are produced. This does not deny the satisfaction implicit in grasping the significance of aspects of objects themselves; I hope that the analysis I have presented lends viewing the Sangatsu-dō sculptures a degree of comprehension, and pleasure, not present before. The ultimate test, however, and the justification for undertaking any sociological examination of cultural objects, (...) is the usefulness of the resulting account in confirming or rejecting ideas about the social conditions surrounding their production. The important question in judging the appropriateness of examining individual objects is therefore not whether sociologists (as opposed, for example, to art historians) ought to concern themselves with such analysis; it is whether such analyses increase the ability of objects to serve as evidence in investigations of interesting social phenomena. My goal is not therefore to supplant generic analysis with a focus on individual objects: it is as possible to fetishize the study of the object as it is to ignore its potential. In fact, it is most useful to see the two approaches as complementary, making possible fuller analyses than each can enable separately. We would do well to take more seriously the benefits of locating objects in the contexts in which people deal with them most commonly: as distinct elements in more inclusive fields, in which meaning and appeal are closely tied to difference. (shrink)

What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, _What Art Is _challenges the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning. Danto argues that despite varied approaches, a work of art is always defined by two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as one additional criterion contributed by the viewer: (...) interpretation. Danto crafts his argument in an accessible manner that engages with both philosophy and art across genres and eras, beginning with Plato’s definition of art in _The Republic_, and continuing through the progress of art as a series of discoveries, including such innovations as perspective, chiaroscuro, and physiognomy. Danto concludes with a fascinating discussion of Andy Warhol’s famous shipping cartons, which are visually indistinguishable from the everyday objects they represent. Throughout, Danto considers the contributions of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, and artists from Michelangelo and Poussin to Duchamp and Warhol, in this far-reaching examination of the interconnectivity and universality of aesthetic production. (shrink)

Although popular music is increasingly recognized as an important area of inquiry in philosophy of art, many organizing principles have been taken over from other fields without scrutiny. This article selects heavy metal as an example of the value of applying philosophy of criticism to discourse about popular music. Metal is now in its fifth decade, and its combination of longevity and diversity have made it an attractive topic in popular music studies. In accounts of metal by musicologists and social (...) science researches, metal is almost always referred to as a genre of music, and the genre is said to unify diverse metal subcultures, which are associated with diverse styles of metal. An examination of the concepts of genre and subculture as they are typically understood in popular music studies generally, and in metal studies in particular, suggests that they do not function to delineate metal as a unitary category. However, contemporary philosophy of art provides several theoretical principles that provide criteria for identifying a unified genre. The relevant theories are historical definitions of art and Kendall Walton's account of style. Viewed in terms of these philosophical developments, metal should be seen as an evolving assemblage of related styles, only some of which are associated with fans who constitute a subculture. However, it is not a "category" in Walton's sense of that term. Video abstract. (shrink)

Much art is committed to political causes. However, does art contribute something unique to political discourse, or does it merely reflect the insights of political science and political philosophy? Here I argue for indispensability of art to political discourse by building on the debate about artistic cognitivism, the view that art is a source of knowledge. Different artforms, I suggest, make available specific epistemic resources, which allow audiences to overcome epistemic obstacles that obtain in a given ideological situation. My goal (...) is to offer a general model for identifying cognitive advantages for artworks belonging to distinct artforms and genres, in a way that can account for each artwork’s historical and cultural specificity. More speculatively, however, my account also comments on the ancient struggle between philosophy and the arts as competing modes of persuasion, and expands our notion of legitimate political discourse to include a greater plurality of discursive genres. (shrink)

In this article, I begin developing what I call the genre view of public lands. It holds that public land designations fall into different genres of land management. I focus on one designation in particular—US national monuments created under the Antiquities Act—to develop the view and illustrate its significance. I characterize the national monument genre in terms of two norms stated in the Act and show how they shape public space in distinctive ways. I then illustrate how the genre (...) view opens avenues for evaluating land designations. By way of example, I evaluate national monuments according to aesthetic considerations. I argue that the genre is, perhaps surprisingly, aesthetically vexed and that there is an aesthetic reason for presidents to depart from the original intent and meaning of the Act. This also lends support for some of the most controversial national monuments. Drawing from case law, I then show how aesthetic evaluations may hold legal weight. Such considerations can also influence decisions about whether to protect an area as a monument. In these ways, the genre view offers a framework for philosophers, and particularly aestheticians, to contribute to environmental law and policy. (shrink)

_A lively meditation on the nature of art by one of America's most celebrated art critics_ What is it to be a work of art? Renowned author and critic Arthur C. Danto addresses this fundamental, complex question. Part philosophical monograph and part memoiristic meditation, _What Art Is _challenges the popular interpretation that art is an indefinable concept, instead bringing to light the properties that constitute universal meaning. Danto argues that despite varied approaches, a work of art is always defined by (...) two essential criteria: meaning and embodiment, as well as one additional criterion contributed by the viewer: interpretation. Danto crafts his argument in an accessible manner that engages with both philosophy and art across genres and eras, beginning with Plato’s definition of art in _The Republic_, and continuing through the progress of art as a series of discoveries, including such innovations as perspective, chiaroscuro, and physiognomy. Danto concludes with a fascinating discussion of Andy Warhol’s famous shipping cartons, which are visually indistinguishable from the everyday objects they represent. Throughout, Danto considers the contributions of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, and artists from Michelangelo and Poussin to Duchamp and Warhol, in this far-reaching examination of the interconnectivity and universality of aesthetic production. (shrink)

The experimental art and poetry of the last half of the twentieth century offers a glimpse of the emerging networked culture that electronic devices will make omnipresent. Craig J. Saper demarcates this new genre of networked art, which uses the trappings of bureaucratic systems - money, logos, corporate names, stamps - to create intimate situations among the participants. Saper explains how this genre developed from post-World War II conceptual art, including periodicals as artworks in themselves; lettrist, concrete, and process poetry; (...) Bauhaus versus COBRA; Fluxus publications, kits, and machines; mail art and on-sendings. The encyclopedic scope of the book includes discussions of artists from J. Beuys to J. S. G. Boggs, and Bauhaus's Max Bill to Anna Freud Banana. -- Publisher. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the practice of categorizing works of art and its relationship to art criticism. How a work of art is categorized influences how it is appreciated and criticized. Being frightening is a merit for horror, but a demerit for lullabies. The brushstrokes in Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" (1874) look crude when seen as a Neoclassical painting, but graceful when seen as an Impressionist painting. Many of the judgments we make about artworks are category-dependent in this way, but previous research (...) has rarely examined in depth the ontological structure of art categories, how they are generated and maintained, and how they function. This dissertation fills this gap. The proposal of this dissertation can be summarized as follows. Categories (especially genres) should be analyzed as clusters of rules that regulate the responses and behaviors of agents in the artworld. The visual mundaneness is a critical reason to consider Duchamp's "Comb" (1916) provocative, given the existence of the readymade as a set of rules that justifies such reasoning. The critical and appreciative practice of which categorization is a part is a social practice of making, declaring, proposing, reforming, and developing rules of appreciation. How we appreciate artworks, and how criticism guides our appreciation, is sensitive to how we categorize artworks. How we categorize artworks is sensitive to what categories have been set up in our community and which categories are active regarding each artwork. (shrink)

Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Stacie Friend’s claim that fiction is a genre, her notion of genre can be fruitfully applied to a paradigmatic genre such as science fiction. This article deploys Friend’s notion of genre in order to improve the influential characterization of science fiction proposed by Darko Suvin and to defend it from a criticism recently raised by Simon Evnine. According to Suvin, a work of science fiction must concern “a fictional ‘novum’ validated by cognitive (...) logic.” While Suvin conceives of his characterization as a necessary and sufficient condition for membership in the genre, I propose to cast the notions of “fictional novum” and “cognitive validation” as standard features of the genre, which works of science fiction should have but might lack. I argue that this amended version of Suvin’s characterization can better account for two basic properties of science fiction as a genre, namely its historicity and its relevance to appreciation. Lastly, I show that the amended version can shed some light on the affinity between works of science fiction and philosophical thought experiments. (shrink)

La prise en compte des problématiques de genre en danse s’est faite tardivement en France. L’histoire de la danse a tout particulièrement longtemps résisté à l’introduction d’une perspective qui remettait en question une tradition historiographique et une certaine doxa. Cet article s’attache à restituer quelques étapes de l’introduction de cette nouvelle appréhension des problématiques historiques. Stimulée par les échanges internationaux, et notamment avec les pays anglo-saxons, elle a été rendue possible par une ouverture interdisciplinaire, croisant les études en danse avec (...) les autres domaines des arts vivants, les études de genre et l’histoire, plus spécifiquement l’histoire culturelle. Elle a aussi été renforcée par des échanges fructueux entre la recherche académique et des recherches et initiatives venant d’institutions culturelles ainsi que d’artistes de la danse. (shrink)

La prise en compte des problématiques de genre en danse s’est faite tardivement en France. L’histoire de la danse a tout particulièrement longtemps résisté à l’introduction d’une perspective qui remettait en question une tradition historiographique et une certaine doxa. Cet article s’attache à restituer quelques étapes de l’introduction de cette nouvelle appréhension des problématiques historiques. Stimulée par les échanges internationaux, et notamment avec les pays anglo-saxons, elle a été rendue possible par une ouverture interdisciplinaire, croisant les études en danse avec (...) les autres domaines des arts vivants, les études de genre et l’histoire, plus spécifiquement l’histoire culturelle. Elle a aussi été renforcée par des échanges fructueux entre la recherche académique et des recherches et initiatives venant d’institutions culturelles ainsi que d’artistes de la danse. (shrink)

This paper looks at the tragedy of Qiao Feng in Jin Yong’s The Demi-Gods and the Semi-Devils. While it is common practice for Žižekean scholars to examine genre writing and popular culture with Lacanian theory, the martial arts genre has received little attention. In Demi-Gods, Qiao Feng experiences an ‘identity crisis’ at the peak of his career: rumour has it that though he was raised and trained in China, he was born a Khitan. Qiao Feng at first believes it is (...) a just conspiracy, and henceforth is blind-sided by the imaginary relation between his ego and small others. He mis-recognises others’ scheming as ‘the Other of the Other,’ while his supposedly deceased Khitan father occupies the corner of the Other in the schema L to orchestra the manipulation game. However, what Qiao Feng is really under prey is the desire of the father, and of the two fatherlands, one Han-Chinese, one Khitan: his tragedy lies in the split of the national Other, in the impossibility of the ethical imperative Your duty is to be loyal to your country. And yet, it is exactly because of the emptiness in the ethical call that Qiao Feng can start to act as a subject, a subject that is by definition already always split. This paper thus interprets the actions of Jin Yong’s hero according to Lacan’s schema L, and also provides variations of the schema based on the twists and turns of this martial arts tragedy. (shrink)

Media art can be conceived as laboratory, at the edges of art. These technological experiments give priority to innovation and exploration by means of new media. In metaphorical terms, we could say that the emphasis is on creating new languages that allow us, in a later phase, to write prose or poetry with it.In my paper, I discuss why the common view on media art falls short. Media art is not just about mixing media but rather about mixing art. Several (...) different challenges are at stake that beget a hybrid post-medium condition. (1) The artistic practice of media art often concerns exercises in remediation (i.e. resonating visual narratives of old media in new media). Here, we encounter a repetition of historical themes and re-makes or re-enactments of classical art pieces. These experiments thus mix the history of art. (2) Media art is often also about immersion (i.e. interactively enclosing the spectactor in a audiovisual or virtual realm). In experiments with CAVE-installations or 3D-cinema using digital goggles, for instance, we notice a combination of an artistic interest with a phenomenologicaland a scientific one (cf. so-called postfenomenology, robotics, experimental psychology). Hence, these experiments mix art with science. (3) Media art is not just a friction between art an technoscience. It takes place at a junction between art, creative industry, design, sociology and politics. Concerning the latter, I willdiscuss the culture-critical potential of i.e. hacktivism, marx 2.0 and bio-performances like Stelarc and Orlan. (4) Media art is not simply a genre that aims for recognition as a part of or a completion of fine art. While democratizing new media technology, it actually blurs the idea of genre, altering and opening up the very canon of fine art, music art, live art, performance art, video art and cinema. (shrink)

L’art pictural religieux non figuratif est difficile à interpréter, et encore plus à théoriser. Plusieurs au xxe siècle ont tenté de le faire selon différentes perspectives. On a élaboré des solutions crypto-réaliste, puis expressionniste et, plus récemment, minimaliste. Tous ces points de vue semblent insuffisants pour rendre compte de la dimension religieuse dans l’art non figuratif. On pourrait enfin envisager une quatrième solution, rhétorique cette fois, qui jetterait un éclairage nouveau sur ce genre d’oeuvre tout en proposant quelques clés d’interprétation (...) aux amateurs d’art ainsi qu’aux artistes qui s’y intéressent. Non figurative pictorial art is difficult to interpret and even more difficult to theorize upon. Several attempts to do so were undertaken throughout the 20th century. Crypto-realist, expressionist and minimalist explanations have been proffered. None of these perspectives, however, sufficiently accounts for the religious dimension in non-figurative art. A rhetorical approach may provide a solution which will shed light on this particular form of artistic expression at the same time that it suggests a number of hermeneutical keys that may prove useful to art-lovers and artists alike. (shrink)

This article will consider the unique contribution that the dramatic arts can make to philosophical practices of communication and reflection. While argumentation typically advocates a particular position over and against less plausible options, dramatic performance can convey the rich possibilities and tensions among conflicting points of view without ultimately taking a definitive stance. This genre, as a performed narrative involving multiple perspectives, can illuminate the complexity and legitimacy of a plurality of—often competing—theoretical commitments, whereas direct argumentation, by its very nature, (...) must weaken the opposition by putting it in a less compelling light. Theater, by its very methods, can .. (shrink)

L’article examine le sens de la systématisation de la philosophie transcendantale que Schelling présente en 1800 comme accomplie par l’art, « organon et document » de la philosophie. A partir d’une reconstitution du problème et de la dynamique propres au Système de l’idéalisme transcendantal, puis de la fonction systématique de la philosophie de l’art, on soutient que l’achèvement que l’art est censé accomplir prend en fait plutôt – en lien direct avec l’ambiguïté du principe du Système – la figure d’une (...) mise en suspens, d’une indécision fondamentale entre deux voies, ultérieurement empruntées l’une par la philosophie de l’identité, l’autre par la dernière philosophie.This article examines the significance of the systematization of transcendental philosophy which Schelling claims in 1800 to be fulfilled by art, « the organon and document » of philosophy. After reconstructing the problem and the process peculiar to the System of transcendental Idealism, as well as the systematic function of the philosophy of art, we maintain that the supposed completion of philosophy by art is in fact fundamentally unresolved, suspended between two distinct approaches which will later be taken up in the philosophy of identity and in the late philosophy. (shrink)

In his presidential address, at the fiftieth anniversary of the American Society of Aesthetics in 1992, Peter Kivy suggested that "progress in the philosophy of art in the immediate future is to be made not by theorizing in the grand manner, but by careful and imaginative philosophical scrutiny of the individual arts and their individual problems." The study of the individual arts, and the differences between them, has, in the ensuing decades, provided a useful corrective to aesthetic theorizing in the (...) grand manner. In this essay, I urge philosophers of art, art educators, and art theorists to consider a different option—the rigorous and creative investigation of art clusters: that is, various collections of artworks and art kinds, unified by significant similarities and cutting across the recognized artforms and genres. (shrink)

Even though it’s frequently asserted that we are living in a golden age of scripted television, television as a medium is still not taken seriously as an artistic art form, nor has the stigma of television as “chewing gum for the mind” really disappeared. -/- Philosopher Martin Shuster argues that television is the modern art form, full of promise and urgency, and in New Television, he offers a strong philosophical justification for its importance. Through careful analysis of shows including The (...) Wire, Justified, and Weeds, among others; and European and Anglophone philosophers, such as Stanley Cavell, Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, and John Rawls; Shuster reveals how various contemporary television series engage deeply with aesthetic and philosophical issues in modernism and modernity. What unifies the aesthetic and philosophical ambitions of new television is a commitment to portraying and exploring the family as the last site of political possibility in a world otherwise bereft of any other sources of traditional authority; consequently, at the heart of new television are profound political stakes. (shrink)

In Literature, Art and the Pursuit of Decay, Timothy Mathews examines work by a range of writers and painters working in France in the twentieth century. The well-illustrated book engages with canonical figures - Guillaume Apollinaire, Marguerite Duras and Jean Genet, Roland Barthes, Pablo Picasso and René Magritte - as well as more neglected individuals including Robert Desnos and Jean Fautrier. Mathews draws on psychoanalysis, existentialism and poststructuralism to show how both literature and fine art promote the value of generosity (...) in a culture of anxiety and intolerance. Decay emerges as a surprising ally in this quest because of its ability to undermine intellectual complacency and egoism. Integrating theoretical and material approaches to reading and viewing, Mathews engages with the distinctive features of different literary genres and different types of painting to develop an original history of artistic ambition in twentieth-century France. (shrink)