Beyond the Aesthetic and the Anti-Aesthetic

9. Things Missing from this Book

Here the subject was all the things that had been excluded from the week’s conversations , either by chance or because the Faculty or Fellows weren’t interested. The idea of the seminar was to think about reasons why certain topics had been omitted, and to distinguish political and philosophic reasons from contingent ones. James Elkins: I thought we should end with an open session, in the spirit of the entire event, on things we have omitted or underrepresented throughout the week. It has been suggested to me that the optimal subject here is the linguistic, political, institutional, geographic conditions under which a conversation like ours can take place at all. I want to begin with that, but first I’ll offer an abbreviated list of things we haven’t discussed. I’ll divide these provisionally into authors and subjects whose work is clearly continuous with our subject, but who were nevertheless omitted for one reason or another; and authors and subjects that might be discontinuous with our subject, where the reasons for omission might be easier to locate. First there are omitted subjects that are continuous with our theme. There are individual authors, such as Alain Badiou and Jean-Marie Schaeffer, whom people might expect in this discussion.1 Aside from that potentially endless list, there is the question of the revivals of beauty. When Diarmuid and I planned the week’s seminars, the entire subject of the re-emergence of beauty, as in Dave Hickey, Peter Schjeldahl, Bill Beckley, and Elaine Scarry, and others associated with it, such as Wendy Steiner and Arthur Danto, gradually dropped out. The faculty just weren’t interested in addressing them. Then there are omitted subjects that might not be discontinuous with our subject. In my introductory lecture I mentioned Christian hermeneutics of beauty in relation to art such as Karl Barth and Jacques Maritain—an enormous tradition stretching back to the Church Fathers.2 Closer at hand there is postcolonial studies, area studies, de-colonial studies, and other initiatives. Several of the Fellows, including Joaquín Barriendos, are deeply engaged with those subjects, but in that case it is not difficult to see the reasons their contributions 9. things missing from this book 1. Schaeffer’s argument is against the “speculative theory of art,” which includes Modernism. Schaeffer, Art of the Modern Age: Philosophy of Art from Kant to Heidegger, translated by Steven Rendall, introduction by Arthur Danto (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 8. The content of the “speculative theory” is “philosophical,” “the same as that of philosophy and religion” (13, 141). All share the Idea, and “the truth of Being” (141). What is needed, Schaeffer argues, is something outside of all that; Danto’s introduction to the English edition notes that the argument might not be convincing, but the reasons for trying are apparent. 2. See the introduction. Beyond the Aesthetic And the Anti-Aesthetic 110 seemed difficult to fit: there is a general lack of conceptualization of the relation between postcolonial studies and art history, which makes the bridge to Western aesthetics especially difficult to cross.3 Beáta Hock: That may be true in well-circumscribed academic traditions. When it comes to other settings, there is much talk about parallel and multiple modernities as opposed to a singular modernity.4 In peripherally Western regions like east-central Europe, the concept and practice of “self-colonization” is often discussed . The term was introduced by Alexander Kiossev to describe a kind of intellectual attitude that imports foreign values and models of civilization, and willingly contributes to the appropriation or colonization of its own authenticity through these imported models.5 Self-colonization, according to Kiossev, is typically practiced in regions that are not sufficiently distant (and their cultures distinguishable ) from the “great nations.” In recent years, attempts have been made to formulate another paradigm by shifting the terms and adjusting the focus of art-historical inquiry. The point is to move away from persistently totalizing analytical frameworks and thus bring out the meanings of cultures located in various geographies. Piotr Piotrowski’s texts form an important part of this work. James Elkins: Yes, those writers and many more are the principal subjects of the first book in this series, Art and Globalization. It’s a larger subject: but my claim would be that even in those projects, there is a fundamental lack of discourse connecting art historical to other values. Piotrowski, for example, does work on these issues, but within an art...