Art as Dramatization and the Indian Tradition

Ranjan K. Ghosh

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 61, No. 3. (Summer, 2003), pp. 293-295.

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 Discussion
Art as Dramatization and the Indian
Tradition
Characterizing art as dramatization undoubtedly has
merits over attempts at defining art in terms of a
single essential quality or necessary and sufficient
condition. "Dramatization," on the other hand, unifies
two concepts that are arguably interdependent: aes-
thetic naturalism and historicism. I find myself quite
in sympathy with such an approach that Richard
Shusterman brings out with considerable cogency in
his paper "Art as ~ramatization."' He has gone to
some length in establishing his position by tracing the
ideas to the Western culture, particularly by drawing
upon the ancient Greek concept of imitation in art, on
one hand, and the historicist thinking "produced by
the Western project of modernity" (as represented by
Adorno, Dickie et al.), on the other. However, I feel
impelled to comment on at least two aspects that, to
my mind, would go some way in contextualizing his
thesis.
In the first place, I would like to make a point in
response to what Professor Shusterman says about
the usefulness of nonhonorific definitions of art
(p. 364), even though it is not perhaps a matter of
direct and major concern for him in this paper. I do
not see any rationale for holding on to two senses of
the term "art": classificatory and evaluative. It is only
the evaluative sense that should be of any concern to
us. As for the classificatory sense, it does not help us
to have a better understanding of the concept of art.
Even if a certain object is given the title of art on the
basis of some institutional framework, such as is
argued by George ~ickie,'it may permanently remain
unable to give us the sort of experience that we look
forward to in our interaction with an object of art.
How does it help us to see why certain things are
classified under the rubric term "art"? Of far more
interest to us would be an insight into the qualities
(experiential or physical) by virtue of which an object
is called an art object. On this consideration, the eval-
uative sense of the term "art" throws up the idea of
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 61:3 Summer 2003
excellence or the criteria of excellence on the basis of
which an object is granted the title of art. It makes
sense to ask for such criteria, and it makes eminently
more sense to look for the fulfillment of such criteria.
I am inclined to be in agreement with M. W. Rowe,
who argues quite convincingly against the two senses
of the term "art" and suggests that such a distinction
(between the two senses) impairs all attempts to
define art.3 On the other hand, it is far more helpful to
find out the great qualities for which the excellent
specimens of art are capable of giving us the sense
of delight or exhilaration that they do. The thrust of
Rowe's analysis is to map "art" as a functional
concept, so that for something to be called art it must
achieve "a certain minimal standard of the assigned
function. When something is evaluated as "good art"
it means that the thing functions as art to an eminent
degree. What goes to make something "good art" is
the same that goes to make it a case of "art" in the
first place. The distinction between "art" and "good art"
is one of degree. So for Rowe, the classificatory
sense of art is parasitic on its evaluative sense.
I now come to the second and more important
point of my comment, which relates to the attempt to
reconcile the seemingly opposed views of aesthetic
naturalism and historicism. It would be worthwhile to
note here that such a happy amalgam of the two is
found in the Indian approach to theorization about
art. In Bharata's Natyasastra (a work of dramaturgy)
it has been clearly stated that what is created in drama
is rasa, which is identified as the enacted emotion on
the stage.4 According to this view, the aesthetic emo-
tion, or rasa, is brought about by the combination of
determinants (vibhavas), consequents (anubhavas),
and the fleeting emotions (vyabhicharins), all of
which relate to the presentation on the stage.5 (Later
thinkers have extended this idea to cover other forms
of art, such as painting, sculpture, literature, etc.) In
this connection, an attempt has been made to distin-
guish between emotion that is enacted on the stage
and emotion as it is experienced in life. The former is
idealized and is not to be conflated either with the

actual emotion of the actor who enacts it on the stage
or that of the dramati~t.~ The distinction is of vital
importance in understanding the nature of the
aesthetic object that is presented on the stage. As
Susanne Langer remarks: "Some of the Hindu
critics. . . understood much better than their Western
colleagues the various aspects of emotion in theatre,
which our writers so freely and banefully confuse:
the feelings experienced by the actor, those experi-
enced by the spectators, those presented as under-
gone by characters in the play and finally the feeling
that shines through the play itself-the vital feeling
of the piece."7 This applies as much to the dramatic
art as to the other forms of art. Now this "vital feeling
of the piece," or what in the Indian text is referred to
as rasa, can come about only through the enactment
of the feeling on the stage. Again, according to the
ancient Indian text (Natyasastra), the enactment of
such feeling is in an impersonal or transpersonal
mode, that is to say that it does not belong to any
actual or historical person.8 In other words, this feel-
ing in the transpersonalized mode that emerges in the
dramatic work is to be clearly distinguished from real
life-feeling. The object of aesthetic contemplation is
an idealized content, and so is the source of aesthetic
delight.9
In the account just provided, one can clearly see
how the Indian theorist makes a definitive attempt to
characterize the nature of art in terms of the kind of
experience that is called rasa-experience. The proof
of the pudding is in the eating, and so any object that
is incapable of providing such experience is not
worth considering as a work of art. Indeed, the search
for the defining objective feature of art in the classifi-
catory sense is a wild goose chase. On the other hand,
anything that is imbued with rasa is worthwhile as an
object of art, and not otherwise. Thus, according to
the Indian theorists, what is created in a work of art is
rasa, and what is experienced by the audience is
rasa. As for its creation in a work of art, words (vak),
gestures (anga), and representation of involuntary
emotions (satva) are the constituents by the combina-
tion of which rasa is created on the stage for the
spectator to contemplate it." In theorizing about art
along these lines, it has been recognized that the con-
tent of poetry is emotion (bhava)," which as poetic
emotion must be distinguished from ordinary life
experience of emotion. In Indian conception, art is
not mere imitation or copy of life or nature. Nor is it
so abstract as to be totally away from our familiar
world. Beauty is idealized by drawing from nature
elements that are then reconstituted by the imagination
to form what is flawless or perfect, and yet is sharable.
The foregoing brief account of the Indian view of
art clearly brings out the point that Professor Shuster-
man is striving hard to establish, namely, that recon-
ciliation between aesthetic naturalism and historicism
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
is possible and adequate enough to characterize art.
In the context of the Indian tradition too, the Theory
of Rasa responds to these two aspects by characteriz-
ing the drama as enacted emotion on the stage implicit
in which is the distinction between art-emotion and
life-emotion. The point as to whether such a charac-
terization would apply to art in its classificatory sense
seems quite redundant as the only purpose for defin-
ing art is to suggest what one should look for in a
work of art.
Fetishization of the classificatory sense of art
gives way to the tendency to institutionalize art in
terms of extraneous factors and conditions. The eval-
uative sense, on the other hand, restores the value for
which art is extolled and preserved. Putting some-
thing "on the stage" or "into the frame" could well be
taken as a metaphor for consecrating the thing as a
work of art. Implicit in this are the two ideas, namely,
that what is so put on the stage or into the frame is
discontinuous with life around and that it is so for it
possesses a value, which is uncommon in life.
"Dramatization" captures both these senses as much
as the term "rasa" does in the Indian tradition of
thinking about art.
RANJAN K. GHOSH
Indian Council of Philosophical Research
36, Tughlakabad Institutional Area
New Delhi
India 110062
1. Richard Shusterman, "Art as Dramatization," The
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59 (2001): 363-372.
2. As Stephen Davies rightly points out: "The institu-
tional theory does not explain why someone who has the
authority to confer art status would choose to exercise that
authority with respect to one objectlevent rather than
another. So it explains how something becomes an artwork
without explaining why it is an artwork." Stephen Davies,
De5nitions of Art (Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 113.
3. M. W. Rowe, "Why 'Art' Doesn't Have Two Senses,"
The British Journal of Aesthetics 31 (1991): 214-221.
4. See The Natyasastra, vols. 1 and 2, trans. Manomohan
Ghosh (Calcutta, The Asiatic Society, 1961). For a fuller
discussion, see also P. J. Chaudhury, "The Theory of Rasa,"
The Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism 24 (1965): 145-149
and V. K. Chari, "Poetic Emotions and Poetic Semantics,"
The Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism 34 (1976): 295.
5. The relevant Sanskrit verse in Chapter VI of The
Natyasastra reads: Vibhavanubhavavyabhicharisamyogad
rasa nispattih. The aesthetic emotion or rasa is at once set
apart from the real-life emotions as the word nispattih in the
sutra has been interpreted to mean not in terms of a material
cause-effect production and is thus treated as ideal content.
For a detailed discussion, see S. S. Barlingay, "Rasa
Discussion
Theory," The Philosophical Quarterly (Pratap Centre of
Philosophy, Amalner, India, Special Issue, 2001): 105-1 16;
see also Ranjan K. Ghosh, "Professor Barlingay on the
Meaning of Rasa," pp. 201-21 1, in the same issue.
6. This is brought about by the process of "Sadharanika-
rana" or transpersonalization as it has been explained by
Abhinavagupta in his commentary on The Natyasastra.
Please see R. Gnoli, The Aesthetic Experience According
to Abhinavagupta (Varanasi, India: Chowkhamba Sanskrit
Series, 1985).
7. Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953), p. 323.
8. As to how this is brought about, please see R. Gnoli,
The Aesthetic Experience According to Abhinavagupta.
This has been explained in a logically more elegant manner
though somewhat differently by K. C. Bhattacharyya who
speaks of it as "duplicated sympathy." Bhattacharyya con-
siders the art situation in terms of three grades of feeling.
The primary object-feeling may be understood as, for exam-
ple, the child's experience of playing with a toy, so that for
the child the feeling of joy is not distinguishable from the
object. At the second level, a person who observes the child
and her sense of joy identifies his feeling with that of the
child. Such "feeling of feeling" or "sympathy" is quite detached
from the object but not from the feeling of the child for the
toy. Aesthetic enjoyment may be considered at a level even
higher than this. If we imagine another person who identi-
fies himself with the person who enjoys the feeling of the
child (for the toy) then such a feeling may be characterized
as "sympathy with sympathy." It is at this higher level of
"duplicated sympathy that a feeling can be emotionally
contemplated in a detached way." K. C. Bhattacharyya,
"The Concept of Rasa," in Studies in Philosophy, ed.
G. Bhattacharyya (Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas, 1983), p. 355.
9. As I have argued elsewhere: "In the main tradition of
Indian aesthetics, rasa stands for what is created by the art-
ist as well as what is experienced by the audience. Rasa as
the created is not the same as what merely goes into its
making. The competent viewer (rasika) is here called upon
to actively participate in his commerce with the work of art
because rasa cannot be evoked in a passive state of mind.
What it means is that the viewer must detach himself from
his immediate egoistic interests. The emotion experienced is
not felt by the viewer as personal or as that of the artist;
rather it is universal or 'transpersonal."' Ranjan K. Ghosh,
"Artistic Communication and Symbol: Some Philosophical
Reflections," The British Journal of Aesthetics 27 (1987):
319-325.
10. Clarifying the nature of emotion created in a dra-
matic presentation in Chapter VII, 1 of his Natyasastra,
Bharata writes: "vagangasatvopetan kavyarthan bhavayanti
iti bhavah iti." See The Natyasastra, trans. M . Ghosh.
11. Poetry, here, stands in its widest connotation for
dramatic and literary arts.
Definition, Dramatization, and Rasa
I am very pleased to learn from Professor Ghosh's
comments that my theory of art as dramatization finds
support from the rich tradition of Indian aesthetics and
its preeminent theory of rasa. Ghosh is right that I
base my theory on Western sources (though my use
of Old Testament material does extend my sources
into the Asian continent), and I greatly appreciate his
efforts to examine my views in a wider context of
comparative aesthetics. Believing that art is rooted in
natural and cultural factors of human experience that
are widely shared throughout the world, but that art is
also variously shaped by the different historical cul-
tures that produce it, I think that cross-cultural aes-
thetic inquiry can be very illuminating. It seems
particularly important in today's age of increasing
globalization where the homogenization of cultures is
combined with false stereotypes of exotic otherness
in ways that conceal many of the aesthetically inter-
esting differences and commonalities in the world's
diverse cultural traditions. I am grateful to the Jour-
nal for welcoming such transcultural discussion.
Before examining the connection between rasa the-
ory and my pragmatist theory of art as dramatization,
I should clear up some confusion with respect to
Ghosh's first point about my theory.
I am surprised that Ghosh presents me as a cham-
pion of the classificatory sense of art and of classifi-
catory definitions, since I have always been
extremely critical of their dominance in contempo-
rary analytic aesthetics. I have repeatedly argued that
although being correctly classified as an artwork does
not entail having aesthetic excellence, the concept of
art as a whole has a deep and intrinsic connection
with value that makes purely classificatory defini-
tions not particularly helpful in enriching our under-
standing and appreciation of art. I have therefore
persistently questioned whether there is "any good
reason why we should try to extract [for definition] a
purely classificatory concept of art." One reason why
"'art' is an essentially contested concept," I wrote in
criticizing George Dickie's institutional theory as an
aesthetic analogue of legal positivism, is "because it
has a distinctively appraisive element and indicates a
valued achievement, and therefore its use is worth
contesting." I further argued that Dickie's attempt to
define a purely classificatory sense of art in institu-
tional terms by using such notions as "the artworld
and "candidate for appreciation" cannot be successful
because those notions already imply value.' As I put
the point in Pragmatist Aesthetics, "the very notion
of appreciation presupposes a background where art
is appreciated, just as the very concept of 'artworld'
presupposes a world where art is valued as a cultural
practice and achievement. Holistically speaking, art
and value cannot be separated, which means that
essentialistically defining art in a purely classifica-
tory sense perversely eliminates what is essential to
art, even though it be absent from many of the objects
so clas~ified."~ More generally, I criticize purely
classificatory definitions of art as "wrapper theories"
that concentrate on the goal of perfectly covering the
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Art as Dramatization and the Indian Tradition
Ranjan K. Ghosh
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 61, No. 3. (Summer, 2003), pp. 293-295.
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[Endnotes]

1
Art as Dramatization
Richard Shusterman
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 59, No. 4. (Autumn, 2001), pp. 363-372.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28200123%2959%3A4%3C363%3AAAD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P

4
The Theory of Rasa
Pravas Jivan Chaudhury
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 24, No. 1, Supplement to the Oriental Issue: The
Aesthetic Attitude in Indian Aesthetics: Pravas Jivan Chaudhury. (Autumn, 1965), pp. 145-149.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28196523%2924%3A1%3C145%3ATTOR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3

4
Poetic Emotions and Poetic Semantics
V. K. Chari
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 34, No. 3. (Spring, 1976), pp. 287-299.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28197621%2934%3A3%3C287%3APEAPS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3

NOTE: The reference numbering from the original has been maintained in this citation list.