Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by L. Campos
Learning Outcomes
To introduce the essay questions for the unit in the context of
the aesthetics and reception theory.
To introduce classical aesthetics debates: Kant
To introduce areas of analytical and continental aesthetic
debates.
To introduce and contextualize areas of hermeneutics in
relation to aesthetics.
To introduce relational aesthetics.
To introduce reception theory.
Classical Debates: What do we mean
by Aesthetics?
Aesthetics, broadly defined as the philosophy of art,
interrogates this discipline with questions such as:
What is art? What counts as art? What is the value of
art? What are our judgments on art?
Kant places aesthetic judgment between the logically necessary (physics and
mathematic theorems) and the purely subjective (but not determinate), making
clear that the experience of beauty is not purely subjective (but also rational).
Judgments of taste are both subjective and universal. They are subjective, because
they are responses to pleasure, and do not essentially involve any claims about the
properties of the object itself. (What matters is not the picture I see; rather it is the
pleasing effect of the picture on me.)
Analytical Aesthetic Tradition
The prominent application of logic and
conceptual analysis.
The emphasis on objectivity and truth.
The need to define terms.
Aesthetic philosophical problems as timeless and
universal
Questions such as: What makes a situation
aesthetic? What is an aesthetic concept? How do
meaning, truth and representation arise in the
arts? What is the scope of the aesthetics?
Continental Aesthetic Tradition
Aesthetic problems as not timeless and
universal, but as constructs of history and
culture.
Questions such as: aesthetics as discourse?
Aesthetics as symbols of modern culture?
Theatrical Performance:
Ephemeralities, Events, and Feedback Loops
Theatrical Performance
Performances are read as open-ended engagements
and exchanges between performers and audiences.
Moreover,
Jacques Derrida
Pierre Boudieu
Michel Foucault
Who is the author?
Jacques Derrida
Roland Barthes
Michel Foucault
Hermeneutics
He says that the human sciences (history, literature, etc.) always approach
a text from a position of being remote from itGadamer calls this
distance alienation.
The hermeneutic circle: has to do with the relation between part and
whole. I can only discover the meaning of the whole from the part, but
the part only gains its meaning by its place in the whole.
Relational Aesthetics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj9rWq2uodY
Reception Theory
Reception theory provides a means of understanding media texts by
understanding how these texts are read by audiences.
Theorists who analyze media through reception studies are concerned with the
experience of viewing for spectators, and how meaning is created through that
experience.
Meaning is created in the interaction between spectator and text; in other words,
meaning is created as the viewer watches and processes the film, performance,
(even paintings).
Reception theory argues that contextual factors, more than textual ones, influence
the way the spectator views the film, television program and/or performance.
Contextual factors include elements of the viewer's identity as well as
circumstances of exhibition, the spectator's preconceived notions, and even social,
historical, and political issues.
Reception Theory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yr7odFUARg
Birmingham University Centre for Reception Theory :
Stuart Hall
Hall argues that the researchers should direct their attention toward:
Analysis of that social and political context in which content is produced
(encoding).