An Aisthetic Theology

Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research 19 (2011) 53-65. doi: 10.2143/ESWTR.19.0.2157467 ©2011 by Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research. All rights reserved.

Stefanie Knauss1

The Language of the Senses: An Aisthetic Theology

For many years now, theology has reflected on the capacity of art to express our desire for transcendence and to enable its experience,2 with Paul Tillich and Hans Urs von Balthasar, for example, contributing much to the development of an aesthetic theology, but overall, it is still a marginal subject. Maybe because of that, in order to legitimate its position within theology, aesthetic theology has mostly limited itself to an intellectual approach and paid little attention so far to the sensual and corporeal dimension of the reception of art and its importance for the opening up of a relationship to the transcendent.3 Already in 1989, art historian David Freedberg pointed out that sensual reactions to art works, in particular sexual excitement, are excluded systematically from (secular and theological) aesthetic theories as if they were proof that a work that arouses such reactions cannot be art but has to be defined as pornographic. However, Freed- berg underlines the necessity of integrating the bodily element of the process of reception in order to be able to understand the immediate and intense impact of art works and their significance:4 after all, “aesthetics” is derived from the Greek aisthesis, i.e. sensory perception, even if it is now nearly impossible to find traces of this etymology in most texts of aesthetics or aesthetic theology. The marginalisation of the aisthetic, i.e. the sensorial and bodily, and of beauty in theology, the emphasis on the intellectual in aesthetic reflections (in

1 This article is based on a paper presented at the ESWTR conference “Feminist Theology: Listening, Understanding and Giving Answer in a Secular and Plural World” in Salamanca, 24–28 August 2011. 2 Cf. Gerhard Larcher, Annäherungsversuche von Kunst und Glaube: Ein fundamentaltheolo- gisches Skizzenbuch (LIT: Wien 2005). 3 This happens only slowly, influenced by recent phenomenological approaches and those that are informed by the psychology of perception; cf. e.g. Vivian Sobchack, The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience (Princeton University Press: Princeton 1992); Christian Mikunda: Kino spüren: Strategien der emotionalen Filmgestaltung (WUV-Univer- sitätsverlag: Wien 2002). 4 Cf. David Freedberg, The Power of Images (Chicago University Press: Chicago 1989), 316.

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those cases when it is reflected upon at all), and the rejection of, or at least caution with regards to bodily reactions and the body has had theological and social consequences, as Grace Jantzen points out:

“With the dominance of word over image, truth over beauty, the stage was set for the complex emergence of evidence-based science and its technological and ideo- logical offspring: capitalism, utilitarianism, and the rest. […] The moves towards making religion a private, spiritual, and subjective state were interlinked with a subjectivising and privatising of beauty, and a shift to the ‘sublime’, while public reality was increasingly defined by global economic and military considerations. Ashes took the place of beauty.”5

These binary aspects (word/image, truth/beauty etc.) are traditionally gendered:6 beauty has practically come to equal the beauty of women; if theological or philosophical texts talk about the beautiful at all, they usually refer to the sublime, associated with the masculine since Kant; and of course ration- ality and its claim of absolute and objective knowledge are also associated with men’s ways of knowing; the body and sensory perception, on the other hand, are perceived to be part of the feminine sphere, and thus the senses are often represented allegorically as female figures;7 furthermore, sensory perception is strongly associated with sensuality and sexuality and thus with the lowest, most sinful, instinctual and animal-like of all modalities of relating to the world and forms of self-expression. Inspired by feminist and gender-conscious body theologies and sexual theologies,8 and in particular by Marcella Althaus-Reid’s indecent theology, I will argue in this paper that it is exactly the devalued and marginalised sensuality and bodyliness of aesthetic experience – aisthesis – which is fundamental for theology as the reflection on God and on the human being in relation to God, and this is true in particular when this theological reflection

5 Grace Jantzen, “Beauty for Ashes: Notes on the Displacement of Beauty,” in: Literature & Theology 16 (2002), 427-449, here 447. 6 Cf. Jantzen, “Beauty for Ashes.” 7 Cf. for example the tapestries of the Lady with the Unicorn (15th/16th ct.), or Hans Markart’s “Five Senses” (1872–1879). 8 Cf. e.g. the recent publications: Virginia Burrus / Catherine Keller (eds.), Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline (Fordham University Press: New York 2006); Gerard Loughlin (ed.), Queer Theology: Rethinking the Western Body (Black- well: Oxford 2007); Margaret D. Kamitsuka (ed.), The Embrace of Eros: Bodies, Desires, and Sexuality in Christianity (Fortress Press: Minneapolis 2010).

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values the diversity of human existence and advocates the good life for each individual. In the following, I will, through the analysis of the artist Tracey Emin’s work, in particular her “Self Growth” (2002), develop some basic aspects of such an ‘aisthetic theology’, followed by some more general reflections about its characteristics.

The Bodyliness of Self Growth “Self Growth”9 is an embroidery on a white bed sheet, showing, sketched in few stark black lines, a nude female body without her head, with spread, bent legs, her feet in high heels. Out of her vagina grows an equally sketchy, orange-red flower, with leaves growing close to the body, which might associ- ate the growth of pubic hair, and with a flower high on its stalk, recognisable as a slightly angled female head. “Self Growth”, personal development, formation of subjectivity and self-consciousness – this is associated by the title, which plays as a text an important role in the experience of the work, but the artwork expresses it also through the embroidered face that stands for the person, her personality. It is a self that grows out of her sex, literally rooted and based in this woman’s sexual identity and lived sexuality, in her experiences of pleasure and pain – and here the embroidery opens up a whole space of ambivalent associations of how a woman’s lived sexuality can be a means of furthering, inhibiting or influencing in various ways her self growth. It is a self whose traits are only hinted at. It remains hidden and inaccessible, even though it is shown in all its intimacy: the face cannot be identified; long hair and the title indicate that the artist might refer to herself, as she does in many of her other works, too, yet because of its ambiguous sketchiness the work cannot be reduced to the personal issues of the artist, but it remains open to multiple references to other women and their experiences. The vertical axis, emphasised through the flower stalk and the orientation of the lower body, and the diagonals of the legs, the upper body and the face, add both dynamics and insecurity to the representation: with the face growing straight up on the slim – too slim? – stalk, traced in angular, yet subtle lines, distanced from the body over which it seems to float, this growing self appears on the one hand to be dynamic, proud and self-conscious, but on the other hand it seems also insecure and precarious: how strong and solid is the

9 See http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/gallery/Tracey_Emin. php?i=731 (accessed 16 August 2011).

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connection between the flower and its ground? What does it take to uproot the self? Is the body only its base, or how is the relation body-self to be imagined? What kind of experiences (positive, empowering, or negative, painful) have nourished the self? With just a few lines, the ambiguity, instability and com- plexity of Emin’s work evokes numerous questions and offers plenty of food for thought.10 Tracey Emin (*1963) is a (artistically and financially)11 successful English- Turkish artist – by now a kind of society celebrity – who deals in her work with her/the female body, female sexuality and life and love story, in an intimate, explicit, sometimes offensive and maybe also exciting way. She is particularly notorious for her Turner Prize nominated installation “My Bed” (1998),12 which refers to existential moments that are related to this place (sex, sleep, birth, death, depression, passion…), or a tent which she embroidered with the names of all the persons with whom she had literally slept (“Every- body I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995”, 1995).13 In her “obsessively con- fessional oeuvre”, as Simon Wilson defines it,14 the most intimate, personal aspects of her life are made accessible to the public through multiple artistic media, but Emin goes far beyond a narcissistic self-reflection in her discussion of questions, hopes and fears that are central to human existence.15 With her criticism of the distinction between the private and the public/political, her discussion of female subjectivity and sexuality, of gender relations, of a male- dominated art market and a history of art that has been literally his-story, Emin

10 Cf. Ali Smith, “Tracey Emin: ‘What You See Is What I Am’,” The Guardian (07.05.2001), http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/may/07/tracey-emin-ali-smith-hayward (accessed 19 July 2011). 11 One of her works, an embroidered blanket, is said to have raised 800.000 £ at an auction for The Elton John Aids Foundation. Emin has dealt with this aspect of her art in her works, e.g. in the photo “I’ve got it all” (2000); cf. Peter Osbourne, “Greedy Kunst,” in: Mandy Merck / Chris Townsend (eds.), The Art of Tracey Emin (Thames & Hudson: London 2002), 40-59. 12 See http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/gallery/Tracey_Emin. php?i=722 (accessed 16 August 2011). 13 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emin-Tent-Exterior.jpg (accessed 16 August 2011). 14 Simon Wilson, “Tracey Emin,” in: The Turner Prize 1999: An Exhibition of Work by the Shortlisted Artists: Tracey Emin Steve McQueen Steven Pippin Jane and Louise Wilson, 20 October 1999 – 6 February 2000, Tate Gallery (Tate Gallery: London 1999), n.p. 15 Sarah Kent, “Tracey Emin: Flying High,” in: Tracey Emin / Neal Brown / Sarah Kent / Mat- thew Collings, Tracey Emin (Jay Jopling: London 1998), 31-37, here 35. Cf. also Jennifer Doyle, “The Effect of Intimacy: Tracey Emin’s Bad-Sex Aesthetics,” in: Merck / Townsend, The Art of Tracey Emin, 102–118, here 112.

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is closely related to the feminist movement in British and international art. But as Rosemary Betterton concludes in her analysis of the feminist aspect in Emin’s art: “Emin has developed her own language for dealing with sexual inequalities, which is neither traditionally feminine, nor feminist, but articu- lates a new kind of independent and iconoclastic femininity in all its complex- ity and contradictions.”16 Jennifer Doyle describes the encounter with Emin’s works as an experience of “intimacy”: “[i]t sets the stage for a fantasy encounter – between her, and you, and me. Emin’s work invites us to take it personally.”17 This intimacy is in particular due to the fact that it is bodily mediated on several levels: in the material and technique she uses, in the represented motifs and themes, and in the reception. Emin’s work develops, as already mentioned, out of her own experiences of bodily trauma and passion (sexual abuse, rape, promiscuity, lust, pain, abortion…) and their influence on her development as a person and as an artist. But more than this, her body is also her means of gaining knowledge, as she states in her film “Why I Never Became a Dancer” (1995): “I stopped shag- ging / but I was still flesh / and I still thought with my body”.18 Her works of art can therefore be seen as the result of her thinking and knowing with her body. Bodyliness in all its aspects – the “aesthetic” ones, such as the beauty of form, or the less “aesthetic” ones such as bodily fluids of all kinds – is therefore the most important motif and medium of her works. This becomes obvious also in her choice of material and technique: she uses an apparently clean sheet for “Self Growth”, but also on occasion used bed linen, such as for “Picasso” (2001),19 on which her body left its concrete traces (urine, blood, sweat etc.) and thus is still present in it. The clean white sheet of “Self Growth” associates a different kind of bodily presence: with the help of a small monogram, which is noticeable only upon close scrutiny of the work, it can be identified as a sheet belonging to a hotel (Walpole Bay Hotel) and thus it brings a whole history of wear and tear to Emin’s work, of

16 Rosemary Betterton, “‘Why Is My Art Not As Good As Me?’ Femininity, Feminism and ‘Life-Drawing’ in Tracey Emin’s Art,” in: Merck / Townsend, The Art of Tracey Emin, 23-38, here 38. 17 Doyle, “The Effect of Intimacy,” 114. 18 Tracey Emin, “Why I Never Became a Dancer,” in: Emin et al., Tracey Emin, 28. 19 Reproduced in David Ebony / Jane Harris / Frances Richard / Martha Schwendener / Sarah Valdez / Linda Yablonsky (eds.), Curve: The Female Nude Now (Universe Publishing: New York 2003), 88.

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people who slept in it – or not – and thus inscribed themselves, their presence – en passant, in the fleetingness of a stay in a hotel – in the material. The sheet is also an article of daily household use; it is not the kind of material that is dedicated to artistic use only, as it would be a canvas, to be bought in a spe- cialist shop. Only through Emin’s embroidery, the sheet becomes a part of the world of art, yet without leaving behind its mundane past which adds its own important contribution to the work in the form of memories and associations.20 Embroidery, the technique used to “paint” “Self Growth”, is also an extremely immediate, material and bodily technique, creating a tension between the laboured, time-consuming and small-stitched embroidery, and the apparently spontaneous, generous lines, seemingly the work of a moment of inspiration. Embroidery is also (like quilting or appliqué, diaries, handwriting etc., all techniques and genres used by Emin) a traditionally feminine activity, (dis)qualified as a “craft”: women stitch traditional, pleasing patterns and monograms on the linens of their dowry, an activity that certainly requires patience and ability, but cannot be described as creative or artistic; a male genius, on the other hand, creates original and challenging art, with great gesture and a phallic brush. Emin takes up this female craft and the materials of the equally feminine sphere of the household, but in an ironic and subver- sive, shocking and critical way: instead of modest monograms she stitches a female nude body from whose vagina grows a self, an identity that is not reduced to two letters (of which the second is usually the initial of her future husband). A similarly ironic statement about the world of “high art” is noticeable in Emin’s work “Picasso”, showing a woman sitting with spread legs, with the word “Picaso” underneath, embroidered on a used sheet. In an interview, Emin expresses quite a critical opinion of Picasso saying: “I thought that Picasso was this great genius, this great artist and great man, yet he treated women disgustingly,”21 and she shows her criticism of Picasso’s distorted female bodies, his relations with women and the mechanisms of the art market

20 This is also the case in the embroidery “Say Goodbye to Mummy” (2002), which deals with her experience of abortion; here, the sheet becomes a kind of shroud for the aborted foetuses. 21 Jean Wainwright, “Interview with Tracey Emin,” in: Merck / Townsend, The Art of Tracey Emin, 195-209, here 197. In the same interview (200), Emin emphasises that her spelling mistakes are simply due to the fact that she left school when she was 13 and never learnt to spell properly; it seems reasonable to assume that in this case, a dose of ironic intentionality was also involved; in any case, the missing S shows a certain unimpressed nonchalance in her dealings with the “great” artist.

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and its celebrity cult through her embroidery and the missing S in the name of this ‘god’ of the arts. With these materials and techniques, the artist emphasises the concrete, physical involvement of her body and her self in the creative process, as well as the bodyliness and materiality of the work itself, and at the same time addresses the bodyliness of the process of reception, which becomes literally an encounter between bodies: pleasure, disgust, rejection facing the represented bodies and genitals, but also a kind of imaginative mimesis of bodily posture, its discomfort and tension, feeling the exposure to the views of others, but also the openness for what might grow out of one’s body that is expressed in the artwork. This intimate involvement is required even more because of the sketchy lines in “Self Growth”: in order to make a meaningful whole of the shapes and lines of the embroidery, it is necessary to take one’s time and look closely, to fill in the empty spaces, to retrace gestures or postures, to feel what they might express. Through this investment of imagination, the viewer becomes a part of the work, and the work a part of her. It cannot be consumed passively, but requires commitment, patience, openness and attention to open up a space in which sense can emerge from the senses, a sense which was not defined from the beginning but developed out of the dialogue, the contact between work and recipient.22 The spectator is thus indirectly included in the relation between artwork and artist and a participant in the creative process, blurring the boundaries between artist, work and recipient. In this intense, personal encounter with the artwork and with the artist, from body to body, “doors for new thoughts and new experiences”23 are opened up, as Emin wishes for her art to do; experiences that leave a more or less conscious trace in the recipient and her life. In “Self Growth” as well as in Emin’s other works it is also obvious that Emin is conscious of her embeddedness in a particular (art) history and culture in whose context she has to deal with the female body and female sexuality, and the conventions of their representation. Art does not exist in empty space; it is, in spite of all the individuality, subjectivity and authenticity of its production and reception, shaped and influenced by socio-cultural and historical factors: motifs and their tradition, references to the history of art or techniques

22 Cf. Stefanie Knauss / Davide Zordan, “L’estasi ‘profana’ di santa Teresa e la ridefinizione dell’arte ‘sacra’: rilievo spirituale di un’esperienza estetica,” in: Annali di Studi Religiosi 9 (2008), 9-27, here 16 and 19-20. 23 Tracey Emin, quoted in Wilson, “Tracey Emin,” n.p.

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(e.g. the high heels, the lines evoking Schiele’s drawings, or the embroidery); the logics of the (art) market in which sexuality is always good to raise attention; the social context in which it is (still) not quite acceptable for a woman to represent female sexuality explicitly – all these are factors that form and deform the language of art and what it tries to say. Emin, too, deploys on the one hand the excitement created by the female body and its sexuality in order to have success in the art and gallery scene;24 on the other hand, she criticises this mechanism as well: the woman seems to offer her vagina, positioned nearly in the middle of the sheet, to the spectator in a classically pornographic position, she does not have a head and seems to be reduced to be the object of somebody else’s pleasure. But her vagina is not the source of another person’s satisfaction, but of her own subjectivity, fertile ground of her self; not denied as a nameless place of shame and self-negation, but the ground from which the precarious, but self-conscious flower of herself grows, out of pain and pleasure. In its sketchiness and through the intimacy of material and technique, “Self Growth” is an explicit, yet discreet representation of female sexuality and subjectivity which expresses both the possibility of its realisa- tion, and the permanent threat of its defeat.

Art – Senses – Sense From this brief discussion of Tracey Emin’s work, some elements have emerged that I would consider as fundamental characteristics of an aisthetic theology, i.e. of a theological approach that is conscious of the sensoriality of the aesthetic experience in particular and of the importance of the body for human existence in relationship with God in general. First of all, the funda- mentality of the bodyliness of the productive as well as receptive process through which work and recipient are placed in an intimate, constructive, even creative relationship in which the work can develop its impact and meaning for the recipient. With this bodily aspect, others are related: the individuality and subjectivity of aesthetic experience that is different for and has a different impact on each person, depending on her biography and situation. Further- more, the involvement with an artwork and the experience of it is a dynamic

24 As a member of the Royal Academy of Arts and as the representative of the UK at the Biennale 2007, Emin is closely connected to the contemporary “official” and “established” art scene in the UK; experiences of social and cultural marginalisation because of the artist’s origins and biography are however clearly a part of her work, which is again and again directed against the social mainstream. Cf. Smith, “Tracey Emin”.

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process that happens between work and recipient over time, inscribing itself into the viewer, her body and her person so that the experience is not finished once and for all when the viewer turns to look at another work or leaves the museum. And finally it has become clear that the production and reception of art are part of a historical and socio-cultural context that shapes norms of representation, techniques of production and modalities of reception associat- ing them with certain meanings. Art is located in an ambivalent tension between authenticity and external influence, between the criticism and the affirmation of a status quo, and it has to be realised in this tension. The theological reflection of art can develop its full potential only when it recognises and appreciates this fundamental importance of aisthesis on all levels of the experience of art (production, work, reception). For the bodyliness of aesthetic experience is important with regard to the three basic facets of human existence: for the subject herself, for her relations with other human beings and to the world, and for her relationship with God.25 Because of its bodyliness, the encounter with an artwork inscribes itself into the self; this experience and its reflection contribute to self-awareness and personal development (“Self Growth”): it is no secret that bodily experiences are necessary for the formation of subjectivity and thus for positive interactions with other human beings. The bodily self is, in the ambivalence of individuality and societality, both the point of reference for encounters with other human beings in their bodies, and the aspect which distinguishes an individual from all others. The most intimate bodily experiences are always socially and culturally shaped; in their universality, they form the basis for communication, yet they are only partially communicable. This tension between subjectivity and inter- subjectivity can be experienced most intensely in an aesthetic experience where the ambivalence of the ever new encounter with a work and its being a part of a given history and context shapes reception. The body is also the necessary basis for our relation to the world and the construction of our image of it (“knowledge”): Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s description of the human body as a “being of two leaves” that exists both as

25 Cf. Stefanie Knauß, Transcendental Bodies: Überlegungen zur Bedeutung des Körpers für filmische und religiöse Erfahrung (Pustet: Regensburg 2008); Stefanie Knauss, “The Sensual- ity of Sense: Reflections on the Bodily Dimension of Filmic and Religious Experience,” in: Stefanie Knauss / Alexander D. Ornella (eds.), Reconfigurations: Interdisciplinary Perspec- tives on Religion in a Post-Secular Society (LIT: Wien 2007), 197–216.

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the subject of perception and its object, is fundamental for this.26 Knowledge does not emerge from disembodied, purely rational processes, but is grounded in the bodily constitution of human beings and in their sensorial experiences, among which the experience of art is in a way a concentrated and unique example, which is lived and reflected and made fruitful for one’s existence in the world.27 Theology has to include this “wisdom” of the body in its reflections about the human relationship with God and take seriously aisthesis as its point of departure and mode of expression – not least because God has revealed God’s self under the conditions of history, materiality and corporeality and thus created the possibility for relationship between human beings in their embodied existence in time and space and God. Aesthetic experience, paradoxically precisely because of its bodyliness, has finally also transcendental potential: experiences of liminality and transgression are made possible and conscious that realise the human capacity for transcendence and our desire for it, as Neal Brown puts it with regard to Emin’s art: “Emin succeeds in further making possible the ability of art to make visible, and therefore shareable, a collective communication of the impulse for the divine.”28 This happens in various ways: in the intense self-awareness through which I establish myself as a subject, and yet transcend myself at the same time; in the transgression of the boundary between artwork and spectator, when I become one with the work and the work is inscribed in me; in the experience that my perception and reflection reaches beyond the concretely present and that the horizon of my experiences and knowledge is expanded; in the sensation of being-taken-out-of-myself and yet being-in-myself, ekstasis, the mystical experience when an artwork completely takes hold of me. These different aisthetic experiences of transcendence – smaller and

26 “Wir behaupten also, daß unser Leib ein zweiblättriges Wesen ist, auf der einen Seite ist er Ding unter Dingen, und auf der anderen sieht und berührt er sie; und wir stellen fest, da es offensichtlich so ist, daß er diese zwei Eigenschaften in sich vereinigt, und daß seine doppelte Zugehörigkeit zur Ordnung des ‚Objekts‘ und des ‚Subjekts‘ uns zur Entdeckung ganz uner- warteter Beziehungen zwischen diesen beiden Ordnungen führt.” Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Das Sichtbare und das Unsichtbare (Wilhelm Fink Verlag: München 1986), 180. 27 This twofold movement of experience and its reflection is supported by the particular situation of reception in the experience of art, as it is not always the case in everyday experiences. Cf. Davide Zordan / Stefanie Knauss, “Presenza/assenza in blu: l’arte, la fruizione e la tras- cendenza,” in: Annali di Studi Religiosi 10 (2009), 89-109, here 105. 28 Neal Brown, “God, Art and Tracey Emin,” in: Emin et al., Tracey Emin, 4-7, here 4.

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greater transcendences, so to speak – emerge from the immanence of the concrete bodyliness of the artist and the viewer and the materiality of the artwork, from the historicity of their encounter, and show that transcendence is not possible without immanence, and immanence is capable for transcendence.29 This entanglement of transcendence and immanence is also the reason for the critical potential of the experience of art: it is not satisfied with the calming affirmation of the status quo, but opens the possibility for thinking differently that which is, to ask further and think beyond – both with regard to the artwork and its possible meanings and with regard to the socio-cultural context of which it is a part questioning it at the same time. This capacity for ambiguity, inquietude and questioning protects art and its intense aisthetic impact, and the theology that is based on them, from being abused for purposes of ideology. In conclusion, I argue that a theology that departs from the bodyliness and sensoriality of aesthetic experience and that I would therefore call an “aisthetic theology”, is a theology (or part of a larger theological endeavour) that responds in a particularly constructive way to the conditions of the world we live in because it can be characterised thus:30 it appreciates diversity and inte- grates it without dissolving it (because what is more diverse than the human body and its experiences?); it is dynamic, welcomes change and does not insist on dogma and doctrines. It is a theology in which the clear distinction between subject and object is dissolved and subject positions are multiplied and democratised, a theology that emerges from the spaces in between experiences and relationships and that is conscious that what it needs to say can be expressed only partially in the discursive language of academic texts so that other languages and approaches to the world – experience, emotions – are required in order to approach the mystery, of which there always remains something unsaid. It is a theology conscious of its contingency which is not perceived as a lack, but rather as a motivation to continue thinking and asking. It is a theology that puts marginalised experiences – of beauty, the body, sensuality – at its centre. Finally, it is a theology that develops out of the multiple, positive and negative experiences of immanence and therefore takes seriously

29 Cf. with reference to filmic experience Vivian Sobchack, “Embodying Transcendence: On the Literal, the Material, and the Cinematic Sublime,” in: Material Religion 4 (2008), 194-203, here 197. 30 Cf. Grace Jantzen, “Contours of a Queer Theology,” in: Literature & Theology 15 (2001), 276-285, here 284–285, which has been an important inspiration for my reflections on an aisthetic theology.

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and appreciates the specificity of socio-cultural contexts and their conditions: conditions of exploitation, marginalisation, persecution, of privilege, power. An aisthetic theology is therefore, because it is bodily and concrete and emerges from aesthetic experience, also ethically committed.31

In der Analyse des Werks “Self Growth” (2002) der englisch-türkischen Künstlerin Tracey Emin, untersucht dieser Artikel die aisthetische, d.h. sinnliche Qualität der Begegnung mit Kunst und entwirft in einem zweiten Schritt in einigen Linien eine aisthetische Theologie, die auf diese Erfahrungen antwortet und sie integriert. Aus der Analyse von Emins Werk ergeben sich einige zentrale Punkte für einen solchen theologischen Ansatz: Zunächst die Fundamentalität der Körperlichkeit des kreati- ven und rezeptiven Prozesses und der Materialität des Werkes selbst. Mit diesem körperlich-materiellen Aspekt hängen andere zusammen: die Individualität und Subjektivität der ästhetischen Erfahrung, und die prozessuale und dynamische Qua- lität des Rezeptionsprozesses, sowie die Einbindung eines Werkes in einen histori- schen und sozio-kulturellen Kontext. Eine Theologie, die diese Erfahrungen als Ausgangspunkt und Ausdrucksform ernstnimmt, kann konstruktiv auf die Fragen unserer Zeit antworten, denn sie akzeptiert Diversität und integriert sie; sie ist dynamisch und besteht nicht auf Dogmen und Doktrinen; sie ist sich dessen bewusst, dass das, was sie sagen muss, nicht in der diskursiven Sprache akademi- scher Texte vollständig Ausdruck finden kann, sondern andere Sprachen braucht, um sich dem Mysterium anzunähern, von dem doch immer ein Rest des Unsagbaren bleibt. Sie weiß um ihre Kontingenz, die sie nicht als Mangel, sondern als Motiva- tion zum Weiterdenken und -fragen versteht. Es ist also eine Theologie, die margi- nalisierte Erfahrungen ins Zentrum stellt und sich aus den vielfältigen, positiven und negativen Erfahrungen der Immanenz entwickelt und so die Spezifitäten des sozio-kulturellen Kontexts ernstnimmt. Weil sie also körperlich und konkret ist und aus der ästhetischen Erfahrung hervorgeht, ist sie immer auch ethisch engagiert.

Basándose en la obra “Self Growth” (2002) de la artista anglo-turca, Tracey Emin, este artículo analiza la calidad aistética, es decir sensorial del encuentro con el arte y esboza, en un segundo paso, algunas líneas de una teología aistética que responde e integra estas experiencias. Del análisis de la obra de Emin surgen algunos aspec- tos centrales para tal teología: primero la fundamentalidad física del proceso crea- tivo y receptivo, y la materialidad de la obra misma. Con este aspecto físico se relacionan otros: la individualidad y la subjetividad de la experiencia aistética y la calidad procedimental y dinámica del proceso de recepción, así como de la incor- poración de cada obra en un contexto histórico y sociocultural. Una teología que toma estas experiencias como serio punto de partida y medio de expresión, puede

31 Cf. Jantzen, “Beauty for Ashes,” 427.

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reaccionar de manera constructiva a los tópicos de nuestro tiempo, porque aprecia la diversidad y la integra, es dinámica y no insiste en dogmas ni doctrinas. Es consciente de que lo que necesita expresar solo puede hacerlo parcialmente en el lenguaje divagador de textos académicos, de modo que son necesarias otras lenguas para abordar el misterio, del que siempre quedarán cosas sin expresar. Es consciente de su contingencia, que no considera como defecto, sino más bien como motivación para seguir razonando e indagando. Es una teología que parte de las experiencias marginadas y que se desarrolla desde las múltiples experiencias, positivas y nega- tivas de la inmanencia, tomando con seriedad la especificidad de los contextos socioculturales. Ya que es física y concreta y surge de la experiencia aistética, también moralmente comprometida.

Stefanie Knauss (*1976) studied Catholic Theology and English in Freiburg (Ger- many). She did her PhD in foundational theology in Graz (Austria) with a thesis on the role of the body in filmic and religious experience. Since 2007 she has been working as a research fellow in the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento (Italy). Her research focuses on aesthetic theology, the body in religion, and gender studies.

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