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. 53 995105_ESWTR_19_05_Knauss.indd5105_ESWTR_19_05_Knauss.indd 5353 77/05/12/05/12 111:021:02 Theme Thema Tema 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 funda- mental 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). 54 995105_ESWTR_19_05_Knauss.indd5105_ESWTR_19_05_Knauss.indd 5454 77/05/12/05/12 111:021:02 Stefanie Knauss The Language of the Senses: An Aisthetic Theology 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, for- mation 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). 55 995105_ESWTR_19_05_Knauss.indd5105_ESWTR_19_05_Knauss.indd 5555 77/05/12/05/12 111:021:02 Theme Thema Tema 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 par- ticularly 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.

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