Feminist Provocations to German Idealist Aesthetics
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DePaul University Via Sapientiae College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 6-2020 Toward feminist aesthetics: feminist provocations to German idealist aesthetics Amelia Hruby DePaul University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd Recommended Citation Hruby, Amelia, "Toward feminist aesthetics: feminist provocations to German idealist aesthetics" (2020). College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 296. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/296 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TOWARD FEMINIST AESTHETICS: FEMINIST PROVOCATIONS TO GERMAN IDEALIST AESTHETICS A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2020 By Amelia Hruby Department of Philosophy College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences DePaul University Chicago, Illinois i © 2020 by Amelia Hruby All Rights Reserved ii To my feminist foremothers, to my mother, and to all the women who’ve raised me and walked with me. iii I have no interest in making work that doesn’t elicit a feeling. Kara Walker Eventually, to behold is to become beholden to. Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing iv CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ……………………………………………………..………………viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ………………………………………………..…………………ix INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………….………………………..1 A Personal History of this Project…………………………………..……………………..1 What is Feminist Aesthetics? ………………………………………..…………………….7 Inverse Through Lines: How These Six Thinkers and Two Tradition (Do Not) Come Together...…………………………………………………………………………..9 Three Chapters, Three Conversations Baumgarten and Ahmed…………..……………………………………………14 Lugones and Kant………………….……………………………………………..16 Lorde and Schiller…………………..……………………………………...…….17 CHAPTER ONE: The (Re)invention of Aesthetics in Baumgarten and its Radical Potential as Recognized by the Feminist Killjoy ….……………………………19 1.1 Aesthetic Predecessors: Confused Knowledge in Leibniz as Precursor to Baumgarten’s Aesthetics ……………………………………………………………23 1.2 Extensive Clarity and Poetic Perfection in Baumgarten’s Aesthetics………………28 1.3 Inventing Aesthetics: The Scope and Form of Baumgarten’s “Philosophical Poetics” ………………………………………………………..…….40 1.4 The Aesthetic Realm: Baumgarten’s Reconsideration of Hierarchy and Boundary in Metaphysics and Aesthetics…………………………………………….44 1.5 Baumgarten’s Aesthetic Ethos: The Ethics of Thinking Beautifully and the Introduction of Happiness…………………………………………………...…...50 1.6 The Happy Aesthetician and the Feminist Killjoy: Baumgarten in Conversation with Ahmed …………………………………………………………64 1.7 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...………76 v CHAPTER TWO: Double Vision as Double Tongue: Reading Kant and Lugones “Together” at the Limen…………………………………………………………...83 2.1 Playfulness and Free Play in Lugones and Kant 2.1.1 Dismissing Being-at-Ease: Understanding Playfulness in Lugones’ “Worlds”……………………………………………………………….….87 2.1.2 Turning to Kant: Play as an Aesthetic Concept, and Free Play and Disinterestedness in the Critique of Judgment ………….……….……….93 2.1.3 Lugones and Kant in Dialogue: Critiquing the Privilege of Disinterestedness.………………………………………………………....101 2.2 Health in Lugones and Kant 2.2.1 The Connection Between Ease and Health in Lugones……………….…...107 2.2.2 Health and the Feeling of Life in Kant……………………...……………..108 2.2.3 Reconsidering Health in Lugones and Kant……………………………...110 2.3 Loving Dispositions in Lugones and Kant 2.3.1 Loving Perception and “World”-Travelling in Lugones…………………..115 2.3.2 Love, Esteem, and the Sublime Disposition in Kant………………………117 2.3.3 Lugones and Kant in Dialogue: Sublime Disposition and Loving Playfulness………………………………………………………………..125 2.4 Common Sense in Kant and Lugones 2.4.1 Sensus Communis and “Vulgar” Common Sense in Kant……………..…129 2.4.2 Common Sense and La Callejera…………………………………………132 2.4.3 Sensus Communis or Common Sense: Critiquing Kant vis-à-vis Lugones..134 2.5 Conclusion 2.5.1 Double Vision, Complex Communication, and the Coalition Limen in Lugones………………………………………………………...141 2.5.2 Double Visioning, “World”-Travelling, and Crashing Stones…………….146 CHAPTER THREE: Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Woman: From Lorde’s Erotics to Schiller’s Aesthetics………………………………………….………151 3.1 Everything Poem is an Erotic Bridge: Fusing Feeling and Thinking through Poetry in Lorde……………………………………………………...…......155 3.1.1 Transposing Feeling into Poetry………………………………………….156 3.1.2 Differentiating Between Thinking and Feeling…………………………..160 3.1.3 From Feeling to Speaking………………………………………………...167 3.1.4 Poetry as a Way of Being…………………………………………………170 3.2 The Erotic as Source, Connection to Source, and Mode of Connecting to Others…174 3.2.1 The Erotic as a Source of Power………………………………………… 176 3.2.2 The Erotic as a Connection to Source…………………………………… 179 vi 3.2.3 The Erotic as a Mode of Connecting to Others………………………….. 181 3.2.4 Erotic Poetry and the Erotic as Poetry……………………………………184 3.3 From Lorde to Schiller: From the Erotic to the Aesthetic………………………….189 3.4 A Call to Freedom: An Aesthetic Disposition/Dimension, the Play Drive, and the Aesthetic State in Schiller…………………………………………………………..191 3.4.1 Schiller’s Reconfiguration of Reason for a (Failed) Objective Aesthetic..193 3.4.2 The Encounter with the Beautiful Object: From “May it be what it will!” to “Be free like me!”……………………197 3.4.3 The Aesthetic Dimension and the Play Drive………………………….....204 3.4.4 The Aesthetic State and its Critics………………………………………..209 3.4.5 Returning to the Aesthetic Disposition/Dimension………………………214 3.5 Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Woman: Lorde and Schiller in Conversation……………………………………………………………………..218 3.5.1 Critique of Reason Alone and Heightened Attention to Sense/Feeling…..220 3.5.2 The Play Drive and the Erotic…………………………………………… 223 3.5.3 A Pedagogical Poetics and the Aesthetic/Erotic State…………………....230 3.6 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….234 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………....241 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………248 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project, like all good works I think, has been a collaborative effort, and I am so appreciative of everyone who has supported me as I’ve endeavored to complete these pages. To name a few: this dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and mentorship of my dissertation director Dr. María del Rosario Acosta López. She introduced me to many of the thinkers in this project and taught me how to shape and stand behind my ideas both in my writing and in the world. To her, I am forever grateful. I am also grateful to the other members of my committee, Dr. Fanny Söderback, Dr. Peter Steeves, and Dr. Avery Goldman, for their ideas and assistance as this project developed, as well as to all the faculty members at DePaul who taught me what philosophy is and can be. Finally, I’d like to thank my undergraduate advisor, Dr. Steven Benko. Without his influence, I never would have pursued this PhD, and I am so appreciative of the ways that his mentorship and this experience have changed my life. In addition to my teachers and mentors, I would like to thank my students. In my five years of teaching at DePaul, I have had the privilege of teaching over 600 undergraduates and so many among them influenced the ideas here and my choices in how to share them. I’d like to give special thanks to Brooklyn Leonhardt who took my very first class, taught me to be a better reader of Kant, and whom I’m so excited to see confer their own PhD one day. And finally, I’d like to thank my family and friends who have been a constant source of love, support, and good cheer as I worked on this project, especially in its final days. Especial gratitude to my mother—two decades ago, I watched you take care of two kids, work a day job, and go to night school in order to become a teacher. Your perseverance and commitment to learning have forever shaped the woman I’ve become and will be. These pages are yours, too. viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS A Baumgarten, Aesthetics AKW Meier, Anfangsgründen aller schönen Künste und Wissenschaften BOL Lorde, A Burst of Light and Other Essays BU Lorde, The Black Unicorn C Lorde, Coal CC Lugones, “On Complex Communication” CJ Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment CWAL Hall, ed., Conversations with Audre Lorde DM Leibniz, “Discourse on Metaphysics” GD Schiller, On Grace and Dignity IAYS Byrd, Cole, Guy-Sheftall, eds., I Am Your Sister K Schiller, Kallias L Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man LFL Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life M Baumgarten, Metaphysics MKTI Leibniz, “Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas” PH Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness PP Lugones, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes RP Baumgarten, Reflections on Poetry SO Lorde, Sister Outsider ix INTRODUCTION A Personal History of this Project In my mind, this dissertation began in two places—an art museum and a classroom. As I introduce this project, I’d like to return to them both, because I think they help explain what I hoped to do here, which I believe is rather different than what I’ve actually accomplished. In short, I set out to write a treatise on feminist aesthetics that would make sense of some of my deep feelings about art and a philosophical