The new aestheticism The new aestheticism edited by John J. Joughin and Simon Malpas Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Copyright © Manchester University Press 2003 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors. This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC- ND) licence, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data applied for Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 0 7190 6138 5 hardback 0 7190 6139 3 paperback First published 2003 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 10987654321 Typeset in Adobe Garamond by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn Contents List of contributors page vii The new aestheticism: an introduction John J. Joughin and Simon Malpas 1 Part I Positions 1Aesthetic education and the demise of experience Thomas Docherty 23 2Art in time of war: towards a contemporary aesthetic Jonathan Dollimore 36 3Mimesis in black and white: feminist aesthetics, negativity and semblance Ewa Plonowska Ziarek 51 4 What comes after art? Andrew Bowie 68 5Touching art: aesthetics, fragmentation and community Simon Malpas 83 Part II Readings 6 The Alexandrian aesthetic Howard Caygill 99 7Defending poetry, or, is there an early modern aesthetic? Mark Robson 119 8Shakespeare’s genius: Hamlet, adaptation and the work of following John J. Joughin 131 9Critical knowledge, scientific knowledge and the truth of literature Robert Eaglestone 151 10 Melancholy as form: towards an archaeology of modernism Jay Bernstein 167 vi Contents Part III Reflections 11 Kant and the ends of criticism Gary Banham 193 12 Including transformation: notes on the art of the contemporary Andrew Benjamin 208 13 Aesthetics and politics: between Adorno and Heidegger Joanna Hodge 218 Index 237 List of contributors Gary Banham Research Fellow in Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University Andrew Benjamin Research Professor of Critical Theory, Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Monash University Jay Bernstein University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, New School University, New York Andrew Bowie Professor of German, Royal Holloway College, University of London Howard Caygill Professor of Cultural History, Goldsmiths College, University of London Thomas Docherty Professor of English, University of Kent, Canterbury Jonathan Dollimore Professor of English, University of York Robert Eaglestone Lecturer in English, Royal Holloway College, University of London Joanna Hodge Professor of Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University John J. Joughin Reader in English Literature, University of Central Lancashire, Preston Simon Malpas Lecturer in English, Manchester Metropolitan University Mark Robson Lecturer in English, University of Nottingham Ewa Plonowska Ziarek Professor of English, University of Notre Dame, Indiana John J. Joughin and Simon Malpas The new aestheticism: an introduction The very notion of the ‘aesthetic’ could be said to have fallen victim to the success of recent developments within literary theory. Undergraduates now pause before rehearsing complacent aesthetic verities concerning truth, meaning and value, verities that used to pass at one time for literary criticism. The rise of critical theory in disci- plines across the humanities during the 1980s and 1990s has all but swept aesthetics from the map – and, some would argue, rightly so. Critical theory, of whatever variety, presented a fundamental challenge to the image of the old-style academic aesthete sitting in his (and it was always his) ivory tower and handing down judgements about the good and the bad in art and culture with a blissful disregard for the politics of his pronouncements. Notions such as aesthetic independence, artistic genius, the cultu- ral and historical universality of a text or work, and the humanist assumption of art’s intrinsic spiritual value have been successfully challenged by successive investigations into the historical and political bases of art’s material production and transmission. Theories of textuality, subjectivity, ideology, class, race and gender have shown such notions of universal human value to be without foundation, and even to act as repres- sive means of safeguarding the beliefs and values of an elitist culture from challenge or transformation. The upshot of this series of interventions has been the rapid expan- sion of the canon, as well as a profound questioning of the very idea of canonicity. Art’s relations to dominant ideologies have been exposed from a number of perspec- tives, as well as its potential to challenge these ideologies. What has frequently been lost in this process, however, is the sense of art’s specificity as an object of analysis – or, more accurately, its specificity as an aesthetic phenomenon. In the rush to diag- nose art’s contamination by politics and culture, theoretical analysis has tended always to posit a prior order that grounds or determines a work’s aesthetic impact, whether this is history, ideology or theories of subjectivity. The aesthetic is thus explicated in other terms, with other criteria, and its singularity is effaced. Theoretical criticism is in continual danger here of throwing out the aesthetic baby with the humanist bath- water. Yet, on theoretical grounds alone, the recent resistance to aesthetics remains puz- zling, not least insofar as many of the theoretical advances of the last few years – the focus on the reader’s role in the constitution of meaning, the possibility that texts are 2 The new aestheticism open to a number of interpretations, the way in which literature troubles fixed defini- tions of class, race, gender and sexuality, etc. – might themselves be brought together under the general rubric of ‘the aesthetic function of literature’.Tied to actuality,in ways that cannot be reduced to the empirical, aesthetic experience allows for the creation of ‘possible worlds’ as well as for critical experimentation. In a teaching situation (as Thomas Docherty argues in his contribution to this volume) a reconceptualisation of the aesthetic means making the most of an approach to ‘education’ which relies on an openness to alterity, and developing a pedagogy that refuses to be prescribed by conven- tional or a priori categories. That these concerns are already rehearsed by the unravell- ing of metaphysical ‘givens’ undertaken by contemporary theory could lead one to the conclusion that, if theory has changed the conditions of teaching, then it will also enable us to develop a more rigorous, non-foundationalist approach to aesthetics: one which avoids the pitfalls and reductive unities of an old-style aestheticism. In the process, though, theory will also need to look to its philosophical beginnings in aesthetics. Two years ago, when the original proposal for the current collection was first sent out for review, an early anonymous reader voiced some concerns about the project’s ‘philosophical’ content. The specific cause for disquiet was that, while ‘several of the contributors happen to work in literature departments’, the overall emphasis of the volume was misdirected, and that, if the book was to get a green light at all, the editors would at least ‘have to decide whether it’s about literature or philosophy’. This accu- sation concerning a migration across disciplinary lines is a curious one, not least insofar as some of the best literary criticism of recent years has been penned by phi- losophers, while much of the work currently described as ‘continental philosophy’ now emerges from departments of literature. But the reader’s comments also serve to remind us of the extent to which the dialogue which already exists between these two subjects now needs to be made still more explicit. There are, after all, tensions to be plotted here, as well as affinities. In this respect of course there are other more tangible reasons why the anonymous reader’s distinction between literature and philosophy seems a less than helpful one. Maybe the best response – at least it was the one that we gave at the time – is to say that aesthetics is the theoretical discourse which attempts to comprehend the literary. This of course is an unsatisfactory shorthand, and we will return to problematise the position below, yet, loosely speaking, the relation between literature and philosophy could be said to be symbiotic, in that each would be deficient without consideration by the other. In this respect, as Andrew Bowie has recently reminded us: The rise of ‘literature’ and the rise of philosophical aesthetics – of a new philosophical concern with understanding the nature of art – are inseparable phenomena, which are vitally connected to changes in conceptions of truth in modern thought. The need to integrate the disciplines of literary study and philosophy in new ways is, I propose, vital to the longer-term health of both disciplines. Important work needs to be done . in showing how issues which emerge in relation to literature are, when connected to developments in contemporary philosophy, germane to issues concerning our self- understanding which do potentially play an important role in engaging with virtually any area of modern society.1 An introduction 3 Bowie’s case, that without ‘an orientation towards understanding the truth-potential in art that is more than ideology, many of the most essential issues concerning the sig- nificance of art cannot even be discussed’,2 is, we would like to argue, compelling. Art is inextricably tied to the politics of contemporary culture, and has been throughout modernity.