View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Vanderbilt Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive SILENCE AND SILENCING: AESTHETIC RESPONSE AS THE IMPETUS FOR COMMUNITY FORMATION By Erin Cecilia Bradfield Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Philosophy August, 2012 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Gregg Horowitz Professor José Medina Professor Jonathan Neufeld Professor Michael Kelly Professor Boris Groys Copyright © 2012 by Erin Cecilia Bradfield All Rights Reserved To Jim Wetzel, my first professor of philosophy, for guiding me towards the path of philosophical inquiry and for teaching me how to articulate my perplexity. iii Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the support of the Vanderbilt University Philosophy Department, the Writing Studio’s Graduate Writing Fellowship, and the College of Arts and Science’s Dissertation Enhancement Grant. I am grateful for all the guidance and support my committee members, Gregg Horowitz, José Medina, Jonathan Neufeld, Michael Kelly, and Boris Groys gave me throughout the dissertation writing process. Thank you for your careful reading, insightful questions, and detailed feedback. My project would not have been the same without your input. I would especially like to thank Gregg Horowitz, the director of my dissertation and my long-time advisor at Vanderbilt University. Thinking with you has shown me the possibility of work that seems more like play when it is going well. Thank you for all of our philosophical discussions and for spurring my interest in Kantian aesthetics. Throughout the dissertation process, thank you for pushing me not only to find answers to difficult questions, but also for encouraging me to develop compelling questions that are worth asking and answering. Thank you for helping me to follow my arguments down unexpected and fruitful pathways and for helping me to find my own voice. I want to thank my mother, Elizabeth, for giving me the gift of a well-rounded education at Colgate University and at Vanderbilt University. Thank you for letting me decide where to pursue my intellectual development – this has made all the difference. Thank you for encouraging my interest in the arts from a young age and for driving me to private cello lessons every week. Thanks also for letting me control the radio and tape deck on these trips. I miss our weekly quizzes on the latest bands! iv I want to thank my brother, Justin, for talking with me about Nietzsche before I went off to college. Because I wanted a deeper understanding, I decided to take the “Philosophy of Religion: God and the Soul” first-year seminar. Even though I did not know it at the time, this was a pivotal moment and the first step on my philosophical journey. Thank you for reading chapters in progress and for taking an interest in my work. Thank you for all our conversations about Andy Warhol and Kant. Finally, I want to thank Lucas. Thank you for always believing in me – I couldn’t have reached this milestone without your love and support! Thank you for sharing my love of philosophy from the very beginning when we met in Wetzel’s philosophy seminar. (Thanks again, Justin.) By being my continual interlocutor, you’ve helped me to become a better thinker and a better writer. I value all of our many conversations, and in particular, those about Plato, Kant, David Lynch, and Pedro Almodóvar. Thank you for whisking me off to see Inland Empire at the IFC upon landing at EWR and for knowing what this would mean to me. Finally, thank you for being my co-adventurer and partner and for being there at my defense. v Table of Contents Page Dedication ............................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... iv Chapter I. Art and Silence ........................................................................................................... 1 I. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 II. Kant and Wittgenstein on Expression ........................................................... 4 III. Meaning in Use: Enculturation and Meaning .............................................. 7 IV. Wittgenstein’s New Boroughs: Rethinking Center and Margins ................. 12 V. Gordon Matta-Clark’s New Boroughs: Englewood, NJ, Splitting, and the Limits of Expression ..................................................................................... 22 VI. David Lynch’s Liminal World: Blue Velvet ................................................ 30 VII. Warhol’s Factory: Subculture in the City ................................................... 38 II. The Unfulfillable Demand to Respond to Genius ..................................................... 46 I. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 46 II. First Moment: Cognition and Aesthetic Ideas: The Objective and Subjective Moments of Aesthetic Response .................................................. 48 Summary ........................................................................................................ 54 III. Second Moment: Communication and Community: The Intersubjective Moment of Aesthetic Response ................................................................... 55 Summary ...................................................................................................... 68 IV. Third Moment: The Cultural Moment of Aesthetic Response .................... 69 A. Ingenious Complications ..................................................................... 69 B. The Paradox of Genius: Cultural Champion and Cultural Enemy ...... 71 C. Disciplining Nature (Part I): Taste Clips the Wings of Genius ........... 76 vi D. Dialectic of Taste ................................................................................ 81 E. Disciplining Nature (Part II): Purposiveness and Culture ................... 85 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 96 III. Silence and Wing Clipping ....................................................................................... 98 I. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 98 II. The Dionysian as a Lack of Wing Clipping ................................................ 101 A. Kant and Nietzsche ............................................................................ 101 B. The Political Dimension of Nietzschean Aesthetics .......................... 108 C. Unrestrained Dionysus – Unclipped Genius ..................................... 111 D. Needcompany’s Dionysian Excess: A Case of Unclipped Wings .... 114 1. Language and Miscommunication ........................................... 115 2. Reception of Needcompany’s King Lear: Unrestrained Dionysianism / Unclipped Genius ...................... 122 III. The Avant-Garde as Moderate Wing Clipping: Bürger and Duchamp ...... 128 A. Introduction ........................................................................................ 128 B. Bürger’s Avant-Garde ........................................................................ 129 C. “Dead” Fragments and the Limits of the Work: A Critique of Bürger’s Theoretical Wing Clipping ........................... 134 D. Conclusion .......................................................................................... 141 IV. Marcel Duchamp and the Case of Minimal Wing Clipping ...................... 143 A. Introduction ....................................................................................... 143 B. Duchamp’s Early Rejection: Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) ................................................ 145 C. A Pattern of Behavior Emerges: The Rejection of Fountain ............ 148 D. The Effects of Duchamp’s Wing Clipping: Playing at Giving Up Art, Alternative Exhibition Practices, and the Boîte-en-Valise ..................................................................... 156 E. Conclusion ......................................................................................... 162 IV. Extreme Wing Clipping and the Multiplicity of Publics ........................................ 165 I. Introduction ................................................................................................... 165 II. Publics and Counterpublics ......................................................................... 167 A. Introduction ....................................................................................... 167 B. Publics ............................................................................................... 168 C. Fraser and Habermas ......................................................................... 170 D. Alternative Publics, Counterpublics, and Cults ................................ 175 III. Extreme Wing Clipping and the Public Sphere: vii Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc ...................................................................... 183 IV. Benjamin’s Notion of Cults ....................................................................... 193 V. Conclusion ..................................................................................................