Distracted Aesthetics: Towards a Hermeneutics of Engagement with Distractive Works of Art

• Authors: Justin L. Harmon

Abstracts

EN

Western aesthetics has privileged contemplation as a necessary condition for authentic aesthetic experience. In contrast, I argue that the adequacy of aesthetic comportment must be measured by the self-presentation of the object in question, shaped by the place from which such presentations issue. Thus, the specific character of many forms of art, particularly in urban contexts, solicits a kind of “distracted” engagement rather than contemplative attention. Distraction is a positive mode of aesthetic engagement. I begin with a critical account of the formalist theories of Kant and Bell as examples of this privileging of contemplative hermeneutics. I then consider Walter Benjamin’s theory of mimesis as a basis for a more fruitful account of aesthetic form, of which certain “distractive” artworks serve as examples. Distraction is an appropriate response to certain presentations, in the face of which absorption would be a kind of aesthetic failure.

Keywords

EN

hermeneutics; Walter Benjamin; distraction; aesthetics; street art

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warszawski
• Journal: Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 36-51

Dates

published

2023

Contributors

author

Justin L. Harmon

• Notre Dame of Maryland University Baltimore, Maryland

• https://orcid.org/0000000214999746

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Identifiers

DOI

10.14394/eidos.jpc.2023.0014

Biblioteka Nauki

19322623