The notion of an endless and exotic space reflected in the title of Jean Rhys’s novel includes the possibility of hidden meanings as well as an intense feeling of the unknown and the inexpressible, which permeates the entire story and becomes an important source of the sublime. The self-conscious use of exoticist techniques and modalities of cultural representation might be considered less as a response to the phenomenon of the postcolonial exotic than as a further symptom of it, a result of the commodification of cultural difference.
This article is dedicated to the specific questions of the global change of cultural paradigms and cultural movements. “The Challenges of Contemporary Art, Aesthetics, and Society within Pandemic 2020” is an opportunity to reflect upon the importance of contemporary aesthetics, arts, and social problems related not only to the digitalization and globalization aspects but also to the change of the understanding of the reality in the context of Pandemic 2020 and the global brand — new experience of lockdown. The main challenges of contemporary aesthetics, culture, and society are relationships between the relation of reality and virtuality and between digitalization and the art world and aesthetics. These relationships raise a question upon popular mainstreams, their influence on contemporary arts, and the possibility to keep the classic notions of aesthetics. Additionally, this article helps to maintain the drastic change in the whole world’s social structure. It gives a theoretical explanation and systematization for a clearer understanding of current aesthetic terms “beauty” and “sublime” as trends and correlations. As well as introduces a specific change in cultural paradigm because of the Pandemic and sharply developing integration of virtuality into the modern culture.
If we define a poet’s encounter with the sublime as an inherently religious experience, then many of W. S. Merwin’s poems can be considered as deeply religious. At its best, his poetry has an air of uncanny familiarity, a “familiar strangeness,” as one critic has put it. In this sense Merwin’s lyrics offer a modified approach to the concept of the sublime. Blending archetypal imagery with defamiliarized diction, the American poet tries to reconnect his readers with a long-gone religious paradigm – that of earth-oriented, pagan spirituality of Western Europe, filtered, though, through Merwin’s essentially Buddhist sensibility. Offering a close-reading analysis of selected poems (with an emphasis on Merwin’s use of what Robert Bly calls the deep image), this paper attempts to decode some of their more complex metaphorical meanings in the light of the poet’s spiritual affinities. These, though theologically unspecified, seem grounded in his both “pagan” and poignant awareness of nature’s self-contained status vis-á-vis the human condition. Thus, both Nature’s ultimate ontological status and Merwin’s private creed remain a riddle.
The article is an attempt to develop a critical interpretation of the category of sublime, which is present in writings of Friedrich Nietzsche: starting from the earliest letters sublime appears in the rhetorical style and archetypal metaphors of this philosopher. The sublimity of Nietzschean style is interpreted in psychoanalytical perspective. This interpretative method enables revealing of the dialectic of desire, which determines Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power. Traces of disgust and moments of sublime emerging out of the writings of Nietzsche are considered in this article as symptoms of relation to phantasmal object of desire (objet petit a in Lacan’s dictionary). In Nietzsche’s writings symptomatic metaphors of elevated Magnitude are accompanied with descriptions of abjection towards everything that should be defeated in man, everything that is feeble and weak. Hereinafter article portrays how Nietzsche became overwhelmed by his phantasm of man conceived as a “bridge” leading to “superman,” that is to say, by his phantasm of superman conceived as incessant movement of transgressing the (self) abjection.
Der Artikel enthält Zusammenfassungen nur in Englisch.
EN
The paper discusses spatial modelling in Ellis James Davis’s Victorian utopia, Pyrna: A Commune; or, Under The Ice (1875) in the context of appropriating the Gothic mode into the utopian convention. In what follows, by examining selected aspects of the novella’s presented world, this article argues that the Gothic tropes of numinosity and sublime constitute significant elements of the examined narrative as major defamiliarizing components of the semiotically monolithic utopian spatial model.
FR
L'article contient uniquement les résumés en anglais.
In White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo, two characters visit a famous barn, described as the “most photographed barn in America” alongside hordes of picture-taking tourists. One of them complains the barn has become a simulacrum, so that “no one sees” the actual barn anymore. This implies that there was once a real barn, which has been lost in the “virtual” image. This is in line with Plato’s concept of the simulacrum as a false or “corrupt” copy, which has lost all connection with the “original.” Plotinus, however, offered a different definition: the simulacrum distorts reality in order to reveal the invisible, the Ideal. There is a real building which has been called “the most photographed barn in America”: the Thomas Moulton Barn in the Grand Teton National Park. The location-barn in the foreground, mountain range towering over it-forms a striking visual composition. But the site is not only famous because it is photogenic. Images of the barn in part evoke the heroic struggles of pioneers living on the frontier. They also draw on the tradition of the “American sublime.” Ralph Waldo Emerson defined the sublime as “the influx of the Divine mind into our mind.” He followed Plotinus in valuing art as a means of “revelation”-with the artist as a kind of prophet or “seer.” The photographers who collect at the Moulton Barn are themselves consciously working within this tradition, and turning themselves into do-it-yourself “artist-seers.” They are the creators, not the slaves of the simulacrum.
Following the suggestion expressed in the title of this essay, I deal with the idea which allows for considering landscape garden as a paradigmatic indicator of our rela-tionship with nature. Focusing on the idea of landscape garden and its aesthetics I ana-lyze two aesthetic notions: the picturesque and sublime, which are the background of the kind of experience accompanying a perception and participation of and in the land-scape and environment. I analyse the kind of experience, which captures all the aspects that situate the human in the environment instead of opposing it. The analysis will be conducted within the framework of aesthetics.
According to Kant beautiful is the lust object, and he refers to the universal complacence that universality is beautiful, and the sublime será o ânimo estético that comes from aesthetic judgment. However, according to St. Thomas from Aquinas beautiful is – quod visa placent.
Karl Heinrich Heydenreich (1764–1801), a now almost forgotten German thinker of the late Enlightenment, attempted his own transcendental-philosophical definition of the aesthetic category of the sublime in the article “Grundriß einer neuen Untersuchung über die Empfindungen des Erhabenen” (1789), which preceded Kant's Critique of Judgment by a year. Thanks to this endeavor, he was often described in the history of aesthetics as being a Kantian in aesthetics before Kant, but his article has not to this point received a detailed analysis. The present study shows that, in particular, Kant's moral-philosophical concept of respect for moral law played a crucial role in Heydenreich's reflections on the sensation of the sublime as a product of pure reason.
CS
Karl Heinrich Heydenreich (1764–1801), dnes téměř neznámý pozdně osvícenský německý myslitel, se v článku „Grundriß einer neuen Untersuchung über die Empfindungen des Erhabenen“ (1789), jenž o rok předcházel Kantově Kritice soudnosti, pokusil o vlastní transcendentálně-filosofickou definici estetické kategorie vznešena. Díky tomuto počinu byl sice v dějinách estetiky nejednou líčen jako kantián v estetice před Kantem, podrobné analýzy se však jeho článku dosud nedostalo. Předložená studie ukazuje, že zásadní roli v Heydenreichově úvaze o pocitu vznešena coby produktu čistého rozumu sehrál zejména Kantův morálně-filosofický koncept pocitu úcty k mravnímu zákonu.
The article raises the question of the relationship between rhetoric as a tool for argumentation and negotiation used by a discursive community to safeguard its norms and rules of life, particularly in a crisis situation and the use of the sublime abject put in use by terrorist propaganda aimed at crushing the speakers through the spectacle of extreme violence. As if this violence were capable of transforming the very body of language, the latter being the necessary condition for making society. The analysis focuses on the post-jihadist propaganda discourse held by “Boko Haram”, a terrorist group which has also been involved in banditry in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa since 2015. After having noted the multiple and complex issues of the socio-historical context necessary to understand the acts of terrorist language, the article highlights the linguistic functioning of this type of discourse, the purpose of which is not only to put civilian populations under the yoke of fear, but to produce a sublime discursive community entirely given over to single thought.
This article focuses on the accounts of climbing the particularly difficult West Wall of Changabang, a mountain in the Garhwal Himalaya, by a team of two British mountaineers: Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker. Close-reading of these non-fiction narratives is aimed at tracing the echoes of the best-known theories of the sublime developed by Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, as well as the modern interpretation of the concept by Jean-François Lyotard. It appears that, though never explicitly referring to the sublime, Boardman’s and Tasker’s portrayals of their Changabang expedition not only contain some of its conventional elements, but also highlight the impossibility of representation and internal contradictions that are now emphasized as its important characteristic features. Based on Tsang Lap Chuen’s theory of the sublime, the article is an example of reclaiming the now mostly art-related concept so that it is more closely linked with real-life experience. In this way, mountain literature can be read as a reflection of the process at the origin of a cultural construct.
PL
Przedmiotem analizy są relacje ze wspinaczki wyjątkowo trudną Ścianą Zachodnią himalajskiej góry Changabang przez dwuosobową wyprawę brytyjską – Petera Boardmana i Joego Taskera. Szczegółowa analiza opisów autentycznych wydarzeń pozwala odnaleźć elementy zarówno najbardziej znanych teorii wzniołości (sublime) sformułowanych przez Edmunda Burke’a oraz Immanuela Kanta, jak i współczesnej interpretacji tego pojęcia przez Jean-François Lyotarda. Choć sama koncepcja wzniosłości nie jest bezpośrednio przywoływana przez Boardmana i Taskera, ich relacje z wyprawy na Lśniącą Górę zawierają odniesienia do poszczególnych konwencjonalnych motywów, a także uwypuklają niemożność pełnego odzwierciedlenia przeżyć oraz wewnętrzne sprzeczności Bazując na teorii wzniosłości zaproponowanej przez Tsanga Lap Chuena podjęto próbę odzyskania pojęcia wzniosłości, używanego obecnie głównie w kontekście sztuki, na potrzeby opisu autentycznych doświadczeń i przeżyć. W tym ujęciu literaturę górską można interpretować jako odwzorowanie procesu, który ukształtował sublime jako kulturową konstrukcję myślową.
Benoit B. Mandelbrot, when discussing the global appeal of fractal patterns and de- signs, draws upon examples from across numerous world cultures. What may be missed in Mandelbrot's presentation is Immanuel Kant’s precedence in recognizing this sort of widespread beauty in art and nature, fractals avant la lettre. More importantly, the idea of the fractal may itself assist the aesthetic attitude which Kantian beauty requires. In addition, from a Kantian perspective, fractal patterns may offer a source for a sense of community with humanity. I close with an excursus on the more sombre note of Kantian sublimity which fractals can also present.
Lęk i niepokój w wymiarach sztuki. W artykule zainteresowana jestem różnymi manifestacjami estetycznej trwogi i strachu, tj. trwogi i strachu wywoływanych przez dzieła sztuki, które omawiam w perspektywie zarówno estetycznej, jak i antropologicznej. Analizuję powiązanie międzt trwogą i przyjemnością w katharsis, w pojęciu wzniosłości Edmunda Burke’a j w odniesieniu do Czarnego Malarstwa Goyi oraz myśli Paula Virilio. Estetyczna trwoga i strach współistnieją wraz z innymi emocjami takimi jak litość, smutek, a szczególnie przyjemność, która pozostaje autonomiczna bądź wyrasta z fascynacji złem.
Przenikające współczesną sztukę rozmaite, często przeciwstawne, strategie estetyczne manifestują się w kulinarnym artyzmie nowoczesnej kuchni, a także w zmieniających się pod jej wpływem postawach i zwyczajach żywieniowych. Z jednej strony — abiektualizacyjny porządek dadaistycznej dezynwoltury, perwersyjna obrona przed całkowitym nihilizmem, w perwersyjny sposób dekonstruuje estetykę jedzenia w kuchni fusion; z drugiej — zupełnie odmienna i szczególnie zaskakująca w wypadku sztuki jedzenia, charakterystyczna dla kuchni molekularnej, estetyka wzniosłości, zbliżająca się niekiedy do anorektycznej awersji wobec ciała, ale też nigdy nieporzucająca perspektywy smaku i związanej z nią zmysłowej przyjemności.
EN
Various aesthetic strategies present in modern art, often contradictory, are not only manifested in culinary art of modern cuisine, but also in changing dietary attitudes and habits. On the one hand — abject order of dadaistic unceremoniousness, defense against complete nihilism, perversely deconstructs the food aesthetics in fusion cuisine; on the other hand — completely surprising in the context of food art, characteristic of molecular cuisine, aesthetics of sublime acquires sometimes anorectic aversion to the body, but never abandons the taste and connected with it sensual pleasure.
The article contains an analysis of the rhetoric of selected texts from Polish popular press of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (“Tygodnik Ilustrowany”, “Ogniwo”, “Niwa”, and “Ateneum”), mainly related to the visual aspect of astronomical phenomena. The interpretation of these texts has been carried out here in the context of modern philosophy (especially of the notion of the sublime from Kant’s "Critique of Judgement", as well as one of the last attempts to create metaphysical “myth” in "The Ages of the World" treatise by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling) and contemporary interpretation of Plato’s philosophy created by Eric Voegelin and Paul de Man (interpretation of Kant’s transcendental aesthetics in the "Aesthetic Ideology"). Creating such a constellation of texts is used to answer the question: how the specific presentation of the findings of science (via the mathematical and the dynamical sublime forms) becomes a tool for promoting a modern worldview with its characteristic features: depersonalization of views on the cosmic order, depriving them of emotional components, as well as displacement of existential issues (related to the philosophical “myth of the soul”) in the private sphere, without the effects on the social dimension of morality and politics.
The two founding conceptions of the “sublime” are Burke’s and Kant’s. Drawing from Casey (and Buber), the article introduces a third concept of the “interplace”, an in-between, relational space of mutuality. Building on this notion, it is argued that Tino Villanueva’s collection Scene from the Movie GIANT, written in response to the climactic scene of the film Giant, enacts an intervention into the scene’s interpellating force and, in so doing, doubly embodies the interplace. Further, it is argued that the film’s two scenes stage allegorically an interplace of the white American patriarchy’s dilemmas of the 1950s. The scenes problematize America’s ability to change and follow through on the promise of reconciliation in diversity. The last section of the paper reviews a number of paradigmatic challenges America has been rehearsing in the past decades and argues that the current backlash against the transformative agenda constitutes a disappointment of the hopes expressed by Giant and Villanueva. The divisive rhetoric of today represents a retreat from the interplace of dialog.
PL
Dwie założycielskie koncepcje pojęcia “sublime” pochodzą od Burke’a i Kanta. Czerpiąc z propozycji Casey’a (i Bubera), artykuł wprowadza trzecią koncepcję interplace jako przestrzeni dialogu w miejscu „pomiędzy”. Pojęcie to zastosowane jest do analizy zbioru poetyckiego Scene from the Movie GIANT Tino Villanuevy, który powstał w odpowiedzi na kulminacyjną scenę filmu Gigant. W dalszej części artykuł dowodzi, że dwie sceny filmu można traktować jako alegoryczne przedstawienie interplace dylematów białego amerykańskiego patriarchatu w latach 50. XX wieku. Sceny te problematyzują zdolność Ameryki do zmiany i pojednania w różnorodności. W ostatniej części zarysowane są wyzwania paradygmatyczne, z jakimi zmagała się Ameryka w ostatnich dekadach, a zwrot ku konserwatyzmowi zinterpretowany jest jako zawiedzenie nadziei Giganta i Villanuevy. Rozłamowa retoryka współczesności stanowi ucieczkę od dialogicznego interplace.
The study interprets two novels by Kafka (Metamorphosis and Disciplinary Camp), and shows that one of the motives both novels share is the “ahypnotic experience”, i.e., the state in which the character of the story is frightened by sleep, since in sleep he loses control over himself, and is given up to the forces which rid him of of his human form (Metamorphosis). Based on the analysis of the apparatus of torture, interpreted here as “apparatus for producing justice”, the paper argues that for Kafka, the law means not freedom, but inhumanity (Disciplinary Camp). The following part of the paper explains that a similar process is uncovered in Donnarumma’s Amygdala art installation, and poses the question as to whether the increasing autonomy of modern technology intensifies Kafka’s fears of dehumanisation of the world. The final part of the paper offers an alternative conclusion to the problem building on Nietzsche’s understanding of the sense of the sublime.
Examining the images of war displayed on front pages of the New York Times, David Shields makes the case that they ultimately glamorize military conflict. He anchors his case with an excerpt on the delight of the sublime from Edmund Burke’s aesthetic theory in A Philosophical Enquiry. By contrast, this essay considers violence and warfare using not the Burkean sublime, but instead the beautiful in Burke’s aesthetics, and argues that forming identities on the beautiful in the Burkean sense can ultimately shut down dialogue and feed the lust for violence and revenge.
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