Controversy and Construction in Contemporary Aesthetics (Transcultural Aesthetics, 2) 9789004685918, 9789004685925, 900468591X

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edited by

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the College of Media and International Culture of Zhejiang University. He is also the editor-in-chief of the journal Research on Marxist Aesthetics.

zheng shen is Associate Professor in the Shi Liangcai School of Journal-

ism and Communication at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. She has published 11 ssci/cssci/a&hci papers and 2 books, including Contemporary Marxist Aesthetics and Criticism: Interviews with Western Scholars.

armida de la garza is Director of International Strategy for the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, and Associate Professor in Digital Humanities at University College Cork, Ireland. She is the author of one monograph and 42 journal articles and book chapters. Jie Wang, Zheng Shen, and Armida de la Garza (Eds.)

ISBN 9789004685918

issn 2773-0921 brill.com/tca 9

789004 685918

tr ans cu ltu r al aes thetics

jie wang is Qiushi Distinguished Professor and Yangtze River Scholar at

Controversy and Construction in Contemporary Aesthetics

The inclusion of this volume in Brill’s Transcultural Aesthetics : An International Association for Aesthetics Book Series, a book series devoted primarily to multidisciplinary Western and non-Western aesthetics, is indispensable to enrich the nature and scope of contemporary aesthetics. Time and again, many aesthetic controversies have not been adequately addressed, and this has become a common concern among scholars in contemporary aesthetics. This volume therefore seeks to contribute new perspectives to these controversies by shedding light on some of the fresh views among the leading theorists working in the field today.

jie wang, zheng shen, and armida de la garza

Controversy and Construction in Contemporary Aesthetics

Controversy and Construction in Contemporary Aesthetics

Transcultural Aesthetics an International Association for Aesthetics Book Series Series Editor Manfred Milz (University of Regensburg/University of Johannesburg) Editorial Board Enea Bianchi (Shanghai Normal University) Murat Celik (Ankara University) Peng Feng (Peking University) Rosa Fernández (University of Málaga) Lisa Giombini (Roma Tre University) Adrián Kvokačka (University of Prešov) Tyrus Miller (University of California, Irvine) Lydia Waithira Muthuma (Technical University of Kenya) Sanela Nikolic (University of Arts in Belgrade) Sandra Shapshay (City University of New York) Zoltán Somhegyi (Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary) Polona Tratnik (New University in Ljubljana) Advisory Board Curtis L. Carter (Marquette University) Rodrigo Duarte (Federal University of Minas Gerais) Aleš Erjavec (Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts) Jale Erzen (Middle East Technical University) Gao Jianping (Shenzhen University) Irina M. Lisovets (Ural Federal University) Kostas Moraitis (National Technical University of Athens) Jos de Mul (Erasmus University Rotterdam) Miodrag Šuvaković (University of Arts in Belgrade) Federico Vercellone (University of Turin) Krystyna Wilkoszewska (Jagiellonian University) Hiroshi Yoshioka (Kyoto University)

volume 2 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tca

Controversy and Construction in Contemporary Aesthetics Edited by

Jie Wang, Zheng Shen, and Armida de la Garza

leiden | boston

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wang, Jie, 1957- editor. | Shen, Zheng (Associate Professor), editor. | De la Garza, Armida, editor. Title: Controversy and construction in contemporary aesthetics / edited by Jie Wang, Zheng Shen, and Armida de la Garza. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2024. | Series: Transcultural aesthetics, 2773-0921 ; volume 2 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “The inclusion of this volume in Brill’s Transcultural Aesthetics, a book series devoted primarily to multidisciplinary Western and non-Western aesthetics, is indispensable to enrich the nature and scope of contemporary aesthetics. Time and again, many aesthetic controversies have not been adequately addressed, and this has become a common concern among scholars in contemporary aesthetics. This volume therefore seeks to contribute new perspectives to these controversies by shedding light on some of the fresh views among the leading theorists working in the field today”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2023036139 (print) | LCCN 2023036140 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004685918 (hardback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9789004685925 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Aesthetics. Classification: LCC BH39 .C66735 2024 (print) | LCC BH39 (ebook) | DDC 111/.85–dc23/eng/20231012 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023036139 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023036140/ Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2773-0921 isbn 978-90-04-68591-8 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-68592-5 (e-book) Copyright 2024 by Jie Wang, Zheng Shen, and Armida de la Garza. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Brill Wageningen Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents List of Figures and Tables ix About the Authors x Introduction: Controversy and Construction in Contemporary Aesthetics 1 Jie Wang, Zheng Shen and Armida de la Garza

PART 1 Classical Theories and New Phenomena: Technological Advancements 1 Aesthetics and the Arts of Engagement 9 Arnold Berleant 2 Adorno, Stiegler, and Industrial Schemata of Experience 19 Tyrus Miller 3 Social Value and Aesthetic Judgement – Television in the UK 33 David Margolies 4 Industrial Development of New Media Arts in China 41 Qingben Li

PART 2 Classical Theories and New Phenomena: Aesthetic Capitalism 5 Baudrillard, Hyperreality, and Emergency Capitalism 59 Fabio Vighi 6 The ‘Cultivated Imagination as a Condition Precedent for Revolutionary Class-Struggle’ 80 Michael Sanders 7 Contemporary Aesthetics Issues: New Horizons for Researches of Economic Aesthetics in Economic Sociology 89 Alexander Petrov

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PART 3 Transcultural Aesthetics 8 Fiction and the Imagination 103 Derek Matravers 9 Cultural Industries and the Cultural Front – Historical and Contemporary Reflections 113 Justin O’Connor 10 Aesthetics of Atmosphere and Intercultural Studies 122 Zhuofei Wang 11 Practice, Reflection and Inspiration of Art Involvement in Community Revitalization in Japan 133 Yongjian Wang

PART 4 The Rise of Chinese Aesthetics 12 Identity and Hybridity – Chinese Culture and Aesthetics in the Age of Globalization 151 Karl-Heinz Pohl 13 The Kowtow and the Eyeball Test 171 Mario Wenning 14 Intermediality in Qing Ming Shang He Tu: from Visual Image to Music 195 Germán Gil-Curiel 15 New Research Directions of Marxist Aesthetics: a Case of Contemporary China 203 Zheng Shen 16 Aesthetic Modernity: a Preliminary Exploration of the Ethnography of Emotions in Contemporary China 213 Jie Wang and Tian Shi

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PART 5 Multidisciplinary Aesthetics: Converging of Fields 17 What Does It Mean to Be Human? A Critique of Design Thinking 225 Harold P. Sjursen 18 Aesthetic Anthropology: Constructing a New System of Contemporary Aesthetic and Art Criticism 233 Jie Wang and Fanjun Meng 19 Crafting an Aesthetics of Science: Textile Artwork and Science Communication 247 Armida de la Garza and Zheng Shen 20 Contemporary Aesthetics from the Perspective of Cognitive Neuroscience – Centered on ‘Aesthetic Cognitive Mode’ 261 Yushui Liang References 271 Index 287

Figures and Tables Figures 12.1 Dong Wei: ‘Culture Culture’ (2002) 165 12.2 Dong Wei: ‘My Attendants’ (1998) 167 12.3 Dong Wei: ‘Dragon and Businessman’ (2000) 168 13.1 James Gillray, ‘The Reception of the diplomatique and his suite at the Court of Pekin’, 1792 174 13.2 Paul Klee, ‘Two Men Meet, Each Believing the Other to Be of Higher Rank’ 182 13.3 A bowing person 184 13.4 Chen Hongshou, Mifu praising a rock (first half of the 17th century) 186 13.5 Jen Po-nien, The Poet Mifu (19th century) 187 13.6 Empire of Signs 192 16.1 Basic dimensions of the emotional structure of contemporary Chinese society 221 19.1 Herpes Virus doily by Laura Splan 252 19.2 Dress depicting visualizations of the first algorithm by Ada Lovelace 254 19.3 Embryonic stem cells 257

Tables 11.1 Statistics of the Setouchi International Art Festival in previous years 139 11.2 Statistics of Echigo-Tsumari Art Field in previous years 141 11.3 Statistics of the Koganecho Bazaar in previous years 144

About the Authors Editors Jie Wang He is Qiushi Distinguished Professor and Yangtze River Scholar at the College of Media and International Culture of Zhejiang University. He is also the editorin-chief of the journal Research on Marxist Aesthetics. His works are about Marxist aesthetics, literary theory, cultural theory, and aesthetic anthropology. He has published more than 120 papers and 7 books, including Research on the Aesthetic Illusion: An Introduction to Modern Aesthetics (1995, 2012), Marxist and Contemporary Aesthetic Issues (2000, 2004), Aesthetic Illusion and Aesthetic Anthropology (2002), Contemporary Aesthetic Issues: Reflection on Anthropology (2013), and Contemporary Aesthetics, Cultural Anthropology and Fashion Studies (2021). His edited books include Principles of Contemporary Aesthetics (1996, 2011), Contemporary Art and Aesthetic Modality (2002), Marxist Literary Theory (2011), and The Power of Utopia: The Political Turn of Contemporary Aesthetics (2021). He has translated three English books into Chinese: The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Terry Eagleton, 1997), Tony Bennett’s Optional Anthology: Literature and Society (Tony Bennett, 2007), and The Task of Critic: A Dialogue in Terry Eagleton (Terry Eagleton, 2014). Zheng Shen She is Associate Professor in the Shi Liangcai School of Journalism and Communication at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the College of Media and International Culture of Zhejiang University, and holds a PhD degree from the Department of Digital Arts and Humanities at University College Cork, Ireland. She has published 12 SSCI/CSSCI/A&HCI papers and edited Contemporary Marxist Aesthetics and Criticism: Interviews with Western Scholars (2022) and Contemporary Aesthetic Education (2022). Her research interests include but are not limited to digital arts and humanities, media aesthetics, aesthetic education, and other interdisciplinary studies. Armida de la Garza She is Associate Professor in Digital Arts and Humanities at University College Cork, National University of Ireland. She is also Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK, and Expert Evaluator for the European Commission. She is the author of one monograph, two edited books and 51 journal articles and book chapters, which have been published internationally in a number of

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highly regarded university and academic presses and peer-reviewed journals, and she is also member of several Associations and Boards in the UK, the USA, mainland China and Hong Kong, Mexico and Brazil. Armida has been awarded various distinctions and prizes, such as the ‘Eyes on Zhejiang’ Prize by the Zhejiang Province Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Contributors Arnold Berleant He is Professor of Philosophy (Emeritus) at Long Island University (USA). His work ranges over aesthetics, the arts, ethics, social philosophy, social aesthetics, and especially the aesthetics of environment. He has lectured and written widely in these areas, both nationally and internationally, and his books and numerous articles have been translated into many languages. His recent books include Sensibility and Sense (Imprint Academic, 2010), Aesthetics beyond the Arts (Ashgate, 2012), and The Social Aesthetics of Human Environments (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). Berleant is the founding editor of the online journal, Contemporary Aesthetics, and is past President of the International Association of Aesthetics. For more details, please refer to https://arnoldberleant.com. Germán Gil-Curiel He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Sheffield. He is currently Research Affiliate in the Department of Music at University College Cork, Ireland. He is interested in research on Intermediality, in particular on the intersection between music, the visual arts and literature. Qingben Li He is a distinguished Professor at the Institute for Arts Education, Hangzhou Normal University, China. Li was also an academic leader of Comparative Literature Program at Beijing Language and Culture University and an advanced visiting scholar at the Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University. Li has published over 100 papers and the following books: Romantic Aesthetics of China in the 20th Century (1999), Cross-cultural Perspectives: A Critique of Culture and Aesthetics at the Transitional Period (2003), A Report Book on Cultural Industries and Cultural Policies in the EU Countries (2008), Cross-Cultural Aesthetics: Beyond the Model of Sino-Western Dualism (2011), Multi-Dimensional Models of Cross-Cultural Interpretation (2014), Cultural and Creative Industries (2015), and Rethinking the Relationship between China and the West through a focus on Literature and Aesthetics (2018).

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Yushui Liang He is Professor at the College of Humanities and the Director of the Research Center of Chinese Contemporary Marxist Literature and Art, Jilin University. His research fields include cognitive neuroaesthetics, aesthetic education, and Marxist aesthetics. David Margolies He is Emeritus Professor of English (Goldsmiths, University of London). He has published widely on cultural politics and for many years edited the journal Red Letters: A Review of Cultural Politics. He has published much work on Shakespeare from a Marxist perspective (the most recent book is Shakespeare’s Irrational Endings: The Problem Plays, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). He edited the work of the outstanding 1930s English Marxist critic Christopher Caudwell (Culture as Politics: Selected Writings of Christopher Caudwell, Pluto, 2018). He also edited (with Qing Cao) Utopia and Modernity in China: Contradictions in Transition (Pluto 2022). Derek Matravers He is Professor of Philosophy at The Open University and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He has written Art and Emotion (OUP, 1998), Introducing Philosophy of Art: Eight Case Studies (Routledge, 2013), Fiction and Narrative (OUP, 2014), and Empathy (Polity, 2017). He is the author of numerous articles on aesthetics, ethics, and the philosophy of mind. His edits, with Paloma Atencia-Linares, The British Journal of Aesthetics. Fanjun Meng He is Associate Professor at the School of Humanities, Jilin University, Deputy Director of the Center for Cognitive Aesthetics and Aesthetic Education, with research interests in cognitive neuroaesthetics, aesthetic anthropology and Marxist aesthetics. Tyrus Miller He is Dean of the School of Humanities and Distinguished Professor of Art History and English at the University of California, Irvine. He is author of Late Modernism: Politics, Fiction, and the Arts Between the World Wars (University of California Press, 1999), Singular Examples: Artistic Politics and the Neo-AvantGarde (Northwestern UP, 2009), Time Images: Alternative Temporalities in 20th-Century Theory, History, and Art (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), Modernism and the Frankfurt School (Edinburgh UP, 2014), and Georg Lukács and Critical Theory: Aesthetics, History, Utopia (Edinburgh UP, 2022). He is the editor of Given World and Time: Temporalities in Context (Central European UP,

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2008) and A Cambridge Companion to Wyndham Lewis (Cambridge UP, 2016). He is the translator/editor of György Lukács, The Culture of People’s Democracy: Hungarian Essays on Literature, Art, and Democratic Transition (Brill, 2012) and series co-editor of Brill’s Lukács Library series. Justin O’Connor He is Professor in the Creative Economy at the University of South Australia. He has been involved as a researcher, teacher and policy-advocate in the cultural/creative industries since 1989 when he helped conduct one of the first ‘mapping’ exercises for the sector in the UK, for Greater Manchester. Since 2004 he became involved in East Asian creative industries and cities, in South Korea and China. Between 2006–2008 he was Professor of Cultural Industries at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds, where he led an MA in Culture, Creativity and Entrepreneurship. He advised a number of European city governments on cultural/creative industries strategies. Alexander Petrov He is Professor of Sociology at the Saint-Petersburg State University. Awards and Honors: Gold medal named after academician I.F. Obraztsov, Chair of Economic Sociology, Deputy Dean of the Department of Sociology, St.Petersburg State University, The Scientific Adviser and the Lecturer at the School of International Relations of Economics and Trade of the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, Chinese People’s Republic, Scientific supervisor of the MA program ‘Sociology in Russia and China’ [Information about the program: https://www.weibo.com/6940270155], and Director of Russian-Chinese Center for Comparative Social, Economical and Political Researches of the Department of Sociology, St.-Petersburg State University. He is author of 160 scientific articles, textbooks and monographs. Karl-Heinz Pohl He was born in 1945 in Saarlouis, Germany. He has a PhD in East Asian Studies, University of Toronto (1982). From 1987–1992, he was Professor of Chinese Literature and History of Ideas at Tübingen University (Germany). From 1992–2010, he had the chair of Chinese Studies at Trier University (Germany). He retired in 2010. His fields of research are Chinese History of Ideas; Ethics and Aesthetics of Modern and Pre-Modern China; Intercultural Communication and Dialogue between China and the West. He is the author of Cheng Pan-ch’iao: Poet, Painter and Calligrapher (1990), and Aesthetics and Literary Theory in China – From Tradition to Modernity (in German and Chinese translation, 2006). He is the editor of Chinese Thought in a Global Context: A Dialogue Between Chinese and Western Philosophical Approaches (1999), and

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(with Anselm W. Müller) Chinese Ethics in a Global Context. Moral Bases of Contemporary Societies (2002). Michael Sanders He is Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Manchester. He is interested in the relationship between aesthetics, education and working-class struggle. His publications include The Poetry of Chartism: Aesthetics, Politics and History (2009) and Subaltern Medievalisms: Medievalism ‘from below’ in Nineteenth-Century Britain (co-edited with David Matthews, 2021), as well as many articles on the Chartist movement. Tian Shi She obtained her PhD in anthropology from KU Leuven, Belgium. She is currently working as a lecturer at the Oversea Chinese College, Wenzhou University, China. Her research interests include research on migration, refugee resettlement, ethnic identity, and the Hmong diaspora. She has been involved in a variety of migration and new media research projects, such as ‘Ethnic Policy in the EU and European Hmong Integration’ (CPRC project). Her current research is on nostalgic expression in contemporary China and on the transformation of public space. Harold P. Sjursen He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at New York University, a visiting professor at Beihang University and East China University of Science and Technology, and on the Board of the Asia New Humanities Network based at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is interested in the philosophy of technology and comparative philosophy. His current research and writing interests focus on the philosophy of technology, global philosophy and technological ethics. Fabio Vighi He is Professor of Italian and Critical Theory at Cardiff University. His research focuses on critical theory, continental philosophy, theoretical psychoanalysis and film, as reflected in his recent publications, including the following volumes: Unworkable: Delusions of an Imploding Civilization (SUNY Press, 2022), Crisi di valore: Lacan, Marx e il crepuscolo della societa’ del lavoro (Mimesis, 2018), Critical Theory and the Crisis of Contemporary Capitalism (Bloomsbury, 2015), States of Crisis and Post-Capitalist Scenarios (Ashgate, 2014), Critical Theory and Film: Rethinking Ideology through Film Noir (Continuum, 2012), and On Zizek’s Dialectics: Surplus, Subtraction, Sublimation (Continuum, 2010).

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Yongjian Wang He is Associate Researcher at the Institute of Art Studies, China Academy of Art, and executive deputy secretary general of the Chinese Society of Art Anthropology. His main research interests are the theory and field of art anthropology, ethnomusicology, and traditional handicrafts. He has published a monograph entitled The Genealogy of Knowledge in Chinese Art Anthropology since the New Period and edited Art Intervention in the Construction of Beautiful Villages—Dialogue between Anthropologists and Artists and The Complete Collection of Chinese Shadow Opera - Singing Volume. Zhuofei Wang She is Associate Professor at the University of Kassel and associated member of the Reinhart Koselleck Project Histories of Philosophy in Global Perspective supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the University of Hildesheim. Her interests cover intercultural philosophy, body phenomenology, aesthetics, general theory of art, image theory, media culture and design theory. Her forthcoming important publications are the German treatise Aesthetics of Atmosphere. The Intertwining of Nature, Art and Culture (Freiburg: Karl Alber 2023) and the chapter essay Beyond Western Epistemology: More than Western Epistemologies & Atmospheres in Handbook on Ambiances and Atmospheres (London: Routledge 2023). She is Assistant Secretary General of the International Association for Aesthetics (IAA), Member of the Advisory Board of the German Society for Interdisciplinary Image Science (GIB) and is active on the executive, advisory and editorial boards of several internationally renowned academic foundations and publishers. Mario Wenning He is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Andalusia. His work focuses on social and political philosophy from a perspective informed by Critical and Intercultural Theory. Recent publications include The Human-Animal Boundary (Lexington, 2018, 2021), Environmental Philosophy and East Asia (Routledge, 2022), The Right to Resist (Bloomsbury, 2023) as well as special issues of Critical Gambling Studies (2022), Kritike (2021), Revista de Cultura (2020) and Thesis Eleven (2017). In addition to his scholarship, Wenning has translated contemporary German philosophers (Sloterdijk, Tugendhat, Habermas) into English. Before moving to Spain, Wenning worked at the University of Macau for thirteen years and held visiting appointments at Kyoto University, the Goethe University of Frankfurt, UC Berkeley, Fudan University and Comillas University. He has been awarded fellowships from the Humboldt Foundation, the DAAD and the Mercator Foundation.

Introduction: Controversy and Construction in Contemporary Aesthetics Jie Wang, Zheng Shen and Armida de la Garza This volume is part of a new series titled Transcultural Aesthetics: The International Association for Aesthetics Book Series, edited by the International Association for Aesthetics (IAA). The inclusion of this volume in a series devoted primarily to multidisciplinary Western and non-Western aesthetics is ­indispensable to enrich the nature and scope of contemporary aesthetics. The history of aesthetic research dates back nearly two millennia. Philosophers have endeavoured to apply a variety of theories to the interpretation of the meaning and value of beauty, which points in different directions and leads to a series of aesthetic controversies, including aesthetic challenges of media and technology, transcultural aesthetics and aesthetic methodology. Time and again, these aesthetic controversies have not been adequately addressed, and this has become a common concern among scholars in contemporary aesthetics. This volume therefore seeks to contribute new perspectives to these controversies by shedding light on some of the fresh views among the leading theorists working in the field today. From classic aesthetic theories to fresh aesthetic methods, this volume is an accessible introduction to the main topics in contemporary aesthetics: the media-technological challenges, transcultural aesthetics and aesthetic methodology. Moreover, it advocates the search for responses to contemporary aesthetic controversies and their theoretical and methodological expressions in different cultures in the midst of complex aesthetic views, thus providing constructive input to the study and reflection of aesthetics in relation to contemporary criticism, social development, and technological change. This is a theoretical construction and research method worth advocating, and it is also a trend in the transformation of contemporary aesthetic research. The contemporary aesthetic controversies and their theoretical responses addressed in this volume have the potential to bring contemporary aesthetic research back to an essentialist position of aesthetics. It is in this sense that this volume provides an interpretation of contemporary aesthetic issues and endeavors to reflect and respond to them on multiple levels, including cross-disciplinary and cross-contextual, forming a theoretically innovative construction of contemporary aesthetics, thus promoting the process of contemporary aesthetic research. © Jie Wang ET AL., 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_002

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1 Classical Theories and New Phenomena: Technological Advancements and Aesthetic Capitalism In contrast to other plausible rival titles, this particular volume is distinguished by its contemporaneity, global perspective, and multidisciplinary approach. Specifically, many previous discussions have analytically probed classical theories such as Kantian and Hegelian philosophy to understand aesthetics.1 Needless to say, one of the strengths of the classical discussions is that they provide comprehensive philosophical references for today’s more specialized aesthetic analysis. However, from the industrial revolution of the past to the current age of social media, artificial intelligence and metaverse of the near future, rapid developments in media and technology have begun to fundamentally change human life. The emergence of new and fresh aesthetic phenomena challenges and calls for a rethinking of classical aesthetic theories. Many authors in this volume present different understandings of technology in contemporary aesthetics and arts from multiple dimensions, including reflections on the critique of technology in the last century, and strategies for coping with the new situation of contemporary digital technology, so as to rethink aesthetic theories in contemporary aesthetic research. Arnold ­Berleant, former president of the International Association of Aesthetics, emphasizes that aesthetic research does not derive from first principles, but should benefit from artistic practice. Following World War II, artistic practice experienced an outburst of remarkable creativity. Nonetheless, the approach of aesthetics continued to grapple with the Kantian theoretical heritage, which emphasized logical analysis and language study. As a consequence, it fell short of fully engaging with the aesthetic challenges posed by artistic and empirical facts. In his chapter, Berleant summarizes the trends in artistic practice over the last 50 years and the new expansion of the field of contemporary ­aesthetic research, the most important of which is the fundamental change in aesthetic perception prompted by social, technological and cultural innovations. Therefore, traditional aesthetics should extend its scope from art to various situations and objects in daily life, and call for a new understanding of the discipline that integrates a wide range of its values and perceptions, which he calls ‘aesthetic engagement’. In light of media and technological aesthetics, Tyrus Miller and David ­Margolies further explore the relationship between aesthetics, media, and technology. From the perspective of media theory, Theodor W. Adorno is one 1 Carrier, David. 2018. Aesthetic Theory, Abstract Art, and Lawrence Carroll. New York: ­Bloomsbury Academic.

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of the most ambivalent figures of the 20th century. According to Miller, the understanding of technology held by Adorno in his critique is the same as that of influential 20th-century philosophers such as Husserl and Heidegger, who misread the integral role of technicity and strengthen its dogmatic comprehension. In contrast to the critique of simplified technologies, Miller proposes that it is Bernard Stiegler who captures the possibility of understanding the technology-art relationship in Adorno’s interpretation of the ‘technologization of the artworks’. Moreover, Margolies explores how social working in television challenges the status quo on a purely artistic level based on Brecht’s theories. Television aesthetics is a relatively new area, but it is now well established and developed in the field. This chapter, inspired by television aesthetics, argues that artistic products must recognise that fantasy can also be a powerful social force. In addition, Qingben Li discusses new media arts in China to explain aesthetic modernity based on Walter Benjamin’s theory. He uses four of the most successful enterprises, namely, ‘China Literature Limited’, ‘iQIYI’, ‘Alpha Animation’ and ‘Tencent Game’ to clarify the industrial development of four types of new media arts, including Internet literature, network video art, digital animation, and electronic game. From the onset of the 20th century, the investigation of aesthetics has become intricately intertwined with the impetus of rapid economic and technological development, leading to an inseparable confluence of these domains. It is technology, aesthetics, and capital that have shaped modern people’s aesthetic perception, and the deep integration of economic and technological factors has continued to drive the development of contemporary aesthetics. Regarding the study of the economic factors of contemporary aesthetics, aesthetic capitalism is arguably one of the most central issues. At the end of the last century, scholars pointed out that developed capitalist countries entered the post-industrial era, and aesthetics has become the fundamental economic motive of the new stage since then, called ‘aesthetic capitalism’. The issue of aesthetic capital in the post-industrial era has been the focus of contemporary Western Marxist aesthetics. In the volume, many authors have discussed aesthetic capitalism. Fabio Vighi correlates Jean Baudrillard’s notion of ‘simulation’ with the implosion of contemporary capitalism and the ideological character of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, Michael Sanders explores the aesthetic theory developed by the English working class autodidact, Tommy Jackson, on ‘Bourgeois’ Fiction, and concludes by considering aesthetics to be a vital aspect of any attempt at social and political transformation. Finally, Alexander Petrov devotes his piece to contemporary aesthetic issues of learning and teaching economic sociology on the grounds of Marxist theories. He provides an overview of research

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in economic aesthetics that includes new independent topics of economic aesthetics. 2 Global Perspectives: Transcultural Aesthetics and the Rise of Chinese Aesthetics Over the course of its extensive history, the field of aesthetics has undergone significant development, resulting in a substantial maturation of aesthetic thought. However, Western thought has been considered dominant in aesthetics, which has been challenged in recent decades by the cultural view of ‘contemporaneity’.2 If a worldview is a coherent system of knowledge about all aspects of the world, then transcultural aesthetics embodies an important tool for refining and expanding our conception of worldviews. In other words, the prospect of contemporary aesthetics is closely tied to both Western and non-Western aesthetics. The chapters in this part explore contemporary aesthetics by comparing Western and non-Western aesthetics, with an aim to bring about the globalisation of contemporary aesthetics. In the first contribution, Derek Matravers argues that the question of the universality of aesthetic judgments raised by Kant continues to dominate discussion about aesthetics, while contemporary art and aesthetic studies take a socio-aesthetic turn, focusing on a broader investigation of art forms and calling for aesthetic justice. In addition, Justin O’Connor argues that while the term ‘cultural industries’ is used by UNESCO to describe the tradable aspect of cultural production and consumption, the term has been used interchangeably with ‘creative industries’ for at least twenty years. He shows the significance of aesthetics and politics on the one hand, and technology and mass organisation on the other, by using contemporary cases—the US and China—to d­ istinguish between these two sets of terms. The fourth contribution is devoted to the aesthetics of atmosphere and transcultural interaction. Zhuofei Wang claims that the concept of ‘atmosphere’ is newly developed in the context of aesthetics, and as a general theory of perception, it helps broaden the boundaries of aesthetics, thus opening up new topics for contemporary East-West dialogue. She argues that the decisive issue is how the aesthetic realities are constructed in their respective cultural atmospheres, especially in the global context. Finally, Yongjian Wang analyses three cases of art festivals in Japan to provide new ideas for the development of transcultural art involvement in community 2 Gladston, Paul. 2021. Contemporary Chinese Art, Aesthetic Modernity and Zhang Peili: Towards a Critical Contemporaneity. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

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revitalisation, as art is considered a visual expression of culture and a representative of local cultural symbols. In the study of transcultural aesthetics, Western scholars are increasingly concerned with China, and Chinese aesthetic studies from Western perspectives continue to grow. Many of the authors in this volume illustrate this point through examples related to China. Karl Heinz Pohl analyses the path of Chinese aesthetics from tradition to modernity, and asks how China can escape from the ‘self-colonization’ of Western influence and achieve a cultural identity in the era of globalisation. According to Pohl, traditional Chinese aesthetics has constructed a completely different world by virtue of its characteristics of subtlety, dynamism, harmony and simplicity. The full absorption of the uniqueness of traditional Chinese aesthetics in contemporary aesthetics and art may be an effective way to cope with the inequality of the current discourse system. Moreover, Mario Wenning illustrates the ethical and aesthetic challenges of expressing respect between people of different cultural traditions from the East and the West, starting with the controversy of kowtowing after Macartney’s mission to the Emperor of China. Germán Gil-Curiel uses the Chinese painting and music of the ‘Along the River During the Qingming Festival (Qingming Shang He Tu)’ as examples to explain the ‘mediation’ and ‘intermediality’ of artworks, and contends that mediation is a prerequisite for maintaining and transmitting the significance of fundamental cultural works alive over time. Zheng Shen takes text mining techniques as an example to propose the application of interdisciplinary research methods to aesthetics for reconstructing contemporary aesthetic research. Finally, Jie Wang and Tian Shi explore the approach of ethnography of emotions to define the structure of emotions and to examine the modernity of aesthetics. 3 Multidisciplinary Aesthetics: Converging of Fields and Neuroaesthetics Many of the current discussions adopt a mainly theoretical approach to understand aesthetics, as is evident in the preceding sections. In essence, aesthetics is multidisciplinary, which further confirms the possibility of using multidisciplinary methods for its study. This volume includes works that employ different research methods in contemporary aesthetic research. Harold Sjursen introduces design thinking as a strategic approach to making human sensations out of aesthetics in the midst of technological progress. Furthermore, Jie Wang and Fanjun Meng argue that aesthetic anthropology contributes to the construction of a new system of contemporary aesthetic and art criticism.

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Recently, many scholars have been focusing on another new direction, that of the connection between aesthetics and science. Alexander Wragge-Morley has shown how the interplay between sensory experience and the production of knowledge, underscoring the importance of subjective experience, was crucial to key figures associated with the early Royal Society of London such as John Ray, Robert Boyle, Nehemiah Grew, Robert Hooke, and Thomas Willis.3 Armida de la Garza and Zheng Shen bridge aesthetics and science in works of textile art, and demonstrate that there is indeed an ‘aesthetics of science’ worth considering and that both aesthetics and science benefit from this interplay. Furthermore, Yushui Liang emphasises that the interdisciplinary study of cognitive neuroscience and aesthetics will inevitably lead to the understanding and discovery of aesthetic cognitive patterns. He further indicates that scholars should make full use of the research results of modern natural sciences to explain the basic problems of traditional aesthetics based on the theory of evolution and Marxist historical materialism, so as to gain a new understanding of aesthetic theory and reveal the mystery of human aesthetic activities. To conclude, this volume presents recent contemporary aesthetic studies from leading scholars in this field, in terms of both theory and methodology. Compared with other published work in the same field, this volume has three distinct advantages: it is contemporary, global and multidisciplinary. First, not only does it introduce important aesthetic theories, but it also connects fresh aesthetic phenomena to previous aesthetic theories, contributing to a renewed understanding of previous aesthetic theories in the contemporary world of media and technology. Second, it seeks to make up for the aesthetic study of non-Western aesthetics in a world dominated by Western aesthetic theory, contributing a global worldview of contemporary aesthetics. Finally, it includes neuroaesthetics and science in addition to philosophical, social, political, cultural and economic aesthetics, contributing to the multidisciplinary development of contemporary aesthetic research. 3 Wragge-Morley, Alexander. 2020. Aesthetic Science: Representing Nature in the Royal Society of London, 1650–1720. Chicago: University of Chicago.

PART 1 Classical Theories and New Phenomena: Technological Advancements

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Chapter 1

Aesthetics and the Arts of Engagement Arnold Berleant

Prefatory Note

In my published essays, I reviewed some of the innovative practices in the arts that had developed since mid-century and considered their significance for aesthetic theory.1 In the past half century, many of these innovations became mainstream and corroborated the transformations in aesthetics that had been projected earlier. 1 The history of aesthetic inquiry goes back nearly two thousand years. Yet despite its ancient origins, questions about the meaning and value of beauty, of art, and of qualitative experience more generally continue to trouble scholars and artists alike. Much of the discussion has to do with the direction of inquiry that helps account for the history and experience of aesthetic values: whether we can find guidance from ancient speculation, from universal first principles, from a scientific model, from an analytical inquiry into basic concepts, or from creative practices, themselves. Each approach leads in a different direction, resulting in a tangle of claims that have no common base. It seems that accord in aesthetic understanding, as in political and social disputes, is not only elusive but may be impossible. Perhaps it will be more productive to look away from tradition, away from textual study, away from the search for first principles, and toward creative practices in the arts and the experiential values they promote.

1 I have made this claim in a number of publications, most particularly in ‘Aesthetics and the Contemporary Arts,’ The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 29(2): 155-168 (Winter 1970). Reprinted in Arnold Berleant, Re-thinking Aesthetics, Rogue Essays on Aesthetics and the Arts, Farnham, UK & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004; The basic insight was the subject of my book, The Aesthetic Field: A Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, Springfield, Ill.: C. C. Thomas, 1970 and formed the underlying theme of the work that followed. © Arnold Berleant, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_003

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Some time ago I offered an approach to aesthetic inquiry that led in a new direction and produced some novel insights. This was to abandon traditional principles and received doctrine and to look instead for guidance in understanding art and aesthetic appreciation in the practices and innovative directions in the work of artists and in the experiences associated with appreciation.2 Moreover, this is far from holding that aesthetic value subsists exclusively in art. Aesthetic gratification has been associated with the natural landscape, with the human figure, and in sensation and perception per se, as well. Yet guided by a pragmatic methodological principle, it is appropriate to look for evidence of the aesthetic in the activities and practices associated with the various arts such as music, poetry, painting, drama, and the novel, arts that produce perceptual experiences that possess inherent value in their very occurrence. The arts, however, have proved to be a troublesome subject for philosophers. Since Plato, they have endeavored to place a diversity of perception and practice under all-inclusive concepts and theories. Of course, we want to bring order into the confusion of experience, for how else can we deal with things rationally and consistently? Perhaps the central issue is not one of consistency but of priority: which should come first, reason or experience? Here we again face the age-old conflict between rationalism and empiricism. Is the choice of a beginning only personal and arbitrary? Can we choose freely from among the various proposals: Descartes’ method of doubt, Locke’s ideas of sensation and reflection, Hume’s impressions, or Husserl’s transcendental 2 Of course, such an approach might seem to beg the question by assuming that the values we identify as aesthetic are most direct and striking in such practices. Yet if we recognize that aesthetic value rests at bottom on perceptual insight and enhancement, creative activities that pursue such values may be considered prima facie to be aesthetic quite apart from considerations of merit. That is, aesthetic activity and artistic merit, while related, are different matters. This is a way of saying that the association of art with aesthetic value may vary but is different from questions of merit. There are no grounds for presuming that all artistic activities, products, and experiences enhance the depth and quality of perceptual experience displayed in direct expressions of distaste, disgust, and repugnance. Among the more innovative extensions of the scope of artistic activity are works that take for their materials decaying matter, ordure, junk, and trash, as well as subject-matter that arouses disgust, repugnance, and feelings of unease and vulnerability. The question of the negative domain of aesthetic perception is an important subject in its own right and one that requires elaboration on its own terms. A preliminary discussion of negative aesthetics appears in my book, S­ ensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World, Eter: Imprint ­Academic, 2010, Ch. 9, The Negative Aesthetics of Everyday Life, Ch. 10, Art, Terrorism, and the Negative ­Sublime, Wrażliwożść ı Zmysły, Polish trans. 2011. See also Katya Mandoki, Everyday Aesthetics: Prosaics, The Play of Culture and Social Identities, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. I elaborate on negative aesthetics in my forthcoming book, Critical Aesthetics.

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ego? Does that rational ideal work for the activities and experiences of the arts, so deeply funded in perceptual experience? Isn’t there a temporal order, an order of experience to which we recur for the primary data? 2 The decades immediately following World War II were a period of striking innovation in the arts. At the same time, the philosophy of art remained mired in the slough of concepts that Kant had theorized so compellingly at the close of the eighteenth century. His was a theory based on an epistemological model that developed criteria for judging beauty but without reference to experience or the arts. Kant, himself, had little encounter with artistic practice, and the standards of judgment he developed were founded on distinctions that conformed to the architectonic demands of his theory of knowledge, a theory that had its metaphysical roots in Platonism. He proposed the view that aesthetic value consisted in the disinterested contemplation of an object for its own sake on whose value there is universal agreement3 (Kant 2000). In an earlier study, I suggested that the study of aesthetics, rather than being derived from first principles, would benefit from knowledge of the arts, especially contemporary developments.4 Such innovations may come as the vanguard of perceptual changes, and of cultural change more generally. Those, half a century ago, came at a time when aesthetic inquiry, like p ­ hilosophy in general, had turned, not to the arts and the data of experience, but to logical analysis and the study of language. Language became its scripture and ­Wittgenstein its messiah. But is the choice of a beginning only personal and arbitrary? Can the rational ideal of the traditional work for inquiry in aesthetics? Isn’t there a temporal as well as a rational order, an order of experience in which we are able to recur to the primary data not in theory but in practice: Descartes’ method of doubt, Locke’s ideas of sensation and reflection, Hume’s impressions, Husserl’s transcendental ego? Beginning in the late nineteenth century challenges to that tradition had begun to be made: first by Bergson, certainly by Dewey, and later by Merleau-Ponty, but the ‘official’ view remained largely unchanged. As the

3 Kant, Immanuel. 2000. Critique of Judgment. South Bend: Infomotions. 4 ‘Surrogate Theories of Art,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 30(2): 163–183 (December 1969), http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6958P. Later included in The Aesthetic Field: A Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, Springfield, Ill.: C. C. Thomas, 1970.

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twentieth century matured, these innovative thinkers began to inspire major changes in culture and consciousness. Consider some historical notes. During the years immediately following WWII, profound political changes and transformative technological innovations had, with increasing force, begun to radically alter social life and practice throughout the developed world. And the arts, reflecting and embodying these changes, increased the momentum of their own transfiguration. Striking innovations in style had begun in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as artists began to emancipate themselves from representational fidelity and other such conventions that had long dominated artistic practice. By the middle of the twentieth century, major changes in the arts were occurring with increasing rapidity: alterations in their practices, their media and materials, their scope, and their cultural role. We could no longer consider the arts to consist of self-sufficient objects to be contemplated disinterestedly for their own sake. Nor could we focus inwardly on the satisfactions and pleasures of contemplation. It appeared then that it would be instructive to look at currents and developments in the arts at that time for insight and guidance rather than to debate meanings and interpretations that reflected conventional canons of acceptability. The technological, and stylistic innovations that then seemed to be so striking were even more significant in the perceptual demands they imposed. As I wrote then, ‘of the many changes in cultural experience, two seem to have had special significance for the arts. The first was the rise of industrial production, which transformed the characteristic features that objects possessed and led to the use of new materials, objects, and techniques in artistic practice. ­Second were the fundamental social changes that came about through increasing democratization, in particular the emergence of population masses and a corresponding mass culture, generating new perceptual activities and reaffirming a social function for the arts. Together, new artistic materials and objects and new perceptual activities [were] embodied in some strikingly different forms and movements in the arts themselves, and it is these that present a challenge to aesthetics.’5 It is essential to give particular notice to the alterations that took place in perceptual experience. These involved more than revolutionary changes in the materials and technologies of artistic production. Aesthetic experience had also changed radically, leading to the perceptual integration of all the ­elements in the aesthetic situation into a unified experience. Not only were 5 Cf. Aesthetics and the Contemporary Arts.

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the distinctions obscured between the creator of art, the appreciator, the art object, and the performer; their functions tended to overlap and merge, as well. These became continuous in the course of aesthetic experience, and expanded the boundaries of aesthetic perception.6 Along with the enlargement of our sensory responsiveness came the breakdown of aesthetic prohibitions, and none was more significant than that against the sensual.7 There was no restriction on the sensory and material content of art creation and reception. Everything was recognized and allowed, and this resulted in changes not only in the arts but in their practice and their appreciation. The catalog of new trends that emerged is impressive in its scope and ­variety, including the collages and assemblages of nouveau réalism, the abstract expressionism of the New York School, and the popularity of theaterin-the-round. This theatrical innovation is representative of the integration of artistic and aesthetic roles and functions. It set the stage at ground level and raised the audience to surround the stage on all sides, while interaction between the actors and the audience became common. Aesthetic sensibility was also expanded to include all the senses, while the subjects of the arts were no longer romantic idealizations but disruptive intrusions of the mundane, the erotic, and the violent. 3 A major consequence of these transformative changes was the enlargement of aesthetic sensibility. To the classically acceptable senses of sight and hearing were added all the channels and modalities in which sensory perception takes place, the proximal along with the distal. The art object burst its frame and began to play a more active part. Such transgressions occurred not only in the art object but became equally true of the perceiver, the artist, and the performer. Moreover, these aesthetic functions were not confined to separate roles in the aesthetic situation but their functions were integrated and shared.

6 This and all subsequent quotations, unless otherwise attributed, are from Aesthetics and the Contemporary Arts. 7 See Arnold Berleant, ‘The Sensuous and the Sensual in Aesthetics,’ The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 23(2): 185–192 (Winter 1964). Reprinted in Philosophical Essays on Curriculum, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1969, ed. R. S. Guttchen and B. Bandman, pp.306–317. Reprinted in Re-thinking Aesthetics, Rogue Essays on Aesthetics and the Arts, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004; Chinese trans., Wuhan U.P., 2010; Polish translation: Prze-myśleć estetykę. Niepokorne eseje o sztuce, trans. Maria Korusiewicz,Tomasz Markiewka, 2007.

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The activity of the art object contributed to a second major change in aesthetic perception. No longer removed from a contemplative observer, the object of aesthetic regard turned into an active force that imposed itself on the viewer. From walk-in sculpture, audience-activated artworks, and the forceful visuality of optical art, to the subtle influence of the shapes, colors, and enlarged proportions of abstract expressionism on the perceiver’s body and mood, the art object was no longer passive, nor was it content to remain bounded by the frame or isolated by distance. Third, the appreciator began to participate more openly in the aesthetic process with the increasing popularity of interactive art. Not just a passive viewer, one physically pushes the sculpture into movement or, passing before a framed work, activates sensors that alter its surface. By such innovations, the ‘viewer’ becomes a co-creator. ‘Not only were the distinctions obscured between the creator of art, the aesthetic perceiver, the art object, and the performer; their functions have tended to overlap and merge, as well, becoming continuous in the course of appreciative experience.’8 To describe this newly integrated and active aesthetic situation, the concept of an ‘aesthetic field’ was elaborated.9 If we can assign to the eighteenth century the consolidation of aesthetic speculation into a coherent theoretical structure, we can recognize in the arts of the twentieth a thorough undermining of that edifice. This was taking place in a society and technology altered dramatically and irrevocably by the disruptive influence of the social changes and armed conflicts that succeeded the Second World War. We have already noted many of the radical shifts that took place in the practices of aesthetic production and experience over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the expansion of the aesthetic perception to embrace ordinary objects, situations, and experiences; the widening of the content of the arts and their emancipation from the need to represent the ideal in form and subject-matter, and the liberation from verisimilitude. Once-radical art movements that appeared early in this transformative process come readily to mind, such as impressionism, fauvism, cubism, surrealism, expressionism, and abstraction in painting; the rejection of tonality and tertiary harmony in music; and the industrial ideal that inspired modernist architecture, elevating and embodying the design values inherent in mass production and functionalism. These expansive thrusts in the arts paralleled the industrialization 8 This and all subsequent quotations, unless otherwise attributed, are from Aesthetics and the Contemporary Arts. 9 Cf. The Aesthetic Field: A Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, Springfield, Ill.: C. C. Thomas 1970. Chinese edition, Wuhan University Press, forthcoming 2021.

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of culture into a mass phenomenon with new perceptual activities that were intense, insistent, and all-encompassing. Aesthetic sensibility was enlarged, democratized, and utterly transformed. Such fundamental changes called for a new account that would explain them and rationalize their occurrence. What was needed was an aesthetics that could accommodate this expanded aesthetic domain, not by excluding the presumed threats to convention but, instead, by altering the theoretical frame to justify and include them. Such an account demanded two basic changes in traditional understanding. The first was the expansion of the aesthetic beyond the ideal of beauty and the arts and into the conditions and objects of ordinary life, while the second endorsed an enlarged range of aesthetic value. These implied the integration of the scope of aesthetic experience into the four vectors of a perceptual field that combined the creative, appreciative, objective (i.e. focused), and performative functions inherent in aesthetic experience.10 4 At this point, it would be useful to consider what factors appeared ­significant in the earlier review of aesthetic experience before turning to an assessment of the present state of aesthetic theory. How does that period of radical ­innovation look fifty years later? Has the evolution of art and the aesthetic continued to follow its projected course? Can the conventional aesthetic of disinterested contemplation adapt any better than before to the new practices and movements in the arts? On the other hand, how does the aesthetic of engagement, devised to account for such changes, fare in retrospect? Such questions are challenging. While this essay is not a study in the history of the modern arts, the arts and art practices since the mid-twentieth century are of signal importance for they can contribute to our grasp of the aesthetic. Let me begin by considering what has followed those artistic adventures. Looking back, it seems clear that the radical art movements of the late ­nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as impressionism, fauvism, cubism, surrealism, and expressionism, were succeeded in the middle half of the last century by newer stylistic and technical developments that continued to move away from the representational realism that seemed to corroborate the conventional aesthetic of disinterested contemplation. These stylistic innovations, among them pop art, optical art, photorealism, abstract expressionism, 10

The Aesthetic Field offers such an account.

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and minimal art, were distinctive and not related, but they shared the same expansive and irreverent impulse of their predecessors.11 These stylistic movements have been widely discussed and are familiar to museum- goers and others interested in the visual arts. Of special interest for us here are more recent innovative changes in the arts, practices that do not contravene the perceptual thrust of their more famous predecessors but extend them in imaginative, disconcerting, and sometimes bizarre ways. Take, for example, the ways in which the body has entered into artistic practice, not merely as its referent or subject-matter, but physically in body art, body ­piercing, and in performance art more generally. At times the audience may collaborate, joining the artist or performer in the creative process. The many variants that performance art and collaborative art have taken were unpredictable, limited only by the imagination of the artist. It is not difficult to cite other directions in which artists have moved in ways that require the active participation of the appreciator. The walk-through sculptures of Henry Moore and viewer-activated expressionist constructions of Mark di Suvero have metamorphosed in the hands of other artists into total environments the ‘viewer’ enters and activates through one’s very presence. One can go from the pole of site-specific art, which inhabits its location and requires the viewer’s presence, to the other pole of conceptual sculpture, where the physical form is dematerialized and the creative product becomes a thought or image that the appreciator is directed to project into a specified location. Comparable developments were pursued by the land art movement, many of whose works are massive in scope and size. Perhaps the most striking case of earth art that merges object, environment, and participatory appreciator is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC, designed by the young American artist Maya Lin. Lin’s Wavefields work in similar ways. Large and extensive earthwork configurations, these invite the visitor to enter and wander within or among the towering waveforms. Then there is pop art, crossing the boundary between art and popular ­culture, and hyperrealism, carrying representation to the extreme, where virtuosic technique makes the visual rendering nearly indistinguishable from the person or object it represents and is disruptive by its very verisimilitude and sometimes by its size or intimacy. Bio-art is a still different direction of creative imagination. Here art works are fashioned in studios and laboratories out of bacteria, tissues, and living plants and animals using genetic knowledge, 11

These examples come mainly from the visual arts, since they are best known. Those familiar with developments in theater, music, literature, and other domains of aesthetic ­creativity and practice can readily cite others.

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materials, and processes, as in the work of Eduardo Kac. And in an entirely different direction is what has been called ‘relational aesthetics,’ in which human relations and their social context are taken as the aesthetic whole. As Nicholas Bourriaud, its originator, claims, ‘The artwork creates a social environment in which people come together to participate in a shared activity.’12 Here, ‘the role of artworks is no longer to depict imaginary and utopian realities but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real in whatever scale chosen by the artist.’13 The gallery scene is not only the venue for viewing art but becomes the art work itself. To this can be added art and theater works that employ immersive or virtual reality techniques along with the various manifestations of virtual art. Beyond the proliferation of new techniques and innovative arts that expand the reach of the aesthetic beyond customary bounds, entirely new regions of research have emerged in recent scholarship that explore aesthetic value in uncustomary places. One of the most prominent in the past half-century is environmental aesthetics. Born of a renewed concern for the proliferation of industrial policies and exploitative practices that damage or pollute the ­environmental conditions under which people’s live, there has developed a growing awareness of the fragile values embedded in the non-human world. No longer an endless resource to be exploited thoughtlessly, the awareness has grown of the global consequences of such practices, such as atmospheric and ocean warming. Even so, an adequate response to the environmental and human consequences has hardly begun and will demand enormous changes in social, political, and economic organization that have transformative implications. Along with adapting to environmental changes has come a greater awareness of rapidly changing environmental experience. On the other side of the scale, a new direction in aesthetic research that has recently emerged in what is known as everyday aesthetics. This recognizes the presence and importance of aesthetic values and experiences in the ordinary objects and circumstances of daily life. These practices and movements are among the more prominent phenomena

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Bourriaud, Nicholas. 2002. Relational Aesthetics. Translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods with Mathieu Copeland. Dijon: Les presses du réel. The innovations in art and appreciative experience I have cited may be seen as an invitation to explore the encyclopedic resources of the internet to search for examples and explanations of these practices and movements. For example, the choreographer William Forsythe calls his dance creations a collaborative process. In the spirit of the contemporary arts, we might call the practice of the reader supplying the reader with links to examples and illustrations, ‘collaborative scholarship.’

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of the artworld and of enlarged aesthetic experience. The list could readily be extended into all the modalities and materials of the arts.14 5 What, now, can we make of all this richness of practice and product? Can anything be inferred of their significance for aesthetics? It now seems clear that many of the prominent innovations in style, medium, and practice in the arts that can be discerned from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth have fulfilled their potential and completed their course in the twenty ­first – impulses toward the expansion of boundaries, materials, and perception in the arts. In the last fifty years, innovative practices in the arts have evolved into common and distinct new artistic media and modes. Often the creative artist deliberately enlists the appreciative observer and the audience to join in the creative process in both its traditional modes as well as the many new techniques, media, and practices. In one way or another, the art object has become incomplete without the contribution of the appreciator. The audience may even join with the artist to become an activator or performer of the art. Nor is the work a passive recipient of their creative actions. As in op art or novels with alternative endings from which the reader must choose, the audience joins with the artist as an originative force in achieving the final art work. These developments represent the culmination of the expansive tendencies identified earlier. They confirm and carry forward the integration of the four constituents of the aesthetic process. We can recognize in this the workings of art returning to its origins as a communal process, its eloquent expression as an aesthetics of engagement. The panoramic sweep of this survey of the vastly enlarged world of art and aesthetic experience may be seen as prefiguring the course of social change. It may serve as a guide for the careful research and scholarship by historians of art and social change. My purpose here has been to recognize a process that appears pronounced and definite. It is for future scholars to identify and detail the particular features, factors, and trends and stages in this evolutionary transfiguration of a social process in which the aesthetic plays a critical role. 14

After completing this essay, the realization emerged that it corroborates practices and exemplifications of the theoretical view presented half a century ago in The Aesthetic Field: A Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, Springfield, Ill.: C. C. Thomas, 1970. This proposed an aesthetic situation in which four principal factors (a creative, an objective, a perceptual, and a performative factor) enter into mutually interactive and interdependent relationships in an aesthetic field.

Chapter 2

Adorno, Stiegler, and Industrial Schemata of Experience Tyrus Miller Bernard Stiegler offers a diagnosis of the 20th century as the period of the increasing industrial organization of technically mediated memory, what he calls ‘tertiary retention,’ and the proffering of industrially standardized and synchronized temporal experiences, such as films, television, and recorded music, for sale and consumed on a mass scale. Despite the couching of his argument in the theoretical idiom of Husserlian phenomenology, Heideggerian existential ontology, and French post-structuralism, as well as French theories of technics including Gilbert Simondon and André Leroi-Gourhan, Stiegler’s exposition also critically reprises—and extends—the ‘culture industry’ hypothesis advanced by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer in the mid-20th century. Adorno, as we know, did not simply criticize the industrial products of culture for their artistic shortcomings, which he viewed as symptomatic of the broader system of cultural production and consumption they fed. More fundamentally, he weighed their effects on aesthetic experience as one of the key means by which individuation was secured in bourgeois societies. As the industrial production and standardization of consumable cultural commodities intensified, he believed, the more rigid the underlying schemata of possible aesthetic experiences became and the less such experiences could help to constitute any coherent, individuated ensemble of personal judgments, memories, and pleasures. Moreover, Adorno saw this disintegration of the individuated subject as, at least in part, a subordination of its lived experiential time to an externalized, industrialized temporality: the economic rhythms of novelty and obsolescence, the synchronized and accelerating cycles of fashion in advanced consumer societies. The culture industry was not solely characterized by the quality or cultural level of its products, which were, so to speak, merely a­ ncillary vehicles of a closed-circuit loop integrating industrialized production, dissemination, and consumption. Adorno believed that the subject of industrially planned and produced aesthetic experience, the cultural ‘consumer,’ was also being assimilated to this system in ways that reached down to the very infrastructures of the subjectivity © Tyrus Miller, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_004

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itself, the quasi-transcendental and stable—but in truth contingent and socio-historically embedded—schemata that constitute the subject and its possibilities of synthetic experience. As he bluntly states in his essay ‘The Schema of Mass Culture,’ ‘The schema of mass culture now prevails as a canon of synthetically produced produced modes of behavior’1—with his usage of ‘synthetic’ connoting both that which is produced and artificial as well as the synthesizing function of the Kantian faculty of imagination, here captured and perverted by industrial processes for profit. In an alternative view of the psychic apparatus, Adorno also suggests that the culture industry effects a kind of ‘psychoanalysis in reverse,’ embedding itself in the structure of representations, drives, and symptoms that Freud described in his model of the mind: ‘[T] he psychoanalytic concept of a multilayered personality has been taken up by cultural industry, and … the concept is used in order to ensnare the consumer as completely as possible and in order to engage him psycho-­dynamically in the service of premeditated effects.’2 The point is analogous whether the psychic model is Kantian or Freudian: the products of culture industry work limit not merely present experience of cultural consumption, but also the subjective faculties of possible experience, thus restricting the structures of the past as memory and the imagination of the future as well. A hollowed-out, repetitive time threatens to preclude substantive duration and development in the experience of the cultural industry product: ‘The consumer is … reduced to an abstract present.’3 With his long anthropological view of retentional techniques as background, Stiegler strongly concurs with Adorno and Horkheimer’s basic diagnosis of the culture industry’s temporal colonization of the individual. Thus, for instance, he writes: Television tends to annihilate the diversity of individual secondary retentions, so that the singularity of points of view on images collapses. It is television’s vocation to synchronize individual temporalities of consciousnesses belonging to bodies, the behaviours of which it is matter of controlling with a view to accentuating their massively consumerist ­expectations.4 1 Adorno, W. Theodor, and Bernstein, Jay M. 1991. ‘The Schema of Mass Culture,’ in The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. J.M. Bernstein. London and New York: Routledge, p.91. 2 Ibid, p.166. 3 Ibid, p.69. 4 Stiegler, Bernard. 2014. Symbolic Misery, Volume 1: The Hyperindustrial Epoch, trans. Barnaby Norman. Cambridge: Polity Press, p.88.

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Stiegler characterizes the socio-economic and aesthetic tendencies of which television is a vector and example as ‘hyperindustrial,’ namely, ‘an extension of calculation beyond the sphere of production along with a correlative extension of industrial domains.’5 He finds in this dynamic an immanent contradiction, insofar as the hyperindustrial drive to synchronize consumption blocks the individuation process by which both individual subjects and cohesive forms of intersubjective sociality are constituted. Both individual and society suffer from a dangerous impoverishment of affective bonds: [H]yper-industrialization brings about a new figure of the individual. But, and this is the paradox of my title (‘Allegory of the Anthill’), it is a figure of the individual that finds itself disfigured insomuch as the hyper-­industrial generalization of calculation creates an obstacle to the processes of individuation, which alone make the individual possible.6 Again, in a partial reprise of Adorno’s socio-psychoanalytic theory of the subject in a late capitalist society, Stiegler turns to Freudian theory to explicate hyperindustrial society’s attack on the individual subject. He focuses on the role that ‘industrialized temporal objects’—the typical products of culture industry—play in undermining that individuated time in which the Self experiences its own cohesion through ongoing affective, libidinally invested interactions with others. With the loss of such diachronic syncopations between self and other in favor of externally synchronized temporalities—the standardized times of broadcasts and experiential objects such as films and musical recordings—the individual self threatens to fragment and disappear. It might, admittedly, appear counterintuitive to place in apposition a thinker so clearly indebted to the philosophical idioms of Edmund Husserl and ­Martin Heidegger as Stiegler, with Adorno, who so polemically rejected this tradition in thought, which obviously informs Stiegler’s more proximate teachers as well, such as Jacques Derrida. However, there are several reasons why this at first glance improbable encounter may be theoretically productive. First, at least in a general sense, Adorno’s approach to many problems, but particularly those of music, is broadly phenomenological: he focuses descriptively on the phenomena as they manifest themselves, rather than, by contrast, a more 5 Stiegler, Bernard. 2014. Symbolic Misery, Volume 1: The Hyperindustrial Epoch, trans. Barnaby Norman. Cambridge: Polity Press, p.47. 6 See also, on this point, ‘To Love, To Love Me, To Love Us: From September 11 to April 21,’ in Stiegler, Acting Out, trans. David Barison, Daniel Ross, and Patrick Crogan. Stanford, ­California: Stanford University Press, 2009, 37–82.

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formalistic treatment. Adorno’s phenomenological bent is evident in much of his writing on atonal, twelve-tone, and serial new music, in which he favors what the ears may hear, the phenomenal manifestation of compositional procedures, over the mathematizing tendencies of increasingly rationalized compositional systems—which can, irrationally, and despite sophisticated formulae and technics, generate crudely articulated sequences and raw sounds, or even, p ­ aradoxically, segments that strike the listener as unwittingly tonal. This is a specific instance of a more general precept in Adorno’s work, which is the reserve of the non-conceptualized materiality of the phenomenally manifest world over the concept, and it is close attention to the dissonance of concept and phenomenon that may disclose this ‘more and different than’ remainder, which is also a non-conceptual origin in material nature, to the listening subject. This in turn informs Adorno’s interdisciplinary methodology, which emphasizes the fruitful interaction not just across different disciplines of knowledge, but also between theoretical and concrete phenomenological and empirical-scientific investigations. Notably, Stiegler’s work is marked by a similar shuttling between philosophical investigation and engagement with applied problems in digital culture, the arts, political economy, social ­psychology, education, and politics, and his professional appointments, notably, have been with a variety of interdisciplinary research projects and cultural institutions rather than with academic departments of philosophy. Second, as several commentators have noted, Adorno’s engagement with Husserl and especially Heidegger, if polemical, is not merely dismissive.7 Indeed, as Adorno himself suggests in Negative Dialectics, the problem of facticity in Heidegger bears a manifest relation to an element of Adorno’s own philosophical thinking, that non-conceptual excess of the material world over the concept, which implies an irreducible empirical residue within any theoretical, conceptual account of the world. As Samir Gandesha, notes, this basic philosophical postulate even allows Adorno to acknowledge, however begrudgingly, a certain contiguity of his own notion of ‘unrelegated experience’ to that of Heidegger’s existence. Both constitute ways of thinking about individuation and possibilities of experience, thought, and action; both protest

7 See, for example, the essays in Adorno and Heidegger: Philosophical Questions, eds. Iain Macdonald and Krzysztof Ziarek. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press, 2007; and Alexander García Düttmann, The Memory of Thought: An Essay on Heidegger and Adorno, New York: Continuum, 2002.

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the reduction of understanding and feeling to the protocols of positivist science, technological instrumentality, and economic calculation.8 Lastly, however, and most directly, Stiegler himself briefly takes up Adorno and Horkheimer in Volume 3 of his Technics and Time, in his discussion of ‘cinematic time and the question of malaise.’ In a chapter entitled ‘Cinematic Consciousness,’ dealing with the synchronization of consciousness through modern forms of technical retention such as cinema, Stiegler quotes and discusses passages from Dialectic of Enlightenment in the chapter entitled ‘Cinematic Consciousness.’ He likewise takes up Adorno and Horkheimer in further commentary on cinema as a factor in the mutation of the psycho-­ temporal economy of the 20th century, arguing, for example, that Adorno and Horkheimer view cinema ‘more than anything else’ as a ‘process of disindividuation.’9 Stiegler at once pays homage to Adorno and Horkheimer for their analysis of the culture industry and draws a critical line between his own perspective and theirs, which he views as flawed in what he takes to be their argument about the experience-fabricating dynamics of the culture industry stepping into the constitutive role that Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason attributed to the transcendental schematism of apprehension (intuition), reproduction (imagination), and recognition (concept). I will return to this point after a more general discussion of the trajectory of Stiegler’s work. Stiegler’s diagnosis of the industrialized synchronization of consciousness in the 20th and early 21st century derives—like Adorno and Horkheimer’s account of the self-destructive dynamics of enlightenment—from a much broader speculative philosophical anthropology that he articulated over ­several different books, most prominently the multivolume Technics and Time studies,10 which expound through a number of critical expositions the technical infrastructures of memorial ‘retention’ of time and exteriorized mediations of experiences registered in time. Stiegler focuses on various means of registering memory and their implications for individual and collective temporal experience, insofar as these historically evolving technics inflect memorial trace-making, preservation and storage of experiences as memory, 8 9 10

Gandesha, Samir. 2004. ‘Leaving Home: On Adorno and Heidegger,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Adorno, ed. Tom Huhn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.107. Stiegler, Bernard. 2018. ‘The Organology of Dreams and Arche-Cinema,’ in The Neganthropocene, trans. Daniel Ross. London: Open Humanities Press, p.164. See Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus, trans. Richard Beardsworth and George Collins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Technics and Time, 2: Disorientation, trans. Stephen Barker (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); Technics and Time, 3: Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise, trans. Stephen Barker (­Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).

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the ­potentialities for reanimation of retained traces, and the anticipatory projection of emergent futures. Technics of retention—including various forms of artifacts, writing, and registration in photographic and electronic media— have, he argues, structured human experience, individuation, and community in variable ways throughout human history, from anthropogenesis in tool making, through mnemotechnics such as writing and image-making, up to the analog and digital reproductive technologies of the contemporary ‘hyperindustrial’ epoch. The 20th century, however, constituted an inflection point in this human development, because of the implications of certain technological media and their capacity to organize temporal experiences themselves as an industrially planned and produced and mass-consumed commodity. Before considering Stiegler’s analysis of the 20th-century shift in retentional technics and temporal experience, however, I will briefly recount his general argument about the structure of retention. Most importantly, drawing upon Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness (and also on Jacques Derrida’s critical interrogation of it), Stiegler distinguishes three orders of retention: primary, secondary, and tertiary. ‘Primary retention’ refers to the way that perception itself requires preservation of previous moments of perception and anticipation of emerging perceptions in order to create continuity in consciousness of any perceived object. Perceptual experience in the present in this sense already requires a more complex temporality than pure presence; memory and expectation are integral to the very possibility of experiencing the presence of objects that persist through a series of lapsing and emerging presents. Husserl describes this in terms of a ‘broad’ or expanded present, rich with retentions and protentions. This articulation of the broad present in time-­ consciousness is especially important in understanding what Husserl calls ‘temporal objects,’ such as melodies—objectivities that are essentially defined by their unfolding in time. ‘Secondary retention’ allows what we conventionally think of as memory—reproductive recall of past moments of experience that interpenetrate with and inflect the experience of the present. This ‘recall’ or ‘memory,’ however, is not just oriented towards the past; it also affects our anticipation of what is emerging in the present, enriching perception with the contents of the recalled memory and allowing the apparent iteration of a perception to be, in fact, different than and new in comparison with the previous primary experience. Stiegler’s innovation (following Derrida’s insistence on the grammatological dissemination of philosophical constructs such as ‘perception,’ ‘consciousness,’ and ‘memory’) is to focus on a third ‘tertiary’ order of retention that is exteriorized in material objects and media. Tertiary retention is ‘supplementary’ and ‘prosthetic’ in relation to primary and secondary retention; yet, as Derrida’s grammatological critique of Husserl already suggested

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decades ago, it is also always already there at the origin, as the index of an originary ‘fault’ or insufficiency of primary and secondary retention. Primary and secondary retention, while seemingly the objects—the ‘­contents’—of tertiary retention’s artificial (technical) reproduction and storage capacities, are in fact reciprocally dependent upon and conditioned by the historical nexus of tertiary retentional technics. In formulating the dynamics of internal time-consciousness, which is in turn crucial to the perception of the external world and hence to phenomenology more generally, Husserl discounts this exteriorized dimension of memory, which in Stiegler’s view, is a precondition of primary and secondary retention. Tertiary retentions, ultimately rooted in the paleoanthropological evolution of the human species as tool-­users and the ensuing history of human cultures, are excluded from Husserl’s account of time-consciousness, leaving him unable to grasp the constitutive and epochally changing role of technics in temporal consciousness. More specifically, without reference to a realm of externalized, materially stored tertiary retentions, Husserl must leave the source of ‘the constitutive flux’ from which the succession of ‘nows’ spring quasi-transcendental and mysterious. This temporal flux that gives time is, as Husserl characterizes it, a paradoxically a-temporal, non-durational, and impersonal stratum of time-consciousness that he attributes to a pre-phenomenal, pre-immanent, self-constituting, and self-appearing ‘absolute subjectivity’ underlying the unity of all other forms of temporality. While Husserl leaves this mysterious impersonal subjectivity that ‘gives time’ ultimately unnameable (he literally says, ‘For all this, names are lacking’11), it will inspire Heidegger to resituate the springing of time in being itself and, as a methodological approach, to seek to illuminate this connection of being and time in the contingent (‘thrown’) thereness of existence, the ‘Da’ (there) of ‘Dasein’ (being-there), understanding time as the time of its own possibilities of existence. Subsequently in Technics and Time, on the basis of a close reading of Heidegger in Being and Time, Stiegler criticizes Heidegger as well for abstractly conflating technicity with inauthenticity, the time of technical equipment with the fallen public time of the ‘they,’ and time measurement with means-end instrumental calculation (whereas for Stiegler technicity also involves the differential logic of tertiary retention, that is, a logic of depositing traces, latency, retrieval, reactivation, repetition, and dissemination). The ‘who’ of Dasein is, Heidegger argues, always already entangled with the equipmental ‘what,’ as the world of things-to-hand into which it has been thrown, thus encountering its 11

Husserl, Edmund. 1964. The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, trans. James S. Churchill. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, p.100.

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existential temporality of being-ahead-of-itself in care. Heidegger will argue, however, that Dasein’s resolute being-towards-death breaks with this proximate mode of time, and grasps itself as the non-­relational, pure ‘there’ of the ecstases of time understood ontologically. But in dismissing out of hand what Stiegler calls the world-historical ‘age-­specificities’ of technics in favor of the time-conception of fundamental ontology, Heidegger remains in secret complicity with Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness. Heidegger, like Husserl, finds no fundamental place in his existential analytic of being as time for the ‘already-there’ embodied in the technical domain of tertiary memory, and he thus misreads the integral role of technicity in the possibilities of experienced existence. Notably, as we will see, Stiegler will similarly charge Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of the culture industry with an analogous failure to come to terms adequately with the role of technicity in the industrialization of consciousness that they rightly diagnose. In taking up Adorno and Horkheimer’s conception of the culture industry in his third volume of Time and Technics, Stiegler focuses on the industrial capture of the imagination they diagnose. They employ the Kantian terms ‘schema’ and ‘schematism’ to imply not only the culture industry’s degradation of fantasy-life through its constant stream of stereotypical sentiments, images, and narratives, but also something more fundamental to psychic life: the imaginative mediations between sensual perceptions and conceptual understanding through which the possibilities of subjective experience are conditioned. Stiegler quotes an important passage from Dialectics of Enlightenment in which Adorno and Horkheimer expound the dispossession of Kantian pure reason by the industrial apparatus of cultural production and consumption: The man of leisure has to accept what the culture manufacturers offer him. Kant’s formalism still expected a contribution from the individual, who was thought to relate the varied experiences of the senses to fundamental concepts; but industry robs the individual of his function. Its prime service to the customer is to do his schematizing for him.12 They evoke what Stiegler, in his discussion, will call ‘a mystery in Kantian thought—the mystery of schematism,’13 as a kind of secret that the culture industry has ‘deciphered’: 12 13

Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, W. Theodor. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, p.124. Stiegler, Bernard. 2011. Technics and Time, 3: Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise, trans. Stephen Barker. Stanford: Stanford University Press, p.40.

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Kant said that there was a secret mechanism in the soul which prepared direct intuitions in such a way that they could be fitted into the system of pure reason. But today that secret has been deciphered. While the mechanism is to all appearances planned by those who serve up the data of experience, that is, by the culture industry, it is in fact forced upon the latter by the power of society, which remains irrational, however we may try to rationalize it; and this inescapable force is processed by commercial agencies so that they give an artificial impression of being in command. There is nothing left for the consumer to classify. Producers have done it for him.14 There are at least two key points of argument in this passage. The first is, of course, that the function of cognitive synthesis through the schema of imagination has been subsumed by the industrial apparatus of the culture industry. Adorno and Horkheimer amplify this point by emphasizing that the culture industry’s schematization of experience comprehends the whole of possible experience, not just that which is taken in before the television screen or in the movie theater, but in ‘real life’ as well. It roots itself in the conditions of possible experience and increasingly colonizes experience’s unregulated zones and ‘free time’ (to make reference to Adorno’s important late radio broadcast, in which he qualifies some of his earlier assumptions about the culture industry’s total efficacy15): The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry. The old experience of the movie-goer, who sees the world outside as an extension of the film he has just left (because the latter is intent on reproducing the world of everyday perceptions), is now the producer’s guideline. The more intensely and flawlessly the techniques duplicate empirical objects, the easier it is today for the illusion to prevail that the outside world is the straightforward continuation of that presented on the screen. The purpose has been furthered by mechanical reproduction since the lightning takeover by the sound film.16

14 15 16

Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, W. Theodor. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, pp.124–125. Adorno, Theodor W. 1998. ‘Free Time,’ in Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, trans. Henry W. Pickford. New York: Columbia University Press, pp.167–175. Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, W. Theodor. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, p.126.

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The endopsychic power of the culture industry is rooted in the reproductive precision of image- and sound-recording technologies, which in turn put their essential stamp on the cultural products produced by their means: The stunting of the mass-media’s consumer’s powers of imagination and spontaneity does not have to be traced back to any psychological mechanisms; he must ascribe the loss of those attributes to the objective nature of the products themselves, especially to the most characteristic of them, the sound film. They are so designed that quickness, powers of observation, and experience are undoubtedly needed to apprehend them at all; yet sustained thought is out of the question if the spectator is not to miss the relentless rush of facts. Even though the effort required for his response is semi-automatic, no scope is left for the imagination. … The might of industrial society is lodged in men’s minds. … The culture industry as a whole has molded men as a type unfailingly reproduced in every product.17 Yet the culture industry’s pretense to represent the limits of what can be imagined, thought, and experienced, Adorno and Horkheimer underscore, is itself only apparent, since its putative ‘pure reason’ is really only a transmutation of the irrational force of blind social mechanisms. Thus in dispossessing the individual of its capacity to imagine, grounded, according to Kant, in the synthetic activity of the transcendental imagination, the culture industry actually embeds and reinforces collective irrationality in the psychic life of individuals. Stiegler argues that Adorno and Horkheimer, while correct about the dangers of the assimilation of consciousness to the industrial apparatus of the culture industry, also fail to adequately thematize the place of technicity in this process. The issue is not as such, he suggests, the contamination of otherwise pure psychic spontaneity—in the imaginative synthesis of sensibility and conceptual understanding—by technics, but rather an epochal shift in the regime of technicity and tertiary retentions, new ‘criteria of selection’ for the memorial basis of possible experience, that technical reproducibility of images and sound represents. For Stiegler, this lack of nuance in Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of technics manifests itself in their reading of Kant, which in his view accepts his schematism ‘as if the concept were self-­evident and contained nothing problematic, no critical question.’18 He goes on to argue 17 18

Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, W. Theodor. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, pp.126–127. Stiegler, Bernard. 2011. Technics and Time, 3: Cinematic Time and the Question of Malaise, trans. Stephen Barker. Stanford: Stanford University Press, p.40.

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that the ability of the culture industry to industrialize the schematism of consciousness should not be understood as the technologizing of an originally pretechnical or a-technical psyche, but rather the imposition of an industrial-technical order on a psyche that was the product of a different order of technicity (­especially rooted in the programmatics of alphabetical literacy). Stiegler does not offer a full reading of Adorno’s interpretation of Kant, which would require closer engagement with Negative Dialectics, where the relations of Kantian reason, scientific objectivity, and technicity are more fully expounded and critiqued. Adorno’s comments on the ‘detemporalization of time’ in Kant and Hegel in Negative Dialectics would also suggest an important point of consonance with Stiegler, insofar as Adorno suggests that apparently pure logical elements of Kantian schematism depend on the supplementarity of a time made visible through empirical change (or, for example, sensually perceptible in artworks). ‘Coagulated time relations’ or ‘detemporalized’ temporal dynamics, he argues, are abstracted by Kant into the ‘pure legality’ of transcendental structures.19 Despite these points of connection, however, Stiegler fruitfully draws our attention to a tension in the work of Adorno and Adorno/Horkheimer with respect to the question of technicity. On the one hand, Adorno—and especially in tandem with Horkheimer—like Heidegger deploys a highly abstract, negative notion of technicity reduced to instrumentality, as a means to a calculable end that dissipates substantive cognitive, ethical, spiritual, and aesthetic dimensions of meaning. This dogmatic conception of technicity is embedded in a relatively unexamined notion of reification taken over from Georg Lukács, which suggestively compounds conceptual elements of Marx’s analyses of alienated labor and technical division of labor and Simmel’s analyses of exteriorization and objectification of life, lived experience, and living activity.20 We can see this, for instance, in Horkheimer’s spring 1944 lecture at Columbia University, ‘Means and Ends,’ which became the opening chapter of the Eclipse of Reason, where the influential notion of ‘instrumental reason’ was given formulation: Having given up autonomy, reason has become an instrument. In the formalistic aspect of subjective reason, stressed by positivism, its unrelatedness to objective content is emphasized; in its instrumental aspect, stressed by pragmatism, its surrender to heteronomous contents is 19 20

Adorno, Theodor W. 1973. Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton. New York: Continuum, p.333. Lukács, Georg. 1972. ‘Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,’ in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingston. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, pp.83–222.

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emphasized. Reason has become completely harnessed to the social process. Its operational value, its role in the domination of men and nature, has been made the sole criterion. … Concepts have become ‘streamlined,’ rationalized, labor-saving devices. It is as if thinking itself had been reduced to the level of industrial processes, subjected to a close schedule—in short, made part and parcel of production.21 He goes on to point to the reification of thinking into things, which serve as tools in the mechanical means-ends apparatus of industrial commodity production: The more ideas have become automatic, instrumentalized, the less does anybody see in them thoughts with a meaning of their own. They are considered things, machines. Language has been reduced to just another tool in the gigantic apparatus of production in modern society.22 In the domain of art, however, Adorno can understand technique, and even technology, as an externalized, material realm that bears forward into the situation of artistic composition and reception the legacy of previous achievements of artistic creation. Technique constitutes an ‘already-there’ external to the creative subject, which conditions and guides the act of composition, even as it is transformed by the current work if it authentically appropriates this technical tradition. In one of his most intriguing formulations, in his essay ‘The Aging of the New Music,’ Adorno evokes the ‘technologization of the artwork,’ which far from reducing the artwork to an instrumental norm, introduces the artwork’s differential spacing and temporality—via a mimetic redoubling— into the apparent closure of technicised reality: The aim of the introduction of these technical elements is not the real domination of nature but the integral and transparent production of a nexus of meaning. … The aesthetic rationality of the materials neither reaches their mathematical ideal nor dominates reality: it remains the mimesis of scientific procedures, a kind of reflex to the supremacy of science, one that casts into an even sharper light the differences of art from

21 22

Horkheimer, Max. 1974. Eclipse of Reason [1947]. New York: Continuum, p.21. Ibid, pp.21–22.

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science the more that art shows itself to be powerless vis-á-vis the rational order of reality.23 He goes on to fully separate, on this basis, technique, as proper to art, from technology, which purely serves means-ends rationality: The meaning of ‘technology’ outside of the boundaries of the aesthetic sphere, of the sphere of play and semblance, is that of the performance of a real function: the reduction of labor. Since today as always the artwork lays claim to a sphere separate from that of practical cause-and-effect relationships, it can have nothing to do with technology in this sense, but must fulfill its own immanent order even where it participates in technique.24 I cannot consider further here the question of whether the artwork’s foregrounding its own impotence with respect to an instrumentalized, technically dominated reality is really the only authentic relationship of art to technology possible. I will instead note that I consider the restriction of the sphere of play and resemblance with respect to technicity to the aesthetic sphere alone is a narrow, dogmatic moment in Adorno’s thought, which vastly overstates the putative uniformity of human-technical relationships and hence greatly underestimates the diversity of modes in which these relationships might be differentiated. In One-Way Street, Walter Benjamin suggested as much in his figure of the child in the section entitled ‘Construction Site’: [T]he world is full of the most unrivaled objects for children’s attention and use. And the most specific. For children are particularly fond of haunting any site where things are being visibly work on. They are irresistibly drawn by the detritus generated by building, gardening, housework, tailoring, or carpentry. In waste products they recognize the face that the world of things turns directly and solely to them. In using these things, they do not so much imitate the works of adults as bring together, in the artifact produced in play, materials of widely differing kinds in a 23 24

Adorno, Theodor W. 2002. ‘The Aging of the New Music,’ in Theodor W. Adorno, Essays on Music, trans. Susan H. Gillespie, ed. Richard Leppert. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, p.193. Adorno, Theodor W. 2002. ‘The Aging of the New Music,’ in Theodor W. Adorno, Essays on Music, trans. Susan H. Gillespie, ed. Richard Leppert. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, p.193.

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new, intuitive relationship. Children thus produce their own small world of things within the greater one.25 Benjamin’s point here is not that the concrete dealings with technical objects revealed in the urban child’s play must be sequestered in a special realm only for play or childhood; rather, the differential relations to technicity modelled in children’s inventive relation to deconstructable and reconstructable stuff are mimetically preserved in adult capacities, applicable in other contexts and to other materials. Benjamin certainly did not see technology as an unqualified good; indeed, he perceived extreme dangers in the socially dominant relations of technology and the new ideologies of technology, such as those of Ernst and Friedrich Georg Jünger, that had sprung up around them. But, in a move that Stiegler would, following Derrida, characterize as ‘pharmacological,’ pertaining to the double-edged poison and cure of the pharmakon, Benjamin sought, as I believe we should continue to seek, to discover the possibilities of new relations to technology that might resist the dominant currents and discover in our technically-mediated world its emerging transformational and emancipatory potentials. 25

Benjamin, Walter. 1996. Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913–1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, pp.449–450.

Chapter 3

Social Value and Aesthetic Judgement – Television in the UK David Margolies Television is probably still the world’s most widely spread medium. Its origin as a device to transmit voice and image over distance brought outside reality into people’s homes. Gradually it produced its own distinct character as a medium; the way material was presented produced a message that was not immediately dependent on the material. With the advent of commercial television, advertisers learned to manipulate the character of the medium. Eventually, the money involved gave advertising an exceptional degree of control, and what had been an adjunct of content often dominated the medium. Advertising served to reinforce acceptance of the system without itself being obviously ideological. The question I want to explore is how socialists working in television can challenge the status quo on a purely artistic level. Brecht is my guide here: he rejects passive art, simple identification of the audience with the characters, and seeks material that encourages questioning. Television in Britain is seldom designed to produce critical response; rather, it often produces the sense that reality is unalterable. This is particularly clear in the afternoon offerings of murder mysteries (with advertising largely directed to the elderly) and in early evening serials (‘soap operas’). As Marx said, the point is to make change. The point for the socialist critic is not simply to rank works but to explore critically their treatment of reality and its potential to shape audience attitudes. Serious study of artistic products must recognise that fantasy can be as potent a social force as the most explicit depictions of concrete conditions. TV’s narrowing of the perspective of the world ultimately affects the material world. Social value seems an obvious category for use in Marxist aesthetic analysis; my immediate concern is how social values are affected by aesthetic responses to British television. I am not a great watcher of television but my limited exposure, paradoxically, may make me more apt to find strange what more habitual users take for granted or accept as customary.

© David Margolies, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_005

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Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase from his 1964 book Understanding Media, ‘the medium is the message’, may have lost much of its importance through half a century of overuse, but its premise is still fundamental to understanding that the way information is delivered and contextualised is also fundamental to understanding how that information affects audience response.1 The British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, was founded in 1922 to broadcast radio programmes to the UK; it started developing television in the 1930s and after the Second World War this became a major part of the BBC’s activity. There was very clearly a consciousness among BBC management that, like radio, television entered people’s homes but was unlike other services piped in – the utilities, water, gas. They were both qualitatively different in having an explicit human relationship. As the providers of that relationship, broadcasters had to respect its character in their language and behaviour. Newsreaders of the BBC’s early years (all men) sat at a desk and were required to wear formal clothing. The broadcast reflected formal service relationships. The formality also had a class basis – the voice of authority was supported by the accoutrements of class and the accents of the readers were educated upper middle class, ‘RP’ (received pronunciation). Regional accents have become acceptable only in recent decades. BBC newsreaders today, both men and women, may speak in their native accents and may move about the set and they have a more flexible dress code. But progress was slow: when women first read the news, their legs had to be concealed behind a desk – so that the formality of showing nothing that could have sexual overtones was maintained. The original televisions had small screens (considerably smaller than most laptops) and they were expensive. It was an event when someone on the street got one, a mark of status like owning a car, but it was not private in the way it is today, just for the people in the house; its social aspect was generally accepted. Major events, like the screening of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, often meant neighbours coming in to watch it, crowding around the small screen. As television sets became cheaper and also available through rental, a wider range of the population had access to them. They still offered the sense of bringing the outside world into the family’s sitting room; it was not yet a private or personal medium. Television was still basically an electric link to the outside world. Viewers could feel they were looking at an actuality – what was actually happening where the broadcast was taking place. TV drama too was still a live performance. This characteristic has become more prominent since the Brexit controversy. The BBC’s reporting of Parliament now often comes from a special 1 McLuhan, Marshall and Lapham, H. Lewis. 1994. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

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studio constructed outside the Palace of Westminster – you can see demonstrators in the background and hear their shouts. Capitalism, of course, encourages the employment of technology for profit. The power of television’s realism was quickly recognised by advertisers and they began to exploit its tremendous potential. By 1955 ‘independent’ television had been established, allowing for advertising on screen. The medium offered advantages unavailable to print. In a previous England when literacy was less widespread, print carried authority. The phrase ‘in print’ was a term that suggested fact, in the same way as the phrase ‘it is written’ suggests, in an environment of illiteracy, a superior truth. When the environment becomes literate, as Thomas Müntzer showed in Germany’s Peasant War in the sixteenth century, print can be revolutionary: when people can read they can interpret for themselves and need not accept the interpretations of the ruling class. ­Television provided a comparable democratic feeling; the sense of having to accept something on the basis of external authority was very much weakened. If you could see for yourself on the TV screen, then you could judge with your own eyes. Authority had to find different ways of manipulating the images to control society. Probably what was shown on the screen was accepted initially as a reality rather than a construction, but there is also a sense that if you can see it, then it probably is true – ‘seeing is believing’, as the old expression has it. Television often has advertising that is old-fashioned, for example showing you the whiteness of the garment you washed with a particular product, or the muddy football kit that comes out glowingly clean. It does not say (as occurred sometimes with US radio serials – from which they got the name ‘soap operas’) that you should buy the product because you like the programme and the programme is paid for (at least in part) by the company that makes the product. Rather, the advertising stresses the reality of the product’s efficacy, washing whiter, etc. Probably the most commercially important aspect of this advertising on television, the most effective use of the medium for commercial interests, is not the encouragement to purchase any specific product but its subtle power to redefine people as consumers. UK and US television don’t confine the ­advertising to a specific slot (in European fashion) but allows it be spread in breaks during the programme. After watching countless breaks in which, for example, an attractive young mother displays with pride brilliant white washing, or another who basks in the achievement of a toilet bowl that positively sparkles with cleanliness, the viewers may be expected to have lodged in their brains, not just that one cleaning product is particularly good, but that cleanliness is supremely important for happy children or safe families,

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or even domestic bliss. They are taught that maintaining cleanliness is a mark of proper humanity, something to which normal people should devote both money and time (or perhaps save time by spending more money on a particular fast-acting product). The definition of mankind is no longer homo sapiens, or homo faber, but is transformed into homo purgatory – the cleaner, or homo emptor – the shopper. Such manipulation is not limited to advertising. Various media studies have shown that the television camera can contextualise events or individuals in way that ‘judges’ their character without any explicit argument. Trade union leaders in interview were shown in profile whereas government leaders were shown full-face, which placed the trade unionists at a disadvantage – effectively they cannot be regarded as straightforward in character if the camera shows them only from the side. This is not just the obviousness of the control of the ­camera. During the UK’s best-known industrial action of the last century, the Miners’ Strike of 1984–85, miners saw their own conflicts with the police depicted on television in a way that distorted the issues, and where the scenes presented were accompanied by a voice-over that completely m ­ is-­characterised them. When the police made a violent charge against the miners which was shown by the BBC, the voice-over reversed the situation. Studies of viewer responses show that the voice-over carries more authority than the image, perhaps because it makes a neat and definite package, whereas the images have to be processed by viewers, which makes them less definite and less ‘true’ than the voice-over. The miners’ experience of the distortion taught them to look critically at the news. They realised that the reporting of ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, which many had previously accepted uncritically, was processed and distorted in the same way as the coverage they had received. Things that go wrong in a programme can reveal techniques of ­manipulation and how imbalance is made to appear natural. William F. Buckley, a superbly articulate, viciously right-wing ideologue in the US, had a long-­running television interview show – ‘Firing Line’. For some reason he chose to bring it to the UK. One of his interviewees was the leader of the work-in that saved Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and the greatest trade union hero of the day, Jimmy Reid. Reid was himself a brilliant orator and as shrewd in manipulating a television appearance as Buckley. Usually Buckley had the cameras in his control, focusing on him when he spoke and sometimes even when the interviewee/victim was speaking. The effect was that the camera made him obviously master. In this case, Buckley probably had not brought his usual US crew with him and instead had to employ British camera and technical staff. They proved to be particularly sympathetic to Reid, giving him the visual privilege usually accorded only to Buckley. When Buckley continued talking while the camera

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moved to Reid, it destroyed his superior tone and made him look incompetent and ridiculous. His language facility and extensive vocabulary became a useless weapon. Fictional narratives on British television have a less obvious but equally powerful effect. There are two contemporary series I want to look at. B ­ odyguard (2018), written by the very popular Jed Mercurio, has three areas of popular attraction: sex, violence and terrorist threat, as well as the staple of soap opera, family problems. The production is tightly knit – i.e., there is nothing shown that does not have implications for the action. Terrorism is the plot framework. The fictional hero, Police Sergeant David Budd, has just returned from fighting in Afghanistan, where he was injured in a terrorist action. He is now working for the Royalty and Specialist Protection Branch of London’s Metropolitan Police Service. He is assigned as the principal protection officer for the ambitious Home Secretary. He has the bearing of the typical strong silent hero-type, with a modern difference in that he has a strong emotional attachment to his young children (but an uneasy relationship with the wife from whom he is separated). As the first episode opens, he captures the attention of the audience through his edgy concentration on his immediate environment, a crowded weekend train carriage. An Asian woman going into the toilet arouses his ­suspicion; it turns out she is wearing a suicide vest. He talks to her slowly and gently, showing his humanity through his questions about family and by s­ howing pictures of his children. She allows herself to be taken away to be questioned. Budd presents her to the police as a victim rather than an ­aggressor, a more positive approach than a show of state power. The scene, as a conflict drama, was very successful – terribly tense as he tries to talk her out of blowing up the train carriage. The tension is heightened by ­claustrophobia created through the use of close-ups and the confined environment of the train toilet and made more intense by the saturated colour in the filming. Budd’s quick thinking derails another terrorist plot but bureaucratic wrangling under the Home Secretary he is guarding undermines anti-terrorist effectiveness and the Home Secretary herself is blown up. Budd is caught in a honeytrap, beaten unconscious and wired to blow himself up with an explosive vest. The police have arrived with heavy weapons and regard him as a terrorist about to trigger his suicide vest. However, through the intervention of his (until that moment estranged) wife, he is not shot and the highly complex and highly dangerous disarming of the vest is carried out by a robot directed by a technician. The earlier failure to protect the Home Secretary was the result of a security lapse attributable to inter-bureau rivalry and the immediate villain from the police department is exposed. There is an Agatha Christie moment in which the whole complex is unravelled: the Asian woman rescued from

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terrorism at the beginning has actually been the mastermind of these terrorist plots. Under interrogation she boasts of her technical skills in electronic explosive devices and in organising incidents of terror. But this transformation of the mousey woman we saw at the beginning into a super-competent villain at the end lacks the clear logic of Agatha Christie – it is an imposed solution to bring the whole plot artificially together. There has been no supporting evidence of its probability in the intervening episodes. While it is welcome to show women as at least equal to men, imposing it gratuitously makes it seem false. What does the series offer us in terms of our aesthetics discussion? – a plot of complexity, tense scenes of mortal danger, sexual tension and a sex scene, and glimpses of bureaucracy as self-interested and corrupt. The photography and intensity of colour are psychologically stimulating, but if we pose any ‘why’ questions, they are not answered in the plot. If, for example, we ask why is the woman a terrorist, the question appears to be irrelevant – terrorism is simply a fact. The notion of the reality presented has not even a hint of different possibilities; we are habituated to expecting a reality that is severely limited, a reality that, despite its intense colour, has only black and white possibilities. A more recent series, Fleabag, that has won prizes offers an alternative. The plot of the series has almost as much action as Bodyguard – of a different sort, sex rather than violence – but the way situations are presented is entirely different. ‘Fleabag’, the central character is acted by the author of the series, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She is a young woman in her twenties who has not yet located herself in society – not to her own satisfaction or to that of her family. The script does not stress details; we are not told many of the usual elements that place characters in television dramas. Rather, what we are given is situations that reveal attitude – the difference between the expected, socially accepted ‘normal’ and the way Fleabag feels about it in a series of encounters. The first departure from television normal behaviour is that Fleabag has strong sexual motivation and has sex with a number of different partners. But this is not just a matter of appetite satisfying itself; what she articulates as the excitement of sexual encounter is a male desiring her body, but at the same time she worries about how she is behaving. She doesn’t question her desire for different men, but does question what they think of her. She is confused and sometimes tries to fit her notion of the image of what men want women to be. In a scene lasting only a few seconds in a grocery store, she reaches for larger size tampons, sees an attractive man looking at her, puts them back on the shelf and takes small – ‘for my little vagina’. When the man has turned away, she reverses her selection. She does not rebel in the sense of having a posture of resistance; she just ­happens to have a sense of herself and occasionally acts against something.

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She is not an anarchist (though accused of being one) but she behaves anarchically in the moment, motivated by genuine feeling rather than anything like ideology. The critique offered by the series has the virtue of not taking positions that would alienate particular groups. I would doubt that any viewer would feel under attack. This ‘neutrality’ is achieved by voicing any criticism through Fleabag’s responses to incidents or behaviour. Hypocrisy and false values, in a situation – not in theory – are what is subject to criticism. Her father and his new partner live an affluent, middle-class life, but she makes no criticism that would disturb middle-class viewers for their social position. Fleabag has an older sister who presents an image of what is expected. She is a high flyer in business, a model of success, whose life is ordered by external codes – what she should do. She is married but her husband is very self-centered, offensive and, basically, a jerk. The sister is not actually happy; she worries about her appearance, about her hair and dry skin, her marriage is unsatisfactory; but, according to those around her, she has what should make her happy and therefore can be assumed to be happy. Fleabag recognises that what her sister says she wants conflicts with what her real happiness would involve. The series is entertainment that is attractive to viewers – it has had good reviews and draws a mainstream audience – but what makes it an excellent example of social criticism, acceptable to the environment that is the subject of its criticism, is its techniques of presentation. In some respects the manner is literary – there are aspects of presenting commentary that are reminiscent of the English novel of the eighteenth century, of Fielding and Sterne. Explicit comment occurs surreally at the same level as the action, i.e. in the same frame. Comment is interjected through Fleabag’s responses in the camera framing her face while the action – paused – is visible behind. We can actually see a connection between the narrative situation and the comment. The scene of the narrative may be regarded as ‘normal’ reality; Fleabag’s response offers a different interpretation. Face on to the camera signals authority, so Fleabag’s views are made important but they are only one individual’s responses. Yet they are responses to experience that we have witnessed, which gives them credibility. The experience is not legal evidence, and Fleabag’s comments are not being ‘proved’—no proof is intended. What we are given is an alternative vision, something that, because of our involvement with the character, we are ­willing to pay attention to and which is juxtaposed with action/ behaviour that is subject to criticism. No one tells us we are wrong if we don’t accept Fleabag’s attitude – the series does not insist that we agree with her; it is the power of suggesting that there are different ways of looking at events, at the world. The effect, I would say, is not directly to make people think differently

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but to make them more susceptible to alternatives, to have some sense that the world and social being are complex and that not everything fits into black and white understanding. This is not logical or ideological – it is affective, working on the emotions. I think I should mention here Dr Fanjun Meng in the ­Zhejiang department who has begun to explore the neurophysiological aspect of aesthetic responses – and I think this is an important direction that should eventually help us to understand much better the processes and effects of ­television fiction programmes. The role of commerce in many of television’s channels remains the same – to advertise things for sale. In non-commercial television – which increasingly has to raise its own funds – there has been a shift to selling what, in commercial television, had been the means to sell something else. Now it is itself the product that is sold. If we are to regard ourselves as Marxist critics, then surely we should follow Marx’s Thesis XI on Feuerbach that the point is to change the world. We have to challenge productions that are opiates – that satisfy cravings for excitement while obscuring the actual reality that they pretend to deal with. And we must also recognise that productions that encourage people to question their reality serve a function that, at this point in history, may be more valuable than ­offering an ideological position.

Chapter 4

Industrial Development of New Media Arts in China Qingben Li During the past decades, China’s industries of new media arts have made a rapid development aided by technological changes. Based on case studies of four most successful enterprises of ‘China Literature Limited’, ‘iQIYI’, ‘Alpha Animation’ and ‘Tencent Game’, this chapter analyses and clarifies the industrial development of four types of new media arts including Internet literature, network video art, digital animation, and electronic game, focusing on the in-depth study of their industrial situation, operating mode, successful experience, and existing problems. In general, the operating modes and strategies adopted by China’s industries of new media arts mainly are online payment profit model, IP industrial chain development model, and the online and offline business model of joint cluster. 1 Introduction In this chapter, new media arts refer to the new type of arts supported by computer technology and multimedia technology. Technological change impact directly upon cultural practices, enabling operative conditions, conventions, community and institutional practices etc.1 Nowadays, the rapid development of new digital media technology has completely changed the ways of people’s thinking and social life, and triggered a series of new cultural phenomena. Through the integration of digital new media technology and traditional art forms, a series of new types of arts such as internet literature, network TV series, Internet movie, digital animation, and online games have emerged. At present, China’s new media arts have not only created new aesthetic values, but also developed into unprecedented ultra-large scale industries. The industrialization of new media arts in China, which had not been involved in the traditional institutes before, has become an important issue 1 Lopez-Varela, Asuncion A. 2011. Intertextuality and Intermediality as Cross-cultural Communication Tools: A Critical Inquiry. Cultura, 8(2): 7–22. © Qingben Li, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_006

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which the institutes must face now. Under the current situation, the studies on literature and art not only should follow the logic of aesthetic modernity which emphasizes the doctrine of ‘art for art’s sake’, but also should grasp the historical process of Chinese modernity. Theodor W. Adorno points out, the culture industry finds ideological support, ‘without concern for the laws of form demanded by aesthetic autonomy’.2 From the perspective of the historic background, Chinese industries of new media arts are a part of Chinese contemporary cultural industries. Since the late 1970s, China has implemented the strategy of reform and opening up, and the national economy has gradually recovered from the great decline caused by the ‘cultural revolution’ and achieved initial development. The reform of the economic system has promoted reform in the cultural and ideological fields. The cultural industries have started to sprout. In 1992, the Chinese government put forward the construction of a socialist market economy system with Chinese characteristics to lay a foundation for the healthy and rapid development of the cultural industries in the following period. There is another important background for the industrial development of China’s new media arts, that is, the great development of digital new media represented by computer networks in China. China has the largest number of computer users in the world. The 45th statistical report on the development of China’s Internet network released by CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) on April 28, 2020 shows the number of China’s Internet users reached over 900 million. The huge number of Internet users has laid a solid foundation for the development of digital economy, which has become a new driving force for economic growth in China. During covid-19 pandemic, the digital economy has played an important role in safeguarding consumption and employment, and promoting the resumption of production, showing strong growth potential.3 After decades of development, China’s industries of new media arts have blossomed and made remarkable achievements. ‘China Literature Limited’, ‘iQIYI’, ‘Alpha Animation’ and ‘Tencent Game’ are the most successful enterprises, respectively in the industries of internet literature, network video art, digital animation, and electronic game. Through the in-depth study of their industrial situation, operation mode, successful experience, and existing 2 Adorno, Theodor W., and Bernstein, Jay M. 1991. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London and New York: Routledge, p.101. 3 CNNIC, The 45th statistical report on the development of China’s Internet network https://www .cnnic.net.cn/gywm/xwzx/rdxw/20172017_7057/202004/t20200427_70973.htm. April 28, 2020.

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problems, we can clarify the industrial development of new media arts in China. Meanwhile, it can provide reference experience for other enterprises, thus laying a foundation for the industrial development of new media arts. 2

Internet Literature Industry

According to Marshall McLuhan, the content of any medium is always another medium, ‘The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print and print is the content of a telegraph’.4 Similarly, we can also logically say that the content of internet literature is literature. In other words, what we usually call ‘Internet literature’ is the extension of literature in the network media. In China, the industry of internet literature is the most characteristic and prominent industry of new media arts. There are 8 listed companies whose main business is internet literature, among which 5 are online literature platforms (including which original content creation and distribution) and 3 are Intellectual Property (IP) derivative businesses and pan-entertainment businesses. In addition, 24 listed companies, including major Internet companies, publishers, operators, media companies and entertainment companies, have also made their layout in the field of internet literature in succession. They have built their influence in the field of internet literature by building subsidiaries, or creating products and entering into a certain field of pan-­entertainment. Companies and platforms such as China Literature Limited, Chinese Online, Palm Reading Technology, Ali Literature, and Baidu Literature are very famous and popular companies in the field of internet literature in China. These five major companies account for more than 90% of the market share of internet literature. Non-­ industrial media such as a single literary website, forum community, and WeChat public account are all extremely marginalized and have very limited influence. Founded in March 2015, China Literature Limited (Yuewen Group in Chinese) positioned its own aim as ‘the industry’s genuine digital reading platform and literary IP cultivation platform’. The establishment of the company has gathered many advantageous resources in the internet literature industry, becoming the largest platform of Internet literature production and copyright operation in China. The company is a pioneer in the online literature market. Its shares were listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange with 4 McLuhan, Marshall. 2003. Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. Hamburg: Gingko Press, p.19.

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a market value of HK $ 81.6 billion under the stock code 0772 on November 8, 2017. China Literature Limited is a market leader as measured by the scale and quality of writers, readers and literary content offerings. As of December 31, 2019, the Company had 8.1 million writers and 12.2 million online literary works, covering over 200 genres and reaching millions of readers. During 2019, the Company had on average 219.7 million monthly active users on its platforms. The company’s annual report shows that 2019 total revenues increased 65.7% year-over-year to RMB 8,347.8 million, the gross profit increased 44.3% year-over-year to RMB 3,692.0 million, and the operating profit increased 7.1% year-over-year to RMB 1,193.9 million (China Literature Limited, 2020: EB/OL). As the largest platform of internet literature in China, the company has experienced the development from a single industrial model to multiple ones. In the early stage, the company mainly implemented the network platform model, that is, through VIP members system, reward system, and advertising to achieve profits. The use of VIP members system, from free writing to paid reading, enables its own rapid development and brings huge economic benefits. Reward system is a kind of non-mandatory payment mode, which means that readers pay for the content they like at their own will. Advertising, as a traditional profit mode, has been transferred to the network, mobile terminal and other new media, to win high profits for the internet literature industry. In the following time, the company started to develop the model of IP industrial chain, that is to use its intellectual property rights, to adapt original works into internet film, network TV series, and animation games to form an industrial chain, which in turn promote the sustainable development of the internet literature. The above operating methods bring up the cycle of ecological effect, become the main means of profit, and win a huge business prospect. After fully developing the IP value of internet literature, the company began to try the clustering model, with the diversification of the form of internet literature, the extension of the IP industry chain, and the individualized and diversified needs of users. With the content as the center, China Literature Limited constructs its ecological system of industrialization, along with the continuous cultivation of original talents and their works, the implementation of interactive reading among all readers, and the development and extension of the IP industrial chain. Overall, the successful experience of China Literature Limited is mainly reflected in the following aspects: First, the company focuses on developing the IP value of original works. By the end of 2017, through the original platform and mobile creative APP, the group has accumulated more than 10 million works, including 9.7 million original works, covering almost all types of literature. Among the TOP50 writers

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on the network, 90% are from China Literature Limited. The number of active writers has increased by more than 50% every year. Moreover, a large number of young writers are pouring in to inject fresh blood into the network. Second, the company covers online literature, electronic edition of traditional publications and other reading products, successfully creating a multidimensional interactive omni channel reading platform. Average monthly paying users increased 33 percent year-on-year to 11.1 million in 2017, the contents provided for users including literature, social science, education, natural science and other fields, covering reading, services, community, derivatives, WeChat, and e-commerce. In these ways, China Literature Limited has already set up a whole content reading platform on the basis of its rich resources of the original work, to meet the demand of various age and types of users. Third, the company takes the network text as the original IP to drive the network drama, games, publishing, animation, film, TV series and other peripheral pan-entertainment products, forming an ecological pattern of the common development of various art forms. By the end of 2017, China Literature Limited had established cooperative relations with more than 200 content adaptation partners, developed various forms of copyright realization, and occupied 90% of market share of domestic IP adaptation. In order to gain higher profits from copyright, the company changed the past model which relied on copyright selling, adopted the mode of IP partner system, and deeply involved in IP industrial chain, to create a new mode of cooperation, and to strengthen the penetration in the whole ecological layout of pan entertainment. Through the platform of the upstream and downstream industrial chain, China Literature Limited realizes the long-term effect of IP, wins high benefits, and becomes a kind of cultural symbol. However, China Literature Limited is still far from the realization of its goals, and faces many problems during moving towards an industrial system of online literature. First, the company needs to pay attention to the quality of IP adaptation. At present, the IP industrial chain initially formed is not fully mature, and the production of animation, movies, TV series and games needs to be handed over to or produced by a third party. This requires all links of the IP industrial chain to cooperate with each other to jointly maximize the influence of the IP brand, so that all parties can benefit. Second, the IP operating model of the company needs to be further optimized. In the development process, the company has no systematic plan for long-term operation. On one hand, the adapted movies and TV series cannot form long-term popularity, and cannot create a classic image in the eyes of the audience; on the other hand, during the IP operating process, the company do not pay attention to the creation of classic images, which is actually a huge waste of IP resources. Last

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but not least, the company needs to strengthen the awareness of IP copyright. In the IP operation industry chain, there are many piracy and infringement phenomena. This behavior not only disrupted the healthy development of the IP industry from the source, but also infringed upon the interests of the entire industrial chain. As an IP platform, China Literature Limited has an obligation to protect the interests of creators and developers. Of course, the resolution of piracy and infringement issues requires the efforts of all parties. 3

Network Video Art Industry

In recent years, giant platforms and enterprises of network video art such as Tencent Video, iQiyi, Youku Video, LeTV Video, Sohu Video, and Mango TV have emerged in China. The volume of products has increased year by year. Taking 2017 alone as an example, there are 229 new works of network video art throughout the year. Among the top 50 works of the year, Tencent Video, Youku Video and iQiyi together account for 94%, occupying the dominant share of the entire market of network video art. Among them, Youku Video launched a total of 17 online self-made dramas in 2017, resulting in a total front-end play of 35.01 billion times. The average front-end play of a single self-made work exceeds 2 billion times, which is the most prominent among major video platforms. IQiyi’s 2016 self-made drama ‘Old Nine Gates’ has exceeded 10 billion views and became a top-level online work. In 2017, it began to pursue high quality and launched 7 popular online works in one fell swoop. In terms of users and markets, the total number of paid members on the three major platforms of Tencent, Youku and iQiyi reached 93 million.5 Among the industrial development of China’s new media arts, network video art (mainly online film and TV series) is the second most popular industry after online literature. From original online literary videos and micro movies to online movies and self-made online dramas, many Chinese video sites have successfully upgraded and transformed creation methods of the new media arts into industrial models with huge market value through years of exploration. Their development and operation have become a very worthwhile discussing issue in the special field of art. In this regard, iQiyi is the most representative. IQiyi video website is an independent video website owned by Baidu. Its predecessor is Qiyi.com, the first large-scale professional website focused on 5 Si, Ruo and Hong. 2018. The Condition and Trend of Chinese Online Series Market Development. Contemporary Cinema, 6: 131–133.

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providing high-quality online video services in China. Its brand name was changed to ‘iQiyi’ on November 26, 2011. IQiyi has always adhered to the idea of ‘Always Fun, Always Fine’, with ‘user experience’ as its own life, through continuous technical investment and product innovation, to provide users with a clear, smooth and user-friendly viewing experience. The users of iQiyi tend to be mature, highly educated and high-consuming people. IQiyi advocates people’s pursuit of high-quality life, and insists on providing VIP members with exclusive mass content, ultimate audio-visual experience, and unique offline membership services. It took only 5 years for iQiyi to be the three major players in the video industry, and its viewers consistently top the list of Chinese video websites. IQiyi’s industrial model has undergone many attempts and adjustments within a certain period of time. In the early days, it mainly used the genuine high-definition long video mode, that is, providing free high-quality video and profiting from advertising. Advertising is the most important and the most widely used profit method of video websites. From 2013 to 2015, according to statistics, the scale of advertising in China’s online video industry was 12.7 billion yuan, 16.2 billion yuan and 25 billion yuan, respectively. The scale has expanded year by year and competition has become more intense.6 In the second stage, iQiyi adopts the paid-for-member-viewing model. In the era of mobile Internet, users are more and more inclined to pay for personalized services, so a single advertising model is difficult to support the development of video websites. The model of paying for watching videos is beginning to be accepted by more and more consumers. For example, ‘The Descendants of the Sun’ used a new member-different broadcast mode when iQiyi was broadcast, and members could enjoy simultaneous broadcasts from China and South Korea, while non-members would postpone the week. The hit of this drama attracted huge income from membership fee for iQiyi. In the third stage, a business strategy for ecological chain is formed. Through content operation, iQiyi selects high-quality content to attract users, and promotes the gradual conversion of free users to paying users. At present, iQiyi has successfully built an industrial chain such as e-shops, games, and movie tickets. As the all-round development of the iQiyi industrial chain is rising, its combination with the membership services will greatly enhance the value of iQiyi members and create a successful model of business development.7 6 Zhang, Penglai. 2016. Tencent’s video revenue model: Advertising and Membership. Modern Business, 14: 104–105. 7 Li, Siyao. 2016. A study on the Business Model of Online Video User Payment: a Case Study of iQiyi Video. Today’s Massmedia, 9: 96–97.

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The success of the iQiyi video website has served as a reference and guide for the development of domestic video websites and network video art industry. First of all, it is worth affirming that as a video company in the Internet era, iQiyi can make full use of the advantages of big data to continuously adjust its business strategy and industrial model. In 2014, iQiyi took the lead in establishing the first video brain to understand human behavior, which is named as iQiyi brain, using big data to guide the production, operation and consumption of content. Through powerful cloud computing capabilities, industry-leading bandwidth reserves, and the world’s largest video distribution network, iQiyi can provide users with better video services. Secondly, the emphasis on the creation of homemade content is also the main reason why iQiyi stands out among many video websites. In recent years, iQiyi has focused on investing in and creating home-made dramas and micro-movies, creating online home-made programs, linking with well-known TV programs on networks, and jointly developing a series of derivative content. As a video playback platform, improving user experience and increasing user’s loyalty is an important prerequisite for achieving huge playback volume. IQiyi can select recommended content for users according to different regions and time points where the users are located. At the same time, iQiyi has established a user’s personal viewing interest model based on the user’s browsing history, sharing history, and search content, to provide users with fully personalized video recommendations. However, the industrial development of iQiyi still faces many problems. The first point is that the cost of iQiyi’s investment in homemade content is far from enough. According to the data, the proportion of iQiyi’s investment in outsourcing copyright and homemade content is 9:1, and the cost of content investment accounts for about 70% of the total cost.8 The exclusive copyright of a movie and TV series is often tens of millions, which is a big burden for video companies. This indicates that iQiyi has to strengthen the creation of original homemade video content to ease the pressure of copyright purchase. If iQiyi wants to show its core competitiveness in the fierce market competition, it must have self-made content and gradually move it toward standardization, specialization, and high quality. Another point is that the phenomenon of excessive pan-entertainment of video content is serious. IQiyi itself is positioned as ‘a genuine, free, high-definition entertainment playback platform’. However, if iQiyi caters to the secular aesthetic level of the audience too much, it will inevitably lower the production level of the video industry, and give the 8 Li, Siyao. 2016. A study on the Business Model of Online Video User Payment: a Case Study of iQiyi Video. Today’s Massmedia, 9: 96–97.

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industry a bad influence. In this regard, iQiyi can finely classify and accurately position its content, taking into consideration both entertainment value and artistic value, to form a diverse video resource library that is both elegant and popular. 4

Online Animation Industry

In recent years, Chinese government has successively promulgated a series of support policies, in order to vigorously support the development of the animation industry. With the increasing number of users of Two Dimensions, a term originated from the cultural circle of ACGN (Animation, Comic, Game, Novel), the Chinese animation industry has developed steadily. According to statistics, in 2016, the output value of China’s animation industry was 131 billion yuan, and by 2019 it has reached 194 billion yuan. In 2019, the domestic animated film ‘The Nerd of the Nezha’ came to the box office with 5 billion yuan in revenue. It is estimated that the output value of China’s animation industry in 2020 will exceed 200 billion yuan.9 It can be said that the animation industry is an emerging sunrise industry in China, which is of great significance for promoting economic growth, optimizing the industrial structure, and maintaining cultural vitality, and has formed a very competitive development of China’s new media industrialization. The direction has become one of the new hot spots in the development of green GDP. Among the many animation companies in China, Guangdong Alpha Animation and Culture Co., Ltd. (abbr. Alpha Animation) has created a unique industrial model, which is worthy of reference for other animation companies. When it was first established in 1993, Alpha Animation was named Guangdong Audi Toy Industry Co. Ltd., and its main brand, Audi Toys, is a leader in China’s toy industry. From 1993 to 2003, it was the initial period of Alpha Animation. The main industrial model was based on toy sales and established a national sales system of toy distributor. From 2004 to 2007, it was the transition period of Alpha Animation. The industry model mainly promoted the sales of toys with original content, and at the same time used the sales of toys to feed back content production. At this stage, it began to intervene in the field of animation content creation, set up a special animation production company, and 9 Wan,Yenan. 2020b. Analysis of Market Scale and Development Prospect of Chinese Video Game Industry in 2020. https://www.qianzhan.com/analyst/detail/220/200511-16ae6589 .html.

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truly became an animation company with original production capabilities. From 2008 to 2012, it was the growth period of Alpha Animation. The main industry model was developed around animation, and the sales of toys were driven by the content and platform of animation. At this stage, it cooperated with Guangdong TV Station to operate the Jiajia Cartoon Channel platform to get through the media playback link in the middle of the industrial chain. It also acquired the ‘Happy Lamb and Big Grey Wolf’ series of brands, bringing the creative team to its command. It is worth mentioning that Alpha Animation also became the first domestic animation company to be listed on the A-share market in 2009. From 2013 to the present, it is the period of all-round growth of Alpha Animation. The main industrial model is the comprehensive pan-entertainment industrialization, with IP as the core and building a full industrial chain ecosystem. At this stage, it first expands the main business into five major sectors, such as animation content creation, mobile games, media operation, toy marketing, and baby business, based on the original main business of animation and toys. Then the company has formed a pan-­ entertainment ecosystem with IP as the core, integrating animation, games, movies, media, education, video platforms and peripheral derivatives such as communities, toys, and even theme parks. From a toy company at the beginning of its establishment, Alpha Animation has developed into the largest domestic animation company with the most complete industrial chain after 27 years, providing some successful experiences. Firstly, it has always been adjusting its industrial model at every stage of its development, and finally forms a complete industrial chain that links each link and complements each others’ advantages. Secondly, it emphasises original content. The digital animation industry is a knowledge-intensive literary industry. At any time animation products cannot be regarded as ordinary commodities, and the cultural connotation contained in animation creation cannot be ignored, which provides huge added value for it. From creative, high-quality animation products themselves, to peripheral derivative toys or other products of downstream of the industrial chain, a driving force is needed to maximize the IP value of original content, so that the entire industrial chain maintains added value. Moreover, no matter how the industry is specifically adjusted, Alpha’s industrial model guarantees the original content of animation IP, so that its successful projects can self-replicate. However, when sorting out the animation industry of Alpha, it is also necessary to point out the existing problems and possible countermeasures. First, the proportion of profit point of Alpha is unbalanced, and the way of profit source is narrow. Specifically, Alpha has embarked on the path of rapid development from the initial industrial model emphasizing the combination of

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animation and game, and has also developed into a complete industrial chain with animation IP as the core, but the company’s largest revenue segment has always been toys. For example, in 2019, the company achieved an operating income of 2.727 billion yuan, but the annual toy sales revenue was 1.26 billion yuan, accounting for 46.2% of the total revenue.10 As the second largest revenue segment, animation has a huge gap with the toy as the first largest revenue segment. The main consumer object of Alpha’s toy products is the age group from kindergarten through twelfth grade (K12), and most of its original animation content is largely limited to this age group, making its space for added value is naturally limited. In order to solve the problem, one possible effective countermeasure is that, as the largest animation company in China, Alpha should raise the revenue target of animation products to a position which is not much different from toy sales in its industrial strategy. It should do some more experiments on the original content of the animation accordingly. That is to say, the object of animation IP products should be expanded to a broader age range, at least to the age range of 30 to 40 years old, because many people in this generation also grew up with animation from childhood. They will be an excellent consumer group of animation products. In short, in the contemporary social culture of new media, digital animation itself should become the growth point of industrial profits. Second, there are obstacles in the coordination of various sections in the pan-entertainment industrial layout of Alpha. In recent years, Alpha has actively promoted the IP-centric pan-entertainment strategy. It has extended the industrial chain to many sectors such as comic creation platform, animation studio, game research and development company, media communication platform, film industry investment and animation peripheral derivatives industry, etc. At first glance, the scale of the industry is already very large, but there are still many potential problems. In particular, the integration of these sub-industries has not yet reached the optimal state. It is more like a mechanical superposition and lack of core industrial competitiveness. The best way to solve this problem is to increase the aesthetic and cultural value of original content and promote the perfect integration of the entire industry chain. This is what Alpha needs to make persistent efforts to do, and it is also the most critical job.

10

‘Alpha Made a Net Profit of More Than 70 million yuan Last Year’, Chinese and Foreign Toy Manufacturing, No 5, 2020: 70.

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Electronic Game Industry

The electronic game, called the ninth art, is a new form of arts, as a product of computer technology and multimedia technology. From the first quarter to the fourth quarter of 2019, sales of domestic electronic games in China showed a general trend of growth. In the fourth quarter of 2019, the sales volume reached RMB48.08 billion yuan, an increase of RMB 3.08 billion yuan over the first quarter of 2019. In the first quarter of 2020, due to the impact of the covid-19 epidemic, people’s leisure time increased, and the sales volume of domestic electronic games increased to RMB 62.35 billion yuan, 29.68% more than that of the fourth quarter of 2019. China had 654 million electronic game users in the first quarter of 2020.11 The development of China’s electronic game industry has experienced the initial stage from 1996 to 1997, the development stage from 1997 to 2004, the market explosion stage from 2004 to 2006, and the mature stage from 2006 to now. Especially in 2015, the overall industrial revenue reached RMB 140.7 billion yuan, becoming the world’s largest market. This situation intuitively reflects the electronic game has become one of the major forms of new media arts. Based on the current situation of China’s electronic game industry, on the one hand, the original domestic electronic games in popularity have been able to compete with those excellent foreign games; On the other hand, due to the large companies and groups have entered the game industry, the market competition is increasingly fierce, and the threshold of capital is gradually raised. Tencent is one of the most important Internet companies in China. Since its founding in 1998, its business has covered social networking, payment, entertainment, consulting, tools and platforms. In 2003, Tencent also began to set foot in the online game market. At that time, Tencent’s technical ability was limited, and it could not develop high-end games. Instead, it only launched a common online board game platform. However, Tencent’s chat software QQ (or OICQ) has a high user stickiness, which has brought a large number of game players to Tencent. In 2004, Tencent Game became the no.1 casual game platform in China. Since 2009, Tencent Game have occupied the largest share of China’s online game market. With the rapid development of smart phone mobile terminals around 2011, Tencent not only seized the opportunity to launch WeChat, a mobile communication social software which later became a great success, but also continuously released many high-quality mobile 11

Wan,Yenan. 2020a. Analysis of the development of China’s animation industry in 2019 https://www.qianzhan.com/analyst/detail/220/200225-1c0b7b3b.html.

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game products. In 2012, Tencent Game announced the implementation of the pan-entertainment strategy. The company has gradually transformed from a purely online game business platform into an entertainment entity covering games, animation, literature, film and television and other multi-­business linkage. In 2018, Tencent Game established a strategic partnership with Shanda Games, another important electronic game company in China, by taking a stake to deepen business cooperation. Today, Tencent Game has become the first domestic game brand, and the largest online game community. The main successful experience of Tencent Game in industrial development is mainly reflected in the following aspects. Firstly, it can give full play to the advantages of new media platforms. QQ and WeChat are the most popular instant messaging software, contributing a large number of users to Tencent Game. Moreover, the convenient design of ‘one QQ number and one game world’ provided by Tencent Game encourages users of other Tencent products to convert to Tencent Game players. Secondly, it can fully grasp the market segmentation and meet the needs of users. In the face of an increasingly diversified game market, Tencent Game has a rich and powerful product line, which can almost meet the needs of various consumer groups from casual online games to large-scale competitive online games. It can analyse all the game behaviors of the players, so as to accurately locate the needs of the target customers and develop follow-up products with a specific aim. Finally, it can consolidate its position in the industry by means of integrated marketing. As the number one game brand in China, Tencent Game often hosts various online and offline activities, such as the e-sports competition of online games to attract and promote the competitive interaction between professional players, so as to achieve the purpose of promoting the game. Even though Tencent Game has achieved great success, there are still some shortcomings, mainly reflected in the lack of high cultural connotation of the game products. The growth of online games is largely due to the youth of online game users, but the game products provided for the majority of players are still relatively deficient in the term of cultural and esthetic values. Of course, this is a common problem for most online games,which not only lack cultural connotations, but also are full of violent and vulgar entertainment content. This will inevitably have a negative impact on the growing teenagers, some of whom lack self-control are even prone to indulge in these highly stimulating virtual worlds, which is harmful to physical and mental health, and may cause more social problems. To solve such problems, Tencent Game needs to reflect on the current online game content itself, and control entertainment and consumption

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within a certain limit. At the same time, it should try to improve the cultural connotation of game products. This is an excellent way to have a subtle positive impact on game players, and to build high-quality Intellectual Property. In fact, in any case, a game can achieve success as long as it combines cultural connotation and playability well, and such success is of more cultural value and social significance. 6 Conclusions According to Walter Benjamin, film is the art in the age of mechanical reproduction which appeals directly to its audience. The mechanical reproduction cannot assure its authenticity, and its uniqueness as a specific object belonging to a specific artist at a specific time and space, therefore it loses its ‘aura’ and ‘exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line’.12 However, new media arts are the art in the age of digital reproduction which has many differences from traditional films. new media arts are not simply a combination of the Internet and art. Internet participates in the whole process of artistic behavior, occupying a dominant position, and being the driving force of art from planning, production, and dissemination to consumption.13 In general, the operating modes and strategies adopted by China’s industries of new media arts are mainly reflected in three aspects: First, online payment profit model. Online advertising was the only means of profit for new media arts enterprises for a long time. At the beginning of the new century, Chinese online literature websites successfully developed the VIP paid reading membership system. Later, the ‘reward system’ was invented. Once successful, VIP payment mode is quickly used by major online literature websites and enterprises, and also quickly spread to the fields of online film and video, online animation and online games, etc., becoming the most important business mode in China’s new media arts industry. It not only brings convenience for viewers to watch movies without entering the cinema, but also avoids the risks and shortcomings of cinema-line movies affected by the off-peak season. Because of the application of big data and its distinct interactivity, the broadcasting platform can adjust the types and themes of movies in 12 13

Benjamin, Walter. 2002. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, eds. Dabney Townsend, Aesthetics: Classic Readings from Western Tradition. Beijing: Peking University Press, p.289. Li, Qingben. 2019. China’s Internet Movie and Its Industrial Development. Filozofski vestnik, 11(3): 211–220.

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time according to the clicks and feedback from the audience, and launch more personalized new works in order to enhance user experience and stickiness, highlight the characteristics of the website and accumulate popularity. Second, IP industrial chain development model. This mode takes a spiritual creation of high value as its base, and uses its intellectual property rights to connect a series of specific products, such as film and television, games, ­animation, stage plays, book publishing, offline products, etc., to form a cultural industrial chain and create output value in multiple aspects. This approach is a common and important industrial model in the network ­literature industry giants such as China Literature Limited and Ali Literature. It also plays an important role in auto-video, animation and game platforms and enterprises. Third, the online and offline business model of joint cluster. The market competition is becoming increasingly fierce, with the diversification of literary forms of new media, the continuous extension of IP industrial chain, the continuous personalized and diversified development of user’s demand, and the continuous emergence of major online consumption platforms. The merger of similar enterprises to achieve win-win cooperation is a common practice in the industrial development of China’s new media arts in recent years. This kind of combination not only occurs between network platform enterprises, but also between online and offline enterprises, which forms the operation mode of online and offline enterprises. Due to the adoption of the above three business profit models, the industrialization of new media arts in China has produced huge economic benefits. It has played a pivotal role in the output value of China’s cultural industries, and the percentage of China’s entire GDP has been increasing year by year. It is worth noting that due to the impact of the covid-19 epidemic, in the first half of 2020, the overall operating income of China’s cultural industries fell by 6.2% over the same period last year, but the industries related to new media have increased by 18.2% over the same period last year, and the operating income of online games and animation both achieved double-digit growth.14 However, there are still many problems existing in the industrial process of new media arts in China. At present, some enterprises have the psychological tendency of ‘making quick money’. They lack long-term planning and only want to attract users by short and flat means, with no intention to develop IP reasonably and effectively. For example, in the game industry, the number of 14

National Bureau of Statistics of China, ‘The operating income of cultural and related industries drop by 6.2% in the first half of 2020’, http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/202007 /t20200731_1779905.html, July 31, 2020.

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new games launched in recent years has decreased significantly. Online game manufacturers are satisfied with the profits brought by classic games online, and have no interest in the development of other links in the industrial chain. The vast majority of network literature companies follow the time model of linear collaboration, that is, to complete excellent network literature works first, obtain the recognition of readers, and then adapt to other forms of art or entertainment. This creates a serious gap between the transformation of literary works into other forms. To solve this kind of problem, Chinese enterprises of new media arts should adopt the mode of multiple cooperation for profit. Experts in literature, film and television, animation, games and other fields should cooperate together to eliminate the separation of different art forms, and even apply this mode to jointly create IP value. Literature writing, film and television shooting, game development and animation production should be carried out simultaneously, so as to strengthen the linkage innovation of all parties and jointly create an organic ecological system of IP industry.

PART 2 Classical Theories and New Phenomena: Aesthetic Capitalism

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Chapter 5

Baudrillard, Hyperreality, and Emergency Capitalism Fabio Vighi 1 Introduction When he first introduced the notion of ‘simulation’ in the early 1970s, Jean ­Baudrillard was acutely aware that modernity was being replaced by postmodernity.1 For him, this shift meant that social relations were no longer grounded in production but in the serial reproduction of reality’s signs. With the rise of post-industrial consumer capitalism, in other words, referents are gradually substituted by the potentially endless reduplication of their signs: ‘the annihilation of any goal as regards the contents of production allows the latter to function as a code’ and therefore ‘to escape into infinite speculation, beyond all reference to a real of production, or even to a gold-standard’.2 In such a regime, society is organised around pre-arranged models where real conflicts and contradictions are neutralized by the principle of indifference and commutability (‘of the beautiful and the ugly in fashion, of the left and the right in politics, of the true and the false in every media message’).3 Crucially, for Baudrillard the coding of reality is imposed on societies in the form of a gift that blackmails everyone into obedience. Contemporary ­capitalism retains the exclusivity of gift-giving, which it uses to exert real domination. In this respect, Baudrillard effectively developed a radicalised version of ­Marcel Mauss’s theory of the gift by conceiving the latter not as a type of generous exchange that predates or exceeds political economy, but as the ideological core of modern capitalist societies.4 In contemporary capitalism, gift-giving is correlative to absolute symbolic power. As such, it materialises not only as the reward of wage labour, but – increasingly – as a ubiquitous network of media 1 Baudrillard, Jean. 1975. The Mirror of Production, translated by Mark Poster. New York: Telos Press, pp.114–115. 2 Baudrillard, Jean. 2017. Symbolic Exchange and Death (revised edition), translated by Iain Hamilton Grant. Los Angeles and London: SAGE, p.29. 3 Ibid, p.30. 4 Mauss, Marcel. 1990. The Gift. The Form and Reason of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge. © Fabio Vighi, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_007

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information, virtual interactivity, and the normativity of ‘protection agency, security, gratification, and the solicitation of the social from which nothing is any longer permitted to escape’.5 As capitalist gifts become increasingly unilateral, strategies of refusal – which Baudrillard invokes through the mobilisation of ‘counter-gifts’6 – turn out to be impracticable. Simulation today would seem to denote the intrinsically totalitarian transfiguration of the real into the virtual code, which, in dramatically accelerating the elimination of referentiality and dialectical negativity, consigns the social to its viral reproduction. Since the 1970s, then, Baudrillard had lamented the abandonment of ‘the referential base of the sign, with its singularity and the opacity of its signified in the real, its very powerful affect and its minimal commutability’. The ‘hot phase’ of the sign, which was still attached to symbolically authoritative signifiers, was being replaced by its ‘cool phase’, characterised by ‘the pure play of the values of discourse […] the omnipotence of operational simulation’.7 In the new millennium, this shift threatens ‘the glaciation of meaning’,8 for the increasing fascination with hyper-mediatised signs is proportional to a growing disaffection with critical thinking, political struggle, and subversion. In what follows, I attempt to correlate Baudrillard’s reflections on simulation with both the ongoing implosion of contemporary capitalism and the ideological character of the COVID-19 crisis within what I refer to as ‘emergency capitalism’. By ideology I do not mean a lie that conceals the truth or distorts reality, but reality itself as the space of our social norms and interactions, which today is increasingly perceived as global, limitless, and unregulated. My central assumption is that, far from being the ‘guru of postmodernism’,9 as he 5 Baudrillard, Jean. 1981. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. New York: Telos Press, pp.164–184. 6 For Baudrillard, the counter-gift haunts the system as the agent of its potential destruction or destabilisation. This may come in various forms (potlach, expenditure, refusal, sacrifice, suicide, inertia, hyper-conformity, etc.), all of which would seem to bear some elementary structural resemblance with the Freudian ‘return of the repressed’: a disruptive violence that necessarily accompanies all symbolic systems. While Baudrillard sees the counter-gift as a subjective challenge to existing power relations, his definition of what a counter-gift might entail changes with the progression of his work, making its politicisation problematic. 7 Baudrillard, Jean. 1981. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. New York: Telos Press, p.44. 8 Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, or the End of the Social and Other Essays, translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and John Johnston. New York: Semiotext(e), p.35. 9 In Richard Smith’s words: ‘Rather than a “postmodernist”, Baudrillard was, in fact, a trenchant critic of many of the taken-for-granted features of advanced capitalism and western culture – consumerism, the postmodern celebration of pluralism and “diversity”, globalisation, capitalism, modernity, mass communication and the information economy – as destroyers of the act and social relation of symbolic exchange’. (Richard Smith, ‘Introduction: the words

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was often labelled, Baudrillard provides one of the most acute and scathing critiques of our condition. 2

Viral Simulations

Baudrillard’s theory of simulation does not merely amount to another ­version of Marshall McLuhan’s well-known claim that real contents and referents are neutralized by the medium (‘the medium is the message’).10 Rather, it implies that the medium itself, insofar as it becomes hegemonic through an operational code, generates its own ‘integral reality’, which Baudrillard called hyperreality: The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and command models – and with these, it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance. It is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is hyperreal, the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere.11 For Baudrillard, the ‘disappearance of reality’ is akin to ‘a perfect crime’, since the real evaporates before our eyes without leaving traces of its former configuration.12 All we are left with is a gigantic machinery of simulation, which signals the impossibility of critical intervention. Every attempt to intervene is defused in advance by the very process of simulation, where vacuous transparency replaces the opacity of the real. Alienation itself can no longer be grasped because ideological manipulation now comes in the form of ‘social control by means of prediction, simulation, programmed anticipation and indeterminate mutation’, which takes us ‘[f]rom a capitalist productivist society to a neo-­capitalist cybernetic order, aiming this time at absolute control’.13 10 11 12 13

of Jean Baudrillard’, in The Baudrillard Dictionary, edited by R. Smith. Edinburgh, ­ dinburgh University Press, 2010, p.1). E McLuhan, Marshall. 2001. Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. Abingdon: ­Routledge. Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations, translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip ­Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e), p.3. Baudrillard, Jean. 2008. The Perfect Crime, translated by Chris Turner. London and New York: Verso. Baudrillard, Jean. 2017. Symbolic Exchange and Death (revised edition), translated by Iain Hamilton Grant. Los Angeles and London: SAGE, p.81.

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As a consequence, our enslavement to the virtual matrix of contemporary capitalism and its numbing utopia (a dimensionless, non-representational space-time where countless intelligent agents meet to share and create their ‘realities’) radically undermines our capacity to build relations based on symbolic exchange. Thus, society ends up buried beneath the simulation of the real, just as sexuality is buried beneath pornography:14 This is really what we are seeing today: the disintegration of the whole idea of the social, the consumption and involution of the social, the breakdown of the social simulacrum, a genuine defiance of the constructive and productive approach to the social which dominates us. All quite suddenly, as if the social had never existed. A breakdown which has all the features of a catastrophe, not an evolution or revolution.15 The dissolution of the social bond is offset by the triumph of simulated sociality, which is assembled around ‘the lowest form of social energy: that of an environmental, behavioral utility. Such is the face of the social for us – its entropic form – the other face of its death’.16 While Baudrillard shared the Freudian postulate that any human community depends on a degree of illusion, repression, and alienation, he also argued that, with the advent of viral simulation, the possibility of perceiving the alienating character of the social tends to vanish. The more we are denied the experience of the gap between the real and its organisation into a socio-symbolic structure, the more alienation gets naturalised, thereby morphing into hyperreality. That is to say, when the sign loses its symbolic anchoring in the real, it begins to free-float, proliferating in metastatic fashion, while meanings turn commutable and superfluous. The rational exercise of thought is thus interdicted, as reality is replaced by self-­ reproducing simulacra. In Baudrillard’s view, the endless flow of information has far more ideological traction than any kind of physical surveillance, since the media behave like a genetic code that ceaselessly defuse any spark of critical awareness and political contestation: ‘Everywhere socialization is measured according to exposure through media messages. Those who are under-exposed to the media

14 15 16

Baudrillard, Jean. 1990. Seduction, translated by Brian Singer. London: Macmillan. Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, or the End of the Social and Other Essays, translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and John Johnston. New York: ­Semiotext(e), p.71. Ibid, p.77.

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are virtually asocial or desocialised’.17 Especially with the advent of digitality, we enter a flat social ontology without breaks or ruptures, a spurious discourse of pure operationality where the subject is progressively obliterated. We are only free to slot into a pre-packaged binary feedback system where ‘differential poles implode into each other’.18 Thus, ‘the cool universe of digitality’, which ‘has absorbed the world of metaphor and metonymy’, elevates ubiquitous communication and connectedness to repressive banality.19 Put differently, media virality imposes itself with the force of a magnetic field made of largely insignificant or secondary diffractions and polarizations, whose key role is to reaffirm a code based on the universal principle of equivalence, exchangeability, and manipulation. The above insights are reflected in Baudrillard’s early 1980s remarks on New York’s World Trade Centre as the architectural embodiment of the binary code of hyperreality: Why are there two towers at New York’s World Trade Center? All of ­Manhattan’s great buildings were always happy enough to affront each other in a competitive verticality, the result of which is an architectural panorama in the image of the capitalist system: a pyramidal jungle, all the buildings attacking each other. […] This image has completely changed in the past few years. […] Buildings are no longer obelisks, but lean one upon the other, no longer suspicious one of the other, like columns in a statistical graph. This new architecture incarnates a system that is no longer competitive, but compatible, and where competition has disappeared for the benefit of correlations. […] This architectural graphism is that of the monopoly; the two W.T.C. towers, perfect parallelepipeds a ¼-mile high on a square base, perfectly balanced and blind communicating vessels. The fact that there are two of them signifies the end of competition, the end of all original reference. […] There is a particular fascination in this reduplication. As high as they are, higher than all the others, the two towers signify nevertheless the end of verticality.20 Here, the ‘end of verticality’ informs a fake social bond where the subject is foreclosed, as Jacques Lacan had put it in his discussions of the ‘capitalist 17 18 19 20

Ibid, p.96. Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations, translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip ­Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e), p.70. Ibid, p.152. Ibid, pp.135–137.

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discourse’.21 In the digital system, reality is hyper-realized and simultaneously de-realized into pure operationality. No wonder that the film The Matrix (Wachowski brothers 1999) was inspired by Baudrillard’s notion of simulation – even though Baudrillard later said (correctly, to my mind) that the film was too Platonic: ‘The Matrix is the kind of film about the matrix that the matrix would have been able to produce’22 (Baudrillard 2005, 202). With simulation, then, the irreducible ambivalence of the real is wiped out by the dogma of the infinite reproducibility of reality’s virtualized signs. In this respect, the significance of Andy Warhol, who for Baudrillard was the last great modern artist, lies precisely in dramatizing the operational principle of seriality that lies at the heart of global capitalism, exemplified today by the purely speculative play of financial signifiers. An example of this simulation can be found in Warhol’s famous grids of Marilyn Monroe, Campbell Soup, and many others of his replicas. What we witness here is the potentially infinite virtual reproduction of the same image (i.e., the same commodified sign) through minimal differences that share the same code. With digitality, the potential for serial simulation reaches its apex, for all reality can now be coded in a virtual reproductive flow. And all that matters is that it continues to flow, to feign some kind of existence. As anticipated, the financialization of the economy provides a perfect illustration of this logic. Our economies are increasingly replete with enormous masses of fictitious capital that, to avoid collapsing, blindly continue to follow their generative flows, while condemning large parts of the world to immiseration. Contemporary capitalism increasingly resembles an enormous dump of rotting nominal values replicating themselves in a parallel orbit with respect to the human suffering on the ground – an insanity which the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Times today elegantly call ‘The Great Disconnect’.23 In 1988, Baudrillard had captured this disconnection with the following provocation: But can we still speak of the ‘economy’? Or, indeed, of political economy (the logic of capital)? Certainly not. At the very least, the striking 21

See Jacques Lacan, ‘Du discours psychanalytique’, in Lacan in Italia 1953–1978/Lacan en Italie, edited by G. B. Contri (Milan: La Salamandra), pp.32–55; and Jacques Lacan, ­Television, in October 40, 1987, pp.6–50. 22 Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations, translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip ­Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e), p.202. 23 See https://www.ft.com/content/00b4937c-d47b-11e4-8be8-00144feab7de and https:// www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/covid19-special-notes/en-special-series-on -covid-19-the-disconnect-between-financial-markets-and-the-real-economy.ashx

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­ rominence of the economy at the moment has not at all the same meanp ing it had in the classical or Marxist analysis. For it is no longer in any sense driven by the infrastructure of material production, nor indeed by the superstructure. The engine of the economy is the destructuring of value, the destabilizing of markets and real economies, the triumph of an economy relieved of ideologies, social sciences, history and political economy and yielded up to pure speculation; it is the triumph of a virtual economy relieved of real economies (not really, of course, but virtually: yet it is not reality which holds sway today but virtuality); the triumph of a viral economy which connects up in this way with all the other viral processes. It is as an arena of special effects, of unpredictable (almost meteorological) happenings – as the destruction and exacerbation of its own logic – that it is becoming once again a kind of exemplary theatre of current events.24 Here, in partial disagreement with Baudrillard, I contend that in an economy driven by the self-referential logic of its financial industry, capital emerges for what it always was: a cold, anonymous and merciless mechanism of self-­ reproduction; a blind end-in-itself with no regard for the social. Today, when threatened by potentially calamitous deflagrations of financial bubbles, we are reminded that the inhuman face of capital was always its true and only face. As its social mask (labour-power) evaporates under the blows of unstoppable technological automation, we have a chance to appreciate capital in its elementary form, which is the measure of both its freedom and undoing. Capital, in other words, becomes identical with the unbroken accumulation of self-cloning fetish-signs. And dancing to the rhythm of its virtual melody, it turns into what it always-already was: a purely immanent phenomenon, indifferent to human suffering and destined to self-destruction. But how can a global system that has expunged all externality – a system that coincides with its own operational code of endless simulation – still manage to support itself? 3

The Conspiracy of Evil

To answer the above question, I begin by revisiting a short polemical piece written by Baudrillard and published on Libération on 5 May 1997, titled

24

Baudrillard, Jean. 2002. Screened Out, translated by Chris Turner. London and New York: Verso, pp.31–32.

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‘La conjuration des imbéciles’ (the conspiracy of imbeciles).25 In this text the author lashes out against the insignificance of contemporary art and, ­especially, the conformist moralism of the democratic Left in confronting the political success, in France, of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National’s right-wing party. As he put it in The Conspiracy of Art, originally published in 1996, contemporary art is merely an expression of hyperreality, and therefore cannot ignite any critique of the status quo: Nothing differentiates it [contemporary art] from technical, advertising, media, financial and digital operations. There is no more transcendence, no more divergence, nothing from another scene: it is a reflective game with the contemporary world as it happens. This is why contemporary art is null and void: it and the world form a zero-sum equation.26 Similarly, contemporary politics is engaged in ‘reproducing itself in an endogamous confusion of all persuasions – the incestuous alliance of Right and Left producing an entire pathology and degeneracy characteristic of inbreeding’.27 In his Libération piece of May 1997, Baudrillard formulates two questions that strike at the heart of our present: ‘Is it possible today to utter anything unusual, insolent, heterodox or paradoxical without being labelled a far-right extremist? [...] Why has everything that is moral, compliant and conformist, which was traditionally on the right, now moved to the left?’ Summarizing a point that he repeatedly made from the 1980s onward, Baudrillard argues that the left, ‘by stripping itself of all political energy’, has become ‘a purely moral jurisdiction, embodiment of universal values, champion of the kingdom of Virtue and guardian of the museum values o​​ f Good and Truth; a jurisdiction that can hold everyone accountable without having to answer to anyone’. Given this context, ‘repressed political energy necessarily crystallizes elsewhere – in the enemy’s camp. The left, therefore, by embodying the reign of Virtue, which is also the reign of the greatest hypocrisy, can only feed Evil’. Baudrillard’s point is that the fluid, non-referential world in which we live affirms itself through a mythopoeia of evil and misfortune, whose role is to 25 See https://www.liberation.fr/tribune/1997/05/07/opposer-a-le-pen-la-vituperation-morale -c-est-lui-laisser-le-privilege-de-l-insolence-la-conjuration_206413, all translations are mine. The article has also been published with the title ‘Exorcism in Politics or the Conspiracy of Imbeciles’ in Baudrillard, Screened Out, pp.203–208. 26 Baudrillard, Jean. 2005. The Conspiracy of Art, translated by Ames Hodges. New York, Semiotext(e), p.89. 27 Baudrillard, Jean. 2002. Screened Out, translated by Chris Turner. London and New York: Verso, p.79.

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set up the moralistic horizon upon which capital continues to function. This is why today’s fixation with emergencies is capital’s perfect alibi. As argued in Simulations: ‘Capital, which is immoral and unscrupulous, can only function behind a moral superstructure, and whoever regenerates this public morality (by indignation, denunciation, etc.), spontaneously furthers the order of capital’.28 This claim is particularly useful if we are to grasp our post-­political epoch’s ideological obsession with morality – an obsession which necessitates the relentless production of crises and ‘ethical deficits’. Our precarious socio-economic membership needs constant support from evil narratives, whose ideological role is to consolidate the illusion that our capitalist order is morally grounded. Such an illusion is imperative for a world that has eliminated all external referents. Differently stated, a global economic system that has reached saturation cannot stand on its own feet. The more capitalism ­perseveres in liquidating anything that refuses to comply with its blind automatism, the more it implodes; and the more it implodes, the more it becomes hostage to a perverse logic that relies on the fabrication or mobilisation of ­ferocious enemies that are poised to annihilate us: In a society which seeks – by prophylactic measures, by annihilating its own natural referents, by whitewashing violence, by exterminating all germs and all of the accursed share, by performing cosmetic surgery on the negative – to concern itself solely with quantified management and with the discourse of the Good, in a society where it is no longer possible to speak Evil, Evil has metamorphosed into all the viral and terroristic forms that obsess us.29 Our viral narratives can now be regarded as consubstantial with contemporary subjectivity, which is why the default position of today’s liberal subject is that of the narcissistic victim obsessed with their own safety and devoted to the Bible of political correctness. In Baudrillard’s words, contemporary ­ideology thrives on a supremely disingenuous ‘culture of misfortune’:30 an aristocratic egalitarianism based on the dogma of victimhood, a form of reverse elitism 28 29 30

Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations, translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip ­ eitchman. New York: Semiotext(e), p.27. B Baudrillard, Jean. 1993. The Transparency of Evil, translated by James Benedict. London and New York: Verso, p.81. Jean Baudrillard, Fragments. Conversations with Françoise L’Yvonnet, translated by Chris Turner (London: Routledge, 2004 [2001]), p.59. ‘Ideologized misfortune has become a kind of emblem today, and a mode of action. There’s a whole “actionalism” of the deficit and the handicap, of legal action and seeking damages. The whole of the social order now

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that a priori reduces the subject to a fragile human being threatened by malignant forces. The paradox is that the more we perceive ourselves as a priori exposed to harassment and injury (from the gaze of a potential stalker to the contagion of a killer-virus), the more we respond by asserting, or complying with, the cynical, machine-like obduracy of our socio-economic order. In other words, reducing the subject to the status of a victim at the mercy of hostile external forces intrinsically validates the subject’s belief in the universal right to (continue to) pursue egotistic self-interest. At the same time, victimhood is projected on ‘less fortunate’ others (i.e., immigrants), which forces them into a state of passivity, preventing them from acting against the very conditions that cause their ‘misfortune’. As Baudrillard put it in one of his later works: ‘Compassion […] is useless and perverse: it merely adds to the inferiority of the victim’.31 Within this perspective, the construction of evil – in the forms of misfortune, states of emergency, and a generalised ethical deficit – remains the essential ideological ingredient for the reproduction of the current system. The flow of the virtual, ‘the horizon of a programmed reality where all our known functions – memory, emotions, sexuality, intelligence – become progressively useless’,32 hinges on its cross-fertilization with mythologies of evil, whose purpose is to shelter us from the ‘primal scene’ of the ‘incomprehensible ferocity’ and ‘fundamental immorality’ of capital.33 It is revealing that, in the scene set up by contemporary ideology, evil emerges as an obscene populist mob, that ‘basket of deplorables’ (Hillary ­Clinton) whom all liberals love to hate.34 However, today’s liberal moralists conveniently forget how beyond those they want to save from (carefully selected) forms of discrimination, there lies a much wider humanity that is being plundered, crushed, and at best sold off to the highest bidder precisely by the system whose values they embody. There is a simple claim in ­Baudrillard’s text that perfectly captures the hypocrisy I am referring to: ‘Le Pen is criticized for rejecting and excluding immigrants, but this is nothing compared to the processes of social exclusion that take place everywhere’. Why limit yourself to fighting the racism of those who reject immigrants, when socio-economic discrimination is systemic, in the form of exclusion, ghettoization, slave-like exploitation, and rests on this kind of trading on misfortune, from which secondary gains may be derived’ (Ibid). 31 Baudrillard, Jean. 2005. The Intelligence of Evil of the Lucidity Pact, translated by Chris Turner. Oxford: Berg, p.171. 32 Ibid, p.56. 33 Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations, translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip ­Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e), pp.28–29. 34 See https://time.com/4486502/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorables-transcript/

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war? Why persist in seeing only the populist walls, when globalization itself excludes large portions of humanity from elementary human needs? Perhaps the answer is simple: by blaming the bad guy, we protect ourselves from our intimate collusion with systemic violence, upon which our identities and ­privileges are based. As shown by Domenico Losurdo, the civil conquests of liberalism were established in symbiosis with the modern tragedies of slavery, deportation, and genocide.35 Bereft of political energy, the postmodern left was always eager to play the morality game, to the extent that ‘capitalism with a human face’ suddenly became its only slogan. Investing in capital’s social responsibility – i.e., choosing to disavow the fact that ‘[c]apital doesn’t give a damn about the [social] contract’ since ‘it is a monstrous unprincipled undertaking, nothing more’ – was, for Baudrillard, the left’s cardinal sin, the sign of its capitulation to the theatre of post-political simulations.36 By trading in class struggle for moral immunity, the postmodern left has now become overtly reactionary. Its fixation with political correctness, identity politics, and civil rights is, fundamentally, a hypocritical gesture whose purpose is to conceal the catastrophic decision to abandon, and even sabotage, the critique of political economy. The result is that, by supporting the global destructiveness of capital through ethical and humanitarian pretences, the left does the job of the right more efficiently than the right itself. 4

Hypnotic Deterrence

Drawing on the main theme of Roberto Esposito’s philosophy,37 the vaccination mandates during the recent COVID-19 pandemic should also be read as an immunological metaphor that accurately depicts our zeitgeist. While mass vaccination (or rather mass ‘genetic treatment’) responds to the logic of ­profit-making, it also captures the functioning of a global power ­apparatus that self-inoculates ‘dangerous pathogens’ to stimulate the production of systemic antibodies. From Le Pen to Trump, from Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction to Islamic terrorism, from Iran’s nuclear program to the 35 36 37

Losurdo, Domenico. 2011. Liberalism: a Counter-History, trans. Gregory Elliot. London and New York: Verso. Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations, translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip ­Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e), p.29. Esposito, Roberto. 2011. Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life, translated by Zakiya Hanafi. London: Polity Press.

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COVID-19 narrative (including its divisive vax/no-vax polarisation) and, more recently, ‘Putin’s war’, we are looking at a long series of immunological operations through which an implosive socio-economic model seeks legitimisation. In this respect, Max Horkheimer’s old admonition should be kept in mind: ‘Whoever is not willing to talk about capitalism should also keep quiet about fascism. [...] The totalitarian order differs from its bourgeois predecessor only in that it has lost its inhibitions’.38 Consider the semantic continuity between ‘virus’ and ‘information’. Every virus carries information, and the ‘viral load’ has to do with the pathogenic information’s ability to penetrate our line of defence, our immune system, or, figuratively, our subjectivity.39 In Baudrillard’s terms, the virus is a metaphor for the viral power of the information system and its illegible violence, particularly endemic in the age of digitality. Let us take the example of the January 6, 2021 events in Washington, DC, where a group of Donald Trump supporters stormed Capitol. The first thing to notice here is the speed with which the news was universally codified and circulated (‘memed’) by the media as a ‘Coup d’état’. The irresistible viral force with which the message of the ‘attack on democracy’ flooded mainstream media highlighted a spatiotemporal paradox that we are increasingly exposed to in our daily lives: news precedes facts, insofar as they shape their meanings in advance. For months, the media oligarchs had prepared us for the likelihood of a ‘Trump coup’ in the event of his defeat at the presidential elections. So, when Capitol was stormed, we had a perfect demonstration of how, today, information travels faster than facts. Put differently: referential reality is constantly vanishing into the virtual form of its coded simulation, where it resurrects as hyperreal. And the launch of Putin’s ‘special operation’ in Ukraine, started on 24 February 2022, follows a very similar logic. This power of ‘creating conflicts’ before they happen is truly hypnotic; it corresponds to what Baudrillard called the ‘ecstasy of communication’.40 Even when it comes to ‘conspiracy theories’, we should keep in mind that, in our age of endemic simulation Facts no longer have any trajectory of their own, they arise at the ­intersection of the models; […] This anticipation, this precession, this 38 39 40

Horkheimer, Max. 1989. ‘The Jews and Europe’, in E. Bronner and D. Kellner (eds.), Critical Theory and Society. A Reader (pp.77–94). London and New York: Routledge, p.78. Baudrillard distinguished four modes of attack and defence embodied by different life forms: wolves, rats, cockroaches and viruses. The latter are considered the most dangerous because of their invisibility. See Baudrillard, Fragments, pp.71–72. Baudrillard, Jean. 1988. The Ecstasy of Communication, translated by Bernard and Caroline Schutze. New York: Semiotext(e).

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short-circuit, this confusion of the fact with its model (no more d­ ivergence of meaning, no more dialectical polarity, no more negative electricity or implosion of power) is what each time allows for all the possible interpretations, even the most contradictory – all are true, in the sense that their truth is exchangeable, in the image of the models from which they proceed, in a generalized cycle.41 To understand the significance of simulation for post-politics, then, we should look beyond conspiracy theories, no matter how tempting, realistic and even factually true they might be. Our post-political order seems to thrive predominantly on political hyper-realism, a self-regulating logic of false binary oppositions that has grown completely detached from our social substance, just as the financial sector has grown detached from the real economy. The exercise of bipartite alternation in our ‘democratic systems’ is another perfect illustration of what Baudrillard meant by simulation: ‘simulation of opposition between two parties, absorption of their respective objectives, reversibility of the entire discourse one into the other’. This implies ‘a tactical doubling of monopoly’, since ‘any unitary system, if it wishes to survive, must acquire a binary regulation.’ Thus, ‘power is absolute only if it is capable of diffraction into various equivalents’, all responding to a binary matrix whose ultimate function is to prevent real antagonism to surface.42 The conspiracy we should denounce is the accelerated dispossession of our lives by the hyper-mediatised operational system of contemporary capitalism. It is capital itself, through its self-regulated corporatocracy, that wages a total war on dissent, leaving no room for radical critical intervention. The true aim of simulation is to collapse the difference between the real and its illusion, so that the real vanishes and the illusion morphs into hyperreality – the only access to reality we are left with. The proliferation of pseudo-events and ­pseudo-conflicts, in both the social and geopolitical spheres, is generated by this gigantic dispositif of simulation where illusion itself is constantly replaced by hyperreality. The result is that our capacity to unmask deceptions is ­increasingly undermined. It is indisputable that, throughout the history of humankind, those in power have always plotted and conspired, in ways which were often exposed. However, because today’s highly refined art of mass manipulation tends to collapse the gap between the real and its appearance, it

41 42

Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations, translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip ­ eitchman. New York: Semiotext(e), p.32. B Ibid, pp.133–134.

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is increasingly difficult for anyone to locate the real, in its intrinsic ambiguity, vis-à-vis its simulations. The peculiar ideological character of our age is that ‘real evidence’ is not even concealed from us, but rather ‘hidden in plain sight’. As such, it constitutes a ‘perfect crime’, as masterfully narrated by Edgar Allan Poe in his 1844 short story The Purloined Letter. It is a crime against reality that resides in silencing reality through reality itself. The ideology of simulation is predicated upon the proliferation of hyperreal signs that remove reality by reproducing it serially, not by hiding it. The COVID-19 narrative follows the same hyperreal logic: ultimately, the pandemic does not originate in the invisible virus, but in the viral reduplication of its countless signs (statistics, lockdowns, vaccination campaigns, expert talks, etc.), which constitute the pandemic matrix that frames us. Again, we are dealing with a pseudo-event that was simulated just weeks prior to its arrival,43 and then reproduced virally. During COVID-19, the world was locked up in a structure of pure repetition, the magnitude of which has never been experienced before. Most of us know that the coronavirus narrative was deeply inconsistent. The imposition of devastating lockdowns and other restrictions were from the start predicated on the results of a PCR test defined arbitrary and diagnostically unreliable by its own inventor, Nobel-prize winner Kary Mullis (who passed away in August 2019).44 The problem highlighted by Mullis, and others after him, is that PCR tests can detect random genetic material which has nothing to do with Sars-Cov-2, such as inactive fragments of nucleic acid belonging to previous infections. By replicating such fragments beyond a given cycle threshold, they will produce ‘false positives’. Even the WHO has eventually admitted that the PCR test cannot be relied upon for accurate diagnosis.45 In Mullis’s plain language: ‘It doesn’t tell you that you’re sick’. However, precisely because the pandemic was fundamentally a hyperreal occurrence, empirical evidence against the PCR test (or other measures) did not undermine its effectiveness in keeping the world population in a petrified state of panic. Although we might have doubted the rationale behind the lockdowns, our critical resistance was a priori defused by the sheer repetition of apocalyptic messages about the deadly virus. In pre-pandemic times, satirist C. J. Hopkins summed up this strategy effectively:

43 See https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/about 44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc0Kysti6Kc 45 https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users -2020-05

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[A]ll the ruling classes have to do is make up an emotionally-loaded ­narrative with a halfway-believable official enemy and have their ‘authoritative media sources’ repeat it, over, and over, and over, in a thousand different iterations, each repetition reifying the others, until the narrative becomes the axiomatic ‘truth’, which no respectable, normal person would ever think of wanting to question.46 What made the pandemic narrative such a powerful ideological tool was precisely its viral character, which has nothing to do with the virus as real referent. The pandemic, in other words, was the product of its naming, supported by a relentless campaign of reduplication of panic-inducing signifiers. Fundamentally, it was an exercise in semantic simulation. The exploitation of fear was maximised by the fact that our brains have long been wired to respond to simple binary inputs such as negative/positive, healthy/sick, true/false, democratic/fascist, Good/Evil, scarcity/abundance, and so on. We live in a ‘testing culture’ that has replaced the complexity of reality with its hyperreal caricature, which is why we readily translate a positive test as sickness (or why we believe that COVID-19 ‘vaccination’ prevents contagion despite all the obvious evidence to the contrary). The real object of the test does not matter any longer, since testing produces its own hyperreal objectivity. Whatever its result may be, the test is framed in advance by the ideology of testing, which, as Ivan Illich had passionately illustrated,47 is implanted into our brains from the first years of schooling. In a context of endemic simulation, our lives are ruled by an ‘economy of the sign’ structured around a binary logic: The entire system of communication has passed from that of a syntactically complex language structure to a binary system of question/answer – of perpetual test. Now tests and referenda are, we know, perfect forms of simulation: the answer is called forth by the question, it is designated in advance.48 In a culture saturated with pre-formatted answers to one-dimensional questions, manipulation turns absolute. Statistics, graphs, and algorithmically

46 47 48

Hopkins, C. J. 2018. The War on Populism. Consent Factory Essays Vol. II (2018–2019). ­ onsent Factory Publishing, p.28. C Illich, Ivan. 1970. Deschooling Society. New York: Harper. Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations, translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip ­Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e), pp.116–117.

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cloned media messages produce contagion everywhere, while COVID-19 acquires the status of hyperreality. It is politically depressing to note that the elites and the (radical and moderate) left speak with one voice against pseudo-events such as the coronavirus pandemic. The acceleration of the crisis of our mode of social reproduction produces the most formidable ‘TINA (There Is No Alternative) moment’ ever experienced by humanity. It would seem that the pandemic first, and then ‘Putin’s war’, were necessary steps towards the attempted imposition of the Great Reset by ethical mandate, which would hook us to a matrix with immense totalitarian potential and appetite.49 We are all in the cloud of capitalism’s operational system. Subjectively, the result is resignation coupled with sweeping misology vis-à-vis the objective implosion of our ‘world’: ‘a ­generalised deterrence of every chance, of every accident, of every transversality, of every finality, of every contradiction, rupture or complexity in a sociality illuminated by the norm and doomed to the transparency of detail radiated by data-collecting mechanisms’.50 Needless to say, the deterioration of our economy is itself marketed as an opportunity for its resetting, which is designed to produce a fairer, safer, and more resilient world, obviously cloaked in green energy for all. This is clearly stated on the website of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which meets every year in Davos.51 There, the wealthiest and more powerful people of the planet come together to make history. Their idea of resetting the world entails ­building a ‘platform economy’ capable of ‘unlocking prosperity for billions of workers’. It also involves the commitment of ‘corporate activists [sic!]: companies that take concrete action on the most prominent challenges that we are facing’, such as ‘the climate crisis, the increasing disconnection of urban and rural communities, or even the current global pandemic’. Our corporate ‘pioneers of change’ also know that, while spinning their narratives, they must reinvent faith, which is why they rely on slogans like ‘Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything’.52

49

Schwab, Klaus, and Malleret, Thierry. 2020. COVID-19: the Great Reset. Cologny: World ­Economic Forum. 50 Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations, translated by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip ­Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e), p.64. 51 See https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/digitalization-platform-economy-covid -recovery/ 52 See https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/modern-leaders-need-powerful-narrative /reputation-matters/article/1498184

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Owning Nothing and Being Happy

‘Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.’ This is not a cruel parody, but the title of a short piece by Ida Auken (former Minister for the Environment and now a member of the Danish Social Liberal Party) which appeared on the WEF website in 2016. Essentially, Auken tells us that in the near future we will live in model cities where ‘I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes’. (Our private property will truly be abolished!) And yet, despite not owning anything, we will finally find happiness, because in the city of digitized services, freed from traffic and pollution, ‘we have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives’. There will be no need to ‘pay the rent’ either, because when we are out cycling, or picking daisies, ‘someone else is using our free space’. Shopping will be a distant memory, as ‘the algorithm will do it for me since it knows my taste better than I do by now’. With robotics in full swing, work will have morphed into a pleasant activity: ‘thinking-time, creation-time and development-time’. Although Auken is genuinely concerned about the people ‘who do not want to live in our city, those we lost on the way, who have perhaps formed little self-supplying communities, or stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages’; and although, she writes, ‘once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy’, since ‘somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded’; despite these small complications, life will be ‘much better, because we will have defeated all these terrible things happening: lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment’. It takes only a small effort of the imagination to see that this utopian fairy-tale is, in truth, a dystopian nightmare, for the simple reason that if we no longer possess anything, it is because, after further disciplining the poor and impoverishing the middle classes, the global capitalist elite truly own ­everything. In this respect, one of the aims of the pandemic psychodrama we suffered was the controlled demolition of what remains of the real economy, eventually leading to the stipulation of a new Leviathanic ‘social contract’ (the Great Reset) in which our own survival depends on the charitable intervention of supranational monetary institutions. The ‘new normal’ is the reshaping of humanity so that it accepts Capitalism 4.0, based on the fourth industrial revolution. Technology, mainstream media, and politics are but extensions of the economy’s global domination. Their biopolitical purpose is entirely subordinate to the power of capital, which requires entire populations to be docile

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and meek (that is, isolated, insecure, and scared) vis-à-vis violent structural accelerations and the destabilisation of their lives. As the apocalyptic COVID-19 narrative transformed a bad flu into a plague, formally democratic constitutions were suspended, while panic, mass unemployment and the administration of experimental vaccines created the ideal terrain for the reinvention of global capitalism at a higher level of technological complexity. The coronavirus narrative allowed the economic, social, political, and biological spheres to meet in a hyperreal bubble of lies. Global governance in the field of bio-security is today the most evident result of this predicament, which finds its perfect economic expression in so-called ‘­stakeholder capitalism’: while gobbling up huge stock market profits, managers and shareholders of large multinationals also control a powerful political and media-friendly front driven by philanthropic sensitivity. After all, the WEF defines itself as an ‘International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation’.53 No doubt it is one, since it promotes the private interests of the wealthiest as they co-opt social and environmental (i.e., public) issues, peddling the ideological fantasy that we are all stakeholders, all sharing the same challenges and dividends. This is indeed the greatest paradox of our time: the 0.01% – the winners of globalization, the most predatory class in the history of humankind – are also socially committed to supporting noble causes such as global health, the fight against world hunger, and climate change. Thanks to their donations, most of which end up in tax-relieved private funds that they control, the philanthropic prophets of neo-feudal capitalism exercise an increasingly tyrannical influence on governments and their fragile institutions. The self-serving interlacing of money, power and lobbying alliances deprives politics of the last crumbs of potential autonomy, to the point that democracies all over the planet now welcome our philanthropic predators with open arms, without even asking questions. The bottom line is that “emergency capitalism” aims to silence the whole planet, while attempting to reset itself. Some on the left are looking eagerly at this implosive acceleration, believing it may finally generate collective awareness of oppression and the push for paradigm change. It may seem a compelling theoretical point, but in truth it is misplaced, for what we are witnessing is the successful masking of capitalist chaos. Capitalist implosion is not necessarily explosive: it does not automatically produce revolutionary dialectical contradictions. Rather, in its current phase it generates only its own deterrence. 53 See https://www.weforum.org/about/world-economic-forum

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Nothing else can be seen on the horizon, as demonstrated by how easily we have been convinced that lockdowns are left-wing measures because, on the one hand, they mean taking care of the weakest, and on the other (the ‘­radical’ one), they put a strain on the expansive mechanisms of capitalism. The truth is that the socio-economic contraction we are experiencing is perfectly in tune with the accelerationist, Orwellian logic of contemporary capitalism. The destruction of large sectors of the real economy and, at the same time, the draconian measures of social control imposed through the health emergency mantras, are integral to the ‘insane rationality’ of capital, which by nature is completely indifferent to those who are crushed or left behind. As Marx had indicated, the capitalist mode of production is so blind in its lust for profit that it destroys the very sources of value, i.e., wage-earners on the one hand, and land or natural resources on the other. 6 Conclusion The coronavirus crisis started in 2020 represented the apotheosis of a formal model of coding no longer built around the socio-symbolic production of reality, or even its ideological fabrication. Rather, it was based on the ­tyranny of simulated reproduction: a closed operational circuit that, in defining our relationship with the world, a priori excludes the fundamental ambivalence of the real, recreating objectivity as reified hyperreality. This model functions through largely irrelevant conflicts, oppositions and choices, whose binary paradigm individuals internalise from a young age. The ideological violence of today’s capitalist mode of reproduction lies in the magnetic field it generates through its coding. The advent of virtuality and digitality has made the totalitarian nightmare possible by hooking humanity into the ‘capitalist cloud’. What we are left with is a totalizing matrix that generates a ­hypnotic reality-effect through ubiquitous networks of pre-formatted news, data, ­statistics, differentials and so on. Today, hyperreality is a self-fulfilling prophecy impeccably realised in the info-sphere. As such, it knows no transcendence, only the immanence of a molecular code that unifies the world under a ­single reproductive principle. Workers themselves are increasingly ­dominated by the force of their reproducibility, while capital reproduces itself not merely through value-producing labour, which is being eliminated, but especially through the virtual signs of finance, which replicate themselves in an orbital loop ­completely external to our lives. In this respect, financial ­simulation is the nemesis of the original capitalist equivalence, the one between ­labour-time and money.

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When global capitalism is increasingly threatened by its own incontinence, however, it has no choice but gamble on the therapeutic power of ­emergencies,54 upping the stakes on what was always a favourite weapon. Since 2020, this has meant exploiting the formidable ‘narrative of misfortune’ whose catch-all signifier is COVID-19. Never before were humans reduced to such mute obedience. Instead of protecting the weakest and sickest from an opportunistic virus, the system unleashes planetary destruction through panic, establishing the pandemic as the ontological and moral horizon within which to reset the world. Capitalist realism prevailed through an ethical plea that proved near impossible to resist or counter: saving lives. This narrative of deterrence is, in Baudrillard’s terms, a gift: one-dimensional and pre-emptive. On the back of its success, new ‘global emergencies’ are already being released. Without an element of radical discontinuity, we will soon wake up in a neo-feudal world, or a digitized nineteenth-century inferno. Growing levels of poverty are likely to result in mass revolts, followed by violent repression as well as injections of ideological deterrence. Repeating Antonio Gramsci, a long ‘interregnum awaits us, where the old is dying and the new cannot be born, and a great ­variety of morbid symptoms appear’.55 And yet, when no head-on resistance seems to have any chance of ­succeeding; when integral virality infiltrates every nook and cranny of our lives; when all negativity is absorbed; then, the only chance is to bet on the system’s inconsistency, which alone leaves open the possibility for new singularities to emerge. Baudrillard defined singularity as that ‘which doesn’t resist, but c­ onstitutes itself as another universe with another set of rules, which may conceivably get exterminated, but which, at a particular moment, represent an insuperable obstacle for the system itself’.56 As William Pawlett put it, quoting from Symbolic Exchange and Death, ‘Baudrillard’s conviction is that people will never acquiesce to the system and resign themselves to being merely “the ­capitalist of their own lives”’.57 Baudrillard once intimated that in any perfect crime, the crime is perfection: it coincides with the attempt to set up a watertight totalitarian structure where 54

55 56 57

‘When it is threatened today, by simulation (the threat of vanishing in the play of signs), power risks the real, risks crisis, it gambles on remanufacturing artificial, economic, ­political stakes. This is a question of life and death for it. But it is too late’. (Baudrillard, Simulations, p.44). Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International ­Publishers, pp.275–276. Baudrillard, Jean. 2004. Fragments. Conversations with Françoise L’Yvonnet, translated by Chris Turner. London: Routledge, p.71. Pawlett, William. 2007. Jean Baudrillard. London and New York: Routledge.

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all accidents are either pre-empted or defused and eliminated.58 Today this crime lies in the neoliberal will to cleanse the world of what cannot be brought under control. Yet we must insist that domination cannot totalise itself. Inevitably, something will give, for the simple reason that those who are in charge of the matrix do not realise that they are themselves under its influence. The dupers always end up duped by their own strategy. The distinctive feature of our global ideological order is that it functions through the automatic proliferation of its effects, while causes are obliterated and disappear into oblivion. In simulated hyperreality, nobody cares for causes any longer. But a world propelled by the accelerating reduplication of its destructive effects will struggle to hide its implosion, and with it the emptiness of its capitalist cause. It is in connection with the impossibility of achieving complete systemic closure that the strength of our desire to unmask our dystopian narrative will be measured. If we fail, it will mean that we have compromised on our desire, and by i­mplication that our will has also been done. 58

Baudrillard, Jean. 2004. Fragments. Conversations with Françoise L’Yvonnet, translated by Chris Turner. London: Routledge, p.71.

Chapter 6

The ‘Cultivated Imagination as a Condition Precedent for Revolutionary Class-Struggle’ Tommy Jackson on the Value of Classic ‘Bourgeois’ Fiction Michael Sanders This chapter takes as its starting point a claim made in Old Friends to Keep regarding the value of literature. In the study’s introductory essay, Jackson writes of his ‘unshakeable conviction of the indispensability of a cultivated imagination as a condition precedent for revolutionary class-struggle, and of the high worth of classic fiction as a means of stimulating and developing that imagination’.1 Jackson returns to this theme in his closing pages where he writes, ‘I regard the systematic cultivation of the imagination – especially among the militant vanguard of working-class struggle – as the most fundamentally revolutionary work that there is to be done’.2 In effect, Jackson insists on the importance of ‘a cultivated imagination’, identifies ‘classic fiction’ as one of the best means of producing such an imagination and, finally, contends that such an imagination is an ‘indispensable’ precondition for ‘revolutionary class-struggle’. These are large claims indeed; but as they are made by a Marxist after fifty years of practical experience of the class struggle, I suggest that they deserve to be taken seriously. My chapter is a contribution to that process of taking these ideas seriously. It begins by offering a brief sketch of Tommy Jackson’s political career. Next, it considers Jackson’s own early experiences of reading literature as recorded in his autobiography Solo Trumpet (1953). Finally, it examines the older Jackson’s ideas about the practical value of literature in the class struggle as recorded in Old Friends to Keep: Studies of English Novels and Novelists (1950), where I will be arguing that many of his ideas represent striking anticipations of the work of better-known Marxist theorists. Thomas Alfred ‘Tommy’ Jackson (1879–1955) has been described as ‘the most brilliant proletarian intellectual to come out of the British Communist

1 Jackson, Tommy A. 1950. Old Friends to Keep. London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp.18–19. 2 Ibid, p.117. © Michael Sanders, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_008

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Party’.3 Born into a working-class family in London, he followed his father into the printing trade, but after completing his apprenticeship as a compositor he became increasingly involved with the socialist movement. In 1900 he joined the Social Democratic Federation, and in 1904 he was one of the founder members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (serving briefly as its General Secretary in 1906), but in 1909 he joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) for whom he became a paid speaker until 1911, when he left the ILP to become a paid lecturer for the National Secular Society and then a freelance lecturer. In 1917 he joined the Socialist Labour Party and also became a lecturer for the North East Labour College Committee. In 1920 he was a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), a delegate to the Comintern, a member of the Central Committee from 1924 to 1929 and editor of The Communist and The Sunday Worker. Jackson opposed the ‘Bolshevisation’ of the CPGB in 1924 and was a leading critic of the ‘class-against-class’ strategy and this led to his removal from the Party’s leadership. However, it is important to note that despite his disagreements with the Party’s leadership, Jackson never became a renegade and continued to work as a journalist for the Daily Worker and after the Second World War as a lecturer for the Party’s Education Department. In addition, to his journalism, Jackson published a number of important works of Marxist theory, criticism and history including Dialectics: The Logic of Marxism and its critics (1936), Charles Dickens: The Progress of a Radical (1938), Ireland Her Own (1946), as well as a collection of his literary journalism for the Daily Worker entitled, Old Friends to Keep: Studies of English Novels and Novelists (1950) and his autobiography, Solo Trumpet (1953). In his autobiography, which Jackson himself described as ‘detached and semi-detached memories of [a] life’ (ST vi), Jackson recalls the effect which literature had on him as an adolescent: [Central London] was truly a wonder-world, for I was seeing it not merely with my eyes of flesh but with the eyes of heightened imagination; – seeing it not only through spectacles manufactured by an optician, but through glasses supplied by magicians named Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, William Makepeace Thackeray, Joseph Addision, Toby Smollett, Sam Johnson and Will Shakespeare himself. Had I scraped an acquaintance with all these before I was fifteen? I knew them well! – and that was the trouble. I was book-hungry and I 3 Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, Yale: Yale University Press, 2010, p.40. Rose also notes the verdict of the miner and novelist, Harold Heslop, that Jackson’s ‘“immense intellectual ability” was equalled only by his scruffiness’, p.129.

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found a land where books were accessible in a quantity and variety sufficient to satisfy even my uncontrolled voracity. How could anyone expect me to even begin to contemplate the complete overturn of a world as wonderful as this?4 Thus rather than literature serving to catalyse proletarian dissatisfaction and channel it into an awareness of the need for struggle, the initial effect of literature is to enchant the world for Jackson and thereby forestall his political awakening.5 In similar fashion, Jackson notes the existence of other dangers which lay in wait for a working-class autodidact. The first of these is a tendency to consider ‘Culture’ as an already achieved state existing outside the working-class milieu which produces a dissatisfaction with working-class culture and an identification with the upper classes – ‘If culture-absolute had been attained, what should an aspirant to culture do but strive in all ways to preserve and protect his achievement from any and every ‘barbarian’ menace?’.6 As a side-note, this vision of a ‘culture-absolute’ which must be defended from criticism currently informs much of the British Government’s educational policy. A second and different danger arises from an excessive ‘preoccupation with … the sensuous form rather than the rational-judgmatical content [which] – tends to create a state of mind in which the victim lives, almost be semi-conscious choice, in a dream-world substitute for the world of every-day actuality’.7 Jackson continues by describing this as ‘a drugged condition’ and a ‘self-hypnotised state’, terms which recall Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of the effects of the ‘culture industry’. However, it is important to note that Jackson is describing the effects of a particular form of engagement with ‘high’ rather than ‘popular’ culture. At first sight, Jackson’s early experiences of literature as a means of reconciling the worker with the existing social order would seem to identify ‘high’ culture as an obstacle to working-class advance and not as something which can be repurposed to proletarian advantage.8 So how does Jackson arrive at the positions from Old Friends to Keep, noted in the introduction to this paper, of 4 Jackson, Tommy A. 1953. Solo Trumpet, London: Lawrence & Wishart, p.12. 5 Philip Bounds notes that this is an unusual gesture in communist autobiography of the period. Philip Bounds, ‘The Marxist Outsider: T.A. Jackson as Autobiographer and Critic’, Socialism and Democracy, 31: 2, 2017, pp.122–144. 6 Ibid, p.22. 7 Ibid, p.23. 8 There are echoes here of some of the debates surrounding the ‘Proletkult’ debates in the early days of the Soviet Revolution.

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regarding literature ‘as a means of stimulating and developing that [cultivated] imagination as a condition precedent for revolutionary class-struggle?’ Firstly, some necessary ground-clearing. It is clear that Jackson is not talking about literature as a way of generating enthusiasm for, or inspiring commitment to, the socialist cause. Nor is he particularly interested in what we might call ‘agitational’ or ideologically sympathetic literature. As an effective propagandist himself, Jackson would have been aware of the importance of propaganda, but this is not his main concern. Indeed, none of the writers discussed in Old Friends to Keep could be described as ‘socialist’, a few such as Dickens and Hardy could be described as ‘radical’, but just as many (for example Scott and Austen) are usually considered to be ‘conservative’ writers. Clearly, for Jackson, the value of ‘classic fiction’ is not determined by either the class position or the ideological sympathies of the writer concerned. Many aspects of Jackson’s defence of literature are immediately recognisable as belonging to an orthodox Marxist tradition. For example, he considers art as ‘an enlargement and an enrichment of life, by its revelation of ever newer and higher possibilities awaiting development in the mind and spirit of man’.9 In his own version of the ‘Bread and Roses’ trope, Jackson argues that a ‘full life’ requires food for the mind as well as for the body and notes that the demand for access to culture ‘has, therefore, been an integral part of the programme of working-class struggle from the very beginning’.10 In this way, the communist future will enable each individual to acquire ‘the historically accumulated achievements of the human race’.11 Similarly, Jackson regards culture as a trans-historical force in human history insofar as ‘never yet has any real cultural gain made by mankind been permanently lost’.12 This question of the trans-historical value of culture is one which presents particular difficulties for Marxist theory. Put simply, if culture is historically determined, then how does a cultural text or form from the past (particularly one generated by an earlier mode of production) have relevance in the presence? Marx himself recognised the existence of this problem when he speculated on the reasons for the continuing fascination of classical culture. His answer, that our culture responds, collectively, to its youth, innocence and vigour in much the same way that we fondly recall our own adolescence 9 10 11 12

Jackson, Tommy A. 1950. Old Friends to Keep. London: Lawrence & Wishart, p.99. Ibid, p.116. In dialectical terms, this represents the ‘aufhebung’ of Benjamin’s great insight that in the context of class society, ‘There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism’ (Thesis 7). Jackson, Tommy A. 1950. Old Friends to Keep. London: Lawrence & Wishart, p.17.

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and early adulthood, has often been considered unsatisfactory. A similar, but more satisfying, answer is offered in the Brumaire with its observations that revolutions ‘anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past … and borrow from them names, battle slogans and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honoured disguise and this borrowed language’.13 In short, previous cultural forms retain their vitality insofar as we are able to identify with them. Another line of argument, derived from Marx but developed by Lukacs, sees the classic realist novel as a repository of historical knowledge which often subverts or contradicts the ideological intentions of its author. For Marx and Engels, Balzac provided an exemplary figure of the author ‘compelled to go against his own class sympathies and political prejudices’ in his work.14 For Lukacs, it is Scott who grasps imaginatively the typical historical forces regardless of his own personal political preferences. There are traces of this approach in a number of Jackson’s thumbnail sketches and, most notably, in his fulllength study of Dickens. Of particular interest here is Jackson’s insistence that Dickens novels must be seen ‘as a developing whole’ because this allows the reader to grasp one of the most important aspects of Dickens’ work, which is that in its totality it expresses the ‘accelerating tempo and multiplying complication of life’ which accompanied the consolidation of industrial capitalism during his lifetime.15 However, Tommy Jackson offers an alternative and, to my mind, a more persuasive account of culture’s trans-historical efficacy which resides in its, necessarily partial, ability to escape from the forcefield of its own historical genesis. The great ‘bourgeois’ novelists are, Jackson claims, ‘only externally … bourgeois’. Fundamentally they are human, and so far universal in their range.16 In some senses, Jackson draws on the radical Romantic tradition which sees artists as prophets, harbingers of a better, redeemed society. Their work in some ways anticipates, or intuits, a better social order. Thus, for example, Jackson reads Meredith’s ‘pictures of cultured leisure …[as] his anticipations of a communist future’.17 Even more significantly, Jackson’s view of art (discussed earlier) as a means of both enlarging and enriching life ‘by its revelation of ever newer and higher possibilities awaiting development in the mind and spirit 13 14 15 16 17

Marx, Karl. 1978. 18th Brumaire in Robert C. Tucker ed., The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., p.595. Engels letter to Margaret Harkness in April 1888, a full transcript is available here: https:// www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1888/letters/88_04_15.htm Jackson, Tommy A. 1950. Old Friends to Keep. London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp.66–67. Jackson, Tommy A. 1950. Old Friends to Keep. London: Lawrence & Wishart, p.19. Ibid, p.105.

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of man’ displays an affinity with the ‘young’ Marx of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts who also theorised aesthetic experience as a profoundly historical event: Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man’s essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye for beauty of form – in short, senses capable of human gratifications, senses conforming themselves as essential powers of man) either cultivated or brought into being.18 It is worth noting that the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts were not available in an English translation until 1956. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that Jackson had access to this aspect of Marx’s thought. A further source of trans-historical value which is not directly discussed by Jackson but which is, I think, implicit in his formulation of the ‘essentially humanistic’ qualities of the ‘ “classic” writers’ is the possibility that the preservation of certain values from the past might be as important as the intuiting of possible futures.19 In the British socialist tradition, this line of thought has been most closely associated with the work of John Ruskin and William Morris. Both writers championed aspects of medieval society (particularly its communal and social commitments) which they saw as offering a positive alternative to the increasingly alienated and reified social relations which characterise capitalism. Ruskin famously celebrated medieval artisanal production as a non-alienated and humanising form of work and his insight was developed by Morris who sought for practical ways of reviving artisanal production in the late nineteenth century. Both writers exerted a large intellectual influence on the British socialist movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their medievalism provides an example of the progressive potential of what Raymond Williams will later theorise as the ‘residual’.20 To summarise the argument so far, we have seen Jackson defend literature both as enlargement and enrichment of life and as a repository of 18

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The Marx-Engels Reader, op.cit., pp.88–89. Jackson also acknowledges that this is sometimes achieved ‘by the inverse method’, citing Dickens’ Hard Times as an example of a novel which ‘shows how all such possibilities are thwarted, excruciatingly, at source by an evil, narrowly utilitarian, money-grubbing, Manchester School-dominated society and scale of values’. Old Friends to Keep, p.99. Jackson, Tommy A. 1950. Old Friends to Keep. London: Lawrence & Wishart, p.19. For a recent discussion of the progressive potential of ‘medievalism’ see, D. Matthews & M. Sanders, eds., Subaltern Medievalisms: Medievalism ‘from below’ in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2021.

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trans-historical value. In short, he identifies literature as a ‘social good’ and suggests the reasons why a communist society would seek to distribute that good as widely as possible. I have also suggested that his arguments can be located within an emerging Marxist tradition of cultural theory. Therefore, the question arises, is there anything distinctive or original in Jackson’s cultural thought? Insofar as there is, I think that it consists of Jackson’s insistence on the immediate, practical value of literature within the working-class movement: his claim, noted earlier, ‘I regard the systematic cultivation of the imagination – especially among the militant vanguard of working-class struggle – as the most fundamentally revolutionary work that there is to be done’. The crucial questions are these; how precisely does the engagement with literature assist the ‘systematic cultivation of the imagination’ and why is this of value to ‘the militant vanguard’? Jackson provides the following answer to the first question: The more profoundly the imagination penetrates into the essence of social reality, the more surely the artist reveals that most universal of truths – that motion is the essential characteristic of reality. ‘Things have just this value – they are transitory’. Fixity, immobility, finality, static indifference – these are attributes of the veil of illusion it is the function of great art to strip away. That which abides eternally is and can be nothing but motion; and the function of art is to so quicken feeling that it sets the intelligence searching and urges the will to action.21 Literature, therefore, promotes heuristic activity on the part of both the author and the reader. In this formulation, the author does not convey truth to a passive reader, rather the result of the author’s active enquiry into social reality provokes a corresponding enquiry on the part of the reader. In short, literature teaches a particular mode of thinking and promotes a particular form of consciousness, both of which are recognisably ‘dialectical’. In short, it is not that a given work of literature instructs its reader what to think, rather it teaches its reader how to think. It is also worth noting the sequence identified by Jackson, first feeling, then thought and, finally, conscious action. It is tempting to see this as an anticipation of Raymond Williams’ important conceptualisation of ‘structures of feeling’.22

21 22

Jackson, Tommy A. 1950. Old Friends to Keep. London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp.19–20. Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.128–135.

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Jackson’s focus on the active, empowering potential of literature is a valuable and necessary corrective to those forms of cultural theory (frequently originating in post-structuralism) which emphasise the difficulty (even the impossibility) of thinking outside existing social forms. These have given rise to pernicious forms of cultural criticism in which no cultural artefact is ever good enough because it is ‘always-already’ compromised by, or implicated in, various extant forms of oppression. Adorno was alert to this problem in the 1940s warning, in Minima Moralia, that the danger of denying the affirmative potential of art helps to ‘bring about directly the barbarism that culture is reproached with furthering indirectly’.23 Once again, Jackson appears to anticipate Raymond Williams’ argument that language must be understood as part of the means of production. Language itself is productive, it can be (and is) worked. Moreover, it is in and through its working that human subjects are produced both individually and collectively. This is not a passive process, Jackson’s assessment of the author as ‘an expression’ rather than a ‘passive echo’ of their historical situation may be extended throughout society.24 While everyday language is central to the production and articulation of consciousness, literature is capable of performing an additional task – that of drawing our attention to the ‘sensuous particularity’ of life (to borrow Lukacs’ phrase). Irrespective of specific content, the practical value of literature is a matter of process and form rather than content. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the importance Jackson assigns to language, he could be scathing about the abuse of language by political organisations. Neither the CPGB nor the Comintern was empt from his criticism. In 1929, Jackson inveighed against the ‘Inprecorisation’ of communist discourse (Inprecorr was the journal of the Comintern) describing it as a ‘Babylonish dialect … used sacramentally as evidence of righteousness’.25 In his contribution to Ralph Fox: A Writer in Arms (1937), Jackson expanded this critique by praising Fox for: show[ing] an ability to break away from the two besetting sins of British Marxist writers – the substitution of a Party jargon for living English; and

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Adorno, W.T. 1978. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. London: Verso Books, p.44. Jackson, Tommy A. 1950. Old Friends to Keep. London: Lawrence & Wishart, p.12. K. Morgan, G. Cohen & A. Flinn, Communists and British Society, 1920–1991, Rivers Oram Press, 2007, p.237. The quotation is taken from, T.A. Jackson, ‘Self Criticism’, Communist Review, Feb 1929, pp.32–26.

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its concomitant: the substitution of fossilized and frozen concepts for real thinking.26 Jackson’s point is precisely that made later by Adorno who observed, ‘Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over his task’.27 To summarise and conclude, Jackson argues that great literature conveys one universal truth, namely ‘that motion is the essential characteristic of reality’. He also argues that the function of literature is to ‘quicken feeling’, prompt intellectual enquiry and motivate action. As Marx’s final thesis on Feuerbach reminds us, this is the vital stage. However, as Tommy Jackson knew from his own experience, the passage between the three stages is neither inevitable nor necessary. Again, drawing from Jackson’s experience, either excessive sensation precludes thought or else a particular combination of sensation and thought negates the need for action. In both cases, it might be argued that action is prevented or negated by an excess of identification – with ‘sensuous form’ on the one hand and with ‘rational content’ on the other. This, perhaps, provides us with a clue as to the nature of the ‘cultivated imagination’ which is the lynchpin of Jackson’s theoretical model. The ‘cultivated imagination’ signifies not only the optimum combination of feeling and thought, but posits a particular relation between them. In short, I’d like to conclude by suggesting that Jackson is claiming for the novel, the self-same properties which the great Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht sought to develop through the means of ‘epic theatre’28 26 27 28

Lehmann, J., T.A. Jackson, & C. Day Lewis. 1937. Ralph Fox: a Writer in Arms. New York: International Publishers, p.153. Adorno, T.W. 1964. Jargon of Authenticity. New York and London: Routledge, p.9. Brecht, B. 1964. Brecht on Theatre: the Development of an Aesthetic. New York: Hill and Wang.

Chapter 7

Contemporary Aesthetics Issues: New Horizons for Researches of Economic Aesthetics in Economic Sociology Alexander Petrov The chapter is devoted to contemporary aesthetics issues of learning and teaching economic sociology in higher education. The chapter draws attention to the theoretical and methodological problems of economic sociology and research of economic aesthetics in its framework. The author analyzes the current global social issues of economic development. The chapter outlines the prospects of development of teaching economic sociology and research of economic aesthetics. These prospects are related to the inclusion in the structure of the teaching and learning economic sociology of new independent topics of economic aesthetics. There are the topics that reflect contemporary social aspects of global economic problems. There are the problems of transformation of labor or organizational culture, development and global spread of environmental ethics, the development of civil society institutions, creation of lifelong learning society and anti-corruption consciousness and culture. New horizons for research of economic aesthetics in economic sociology appear in theoretical and educational deperiferization of these research topics. Modern economic sociology can continue its development only on the basis of transformation of the traditional theoretical discourse toward problem-oriented research on economic aesthetics. The basis for the study of economic aesthetics is Marxist economic sociology. 1 Introduction Economic sociology is one of the most interesting and dynamic branches of contemporary sociological research. This branch of sociology already has its own history. Perhaps the history of the institutionalization of economic sociology as a university discipline is not very long in different countries of ­America, Europe, and Asia, especially in Russia and China. But economic sociology as the scientific branch has strong theoretical foundations. The scientific and learning structures of modern economic sociology are based on the classical works © Alexander Petrov, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_009

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of Karl Marx’s political economy, Max Weber’s interpretive sociology, Émile Durkheim’s sociological functionalism, Georg Simmel’s sociology of exchange, Joseph Schumpeter’s socioeconomic institutionalism, Talcott Parsons’ structural functionalism and, of course, Karl Polanyi’s social criticism of economics. Economic sociology is, theoretically, an interdisciplinary branch of social research. According to modern classics of economic sociology N. J. Smelser and R. Swedberg, this branch is defined as the application of the frames of reference, variables, and explanatory models of sociology to that complex of activities which is concerned with the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of scarce goods and services (Smelser and Swedberg 2005). A such universal definition and traditional logic mean that the teaching of economic sociology in universities includes both the study of classical works, fundamental research of economy and society, contradictions of such interaction, and the study of contemporary problems of the modern postindustrial economic and social transformations. Usually, in the teaching process, purely economic issues continually come to the fore. And this is quite understandable and explainable. The production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services are economic processes. The economic trend in economic sociology is still influential (one might even say dominant). Indeed, it is really difficult to explain the social nature of these processes, if we rely on the traditional models of teaching economic sociology. Methods of teaching economic sociology affiliated with its basic methodological directions. Therefore, there are a number of methodological limitations. These methodological limitations can be overcome by forming a problem-oriented approach to teaching economic sociology and diversifying its research field. Such diversification is possible, provided the structural transformation of teaching and learning in the field of economic sociology. Structural transformation involves the emergence of fundamentally new areas of research and learning in the framework of economic sociology. 2

Results and Discussion

As with any direction of social research new topics, related to the comprehension of various aspects of the interaction between the economy and society, are added continually to economic sociology. However, it is the study of economic aesthetics that dominates modern economic sociology. Modern global transformation processes and problems of economic and social development dictate the need to explore new topics for economic sociology. There are five main topics, which in modern economic sociology are not given enough attention.

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New horizons for research of economic aesthetics in economic sociology include such topics as: 1. Transformation of labor or organizational culture under the influence of economic globalisation; 2. Socio-economic aspects of the environmental ethics development; 3. Socio-economic problems and barriers to the development of civil society in different countries; 4. Economic and social aspects of the creation of a learning society (or lifelong learning society); 5. Economic and social aspects of the creation of anti-corruption consciousness and culture. One of these topics is the study of labor culture. That is the modern trend in economic sociology. In economic sociology, the studies of labor and organizational culture are in the area of interest sociology of labor, sociology of management, in which labor culture is regarded as one of the factors affecting the productivity of enterprises, as well as the sociology of organizations, where corporate culture is analyzed as a factor in the optimization of formal and informal relations within firms. Feature of all these approaches to the study of corporate culture is the desire to create within them the optimum conditions of the company management through the creation of new process control technologies, including technologies to manipulate intercompany social and economic communications using the labor and organizational culture. In this case, however, is often overlooked necessity of comprehension essence of labor culture as a system of norms, values and rules of conduct, in fact, defining features of social and economic communication within organizations, ‘embeddedness’ of those communications in the overall structure of the socio-economic relations. After all, any organizations are not only closed systems, and experience the powerful, persistent and pervasive impact of different socio-institutional structures that are part of the traditional approaches usually considered only as the external conditions of economic activity. For example, there is the process of social reproduction of labor resources. And a very important factor of this reproduction is the labor culture. The development of labor relations is always based not only on the development of the means of labor—advanced technology or super-modern equipment. The important conditions for the development of labor relations are the social motivation of labor, human attitude towards labor and self-­realization through labor activity. All of this is part and parcel of the structure of labor culture and formed by labor aesthetics. Especially as technology could be considered as part of or derivative from the culture and aesthetics of labor, because all human life is labor.

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Could we assume that labor (in Adam Smith’s interpretation) is the basis of the wealth of nations in modern times? Yes, we could. However, the basis of the wealth of nations in modern conditions is not just labor, but labor culture and aesthetics. Therefore, labor culture and aesthetics are also concrete concepts that economic sociology can use to explain the essence of the fundamental contradictions of modern global capitalism. Labor culture is the main structure of the relations of production (or industrial relations). This structure of social relations appears in the course of the production process. But the labor culture is also an important part of social culture and the process of social reproduction. Social identity is based on labor culture. In addition, the labor culture is a very important part of the national culture.1 Therefore, the labor culture is not only a universal structure of norms and values that define the quality of the workers, labor communications and the production process. Labor culture not only affects labor productivity. Labor culture also creates specific cultural and aesthetic conditions for socialization and self-realization. Therefore, we could talk about the special qualities of European, American, Chinese, Russian, Indian and other workers. Social and cultural differences determine labor motivation in circumstances when other forms of motivation are not effective (especially in the context of the modern global economic crisis, the globalization of poverty and the global increase in unemployment and declining wages). Global industrial system effectively applied labor culture as an important new resource for the development of modern production, because the labor culture is the last societal resource that has not yet involved in the global production process. Globalization, or rather, economic globalization is a very complex concept. Globalization can’t be considered only one aspect—the progressive process of global unification and integration. Global transformation processes include a variety of contradictions.2 The main contradiction is between the abstract notions about globalization and the concrete manifestations of global transformations. Commodification of traditional culture destroys the ‘traditional’ labor motivation. Therefore, economic globalization destroys ‘traditional’ labor motivation, because cultural globalization destroys national culture and labor traditions. Economic globalization is constituted by the ‘traditional’ labor culture, but it is gradually destroying such type of culture.

1 Hofstede, Geert, Hofstede, Gert J. and Minkov, Michael. 2010. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and its Importance for Survival (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. 2 Petrov, Alexander V. 2009. ‘Globalization’ of Economy: social and political Aspects. Saint-­ Petersburg: Saint-Petersburg University Press.

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Labor culture as a phenomenon of social consciousness is the system of ideas about creative self-realization in the working process. It is a system of ideas about the possibility and necessity of transformation of material life in certain socio-historical conditions. As mentioned above, the processes of economic globalization form adverse socio-historical conditions for self-realization in ordinary and usual labor. Therefore, overcoming such negative socio-historical conditions of labor is possible through aestheticization of labor process and aestheticization of the concrete labor. That transforms the culture and aesthetics of labor in the new and highly demanded commodity in the labor market. The modern labor market increasingly needs such workers and farmers, who can creatively take the labor process. And their perception is not dependent on the wage level or quality of life in the country. While preserving the ‘traditional’ aesthetics of labor in modern economic conditions is a very difficult task for most workers and farmers. Thus, the main resource in the modern context of global transformations is not just labor, but people’s attitudes to labor, and willingness to work in modern social and economic conditions. Therefore, the process of economic globalization can also be seen as a dialectically contradictory process of aestheticization of labor and exploitation of specific labor aesthetics. Therefore, economic sociology ought to study labor culture as an important part of modern global industrial relations. The development of global industry has serious consequences for the environment. The concept of sustainable development involves the active search for solutions to preserve the environment in the conditions of a radical transformation of the global industry. The concept of sustainable development is perhaps the most popular concept of social development amongst politicians and scientists in the late 20th–early 21st centuries. The concept of sustainable development implies economic development of society in harmony with nature. This type of social and economic development requires the effective use the limited resources in the modern (post)industrial system and preserve natural resources for future generations. Sustainable development is such type of development that involves maintaining natural environment, because the destruction of nature means the destruction of society. Harmonization of the relations between modern society and nature depends on environmental ethics. Social and economic problems and the specificity of the process of harmonization should be the subject of economic sociology. The harmonization is defined by the possibility of implementation of environmental ethics of sustainable development. But now we can definitely say that the environmental ethics of sustainable development has significant barriers for implementation. And these barriers are related primarily to economic factors determining the attitude of modern societies to nature.

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The first barrier is modern anti-environmental economic ethics. Typically, social scientists (especially neoliberal economists) do not regard this factor as a major. Modern economic ethics is the ethics of economic efficiency and unlimited success. Economic efficiency is determined only by low costs and high profits. Moreover, thanks to classical and neoclassical economic theory, economic efficiency is considered identical with social efficiency. The logic is simple: low costs mean big profit, and big profit means a rich and prosperous society. The modern production system is based on this logic. But the question arises: who needs the unnecessary economic costs of such a system? Unnecessary costs do not need anyone. Most unnecessary costs for this system are the environmental costs of economic activity. In principle, the whole history of humanity might well be interpreted as a set of adaptation processes of different societies at different times to the natural environment due to degradation of nature, especially in the industrial era.3 The efficiency of this adaptation is directly proportional to the degree of the destructive influence of human activities on the environment. The first environmental laws have appeared in the era of ancient Babylon (the code of Hammurabi) and ancient China. But no laws could change human attitudes to nature as a limitless source of economic possibilities, possibilities for unlimited consumption. A successful industrial growth is only possible while maintaining the principle of externalization of environmental costs. But we’ve long since learned that industrial growth is the foundation of social progress. The next barrier is growing geoeconomic differentiation between countries and societies. More and more experts come to this conclusion. Inequality between countries is widening. The U.S., Western European countries are 100 times richer than Ethiopia, Haiti, Nepal and many other countries now. If we abandon preconceived approaches to the study of poverty, one finds that in reality in the world live more than 4 billion poor people.4 The global economic crisis of the late-2000s and the Great Recession only exacerbated this differentiation. Another barrier is the spread of the global consumer society. Reducing total costs in developed and developing countries due to the externalization of environmental costs stimulates further growth of global consumption. Values of the global consumer society orientate to the total subjection of nature to the interests of a comfortable life. Mass culture of the consumer society is opposed 3 Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2004. The Ecology and the Economy: What Is Rational? Review (­Fernand Braudel Center), 27(4): 273–283. 4 Birdsall, Nancy. 2006. Rising Inequality in the New Global Economy. International Journal of Development Issues, 5(1): 1–9.

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to national cultures. The national cultures-oriented people to the harmonious interaction with the environment during thousand years. But the mass culture of consumer society suppresses the national cultures and forces the majority of people around the world to follow in their consumer behavior the universal strategy of personal comfort at any cost. And this cost is the degradation of nature. The great barrier is also the process of transnationalisation.5 Most experts believe that it would be impossible to solve environmental problems without the investments and high technologies of transnational corporations. The transnational corporations are developing around the world new energy-­saving and resource-efficient productions, setting new environmental standards, creating new jobs in poor countries, and contributing to increasing the financial capacity of such countries in solving environmental problems. Dissemination of environmental standards promotes environmental ethics among national producers and consumers in all countries. The process of transnationalisation hides a set of environmental hazards. There is problem of global placement of polluting industries, problem of hazardous waste, problem of international environmental standards, which eliminate economic competition in the different domestic markets. There is also a danger of freezing of environmental regulation, especially in poor countries. Perhaps it is the most difficult problem. Of course, there are a lot of barriers to the development of environmental ethics for sustainable development. But the economic barriers are the most important under modern conditions. Contemporary economic sociology ought to include the results of such research in own subject area. Global economic transformation processes create not only new opportunities for the development of different countries, not only allow to use more and more effectively the achievements of scientific-technical progress and new forms of labor organization in the national economies. These transformation processes also lead to the aggravation of old and the emergence of new social problems and labor conflicts. Millions of ordinary employees in different countries face daily with various forms of employment discrimination, issues of respect for economic human rights, and low level of social protection. Civil society is a system of non-governmental organizations, institutions, associations, foundations, and professional associations. Civil society realizes feedback function between the subject and object of public management, between those who make decisions that affect the lives and well-being of the majority of citizens, and this majority, thereby correcting the economic policy in order 5 Subbotin, A. K. 2008. The Boundaries of the Market of global Companies. Moscow: URSS.

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to improve its social efficiency. Thus, civil society can influence the processes of economic changes in general as a specific social system, and in particular through specific organizations directly related to the economic life of society (e.g. political movements, social associations, trade unions, etc.). Therefore, socio-economic research on problems of civil society formation, its impact, including on economic policy, is crucial for understanding the essence and prospects of social development processes. In many countries, civil society is treated as the basis of social self-government. In many countries, civil society is seen as the basis of social self-government, which is independent of the state or business structures. Such a system of local self-government allows to solve many social problems without state authorities or businesses. Social efficiency of any economic transformation depends on an adequate perception of the majority of citizens of these changes and the opportunity to have a significant impact on the process of making socially important economic and political decisions. However, citizens can effectively influence government and business in the modern system of social and political communication only if there are developed, effective, popular civil society institutions in the country. But on the path of development of civil society institutions, there are many obstacles and problems, e. g. the lack of traditions and culture of civil society, the growth of social differentiation in many countries and low living standards of large groups of citizens, regional and social disparities, financial limits for the formation of independent civil society institutions. One of the most important aspects of improving the competitiveness of modern companies and national systems of production is the creation of favorable conditions for the formation, reproduction and effective use of the innovative potential of employees. Innovation capacity of labor resources of the national economies and the quality of human capital of particular companies are determined in modern conditions of the global spread of ‘knowledge economy’ by the opportunities for continuous learning or lifelong learning of staff. Lifelong learning contributes to improving the competitiveness of the staff at the corporate, national and global labor markets. Why is it so important now? In the modern global economic system part (and often large) value of any goods or services creates through the use of such an important production factor as knowledge and experience. Therefore, the organization of continuous training of staff is becoming an effective tool in the competition and strengthening the company’s position in the global and local markets. Lifelong learning is gradually becoming not only a part of corporate HR-policy, but also an element of corporate culture. Extensive experience in organizing systems of corporate lifelong learning exists in Japan, South Korea and China. People’s commitment to lifelong learning in these countries has a significant impact

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on the gradual and substantial economic growth of these countries, becoming to some degree the key to economic stability and positive social change in the Asia-Pacific region. The exhaustion of opportunities for extensive development of the industry through the inclusion of new non-renewable resources in large quantities has led in the second half of the XX century to the necessity of increasing the competitiveness of national economies and concrete companies at the expense of the resource that ‘there would be abundance’. So, the only resource is the corporative human capital. The main resource of companies is the workforce, qualified, experienced, creative staff, and, importantly, loyal to the values of the organizational culture. The professional education, which is paid by the state and companies, has turned from a privilege for the few ‘white’ and ‘blue’ collar workers to a necessity and an integral part of modern labor activity. The competition between companies, which is aimed at permanent search and attraction of more and better-qualified workforce, was gradually transformed into a competition for the improvement of working conditions, improving the efficiency of management of organizational culture. One of the most important values of this culture becomes continuous education of the staff. The famous American economist J. E. Stiglitz claims, that ‘citizens in the world’s richest countries have come to think of their economies as being based on innovation. But innovation has been part of the developed world’s economy for more than two centuries …’ And ‘rising incomes should largely be attributed not to capital accumulation, but to technological progress—to learning how to do things better’.6 ‘To do things better’ is necessary to create conditions for constant self-improvement producers. Permanent self-improvement should be an integral part of the economic culture. So lifelong learning is not only a system for improving the competitiveness of corporations and national systems of production, but also the important value of the modern global economic culture. Global spread of learning society’s structures could create favorable conditions for improving the quality of human resources, increasing productivity, and stimulating innovation. Of course, towards the formation of a lifelong learning society, there are many problems. For example, the management of modern companies still seeks to hire specialists who already have a good education and professional experience. This human resource policy is focused on reducing the costs of staff training in the short term. But such a policy would lead to a deterioration in the quality of corporate human capital in the long term. This corporate policy creates additional problems for the hiring of young 6 Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2014. Creating a Learning Society. The Korea Herald. [Online] Available: http://www.koreaherald.com (June 4, 2014).

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workers. Since labor adaptation requires the creation of a corporate system of continuous education. A barrier to the development of lifelong learning on the global scale is the geoeconomic differentiation between countries. A society with a high level of corruption needs specific methods of influ­ encing social consciousness to be included in anti-corruption programmes. It is much more important to implement an intolerant attitude to corruption at all levels. In order to develop such technologies, we need to reveal mechanisms and factors that work on perception of corruption as a social phenomenon and evaluation of governmental programme effectiveness. One of the effective methods of anti-corruption policy is to create a specific type of organizational culture in which norms and values are firstly based on ethic codes and moral principles. An effective anti-corruption policy is based on anti-corruption consciousness and culture. Anti-corruption consciousness, the same as a sense of justice and moral consciousness, defines the attitude of a person toward corruption and this attitude reflects the concepts of civic duty, responsibility and solidarity. It is significant to mention that both a society and a government can deal with corruption only if they share common values and these values should be taught and declared in such a specific document as Code of Ethics. If to speak about the experience of foreign countries which successfully fight corruption, then it becomes obvious that positive achievements are possible for harmonious relations between citizens and public institutions whose relations are based on common values.7 Anti-corruption consciousness may be formed by creating specific conditions of negative attitude to corruption which are highly connected with responsibility for reputation as a human and a professional in any sphere. Such kind of professions as ‘public servant’ belongs to a group of professions which are usually characterized by high corruption possibilities. And here the main priority belongs to the influence of a society, its culture and civil activity, which means civil participance and control, and organizational and professional culture. Studying these aspects, same as creating new techniques of implementation to collective consciousness and possibility of forming anti-corruption ­professional culture, is based on the main ideas of structural-functional analysis8 and genetic structuralism.9 The research was also built on theoretical and 7 Dixon, John, Bhuiyan, Shahjahan, and Ustuner, Yilmaz. 2018. Public Administration in the Middle East and North Africa. International Journal of Public Administration, 41(10): 759–764. 8 Parsons, Talcott. 1971. The System of modern societies. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 9 Simiand, François. 1985. Historical Method and Social Science. Review, 9(2): 163–213.

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methodological ideas of Baudrillard’s concept of symbolic exchange.10 The analysis is based on the theory of intellectual capital and a model of organizational culture of Schein11 and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory.12 ­Moreover, the research used methodological ideas of studying specific impact of structural and valuable context on transformation of professional culture in Russia.13 3 Conclusion Economic sociology for several decades has a strong position in the structure of higher university sociological education in different countries. The classical structure of teaching economic sociology includes analysis of sociological theories of production, distribution, exchange and consumption.14 This methodological approach is now generally accepted in the framework of modern sociological education. Such a methodological approach is characterized by internal logic. But this logic is the logic of classical economic analysis. A similar logic is preserved under the new economic sociology.15 The only significant difference is that the scope of the economic and sociological analysis is extended by the introduction of the concept of ‘social networks’. Modern economic sociology as a university discipline needs a transformation of the traditional theoretical discourse toward problem-oriented research on global changes in different societies. The traditional model of research and teaching in economic sociology is not suitable for this purpose. The transformation of the structure of teaching economic sociology is determined by the possibility of the inclusion of new topics. There are topics that reflect contemporary social aspects of global economic problems. There are the problems of transformation of labor or organizational culture, development and global spread of environmental ethics, the development of civil society institutions, creation 10 11 12 13 14 15

Baudrillard, Jean. 1995. The Gulf war did not take place. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Schein, Edgar H. 2010. Organizational culture and leadership. San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass. Hofstede, Geert, Hofstede, Gert J. and Minkov, Michael. 2010. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and its Importance for Survival (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Petrov, A. V. and Karaseva, K. S. 2015. Main Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Modern Corporate Labour Culture. Vestnik of Saint-Petersburg University. Sociology, 2: 86–92. Smelser, N. 1994. The Sociology. Moscow: Feniks. Radaev, V. V. 2005. Economic Sociology. Moscow: Vysshaya Shkola Ehkonomiki.

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of lifelong learning society and anti-corruption consciousness and culture. New horizons of learning and teaching economic sociology appear in theoretical and educational deperiferization of these research of economic aesthetics topics that are weakly interested in representatives of this branch of sociology. The basis for the study of economic aesthetics is Marxist economic sociology.

PART 3 Transcultural Aesthetics

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Chapter 8

Fiction and the Imagination Derek Matravers In the past 30 years, in particular since the publication of Kendall Walton’s Mimesis as Make-Believe, Anglo-American philosophy has seen a sustained revival of philosophical interest in the imagination.1 However, work on the imagination has faced a difficult problem. Using the imagination to illuminate problems in the philosophy of the arts is hampered by the fact that there is no accepted account of the scope and limits of the concept. Claims made on behalf of the role of the imagination in solving a problem will be unsatisfactory to the extent that, without such an account, it will be unclear whether it can, in fact, play that role. In her introduction to The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, Amy Kind attempts to mitigate this by giving us ‘four basic claims about the imagination that enjoy near universal agreement’, which she hopes will situate the concept within our cognitive architecture.2 They are: 1. Not every use of the word “imagination” or its cognates in ordinary language corresponds to an exercise of imagination.’ 2. ‘Imagination is a primitive mental state type (or group of types), irreducible to other mental state types.’ 3. ‘Imagination is intentional; i.e., imaginings have intentional content.’ 4. ‘Imagination is not constitutively constrained by truth.’3 This is an admirable attempt to bring some order to the debate and most working in the area would, I think, endorse these claims. However, claim (4) is ­seriously misleading – indeed, has misled most of those working in the ­philosophy of fiction. As we shall see, this can have a knock-on effect on the acceptability of (2) as well. One popular approach in the philosophy of fiction (which I shall refer to as ‘the consensus view’4) makes two claims. The first is that the distinction 1 2 3 4

Walton, Kendall L. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe. Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Kind, Amy. 2016. The Routledge Handbook to Philosophy of Imagination. Abingdon: Routledge. Ibid, pp.2–3. See Schroeder, T. and C. Matheson. 2006. Imagination and Emotion. The Architecture of the Imagination. S. Nichols. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 19–39. Contrary to the view expressed in that paper, Kendall Walton does not hold the consensus view and is not a target of mine here.

© Derek Matravers, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_010

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between fiction and non-fiction is of fundamental importance; that is, it is the rock on which the rest of the philosophy of fiction is built. Peter Lamarque and Stein Olsen make the point as follows. The truth is that the classification of narrative into fiction and non-­fiction is of the utmost significance; not only is it a precondition of making sense of a work, but it determines how we should respond both in thought and action.5 The second is that the readers process fiction differently to the way in which they process non-fiction. That is, there is a mental state (or attitude) associated with fiction which differs from the mental state (or attitude) associated with non-fiction. Once again, I shall quote Lamarque and Olsen. The fictive storyteller, making up a story, makes and presents sentences (or propositions, i.e. sentence meanings) for a particular kind of ­attention. The aim, at first approximation, is this: for the audience to make-­believe (imagine or pretend) that the standard speech act commitments ­associated with the sentences are operative even while knowing they are not.6 I shall refer to the attitude appropriate to fiction as ‘the fictional attitude’ (FA) and that appropriate to non-fiction as ‘the non-fictional attitude’ (NFA). As is evident from the quotation, the consensus view holds that the FA is ‘imagining that’ or ‘make-believe’. The thought, in outline, is this. Engaging with fiction involves certain content-bearing mental states – some propositional attitudes to contents such as ‘Gatsby lives at Great Neck’ and ‘Sherlock Holmes is a detective.’ Such a propositional attitude cannot be a belief, as belief is constrained by truth, and those propositions are not true. According to Kind’s (2) and (4), we have a propositional attitude that is both distinct from belief and not constrained by truth. Hence, imagination is suited to play the role that is needed. Hence, there is a constitutive link between reading fiction and imagination. Neither of the claims made by the consensus view is correct. It follows that there is no constitutive link between reading fiction and imagination. To see this, we need to examine why anyone would think that FA and NFA refer to 5 Lamarque, Peter, and Olsen, Stein H. 1994. Truth, Fiction and Literature: A Philosophical ­Perspective. Oxford, Clarendon Press, p.30. 6 Ibid, p.43.

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different attitudes. The consensus view (following orthodoxy in the philosophy of mind) attempts to show that they are different attitudes by attempting to show that they have different functional profiles. Functional characterisations define mental states in terms of their inputs, behavioural outputs, and relations to other mental states. Greg Currie (a prominent exponent of this view) provides the following example. I might start off my imagining by taking on in this way the beliefs and desires, and also the perceptions, of someone who sees a lion rushing towards him. These beliefs and desires then operate on me through their own natural powers; I start (if my imagining is vivid enough) to feel the visceral sensations of fear, and I decide to flee. But I don’t flee; these beliefs and desires – let us call them to pretend or imaginary beliefs and desires – differ from my own real beliefs and desires not just in being temporary and cancellable. Unlike my real beliefs and desires, they are run offline, disconnected from the normal perceptual inputs and behavioural outputs. I start my simulation without actually seeing a lion, and end it at the point where the decision is made, but before that decision is translated into action. The function of the simulation is not to save me from a lion, since I am not actually threatened by one, but to help me understand the mental processes of someone so threatened.7 It will be worth bearing in mind some examples. I shall take Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as my example of fiction, Runciman’s The Crusades as my example of non-fiction. Let us examine whether the attitude appropriate to the first (the FA) does have a different functional profile from the attitude appropriate to the second (the NFA). Currie holds that, in imagination, the inputs are ‘disconnected from the normal perceptual inputs.’ It is true that, when reading Gatsby, I do not perceive the hero of that novel, Jay Gatsby. However, it is equally true that, when reading The Crusades, I do not perceive Jerusalem. The FA and the NFA do not differ in input; in both cases, the input is words on the page. The case of outputs is almost as clear, but admits to a small complication. For Currie, beliefs and make-beliefs differ in that the latter, unlike the former, do not result in outputs. Let us distinguish short-term outputs from long-term outputs (I shall drop the ‘behavioural’ but assume it is understood). Short-term outputs are immediate actions in my egocentric space. Examples might be reaching out for my cup 7 Currie, Gregory. 1995. Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p.144.

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of tea or running from a charging knight. Long-term outputs are actions that I might perform later; actions that do not take place at the time and place of the input. Examples might be my buying more tea or planning a trip to Cyprus. Clearly, the attitude appropriate to Gatsby and the attitude appropriate to The Crusades do not differ in short-term outputs for the very good reason that there is nothing in either Gatsby or The Crusades that appears in my egocentric space. I cannot rise from my chair either to ring on Gatsby’s doorbell or to flee from Saladin’s army. However, it might be thought, there is a difference in long-term outputs. The attitude appropriate to Gatsby remains forever insulated from outputs; it will not affect my behaviour in the world. The same is not true of the attitude appropriate to The Crusades; I may well put down my copy of Runciman and start planning a trip to Cyprus to visit the Crusader castles. This is too quick. It is not true that the attitude appropriate to Gatsby remains forever insulated from outputs; I might well put down my copy of Gatsby and start planning a visit to Cape Cod (the actual place in the world where the novel is set) because of what I have read. Both fiction and non-fiction bring about long-term outputs. The consensus view might here cry foul. My make-belief that Gatsby’s house was interesting could not contribute to any long-term output. It could not combine with a desire to visit the house to bring about action. However, my belief that Bellapais (a Crusader castle in Cyprus) is interesting could contribute to a long-term output. It could combine with the desire to visit Bellapais to bring about action. In short, there is a functional difference between make-beliefs and beliefs; only the latter can cause long-term outputs. If this is the consensus view, then it is mistaken in what happens in the head of the reader. Generally, narratives (whether fictional or non-fictional) bring about long-term outputs by causing desires. Reading Gatsby gives me the desire to visit Cape Cod, and reading The Crusades gives me the desire to visit Bellapais. These combine with beliefs I already have so as to bring about long-term outputs. There is no systematic difference between fiction and non-­ fiction in the bringing about of the desires. Generally, therefore, there is no systematic difference between fiction and non-fiction in bringing about longterm outputs. However, the consensus view might say, the point still stands. Even granted that fiction and non-fiction bring about long-term outputs by bringing about desires, it is nonetheless the case that make-beliefs and beliefs differ in that the former cannot contribute to action and the latter can. Hence, there is a functional difference between the two types of state. I will only be able to answer this point once I have considered the relation of make-believe to other mental states. Of the three (inputs, outputs, and relations to other mental states) this is the most complicated. I shall argue that

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the consensus view confuses two different issues: the first is what goes on in the head of the reader and the second is what beliefs the reader forms as a result of reading. Once this is sorted out, we will see that the imagination could be thought to play one of two roles, neither role distinguishing fiction from non-fiction. I shall, then, first consider the issue of what goes on in the head of the reader. According to the consensus view what goes on when we read fiction is different from what goes on when we read non-fiction. Here is Greg Currie on the issue. Consider first a nonfictional work: a newspaper article or television documentary. If we think the work reliable, we shall form certain beliefs based on the information the work conveys. We may also acquire certain desires: documentaries about the dangers of smoking can make you want to give up, and travel articles extolling the virtues of an exotic location can make you want to go there.8 This view holds that different wheels turn in our cognitive economy when we read fiction to those that turn when we read non-fiction. In the first case, there is a route through beliefs and in the second case there is a route through make-beliefs. I have argued elsewhere that taking this approach leads quickly to all manner of problems. Part of the issue is that it is not clear what the question might be to which this is the answer. All agree, surely, that engaging with a narrative (whether fiction or non-fiction) is a matter of constructing some kind of representation of its content. Psychologists of text-processing speak of ‘­situation models’, which are structures of propositions. Elsewhere I favoured ‘­mental models’, which is a richer notion in which there is a structure of propositions but also spatial information. We need not sort this out here; for current purposes, we can be agnostic as to which is correct. Nonetheless, Amy Coplan has given us reason to favour the latter alternative by showing that readers’ representations do in fact embody the spatial perspectives of some characters in narratives (Coplan speaks only of fictional narratives, but there is nothing in what she says to suggest the results cannot be generalised to all narratives).9 Hence, I shall refer to ‘mental models’ below. 8 Currie, Gregory. 1995. Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p.148. 9 I am grateful to David Davies for pressing me on this point. Under pressure from Davies, I conceded that it would have been more accurate to speak of ‘situation models.’ However,

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The key point is that any such representation is needed for both fictional and non-fictional narratives. When we read a book, watch a film, listen to a narrative on the radio, we construct such representation whether that with which we are engaged is The Great Gatsby or The Crusades.10 Hence, the consensus view is simply mistaken when they claim that different wheels turn in our cognitive economy when we read fiction to those that turn when we read non-fiction; it is the same wheels turning in the same way. Once again the consensus view might cry foul. If it is the same wheels turning in the same way, what explains the fact that fiction does not track the truth and non-fiction does track the truth? What, in short, is the relation to belief? There are two possible relations between the mental model and our pre-­ existing structures of belief. The first, known as ‘the structural model’ holds that the information from the representation is compartmentalised: that is, a new ‘node’ is created in memory to store the information (‘nodes’ and ‘connections’ among them are metaphors used by cognitive psychologists to describe memory structures11). The second, known as ‘the context directed search model’ holds that information from the representation is incorporated directly into existing memory structures. George Potts and his colleagues have run a number of experiments to test which model we use.12 In their experiments, subjects read a representation – which they are told is non-fiction – concerning the near extinction of a New Zealand bird, the takahe. Potts and his colleagues worked on the assumption that ‘the primary functional characteristic of compartmentalized information is that it is difficult to retrieve that information in a context that is different from the one in which it is learned.’13 What Potts and colleagues did (putting matters crudely) was to ask about the content of the story in story-contexts and in non-story contexts. If the structural model were correct, there would be little direct connection between the takahe and information about birds held in existing memory structures, and hence the time it took to retrieve information in story-contexts would be less than the time 10 11 12 13

having reflected on Coplan’s work, I am now inclined to recant. The exchange with Davies (always a rewarding critic) occurred in a conference on my book, Fiction and Narrative, organised by Elisabeth Schellekens in Uppsala in November 2015. Psychologists simply assume there is no difference between fiction and non-fiction here: Gerrig, R. J. 1993. Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. Boulder, Westview Press. Gerrig, Richard J. 1993. Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. Boulder, Westview Press, p.213. Potts, George R., John, Mark F. St., and Kirson, Donald. 1989. Incorporating New Information into Existing World Knowledge. Cognitive Psychology, 21(3): 303–333. Ibid, p.305.

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it took to retrieve information in non-story contexts. If the context directed search model were correct, then there would be a direct connection between the takahe and what was already known about birds and this time difference would not be apparent. The results of the tests supported the structural model: ‘there were few direct associations between the new concepts and their realworld superordinates, suggesting that the compartmentalisation of new information does involve some kind of structural separation between the old and new information.’14 This result should not be a surprise. The point of the mental model is to enable the reader to keep track of, recall, and anticipate the narrative. They will only be able to do that if the model exists in a fairly self-contained way. Clearly, this will be much easier if it is held separately at a node. Consider an analogy; it will be easier to keep track of the water in a glass if we keep it in the glass rather than integrate it with the swimming pool of our memories. That a mental model of a narrative (whether fiction or non-fiction) is held at a node does not yet account for the relation between the content of that model and belief. It is here, the consensus view might claim, that we can distinguish between the attitude appropriate to Gatsby and the attitude appropriate to The Crusades. Kathleen Stock puts the point thus. Why should we accept that there’s no difference in the kinds of accompanying mental states typically caused by fictions versus nonfictions? Matravers considers various possible accompanying states typically shared by responses to fictions and nonfictions, ignoring the most obvious: with exceptions as noted, the content of nonfiction tends to be stored, however briefly, as beliefs in the mind of the reader, whereas, with exceptions also noted, the content of fiction tends not to be. Moreover, when stared as beliefs, then tend to inferentially integrate with further stored beliefs in a way that imaginings don’t … Why deny this integration, which takes place in one case but not the other (whether at a ‘second stage’ or not), can form a basis for a distinction between fiction and ­nonfiction?15 This, however, simply will not do. We can see why if we consider a self-inflicted problem that dogs the consensus view. For them, recalling imagination – in contrast to belief – is the attitude appropriate to fiction. However, for much 14 15

Ibid, p.332. Stock, Kathleen. 2016. Imagination and Fiction. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, edited by Kind, Amy. Abingdon: Routledge, pp.204–216, p.212.

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of the content of any fiction, the appropriate attitude is not imagination but belief. The mental model formed as a result of reading Gatsby will contain many straightforward beliefs about, for example, the geography of the Eastern seaboard, the nature of money, the nature of love, the status of Oxford, and the effects of automobile accidents. Fictions are, to use Currie’s phrase, a ‘patchwork’ of propositions we are intended to believe, and propositions we are not intended to believe.16 The standard response from the consensus view is to claim that fictions (novels and the like) are composed of fictional and non-fictional elements. For Currie (as I have said) they form a patchwork. David Davies claims that they consist of fictional and nonfictional narratives.17 For Stock, it is fictional and non-fictional episodes.18 What this Ptolemaic gymnastics tells us is that, on the consensus view, we need to take the propositions of which novels and the like consist on a caseby-case basis. We believe those propositions we think merit belief, and we do not believe those propositions we think do not merit belief. Of course, the fact that a proposition occurs as part of a work with ‘fiction’ stamped on the back will dispose us to expect more of the latter; indeed, in such cases, thinking the proposition does not merit belief may well be the default option. However, this does not change the fact that, by the consensus view’s own lights, there is no general rule to tell us which propositions merit belief and which do not.19 We are now in a position to return to the claim that fiction can be distinguished from non-fiction in that only the latter can produce beliefs that combine with desires so as to bring about long-term outputs. We can see now that this is simply not true. It is true that representations can contribute to longterm actions not only by causing desires (the usual route) but also by causing beliefs. However, there is no systematic distinction between fiction and non-fiction with respect to causing beliefs. Anybody who wanted a history of the East Anglian landscape could do a lot worse than consult Graham Swift’s novel, Waterland.20 What, then, is the relation between fiction and imagination? There seem to be two remaining options; neither of them is conducive to the consensus model. The first is to claim that it is sufficient to imagine something that that thing appears in the reader’s mental model. The second is to claim that it is 16 17 18 19 20

Currie, Gregory. 1990. The Nature of Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.49. Davies, Davies. 2015. Fictive Utterance and the Fictionality of Narratives and Works. The British Journal of Aesthetics, 55(1): 39–55. Stock, Kathleen. 2016. Imagination and Fiction. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination, edited by Kind, Amy. Abingdon: Routledge, pp.204–216. See also Friend, S. 2008. Imagining Fact and Fiction. New Waves in Aesthetics. K. ­ThomsonJones and K. Stock. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 150–169. Swift, Graham. 1984. Waterland. London: Picador.

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sufficient to imagine some proposition if that proposition appears in the reader’s mental model and is not believed. I shall consider each in turn. Stacie Friend takes the first option. She opts for ‘situation model’ over ‘­mental model’; the relevant point is that she and I are in accord that the construction of such applies equally to fiction and non-fiction. A situation model is the reader’s representation, not of the text itself, but of the situation the text is about. It may be described as a complex representation of a world, created in a reader’s imagination.21 I do not have any great objection to using ‘imagination’ in this way. Doing so supports the claim that there is no interesting connection between fiction and imagination. What is held in the imagination will be, indifferently, non-fictional situation models and fictional situation models. However, and this seems to me a danger, this is not the only way in which this usage differs radically from the way ‘imagination’ has been used in the debate so far. Consider Kind’s (2), quoted above: ‘Imagination is a primitive mental state type (or group of types), irreducible to other mental state types’. This now looks to be a category error; ‘imagination’ is not a mental state type at all, but the name for a set of ‘primitive mental state types’ such as beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, and whatever other proposition attitudes are to be found in a situation model. Kind’s (4) does not fare well either: ‘Imagination is not constitutively constrained by truth.’ As, in Friend’s view, imagination is not a mental state type what this means is not so clear, but, as far as it is clear, it is false. What goes into a situation model is constitutively constrained by what is in the representation with which the subject is engaged. If the representation is non-fiction, and non-fiction is (broadly) constitutively constrained by truth, then what goes into the situation model (that is, the imagination) will be (broadly) constitutively constrained by truth. To be clear, I am not attempting to undermine Friend’s view by defending Kind’s (2) and (4). I am only making the pragmatic suggestion that this might not be the clearest way of carrying on the debate. Rather than talk of ‘imagination’ here, it might be better to stick with ‘situation model’ or ‘mental model.’ The second option would be to reserve the term for those propositional ­attitudes that are part of the mental model, but which are not believed – sometimes called ‘mere make-beliefs.’22 That is, we reserve the term to cover those propositional attitudes, whether in fictions or non-fictions, that we do not 21

Friend, Stacie. 2008. Imagining Fact and Fiction. New Waves in Aesthetics. K. ­ThomsonJones and K. Stock. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan: 150–169. 22 Ibid.

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believe. It is worth pointing out what, on this option, imagination is not. Imagined states do not differ from belief states in the psychological role relevant to reading – that is, they are both equally part of the mental model. They do not differ from beliefs in terms of being in the front of the reader’s mind; there will be no differences in vivacity, attention, links to emotion, or other aspects the imagination is occasionally thought to explain. There is no particular link to fiction as all mental models, whether of fictions or non-fictions, will contain mere-make-beliefs. They have everything in common with other inhabitants of the mental model apart from the fact that the reader does not believe them. If this is all there is to the propositional imagination one might well wonder what all the fuss was about. At the beginning of this chapter, I remarked that Amy Kind’s claim (4) about the imagination, that ‘imagination is not constitutively constrained by truth,’ is misleading. The problem is that the concept of the imagination embodies a confusing set of claims, not all of which sit happily together. When we say that someone ‘has imagined something,’ we could mean that they have invented it – they have made it up. However, imagining something can also be doing something that ‘stands in’ for sensory experience.23 We imagine our friend’s face when she opens our present, the sack of Constantinople, or Gatsby’s party at Great Neck. The former idea looks like a promising way to illuminate fiction, as fiction is something we invent. However, much of what needs explaining in fiction falls within the latter: how do we recreate in our minds what we are reading or watching? However, all this latter explanation applies equally to non-fiction and to fiction. Hence, we end up in the position of using the former to define fiction by a link to the imagination, and then deploying the concept in the latter way that applies to fiction no more than it does to non-fiction. Once the consequences of this are fully worked out, I suspect that (semantics aside) there will be many fewer philosophical problems peculiar to fiction than we now take there to be.24 23 24

Currie, Gregory, and Ravenscroft, Ian. 2002. Recreative Minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.11. This is a version of a paper due to be published in Christy Mag Uidhir, Art and Philosophy: New Essays at the Intersection (OUP).

Chapter 9

Cultural Industries and the Cultural Front – Historical and Contemporary Reflections Justin O’Connor For two decades at least, the term ‘cultural industries’ has been generally used interchangeably with ‘creative industries’; or, in the UK and Australia, for example, ‘creative’ directly replaces ‘cultural’; or both are merged via the composite term ‘cultural and creative industries’ or ‘CCI’. In everyday policy talk, amongst global agencies or local city officials, the two constantly overlap, or alternate, often interchangeable with the ‘cultural sector’ (which also becomes the ‘creative sector’) and often ‘the arts’. There are some who seek to distinguish these two distinct groups of activities. Bernard Miège, a key theorist of cultural industries from the 1970s onwards, makes a strong distinction – and this is mostly followed in the European Union - with cultural industries defined around mass reproduction and the centrality of copyright.1 Creative industries – such as architecture, fashion, design and craft – are seen to have a high material component – as do the visual arts – and performing arts with the centrality of live events. Hesmondhalgh also excludes these sectors from the cultural industries proper.2 Many African and South Asian countries have picked up on this distinction, embracing ‘creative industries’ because it allows a focus on design, crafts, fashion and textiles which foregrounds their more traditional sectors.3 On the other hand, in East Asia (South Korean, Singapore, Japan, and China) these more traditional ‘heritage’ sectors were ‘cultural industries’, whilst ‘creative industries’ tended to include both the high-tech (including biotech) and business services sector, though it could also include routine activities such as hairdressing and wedding photography.

1 Miège, Bernard. 2020. ‘Creative Industries, a Large Ongoing Project, Still Inaccurate and Always Uncertain’ in Ilya Kiriya, Panos Kompatsiaris and Yannis Mylonas (eds) The Industrialization of Creativity and Its Limits: Values, Politics and Lifestyles of Contemporary Cultural Economies. Switzerland: Springer. pp.151–162. 2 Hesmondhalgh, David. 2019. The Cultural Industries. London: Sage. 3 Menger, Pierre-Michel. 2013. ‘European cultural policies and the ‘creative industries’ turn’, in Kerry Thomas, Janet Chan (eds), Handbook of Research On Creativity, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp.479–492. © Justin O’Connor, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_011

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These distinctions often map onto different government agencies, where ‘art and culture’ are given over to the more traditional cultural policy agencies, and ‘creative industries’ are allocated to economic development. Given the definitional ambiguities noted above this is often incoherent and arbitrary; or it becomes a proxy for binaries between state subsidy/private sector; or essential heritage/commercial consumption; or politically sensitive/harmless entertainment. UNESCO’s 2005 Convention – the only UN program concerned with cultural industries and their global regulation – used the term cultural industries to describe the tradeable aspect of cultural production and consumption.4 The Convention framed cultural goods as having a dual economic and cultural value,5 and so cultural industries were part of a broader ‘cultural domain’.6 This sector included visual and performing arts, crafts, design and fashion, alongside the ‘cultural industries’ of recorded music, publishing, games, screen industries (film, TV and streaming) and news media. It would also include galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) and was related to heritage, education and so on. But in its day-to-day communications UNESCO, especially in its regional offices and those leading individual programmes, constantly uses ‘creative industries’ or ‘cultural and creative industries’ or just ‘CCI’ to speak of culture. In fact, following the lead of UNCTAD7 and other agencies such as British Council and Goethe Institute, as well as many national and local governments, it also links cultural and creative industries to a wider ‘creative economy’.8 Here ‘creativity’ is deemed to be a central resource for a new post-industrial economy, in which ‘CCI’ acts as a leading, catalytic sector, sometimes (but by

4 UNESCO. 2005. Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Paris: UNESCO. 5 Garner, B. and O’Connor, Justin. 2019. ‘Rip it up and start again? The Contemporary relevance of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity’, Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development, 24: 8–23 6 UNESCO. 2009. Measuring the economic contribution of cultural industries. A review and assessment of current methodological approaches. UNESCO and UNESCO Institute of Statistics: Paris and Montreal. 7 UNCTAD and UNDP. 2008. Creative Economy Report 2008: The Challenge of Assessing the Creative Economy: Towards Informed Policy-Making. UNCTAD/DITC/2008/2. Geneva: United Nations. UNCTAD and UNDP. 2010. Creative Economy Report 2010: Creative Economy: A Feasible Development Option. UNCTAD/DITC/TAB/2010/3. Geneva: United Nations. 8 UNESCO and UNDP. 2013. Creative Economy Report. Paris and New York, NY: UNESCO and UNDP.

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no means always) with ‘the arts’ as representing the purest form of such, akin to ‘blue skies’ research in the physical sciences.9 Why is the brief terminological history of any interest, and especially in a conference on aesthetics? Two reasons. First, far more than a simply stated ‘economic instrumentalism’10 what I have traced above represents a deep, and long-term transformation of cultural policy, and of our shared understanding of ‘culture’. It represents a shift from culture as a key component of public policy – along with health, education, social services – closely linked with what Euro-America calls ‘social citizenship’11 but which in East Asia certainly, and especially China, combining both Confucian and socialist elements, was simply citizenship. It was linked to ideas of socialism, social-­democracy and ‘nation-building’ conceived as an historical state formation of the national-popular interest and will, an essential part of the social state in both ‘East’ and ‘West’ of the Cold War era. It is therefore inconceivable that the transformation of this cultural policy configuration into one where culture’s primary role is positioned as the nurturing of a creativity able to propel a post-industrial economy, with CCI as a leading-edge high value-added consumption economy, could have come without a radical abolition or reconfiguration of social citizenship, of social democracy, or of the ethical-historical purpose of the nation-state. It has direct impact on how we conceive of the governance of that symbolic realm of ‘­culture’ which had been deemed vital to the creation and continued unity – the imagined community’ – of the nation-state since (at least) the 19th century.12 Second, this narrative – whether celebratory or critical – merges the history of the cultural and the creative industries into one trajectory. Many contemporary commentaries use ‘creative industries’ to describe policies from the 1980s, for example, even before this term was invented. The term cultural industries, as it was re-invented in the early 1970s, are frequently seen as harbingers, a first step towards a full-blown culture-as-economy, finally consecrated by the universal adoption of ‘CCI’. Here the critical (and elitist) stance of Adorno

9

O’Connor, Justin. 2019. Resources of Hope. Creative Economy and Development in the Global South. Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen IFA. Input: https://www.ifa.de/wp-content /uploads/2019/06/ifa_input_OConnor_Creative-Economy-and-Development.pdf 10 (and indeed its social effects, which are a form of this – social and human capital, ­networking, social inclusion etc.) 11 Mann, Michael. 2013. The Sources of Social Power. Vol.4: Globalisations, 1945–2011. ­Cambridge University Press. 12 O’Connor, Justin and Gu, Xin. 2020. Red Creative. Culture and Modernity in China. Bristol: Intellect.

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and Horkheimer13 – who routinely act as ‘ground zero’ for accounts of ‘CCI’ – gives way to a recognition of the growing mass of commercial ‘popular culture’, which is thus both democratic (or anti-elitist) and presents as a new kind of post-manufacturing ‘industry’. Though many pointed out how the UK New Labour Government’s 1998 launch of the ‘creative industries’ altered the definition of ‘cultural industries’, giving rise to the sorts of slippages and ambivalences we noted above, it is often assumed it was simply the next logical step in the integration of culture into economy first wrought by the idea of ‘cultural industries’. On the contrary, and in the spirit of Benjamin’s ‘brushing history against the grain’,14 I want to challenge this idea and suggest that the terminological absorption of ‘cultural industries’ into ‘creative industries’, is itself an act of political occlusion, hiding the radical political history of the cultural industries. Part of the problem is that Adorno and Horkheimer did write the text which named these new industries of mass reproduction and set them against an older idea of autonomous art in ways that have been highly problematic. It has stamped their critique as ‘elitist’ or ‘conservative’, especially from the 1960s when new popular cultures became radical, and even adopted the language of the Avant-Garde.15 But from the 1980s, as communism crumbled in Eastern Europe (and was assumed to be crumbling in China) an embrace of these new popular cultures and the cultural markets in which they thrived was itself a progressive, democratic, anti-elitist position. The state became ‘the bad guy’, rather than capitalism or commerce. In fact, in the 1980s and 1990s capitalism, if it was mentioned at all, was equated with ‘the market’, and acquired the democratic charge of ‘bottom-up’ ‘free’ as opposed to top down, regulated, planned etc. It was easy to see how proponents of the cultural industries, now increasingly equated with small ‘independents’ and ‘Small and Medium Sized Enterprises’ (SME s), could set themselves against elitist state subsidised culture at the same time as presenting themselves as a new kind of industrial future, beyond state-planning and corporate managerialism. This in turn transmuted into the ‘digital economy’ which underpinned New Labour’s shift to ‘creative

13 14 15

Adorno, Theodor W., and Horkheimer, Max. 1944/1997. Dialectic of Enlightenment. ­London: Verso. Benjamin, Walter. 1970. ‘Twelve Theses on the Philosophy of History’. In Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. trans. Harry Zohn. London: Fontana. Frith, Simon, and Horne, Howard. 1988. Art into Pop. London: Methuen.

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industries’ – ‘start-ups’ operating in grass-roots, ‘bottom-up’ networks of creative entrepreneurs.16 Another problem is that Adorno and Horkheimer were late-comers to a world they knew little about. Most notoriously Adorno’s strictures on jazz were all based on radio listening, with no acquaintance at all with the social and cultural world in which one of the 20th century’s great art forms was in full flower. But Adorno was focused on Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley, and the forms of mass consumerism that were to explode across America in the postwar period. He had little idea of the intersection of the labour movement of the 1930s and 40s, with both the traditional art forms of literature, theatre and painting, and the new forms of commercially produced cultures of magazines and popular novels, popular music, film, fashion, and communications more generally. These new popular forms had been closely linked with the labour struggles of the popular front (sometimes engaged in labour struggles in their own industries, as with Walt Disney). Michael Denning’s indispensable book The Cultural Front is about this moment when the communist party worked with a range of other political movements, unions, civil society, educational and cultural agents and institutions to fight fascism.17 It is sub-titled ‘The labouring of American Culture’. That is, between 1930–1950 across both the arts and the new commercial culture, the period saw the entry of working-class themes and representations, often by proletarian writers, actors, musicians themselves. This transformed the landscape of American culture leftwards. Adorno and Horkheimer see only mass manipulation, whereas the histories of these cultural forms is radically different. Denning shows how the actual Popular Front – which was a crucial part of the emergence of the New Deal and the post-war Keynesian social settlement – was defeated by McCarthyism. But its impacts on culture lasted across the 1950s to reconnect with the world of civil rights, the new left and the burgeoning forms of popular culture of the 1960s. He also outlines the theoretical impact of the popular front, and how its leading lights represented an engagement with the new ‘mass culture’ comparable to Benjamin and his collaborators in Weimar Germany. The fact that Brecht, Weil and so many others arrived in the US to take up jobs in film, theatre, cabaret and so on spoke to the shared language of the US and German (and Russian) radicals. What we see is an active political engagement with the radicalisation of traditional art forms and with the new forms of commercial 16 17

Oakley, Kate, and O’Connor, Justin. 2015. The Routledge Companion to the Cultural ­Industries. London: Routledge. Denning, Michael. 2010. The Cultural Front. The Laboring of American Culture in the ­Twentieth Century. London: Verso.

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culture that has been blotted out in accounts which start with Adorno – including his US contemporaries who saw the popular front as some kind of propaganda or social realist movement of little cultural value. But the popular front created a legacy of a democratic culture that the actual productions of the cultural industries could not ignore, and which exploded again in the popular cultures of the 1960s. It also saw the arrival of this left-wing, labour-­ inflected culture into public institutions, universities and the cultural industries themselves. It should not be Adorno and Horkheimer with whom we start but people like C Wright Mills, and his ‘cultural apparatus’,18 an analysis of the changing configuration of culture and communications, and the ‘new class’ involved in their production which was contemporaneous with Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall in the UK in the 1960s. That is, the cultural industries, using terms like ‘apparatus’ or ‘the popular arts’, or ‘commercial culture’ was already freighted in the 1960s with political histories of struggle and contestation, of the reframing of culture – art and popular culture – in new democratic terms. This is sometimes acknowledged when discussing those 30s radicals in Germany – Brecht, Benjamin, Krakauer – who sought to embrace aspects of the new popular, technological forms. So too in the USSR in the 1920s, though such industries were of course very under-­ developed. But frequently ignored are non-European contexts, in particular those places where colonialism had ensured the introduction of the new technologies of film, recorded music, printed music, novels and magazines, radio, street advertisements. This at precisely the moment when anti-­colonial moments were beginning to become mass movements led by educated elites and an emergence worker movement. Latin America, in the metropoles of Buenos Aries, Mexico City, Rio – and of course, revolutionary Havana; or Calcutta and Bombay in India; but, for me, most saliently in Shanghai.19 The multiple, conflicting narratives around Shanghai are well known. For the West, the city was China’s ‘Gateway to Modernity’,20 which meant both westernisation and capitalism. In cultural terms, it meant the ‘cultural industries’ and a new kind of urban mass cultural consumption. This was negatively accepted under Mao, who punished the city for this association with Western modenity. The post-1978, and especially post-1992, ‘reform and opening’ was welcomed 18 19 20

Sawchuk, Kim. 2001. ‘The Cultural Apparatus: C. Wright Mitts’ Unfinished Work’. A ­ merican Sociology, 32: 27–49. O’Connor, Justin. and Gu, Xin. 2020. Red Creative. Culture and Modernity in China. Bristol: Intellect. Bergère, Marie-Claire. 2009. Shanghai: China’s Gateway to Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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as a return to the western-capitalist path, with the revival of Shanghai a visual index of China’s progress towards this modern ideal. Leo Ou-Fan Lee’s Shanghai Modern (1999) gave a vision of an urban modernity outside of the nationalist-­ communist conflict and providing the basis for a new urban cosmopolitanism in which Chinese culture could again become modern.21 The Shanghai government picked up some of this, with the city’s cosmopolitan past providing the resources for the city to spearhead China’s entry into the new globalised world. It embraced its modernity but not as some western-imposed path away from Chinese past but as China’s own vision of a modern future of entrepreneurship and urban consumption. A vision of the new Chinese middle class! I feel this underplays the role of the cultural industries as a site of political struggle in the 1930s. The popular arts of the 1920s and 30s are often reduced to a one dimensional ‘political propaganda’ – whether positive or negative – and linked to the new approach to political work in culture developed in Ya’nan. Our book Red Creative attempts a different story. One in which a popular front of intellectuals, marked by a historical and political vacuum - or interregnum - of uncertain outcome brought a political engagement derived from a distinct Chinese tradition or ‘wang dao’, not a Sartrean ‘commitment’ of the autonomous intellectual. They undertook this commitment at a moment when the long historical status of the intellectual was undermined by the abolition of the imperial examination system in 1905, the rise of mass political Leninist parties with little room for ‘scholars’, and the rise, post-1918 of the market for culture which barely supported these new ‘intellectuals’ and which also marginalised them as no longer possessing unique cultural authority. And yet, at the same time, they had a space of autonomy located in an extra-territorial city, between Nanjing and Ya’nan. In this context they began to engage with film and popular music, literature and theatre, in ways very different to the ‘modernists’ eulogised in Leo Ou-Fan Lee and the political propaganda coming out of Ya’ nan (and Nanjing). Here was a Chinese popular front increasingly working within the cultural industries, outside state control and dependent on the market, in which they must compete to provide new forms of popular culture, seek to build a national-popular revolutionary people, using the apparatus of the cultural industries – with no guarantees of success either commercially, artistically or politically. I use these two examples to point to older histories of the cultural industries that were not set within a binary of elite/mass, and in which popular political transformation was at stake, using new technologies, forms, genres and (as 21

Lee, Leo O. 1999. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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they say) ‘business models’. These two historically contemporary cases – the US and Shanghai – might be linked to our present via a phrase used by Oscar Negt and Alexander Kluge (1993), who first wrested the term ‘cultural industry’ (pluralising it into ‘industries’) from Adorno (Negt had been his student). In their book The Proletarian Public Sphere what was at stake was the ‘social horizon of experience’ and the absolute necessity of the working class to engage and struggle with those who controlled the cultural industries, effectively privatising the new public sphere. So much of this aspiration to bring the cultural industries under public control actually informed the cultural politics of the 1970s – including the need to move away from a focus on traditional art and to engage with the cultural industries as a site of cultural policy and popular policy.22 It informed much of the democratic energies that fed into the new post-1968 politics of contestation, of taking control of the urban realm, of the need to participation in culture, but also the absolute centrality of the cultural sphere – the cultural apparatus – in ongoing political struggle. The story of the shift from cultural to creative industries is also one of depoliticisation. It is also a story of retreat. Globally the failure of the challenge of the newly independent countries, such as the New World Information Order23 which seriously wounded UNESCO and UNCTAD, led to the imposition of new global economic discipline via the IMF and the World Bank, imposed in exchange for debt relief.24 This came at a time of the technological and corporate convergence and globalisation of telecommunications and media.25 It is the story of the rise of the market as proxy for popular participation, and the channelling of new forms and possibilities of culture into the story of a ‘replacement industry’ as its primary public good, defined as employment, innovation, competitiveness and GDP growth. It saw a shift of focus away from the bringing the ‘cultural apparatus’ under democratic control to the promotion of ‘creative work’ as a site of individual liberation, and the idealisation of grass-roots innovation driven by those who in effect were becoming a new 22 23 24 25

Girard, Augustin. 1982. ‘Cultural industries: a handicap or a new opportunity for cultural development?’ in UNESCO (1982). Cultural Industries: A Challenge for the Future of Culture. Paris: UNESCO. Garner, B. and O’Connor, Justin. 2019. ‘Rip it up and start again? The Contemporary relevance of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity’, Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development, 24: 8–23. Slobodian, Quinn. 2018. Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. China Youth Press. Furtado, Celso. 2020. The Myth of Economic Development (Trans. Jordan B. Jones). Cambridge: Polity Press. Mosco, Vincent. 1996. The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal. London: Sage. Hesmondhalgh, David. 2019. The Cultural Industries. London: Sage.

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breed of casualised workforce, so much so that they gave their name to it: the gig economy. Going back into these prior historical moments – in this case 1930s and 40s US and China – when aesthetics and politics, technology and mass organisation actively informed one another, is crucial. We should not put these in the glass case of the academic museum but spring them free for the contemporary struggle.

Chapter 10

Aesthetics of Atmosphere and Intercultural Studies Zhuofei Wang In the intercultural communication, an issue facing aestheticians is: can the word beauty appropriately express the central aesthetic phenomenon of each culture? If not, how can the approach of aesthetics, which was originally introduced as a branch of European philosophy, be transformed in accordance with respective traditions? Based on these considerations, my presentation will deal with how the concept atmosphere, which has been newly developed in the context of aesthetics as a general theory of perception, would contribute to broadening the aesthetic boundaries and thus opening up new topics and themes for the contemporary dialogue between East and West. As a ­consequence, a general question What is aesthetics? might be meaningless. The decisive issue would be rather how the aesthetic realities are constructed in respective cultural atmospheres and how the transcultural atmospheres, ­especially in the global context, arise from their interaction. 1 Issues Since the 18th century, aesthetics has been essentially assigned to the field of European philosophy. The aesthetic conception was significantly influenced by Kantian approach of aesthetic judgment which was based on the transcendental philosophy and dedicated to the beautiful experience of the perceiving subject. Since the 19th century, the basic approach of European aesthetics has spread to non-European countries and exerted a profound influence. In China, Japan and India, for example, aesthetic phenomenon was primarily interpreted as beauty (mei, bi, saundarya). Accordingly, aesthetics was called the doctrine of beauty (meixue, bigaku, saundarya-sastra). The reception of aesthetics as a doctrine of beauty could lead to the situation that the aesthetic phenomena which go beyond the boundaries of beauty would be largely neglected or excluded. These phenomena, however, may

© Zhuofei Wang, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_012

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be closely related to respective traditions and still occupy a prominent place today.1 In order to develop a contemporary approach to intercultural aesthetics, the first and basic question is: has the word beauty appropriately described the central aesthetic phenomena of each culture? If not, then the danger of ­translating the aesthetic into the beautiful would be that the actual aesthetic fields may be obscured or ignored. In this respect, another question faced by aestheticians is: how can new topics and issues of aesthetics, which was originally introduced as a branch of philosophy from Europe, be further developed in accordance with respective traditions? On the basis of these considerations, I will examine how it would be possible for the concept atmosphere, newly developed in the context of aesthetics as a general theory of perception, to broaden the aesthetic scope and thus open up new dimensions for the contemporary dialogue between East and West. 2

The Aesthetic Concept Atmosphere

In recent decades, the concept atmosphere has gone beyond the physio-­ meteorological field and become a category of aesthetics. The term aesthetics envisaged here is not to be understood in the sense of the Kantian aesthetics of judgment or an art-centered doctrine. Rather, it refers to aisthetik, namely a general theory of perception, which ties to the renaissance of the original meaning of aesthetics as a doctrine of sensory perception, which was first developed in the 18th century by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. As the primarily perceived object, atmosphere is neither an individual thing nor a purely subjective feeling, but a sphere constructed jointly by the ­perceiver and the perceived, in which human sensibilities and environmental conditions are corporeally brought together and pervaded by a specific ­emotional quality. Here is a brief overview of two basic approaches to the a­ esthetics of atmosphere. 2.1 Atmosphere as Transpersonal Emotion Hermann Schmitz (1928– ), the founder of New Phenomenology, has dedicated himself to integrating the exploration of atmosphere into his philosophical considerations of emotion. Contrary to conventional European thought 1 Elberfeld, Rolf. 2000. Komparative Ästhetik – Eine Hinführung. In: Elberfeld, Rolf; Wohlfart, Günter (Hg.). Komparative Ästhetik. Künste und ästhetische Erfahrungen zwischen Asien und Europa. Köln: edition, chōra, 9–25.

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that considered emotion as private, psychological state, in Schmitz’s context ­emotion transcends the subjective boundary and manifests itself as spatially outpouring atmosphere. According to Schmitz, although subjective correlation is a necessary precondition for atmospheric emotion, objective quality plays a more crucial role. As a result, atmosphere exhibits a high degree of independence However, Schmitz ignores the fact that the so-called objectively existing emotional space also depends on the subjective perception of the external conditions so that the way of its existence actually depends on how the perceiver experiences it. 2.2 Atmosphere as In-Between On the basis of New Phenomenology, Gernot Böhme (1937– ) has been ­dedicated since the 1990s to integrating the concept of atmosphere into ­aesthetics in the sense of a general theory of perception. His studies are recognized as the most influential contribution to this area. According to Böhme, atmosphere is ubiquitous phenomenon that erts a far-reaching influence on our lives. In contrast to Schmitz, who understands atmosphere as a largely independent, free-­ floating phenomenon, Böhme defines atmosphere as In-­between between the perceiver and the perceived.2 On the one hand, atmosphere contains the objectively identifiable features of the environment. On the other hand, atmosphere always appears in the moment of the attention of the perceiver. Atmosphere, therefore, concerns a reality that is created through our bodily presence. ­Starting from this point, Böhme dedicates himself to studying the relation between objective properties, like everyday objects, artworks, and elements of nature, and the atmospheres they radiate.3 Special emphasis is placed on atmospheric reception and production in various situations. Within the framework of a general theory of perception, the world surrounding us is primarily something sensually given. In this respect, the felt body (Leib) plays a vital role because it embeds us, along with our manifold modes of perception and sensory functions, in the environment. From this point of view, Böhme’s aesthetic study of atmosphere would provide a decisive stimulus for the intercultural aesthetics in the global context. As In-between, atmosphere emphasizes the intertwining of the perceiver and the perceived. As the access to atmosphere, the felt body contributes to a situation where the meaning of atmosphere is conveyed in a sensuously ascertainable, holistic manner. Here the decisive question is: in what kind of environment do we live and in what way do we experience it? The focus of aesthetics is now not on the 2 Böhme, Gernot. 2013. Atmosphäre: Essays zur neuen Ästhetik. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, p.22. 3 Ibid, p.35.

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issue whether the environment is beautiful or gives us a sense of beauty, but on how the environment influences our feeling of being there (Befinden) through our own sensuality. 3

Non-beautiful Traditions

The complexity of atmosphere opens new horizons for the aesthetic traditions that have been ignored or underestimated by the doctrine of beauty. The boundaries of the aesthetic would therefore expand enormously. The following deals with several phenomena in India, China and Japan, which are not primarily oriented towards beauty, but occupy an essential position in the ­aesthetics of these cultures. 3.1 Rāsa In System der einzelnen Künste, Hegel defined the order of art as follows: architecture → sculpture → painting → music → poetry → dramatic poetry. In accordance with the Hegelian art classification, Pramod Kumar Pandey divided Indian art into three classes in his book Comparative Aesthetics (1959): architecture → music → poetry → drama → dance drama (dramatic poetry). In contrast to Hegel’s aesthetics, which did not devote itself to any concrete forms of perception, but above all to the idea of art, in Indian aesthetics, the ideas of art and concrete forms of perception are inseparably linked.4 Due to the influence of religious traditions, the Indian aesthetic and artistic experience is considered a way to realize the liberation of man from the cycle of suffering in order to enjoy peace and quiet. The Sanskrit term Rāsa is a core concept of classical Indian aesthetics, which was mainly influenced by Hinduism. Etymologically, Rāsa describes mysterious and sweet feelings. In the field of aesthetics, Rāsa refers to a profound and indescribable feeling of enthusiasm, joy and satisfaction triggered by a certain artistic atmosphere. Poetry and dance drama are the main forms of spreading such feelings. This picture shows the nine basic emotions of Rāsa expressed by dance language: (love, wonder, fury, fear, disgust, laughter, compassion, peace, and heroic). In the field of drama, Rāsa is the guiding principle for artistic creation

4 Elberfeld, Rolf. 2000. Komparative Ästhetik – Eine Hinführung. In: Elberfeld, Rolf; Wohlfart, Günter (Hg.). Komparative Ästhetik. Künste und ästhetische Erfahrungen zwischen Asien und Europa. Köln: edition, chōra, 9–25.

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and reception. When the artists and the audience finally share the same atmosphere, the performance is considered successful. 3.2 Qi As the core concept of Chinese traditional philosophy, Qi has no direct ­equivalent in the history of European philosophy. Qi should not be equated with the substance or material in the sense of modern physics, but involves an invisible life energy permeating all beings and things within the cosmic system. In the development of the universe, Qi is the most fundamental driving force. According to Chinese thinking, all things and beings emerge from Qi and are transforming from not-being to being. In this context, not-being does not mean nothing, but rather the potentiality that encompasses all possibilities. As the realization of one of the possibilities, being refers to something formed and perceivable. This may give the impression that the great universe, with its inexhaustible forms and structures, is unfathomable, inexhaustible and changeable. In this sense, Chinese philosopher Cheng Chung-ying pointed out that Qi lays the foundation for the life principles of nature and man. As a power of production, reproduction, formation, transformation, penetration, effective participation and presence, Qi displays its effect in the natural and human world.5 Based on this fact, the significance of Qi goes beyond the ­specific cultural circle and achieves the cosmological level. In a sense, Chinese Shan Shui Painting, namely Mountain Water Painting, which played a crucial role in the pictorial representation of the relationship between man and the world, was developed on the basis of the philosophy of Qi. The reason why Shan Shui Painting is aesthetically praised is above all that it brings to light a constantly renewing life force pervading the phenomenal world. Take Guo Xi’s work Early Spring as an example. This painting does not concentrate on the exact imitation of what has been seen, but portrays the process of nature. The synergy between ink and brush creates a visible world. Exactly at this moment, the In-between occupies a central position. In the course of brushwork, the painter focused on the polar elements (fullness and emptiness, presence and absence, emergence and disappearance, etc.), which are in constant interaction with each other and correspond to the continuous transformation of the natural process.

5 Cheng, Chung-Ying. 2008. Qi (Ch’i): Vital Force. In: Cua, Antonio S. (Hg.). Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy. New York, US: Routledge, 615–617.

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3.3 Mujō Japanese culture largely reflects the overlap with Chinese tradition. Nevertheless, it shows its uniqueness in many aspects. Special emphasis is placed on the world’s impermanence (mujō), which was influenced by Buddhism and is crucial for the Japanese aesthetic experience. For example, the constantly changing and ephemeral atmosphere resulting from adverse weather conditions (fog, rain, snow, wind etc.) is praised in Japanese aesthetics. Linked to this is the understanding of impermanence. Yuriko Saito explained, ‘Aestheticizing the impermanence in nature then leads us toward an acceptance and sympathetic appreciation of our own transience’.6 Chinese aestheticians also attach importance to diffusing atmosphere arising from adverse weather conditions. However, this view is based on the different philosophical consideration: ambiguous contours of objects in adverse weather reveal a process in which everything is in the transition from the invisible to the visible. In this way, life and movement are brought to the foreground of aesthetic experience. The appreciation of impermanence can also be found in the tea ceremony. The tea ceremony is a ritual focusing on Ichigo Ichie which means a unique, unrepeatable meeting.7 The tea house is ideally a hut made of wood and clay, at about 9 pm. It is a closed space which symbolizes a paradise that frees from imperfections and inadequacies of the earthly world. The tea ceremony usually lasts 4 hours. Here, one should not discuss worldly topics such as money, politics and economics. One of the main topics is nature. The communication between host and guests is characterized by honesty, since it is assumed that both sides may meet only once in a lifetime. A solemn, soothing and harmonious atmosphere thus appears. 4

Art and Everyday Life

The aesthetic investigation of atmosphere is developed in the context of aisthetik, namely a general theory of sensory perception. Welsch wrote: I would like to understand aesthetics as aisthetik in a more general sense: as the ­thematization of perceptions of all kinds, sensuous as well as spiritual, daily as

6 Saito, Yuriko. 2005. The Aesthetics of Weather. In: Light, Andrew (Hg.). The Aesthetics of Everyday Life. New York: Columbia University Press, pp.156–176. 7 Elberfeld, Rolf. 2000. Komparative Ästhetik – Eine Hinführung. In: Elberfeld, Rolf; Wohlfart, Günter (Hg.). Komparative Ästhetik. Künste und ästhetische Erfahrungen zwischen Asien und Europa. Köln: edition, chōra, 9–25.

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well as sublime, life-world as well as artistic.8 On this basis, aesthetics of atmosphere is dedicated to a new consideration of the relationship between artistic and non-artistic forms. One focal point lies in transcending the art-centered understanding of aesthetics and paying more attention to those cultural traditions in which artistic and non-artistic elements are intertwined. In East Asia, everyday activities that were excluded from Western aesthetics and art history have long been an integral part of aesthetic experience. In traditional Chinese culture, daily activities such as calligraphy, tea ceremony, zither playing, Go game and archery were essentially aesthetic forms. As an ancient doctrine of geomancy in the Far East, Feng Shui deals with the design of l­iving spaces serving to produce a harmonious atmosphere. Here a harmonious atmosphere means that the invisible Qi flows smoothly through animate and inanimate beings so that our body and mind are in harmony with natural and artificial environmental factors. The Japanese art of living (geidō) (chadō/way of tea, kadō/way of flower, shodō/way of writing, kyudō/way of sword etc.) is connected with daily life as well as the associated morally charged lifestyle and is thus aesthetically appreciated. According to Weinmayr, traditionally there is no significant difference between high art and craft in Japan.9 Instead, the atmosphere of high art is constantly merged with the daily atmosphere. As Weinmayr wrote: The completion of art, namely the work of art, is always the event of a particular occasion. It takes place in a constellation of relationships, it is completely individual and related to the current situation.10 For a long time, the East Asian perspective has not received enough attention from European aesthetic theorists. And this is still the case today. In his book Oriental Aesthetics (1965), Thomas Munro analysed the reason: ‘The neglect of Oriental ideas by Western aesthetics can no longer be attributed to any s­ carcity of good Oriental art in the West. It is not due to a lack of good histories and critical interpretations of particular arts. The neglect is rather due, I believe, to the inertia of tradition in Western aesthetics itself: to its over-­reliance on deduction form metaphysical assumptions about beauty’.11 ­Following Munro’s point of view, Elberfeld pointed out: Western philosophers 8 9 10 11

Welsch, Wolfgang. 1990. Ästhetisches Denken. Stuttgart: Reclam Verlag, p.11. Elberfeld, Rolf. 2000. Komparative Ästhetik – Eine Hinführung. In: Elberfeld, Rolf; Wohlfart, Günter (Hg.). Komparative Ästhetik. Künste und ästhetische Erfahrungen ­ zwischen Asien und Europa. Köln: edition, chōra, 9–25. Weinmayr, Elmar. 1996. Überlegungen zum Ort und Charakter der‚ Kunst in der japanischen Kultur. In: Hõrin 3, 75–89. Munro, Thomas. 1965. Oriental Aesthetics. Cleveland, Ohio: The Press of Western Reserve University, p.7.

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seem to – often only after a lengthy work based on their own tradition – be able to realize that in other cultures there are aesthetic phenomena which expand and renew horizons and show significantly different forms of realization of art, which are in no way inferior to the European art regarding their rank and liveliness.12 Compared to the late arrival of the theoretical examination of non-­European aesthetic traditions, many European artists (Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso etc.) have been influenced by East Asian perspectives since the 19th century and deliberately transferred the relevant knowledge into artistic practice. In the context of globalization, any cultural structure is no longer autonomous and closed, but exhibits a mixture of different cultural elements. The intercultural links can be found in almost all areas of life. Due to frequent intercultural communication, contemporary European art has been largely transformed. The artistic boundaries between East and West have long been blurred, so that the standards of aesthetics have to be challenged again and again. How would Kant, Hegel and Schelling evaluate the works of Jackson Pollock, John Cage or Jean Dubuffet? Could they still consider these hybrid works arising from different cultural atmospheres as art? Today, the creation of the atmosphere has mostly become an integral part of aesthetic practice. Using a wide range of media such as light, color, scent, fog, sound, cultural signs and objects with symbolic meanings, contemporary artists like James Turrell, Fujiko Nakaya, Olafur Eliasson, Tomás Saraceno and Yuan Gong have produced atmospheres that may influence and modify our consciousness of environment and everyday life. The production of atmosphere can be assigned to a comprehensive aesthetic project which is dedicated to the recognition of the equivalence of various aesthetic practices. This development would open up new ways for deeper aesthetic communication between East and West. 5

An Up-to-date Approach to Intercultural Aesthetics

The last part of my presentation is devoted to the criticism of aesthetic essentialism and an up-to-date approach to intercultural aesthetics. In his late work Philosophische Untersuchungen (1953), Wittgenstein criticized the essentialist position in European thought. According to essentialism, 12

Elberfeld, Rolf. 2000. Komparative Ästhetik – Eine Hinführung. In: Elberfeld, Rolf; ­ ohlfart, Günter (Hg.). Komparative Ästhetik. Künste und ästhetische Erfahrungen W zwischen Asien und Europa. Köln: edition, chōra, 9–25.

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there is always something in common between different phenomena that can be denoted by the same word.13 In contrast, Wittgenstein pointed out that diverse phenomena do not have to have a common essential feature. Rather, they are related to each other in different ways.14 Wittgenstein referred to this relationship of phenomena as family resemblance. It concerns a complicated network of similarities that overlap and cross each other.15 Culture is always associated with a particular nation or region and influences the ways of thinking, customs, and behaviors of the respective population. As a result, each cultural structure is characterized by social homogenization, ethical founding, and intercultural demarcation. From this point of view, aesthetic ­phenomena of different cultures also form a network characterized by family resemblances. There are no absolutely identical elements, but only the coexistence of c­ ompatibility and incompatibility. This perspective opposes the aesthetic essentialism and focuses on the intertwining regarding aesthetic objects, behaviors and perceptions. From the perspective of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, Stefan Majetschak examined the influence of cultural practices on the aesthetic experience. His study is based on the following idea: ‘there is a great deal to be said for looking more carefully at the cultural framework determining the practice according to which we interpret certain things as aesthetic objects [...] My argument is that we need familiarity with the specific relevant cultural framework to decide which aesthetic concepts apply’.16 According to this view, the lifestyle and the associated cultural conditions form the basis for aesthetic experience in a civilized society. Familiarity with certain socio-cultural frameworks helps us understand why an object in a particular cultural context can or should be perceived as aesthetic. In the anthology Komparative Ästhetik (2001), cultural philosopher Rolf Elberfeld summarized the contemporary tasks of intercultural aesthetics the contents of intercultural aesthetics refer not only to the construction of ­general theories, but first of all to the understanding of beauty, aesthetic experience and arts in respective traditions. Through the comparative analysis, it 13 14 15 16

Majetschak, Stefan. 2019. Wittgenstein und die Folgen. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, p.87. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, and Schulte, Joachim (Hg.). 2003. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Auf der Grundlage der kritisch-genetischen Edition neu herausgegeben. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, p.65. Ibid, p.66. Majetschak, Stefan. 2018. Aesthetic judgments and their Cultural Grounding Considerations about the Problem of Ascribing Aesthetic Concepts to Works of Art. In: Feger, Hans; Xie, Dikun; Wang, Ge (Hg.). Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy: Aesthetics and Life-World. Berlin: De Gruyter Verlag, 269–281.

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can be seen that for the above phenomena, there are different divisions and weights in different traditions, which do not have to be compatible with each other.17 Elberfeld’s view is based on the doctrine of sensuality in the broad sense. On this basis, the purpose of intercultural aesthetics lies not only in the construction of general theories, but also in the empirical investigation of aesthetic practices in respective cultures. The relevant themes involve the comparison of the understanding of aesthetic phenomena (beauty, aesthetic experience, arts, etc.) in different traditions, which are both compatible and incompatible. Based on this foundation, the aesthetics of atmosphere would promote interculturally oriented aesthetics through the following aspects: corporeal experience, aesthetic fields beyond beauty, and the intertwining of art and everyday experience. As far as the aesthetic communication between Europe and East Asia is concerned, Elberfeld pointed out: Europeans’ view of Asia and Asians’ view of Europe would almost inevitably cause the development of comparative aesthetics based on the understanding of respective aesthetic traditions.18 The comparative approach allows us to find that the aesthetic scopes and focuses of East and West are not necessarily compatible. European culture was largely influenced by vision, which led to a series of related philosophical terms: concept, judgment, reflection, insight, etc. In contrast, in East Asian culture, corporeal experience played a more significant role. As a result, poetic and lyrical forms were well developed. Vision is more connected with substance and entity, while corporeal perception refers more to events and processes. Therefore, in East Asia, the sensory way of discovering and designing the world obviously differs from that in Europe. Aoki Takao pointed out, ‘The contemporary aesthetic consciousness and arts of East Asia were notably shaped by their cultural exchanges with Western Europe, especially after the middle of the 19th century. [...] Moreover, we must also consider the historical and regional integrity and diversity of the various cultures of East Asia. [...] It is necessary to appreciate both the commonalities between the various cultures of these regions, as well as the unique differences of each region’.19

17

Elberfeld, Rolf. 2000. Komparative Ästhetik – Eine Hinführung. In: Elberfeld, Rolf; ­ ohlfart, Günter (Hg.). Komparative Ästhetik. Künste und ästhetische Erfahrungen W zwischen Asien und Europa. Köln: edition, chōra, 9–25. 18 Ibid. 19 Aoki, Takao: The conception for the round table “The Transformation and Integrity of East Asian Aesthetics and Artistic Cultures: A double comparative perspective of East and West, and of intercultural trajectories within East Asia itself” of the 21st International Congress for Aesthetics in Belgrade, 2019.

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6 Conclusion Culturality, interculturality and transculturality are, in fact, three closely related aspects in the process of human civilization – The uniqueness of each culture shows the necessity for intercultural communication, while transcultural phenomena are the results of intercultural communication. In this sense, interculturality is at the intersection of culturality and transculturality and thereby is dedicated to co-existence, understanding and communication. In the global context, the aesthetics of each culture shows an ever-transforming communication space characterized by interaction, overlap, and intertwining. As Böhme pointed out – we will continue to investigate the aesthetic differences between cultures, but this investigation is increasingly relevant to classical fields. By contrast, contemporary aesthetics is largely intercultural. Now, a general question What is aesthetics? might be meaningless. The decisive issues would be rather how the aesthetic realities are constructed in respective cultural atmospheres and how the transcultural atmospheres arise from their interaction. However, transculturality is not exclusively a feature of modern society. From a historical perspective, each cultural structure is not an autonomous and closed sphere. In contrast, there is always an interaction between cultures. For example, transculturality in architecture, urban planning and design has received a strong boost so that their aesthetic styles have long been in a transculturally oriented adjustment process.

Chapter 11

Practice, Reflection and Inspiration of Art Involvement in Community Revitalization in Japan Yongjian Wang Ever since the beginning of the new millennium, China has been experiencing an economic take-off, together with a significantly enhanced national strength. However, this is also accompanied by accelerated urbanization – a large number of migrant workers have come to cities to work, leading to a significant decrease in rural population and resulting in an increasingly severe problem called ‘rural hollowing’. Along with this process, the rural culture, which is born and handed down on the rural soil, has been losing its inheritors and facing the risk of being lost forever. The countryside has become problematic now. At the same time, the rapid development of urbanization and the diversification of the social environment have also produced a series of ‘urban diseases’. Now both the Central Government and local governments are seeking solutions to these problems. For example, the Central Government has issued a number of policies and regulations on ‘rural revitalization’ and the orderly development of cities, showing that it has really attached great importance to these problems. In local areas, some farsighted artists, architects and anthropologists walk into the countryside and participate in the rural construction, giving us various cases for study. Of course, everything is now at the exploratory stage, with many issues waiting to be discussed. Japan, our neighbour, has been consciously working on community revitalization since very early, and has gained rich experience in this regard, which is quite helpful to our rural construction, as the work they have done is quite similar to what we are doing right now in China. So how has the community revitalization been developing in Japan? Are there any successful cases that we can learn from? How is the relationship between art and community culture and residents handled in the process of community revitalization? How are the cultural heritages of communities treated? And what reflections and inspirations does it bring us? With such questions, the author applied to Japan Foundation for initiating a research project, and luckily the research plan submitted received the support from Japan Foundation. From September 10, 2019 to February 9, 2020, the author carried out a five-month collaborative research on ‘community revitalization and cultural heritage protection’ with © Yongjian Wang, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_013

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Prof. Masahiro Ogino, a well-known Japanese sociologist, in Kwansei Gakuin University. During this period, the author consulted academic literatures on community revitalization and also investigated the cases of art involvement in community revitalization in Setouchi International Art Festival, Echigo-­ Tsumari Art Field, and Koganecho Bazaar, hoping to find the answers to the above questions through literature study and field work. 1

Development Process of Community Revitalization in Japan

The concept of ‘community revitalization’ originated in Japan. It refers to continuous building activities carried out by Japanese residents or residents to communities in a self-organized manner through effective utilization of the capital and cultural resources in their communities after World War II, which have played an important role in the post-war community reconstruction in Japan. The Japan Institute of Architects defines ‘community revitalization’ as a series of continuous activities carried out to gradually improve the living environment of residents based on the existing resources of the local society and through participation and collaboration of various parties, with a view to making the community more vital and charming and improving the quality of life.1 This definition tells us that utilizing community resources is the foundation, and that recreating charm and improving the quality of life are the main goals of community revitalization. To better understand the connotation of this concept, now let us review the development process of community revitalization in Japan. The regional development policies in Japan started with the Comprehensive National Land Development Act. Enacted in 1950, it acted as the basic law for the formulation of development plans and various regional development and maintenance plans. In 2005, it was revised to National Land Use Planning Act, on the basis of balanced development of national land. Afterwards, it is reviewed every seven to ten years to evaluate the framework of post-war land use. In fact, the concept of community development in Japan gradually flourished along with the process of agriculture, industry and urbanization. In the period from 1960 to the mid-1970s, Japan saw rapid economic growth. In 1961, the Agricultural Basic Law was promulgated, marking the full implementation of agricultural modernization in Japan, and along with this, agricultural mechanization was quickly popularized across the country. The increase in 1 Yukio, Nishimura. 2007. Recreating a Charming Hometown: The Story of Rebirth of a Traditional Japanese Neighborhood, trans. by Huijun Wang. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, p.19.

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mechanization released a large number of agricultural populations, who were then attracted to cities due to the development of industrialization, so with the rapid development of the economy, more and more people came to cities from rural areas, ‘hollowing’ lots of rural communities. According to the data provided by the World Bank, the rural population accounted for 37% of the total population in Japan in 1957, but in 2017, this figure dropped to as low as 6%, showing that population tended to leave rural areas in the process of modernization.2 This phenomenon is very similar to what China has been experiencing with the increase of agricultural mechanization since the mid-1990s – a large number of migrant workers have been moving to urban areas for work, hollowing the countryside. Under this context, the Japanese government proposed the concept of community revitalization, and promulgated the Law to Promote the Introduction of Industries to Rural Regions in 1971 to attract rural populations to return to hometowns for employment. At the same time, the concept of agricultural tourism began to emerge. Many rural communities have built agricultural sightseeing parks, agricultural history museums and farming experience areas, etc. to attract tourists, enabling farmers to earn considerable income. The implementation of these measures has changed the look of these communities, and recovered the rural population to a certain extent, but has not fundamentally solved the problem. Later, with the economic bubble in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Japanese rural communities ran into trouble again - a large number of agricultural sightseeing parks and resorts went bankrupt. The Japanese government began to reflect on the crux of this problem and issued the Allotment Garden Promotion Act (1990) and the Law on Promotion of Tourism and Leisure Activities in Rural Areas (1995), etc., to provide legal and institutional support for the revitalization of rural communities. The connection between art and communities began with the ‘Urban Sculpture Development’ project initiated in the 1960s. After that, with the development of public art, many art projects began to enter local communities. Through 40 years of development, numerous art projects have been established in communities. Since 2000, community revitalization has spread all over Japan rapidly, which has been reported by different media and received attention from all walks of life. In the book Art Festivals and Regional Revitalization: From Voluntary Acceptance of Art Festivals to Cooperative Development of Inherent Resources, the author Yoshida Takayuki divides art festivals into ‘urban art festivals’ organized in metropolises and ‘local art festivals’ organized 2 Cf. http://k.sina.com.cn/article_1990953592_76ab8a78001008y rh.html.

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in under-populated remote areas. According to the author’s statistics, out of the art festivals held from 2016 to 2019, 13 ones cost more than 100 million yen each, showing the large scale of these festivals. At the same time, the Japanese government successively promulgated acts and laws such as the Landscape Act (2004) and the Tourism-based Country Promotion Basic Act (2007) to support the development of community revitalization. Many cases of community revitalization in Japan are carried out in the form of ‘art festival’. Through the use of communities’ historical, natural and cultural resources and by means of art, some declined community cultures, such as those in so-called marginalized communities like hollow communities and remote islands, are re-activated. Contemporary artists are invited into communities from around the world and given space and all kinds of support so that they can freely create works here. After the works are completed, they will be displayed during art festivals in the spring and autumn of each year. This will attract both domestic and international tourists, who will help promote community reconstruction through consumer activities and thereby revitalize these communities. 2 Fieldwork on Three Cases of Art Involvement in Community Revitalization During the fieldwork, the author focused on cases of art involvement in community revitalization, mainly because Japan has in recent years achieved significant results and accumulated rich experience in the use of contemporary art for community revitalization. This study can provide some experience and inspiration for the practice of community revitalization in China. After a review of related Japanese literature and discussions with Prof. Masahiro Ogino, the author decided to take three cases – Setouchi International Art Festival, Echigo-Tsumari Art Field, and Koganecho Bazaar – as the study objects. The main reasons are as follows: First, these three cases are representative from the perspective of geography and community environment. The Setouchi International Art Festival is held in an archipelago with an area of 19,700 square kilometers in the Seto Inland Sea, representing the community revitalization in the island areas of Japan; the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field is held in the mountainous area of Tokamachi City and Tsunan Town, Niigata Prefecture, representing the community revitalization in the mountainous regions of Japan; the Koganecho Area is located in Yokohama, representing the community revitalization in Japanese cities. Secondly, these three cases all have great influences in Japan and around the world – every year, a large number of domestic and international tourists participate in art festival activities. The

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hosting of such art festivals has changed the look of these communities, so these are all successful and typical cases that we can learn from. 2.1 Setouchi International Art Festival The Seto Inland Sea, located between Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu, has been a strategic transportation route in Japan since ancient times. However, with the rapid economic growth in Japan since the 1960s, large-scale industrial development in the Setouchi region has caused serious pollution, leading to the deterioration of the ecological environment. In addition, with the population aging, and the fishery resources depleted, many islands have been left uninhabited or even become garbage islands. Since 2010, the Setouchi International Art Festival has been held every three years, and for four times so far. Initially, seven islands mainly participated in the art festival, namely Toshima, Naoshima, Ogijima, Megijima, Shodoshima, Inujima and Oshima. Later, the scale kept expanding to 12 islands and two port cities – Takamatsu and Uno. The community revitalization of the Setouchi Islands began with the reflection on the status of the communities. Facing the long declined islands, people at that time were trying to find a way to get the population back and also attract young people to start businesses there, with a view to recovering the communities’ traditional culture and lifestyle. Under the organization of the Setouchi Art International Festival Ecutive Committee and with the joint support of the government and the consortium, they have finally found the way, that is, using contemporary art as a form to show the charm of marine civilization and islands and present the history and culture of the communities. This is a sustainable ecological road – the art festival has not only attracted a large number of tourists for sightseeing and consumption, activating the island economy, but also recovered the lost population and attracted young people to start businesses there. Naoshima is the earliest island that carried out community revitalization among the Setouchi Islands. Since modern times, this island has relied on four major industries – agriculture, fishery, shipping and salt production. In 1957, a travel and tourism committee was established in the Island Town Council, which conducted a series of investigations, formulated a development plan and reviewed and re-identified the cultural and tourism resources. Naoshima’s cultural projects began in the mid-1980s, which utilized the natural landscape in the south of the region, trying to make tourism a pillar industry. In 1988, the concept of ‘Naoshima Cultural Village’ was proposed, the purpose of which was to create a place where people’s creativity could be cultivated. This creativity originates from the exchanges between children, elderly people, artists and entrepreneurs with different cultural backgrounds. Later, the cultural

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undertaking centered around contemporary art and themed on the integration of people, nature, art, and architecture was also developed on the basis of this philosophy and has continued up to this day. According to Mr. Fram Kitagawa, General Director of the Setouchi International Art Festival, the most important philosophy for the art event is the combination of history, folklore, artistic skills and sacrificial rituals of the Setouchi Islands with contemporary art, architecture and performing arts. Art and architecture are powerful tools that can draw people to the Setouchi region and allow them to discover the unique history, culture and landscape. Each community has its unique identity, which is rooted in its history and culture, and reflected in its local customs, arts, crafts, occupations, folklore, festivals and architectural heritage that have been passed down from generation to generation. In this art festival, people of all ages from various occupations and geographical regions are gathered together, integrating their wisdom in art, architecture, science, culture, philosophy and international exchange, injecting new vitality into the Setouchi region. The purpose of the art festival is to inspire local initiatives and inter-island cooperation, so as to promote local sustainable development and revitalize the region. The contemporary art works are created by artists together with residents. These works are full of residents’ lifestyles and life experience. Through these landscape works, the residents can see the places where they live. In fact, the art festival is a reproduction of collective memories presented in the form of contemporary art. Some works involve places that are closely related to the local community residents, such as shrines and old houses. Typical examples include the ‘Art House Project’ created with a 200-year-old mansion in Naoshima, Teshima Yokoo House, and Aoki Noe’s work which uses the shrines in central Teshima. In addition, there are also works that make use of the island’s natural landscape and resources, such as the ‘Spring’ exhibited in the Teshima Art Museum. By utilizing the natural spring water resources of Teshima, the artists designed the interior floor of the museum to be high in the surrounding area and low in the center, and also left many bean-sized spring holes on the floor, so that when the spring water overflows from the spring holes, it will naturally flow downhill and converge, forming a variety of shapes. The flowing spring water is the whole landscape and the artwork. Many visitors appreciate this by kneeling or lying on the ground. This is completely natural art, full of poetry and philosophy. The common feature of these works is that they are closely connected to the local history and the specific local resources (old houses, shrines and natural resources), and that they cannot be separated from the sites where they are located. To appreciate these works of art, one has to go into the local environment. This has also been a change in people’s

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Table 11.1  Statistics of the Setouchi International Art Festival in previous years3

Year

2010 2013 2016 2019

Duration (days)

105 108 108 107

Number of exhibits

 95 233 216 220

Number of tourists (10,000 persons) 94 107 104 117.8

aesthetic tendency in recent years, that is, people are beginning to take a keen interest in the arts related to their daily life and the art works created based on the historical and cultural environments of the communities. Such change is clearly reflected in the increasing number of participating artists and tourists on these islands, as shown in Table 11.1. Of course, it took a process for the community residents to take in the involvement of contemporary art. At first, they regarded contemporary art as strange, because first they could not understand these transplanted abstract contemporary arts; and second, they saw no clear connection between these art works and their life and thus could not feel related. However, as artists actively involved themselves in local community life and interacted with the residents, and also integrated local historical, natural, and cultural resources into their artistic creation, a change of attitude started to show from these community residents, because they saw the elements of their community history and daily life in these works of contemporary art and gradually understood these works. Today, residents of these communities have considered contemporary art as an important resource for local community development and also a representative community cultural symbol that they are proud of. 2.2 Echigo-Tsumari Art Field Echigo-Tsumari, located northwest of Tokyo, is a mountainous snowy region with an area of 760 square kilometers, covering Tokamachi and Tsunan in the south of Niigata Prefecture. The region is larger than the total area of the 23 wards in Tokyo, and it is only 2 hours drive from Tokyo. There were already people living there in the Jomon period some 4000 years ago. The profound historical culture and the unique geographical environment gave birth to the 3 Data source: the official website of Setouchi International Art Festival: https://setouchi -artfest.jp.

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typical Japanese tradition – the Satoyama culture. However, since the 1970s, along with the development of urbanization and industrialization, a large number of people outflowed, significantly decreasing the local population and leading to serious aging and ‘rural hollowing’ problems. According to official statistics, in the 2005 national census in Japan, the total population of the Echigo-Tsumari region was 73,777, a decrease of 40% compared with that fifty years ago. The most prominent population reduction occurred in Matsunoyama and Matsushiro, which was 70% in total. The elderly population over the age of 65 accounted for more than 30% of the total population, and in Matsunoyama and Matsushiro, this proportion was even over 40%. In these bleak and sparsely populated communities, community development and cultural inheritance have encountered great challenges. In 1996, Niigata Prefecture formulated the Niigata New Plan, which proposed the organization of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Trienniale, and established a ten-year local revitalization fund, bringing hope to the revival of the communities. This was a regional revitalization undertaking initiated and funded by local government. After that, 122 municipalities were merged into 14 wide-area regions, and a ten-year local business development policy was implemented to promote regional development. The organizing committee engaged the wellknown Japanese art exhibition planner Prof. Fram Kitagawa as the general director of Echigo-Tsumari Art Field, who has been planning for this art festival since 1997. With revitalizing the communities as the goal, this art festival has successfully introduced contemporary art into the countryside and has taken it as a means of reconstructing rural communities. The Echigo-Tsumari International Art Festival began in 2000 and is held every three years thereafter. As of this year, seven art festivals have been successfully held. As the world’s largest international outdoor art festival, it uses farmland as the stage and art as the bridge to connect people and nature, trying to explore the inheritance and development of regional culture, and revitalize the rural areas that are aging and declining in the process of modernization. The art festival is intended to integrate the power of contemporary art, the wisdom of local people, and the resources of the communities to rejuvenate the declining rural areas. The philosophy of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field is ‘to embrace the nature’. Based on the traditions of Satoyama and the ancestors in the Jomon Period, this art festival has broken the constraints of geography, age and background culture, and established a new model that keeps the sustainable development of communities. The art festival organizing committee encourages artists to conduct field work in local communities, get familiar with the local environment, and work with the elderly in the countryside and also young volunteers from around the world. So far, more than 200 works of art have been created,

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Table 11.2  Statistics of Echigo-Tsumari Art Field in previous years4

Year

2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 2015 2018

Duration Operating expense for Number of Number of tourists Economic income (days) executive committee exhibits (10,000 persons) (100 million yen) (100 million yen) 50 50 50 50 50 50 51

5.5 4.3 6.5 5.8 4.8 6.2 6.6

153 220 334 365 367 378 378

16.28 20.51 34.9 37.53 48.88 51.07 54.84

 127.6 188.4  56.8  33.7  46.5  50.9  53.9

displayed in villages, fields, empty houses and deserted schools, etc. For example, there are a large number of deserted houses in the Echigo-Tsumari region, so many artists convert these deserted houses into works of art in an artistic way to rediscover and develop the values of these houses. Representative works include the ‘Shedding House’, which took Junichi Kurakake and students Nihon University College of Art Sculpture Course to complete, the ‘Golden Tea House’ by Ryo Toyofuku, ‘Another Singularity’ by Anthony Gomley and ‘House Memory’ by Chiharu Shiota, and so on. These works are full of contemporary art style and have also cleverly used and integrated local cultural customs and heritage. They are the works of community harmony and coexistence, and have been highly recognized by both local people and tourists as they allow them to feel the connection among people, between people and things as well as between people and land again. As shown in Table 11.2, since the launch of Echigo-Tsumari Art Field, the seven triennales have received more than 2.64 million tourists and earned an income of more than 55.7 billion yen. The first two triennales were mainly funded by the government, but in the third triennale, the financial support of the Niigata Prefecture Government was reduced to one-third of the total costs incurred by the artists. As the influence of the triennale continues to increase, the number of tourists keeps on rising, and the income gained from ticket and product sales is already able to cover part of the operating fund. Since the fourth triennale in 2009, the Japan Agency for Cultural Affairs has 4 Data source: Yoshida Takayuki. 2019. Art Festival and Community Development. Suiyosha Publishing Inc, p.72.

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funded the art festival. In addition, many companies and consortia have also joined the sponsoring team, such as Japan Railways, Benesse Group and BMW, etc. Therefore, the Art Festival has obtained stable financial support to help it achieve long-term sustainable development. The number of exhibits displayed at the triennale is increasing year by year, and more and more famous artists are being attracted from all over the world to participate in this event. For example, in the 2018 triennale, 378 exhibits created by 335 groups of artists from 44 countries and regions were displayed, which is enough to demonstrate the great international influence of this art festival. The value of this art festival is that it integrates the powers of government, community and commerce to move the elegant contemporary art from art galleries and museums to public space and inject it into people’s daily life, which can activate the public resource value of art, and foster community culture and public feelings. It has also driven the development of local industries like tourism, catering, leisure and education. Many young people have returned to their hometowns to run restaurants, cafes and small shops at their own will, which has revitalized the long-declined communities. 2.3 Koganecho Bazaar Koganecho is located in Naka Ward of Yokohama, only 50 kilometers from Tokyo. Historically, Kaneko flourished with the opening of the Yokohama Port. In 1871, the community was officially named Koganecho. In 1872, the first railway between Yokohama and Shinbashi opened, passing through this community. Kanekocho is only one kilometer from the Yokohama Station, so the opening of the railway made it more prosperous. In 1945, the U.S. military took over the Port of Yokohama, and in the next decade, a large population gathered in this area. With the rapid economic development in Japan and the construction of the Shinkansen high-speed railway in the 1960s, a lot of space was formed around the stations and under the railway bridges, and a large number of shops and restaurants were running there. However, the commercial prosperity also fostered illegal immigration and prostitution. Many illegitimate soaplands were running there, worsening the public security environment of the community. In view of this situation, the community set up an environmental purification promotion committee in 2003 in an attempt to rectify the chaos and revitalize the community. In 2004, Yokohama proposed the idea of ‘­building a creative city’, and Koganecho was included as part of the creative city plan. The government demolished some illegal restaurants (mainly privately built tent restaurants), cleaned up the soaplands, and signed a ten-year lease contract with the railway company for the space under the railway bridge. In 2005, the

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Community Development Promotion Group was established, and various organizations such as the local government, community residents, and the police worked together to maintain the safety of the community. The space under the railway bridge was assigned by the government to a non-­governmental and non-profit organization Koganecho Management Center1 for organization, coordination and operation. This NPO is responsible for communicating with the government and the community and also for maintaining the daily operation of the Koganecho Art District. The preparations for Koganecho Bazaar started in 2005. In 2006, the art base ‘BankART’ was opened. In 2007, the students of Yokohama National University and Kanagawa University put forward the idea of building studios in the space under the railway bridge, hoping to carry out community revitalization by means of art. The executive committee engaged Mr. Yamano Shingo, one of the directors of the Yokohama Triennale, as the Art Director of Koganecho Bazaar. The art district has implemented a space use program called ‘AIR’, which includes long-term and short-term projects. Long-term projects are to provide space for artists who can create art works in this space for a long period of time, usually more than one year. Short-term projects refer to short-term residency (usually three months) or short-term venue rental services for exhibitions and local events. The first two art studios were Kogane Studio and Hinode Studio. At the same time, the NGO Koganecho Area Management Center summarized a set of methods for artist management and service, such as providing space for invited artists free of charge, but the management center required the artists to conduct field work in the Koganecho community and communicate and interact with local residents within the 2–3 months, and that the works created must contain local features. The artists’ works were exhibited at Koganecho Bazaar and recognized by local residents. At the same time, the management center also opened the Koganecho Art School, and invited resident artists or writers to give lectures there, aiming to provide art classes for residents and children in the community. This has encouraged local residents to actively participate in the community-organized activities and helped form a new relationship between contemporary art and the community. The first Koganecho Bazaar opened in 2008. The buildings which used to be illegal restaurants and soaplands are rebuilt and used as art studios and public community space. The Koganecho art district holds the art festival each year, inviting artists from all over the world there to create works. Up to now, artists from more than 50 countries and regions around the world, including China, Indonesia, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines, have settled in the Koganecho art district. The project aims to revitalize the community by rebuilding it into an urban art district and achieve sustainable

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Table 11.3  Statistics of the Koganecho Bazaar in previous years5

Year

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Duration (days)

Number of participating artists Number of tourists (groups) (10,000 persons)

81 27 32 83 59 62 89 30 32 88 33 39

24  9 39 32 33 16 39 21 56 26 37 23

10 1 1.5 9.25 2.08 1.44 4.34 1.25 1.35 3.87 1.29 1.72

community development. In the exhibition spaces there, people can see not only the works of resident artists, but also those of famous artists at home and abroad. Moreover, the art works are not only displayed in exhibition spaces such as art galleries and studios, but also created and displayed in everyday living spaces, such as community streets, facades and public spaces under the railway bridge. As of this year, Koganecho Bazaar has been successfully held for 12 times, and Koganecho has become a well-known urban art district and online famous tourist destination, receiving a large number of tourists from all over the world every year (see Table 11.3), and through this process, the look of the community has been fundamentally changed.5 3

Reflections and Inspirations

3.1 Reflections We should be vigilant against communities being taken over by art and properly handle the relationship between art and local community culture and residents. Communities may be revitalized and developed, but new problems 5 Data source: Annual Business Report of Koganecho Certified Nonprofit Organization Koganecho Area Management Center.

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will also emerge. People are concerned that communities and art will overuse each other. Artists have a strong sense of being elite. How do local community residents feel about it? How is the relationship coordinated between artists and community residents? In future development, how should the relationship between community and art be coordinated? These are the questions to consider in the process of art involvement in community revitalization. In the book A Sociological Study of Art and Community Development: Memory and Creativity of Naoshima, Oshima and Echigo-Tsumari, Miyamoto Yuka puts forward a reflective question: ‘is art involvement the trump card of community revitalization?’ With the establishment of many art projects in communities, new problems are also emerging. From the perspective of the communities, people are starting to worry that the traditional cultural expressions of the communities are being weakened and that the communities are becoming a tool for expression of contemporary art. Fan Wanzhen, a well-known director of art exhibitions and art critic in Taiwan, uses the title of Borrowed Place, Borrowed Art in one of its review articles on Japanese art festivals, expressing his concern about such art events. He questions whether contemporary art could be integrated into the local communities and recognized by the locals, whether this form of art involvement can exert a globalized effect, and whether it can provoke the thoughts of the locals. The author finds these concerns quite reasonable. To solve this problem, we must start with respecting the subjective initiatives of local culture and community residents. In the process of art design and creation, public opinion must be fully sought. Koichi Miyoshi proposed the concept of ‘community design’. He believes that ‘communities must be reconstructed and developed by the locals according to the local standards for community development and local people’s living and community needs, and based on local values, visions, and norms. Each area has its own cultural environment and there is no universal standard for community development, so it is necessary to determine and evaluate the local experience and resources, design the community and promote local development according to the specific standards of each area’.6 With this concept in mind, good results can be expected. We should be alert to the impact of contemporary art on community cultural heritage and properly handle the relationship between the two. The long-­ existing cultural heritage of a community is already being gradually lost with the decline of the community, and the introduction of contemporary art, which has strong visual impacts and leading values, in the process of community 6 Koichi Miyoshi. 2017. Regional Resources and Community Design. Koyo Shobo, pp.2–3.

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revitalization will inevitably bring certain impacts on the cultural heritage of the community. The relationship between the two should be properly handled, and any improper handling will accelerate the loss of cultural heritage. Therefore, while introducing contemporary art, we must also pay attention to formulating correct guiding principles in top-level design. When contemporary artists settle in, they should systematically investigate the cultural heritage of the community and have an idea about its status. In art creation, the existing cultural heritage of the community should be integrated and utilized to create contemporary art works that can represent the cultural characteristics of the community, so as to achieve the purpose of cultural heritage protection. We should encourage more art criticism. Through research on the three cases of art festivals, it is found that art criticism is apparently not enough compared with the number of art projects which is increasing year by year. The sponsor should invite a number of high-level art critics to visit the art projects and give objective evaluations. On the one hand, these art criticisms can provide a reference for the selection of art projects for the next art festival; on the other hand, they can also be used as guidance for tourists on how to appreciate the art works. 3.2 Inspirations Break the traditional art display form, allow art to be integrated into daily life, activate the public effect of art and create an international art language. In community revitalization, Japan has introduced contemporary art. It has invited not only local artists, but also those from all over the world, and had art works integrated into society and people’s daily life to activate the public effect of art, which is to truly serve people’s life and aesthetics. It has broken the stereotype and traditional paradigm that art is only displayed in galleries and museums, and expanded the spatial range of contemporary art. It can be said that the more creative and innovative the art works are, the more attractive they will become. In 1967, Arts Magazine published a feature article entitled ‘The Death of Galleries’, summarizing many authors’ articles and opinions. Critics believe that storing works in a museum is like burying them in a cemetery, and they hope to reduce the distance between art works and daily life and restore their social function. Artists should interact with social development and community development. They should develop local cultural resources jointly with local residents. When taking part in the projects, residents can use the works to tell visitors about their memories and visualize their living habits to ensure their independence. It is a process where residents change perceptions by interacting with visitors. Different from those displayed in the traditional ways, these

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art works, displayed outside art galleries and museums, are true arts integrated into society and life. They can activate the public effect of art, and interact more closely with society, thus generating lasting values in a bigger range. Respect community residents’ subjective initiatives, and establish ‘expert workshops’ and ‘resident-participating workshops’. This means that professional research teams should be established to conduct social investigations in the revitalized communities, listen to the opinions and demands of local residents and government departments, study the problems existing in the communities and their future visions, analyse the problems and propose design solutions and ideas. The workflow is mainly as follows: (1) collect the basic community information such as its history, culture and folklore; (2) assign the work team to conduct field work to collect further information; (3) hold resident-participating workshops to collect public opinions; (4) analyse the location and environment of the community and issue an analysis report; (5) propose a specific design plan for community revitalization; (6) report to the public and government departments, solicit their opinions, and then revise and finalize the implementation plan. For example, the executive committee of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field held over 2000 meetings with villagers 4 years before the art event was started. During the preparatory phase of the Koganecho Bazzar, the executive committee also held more than 1,000 workshops with the community residents. Through such solid public opinion collection, the ideas and thoughts of community residents have been respected and adopted. It can be said that only by respecting the subjectivity of the locals, having a whole picture of the local problems and maintaining a closer relationship with residents can we arouse the enthusiasm of local residents in participation and ensure the smooth progress of event organization. Establish a number of NPO s (non-profit organizations) for rural construction. In Japan, most NPO s are volunteer teams or affiliates set up by the government. As an independent organization, an NPO can effectively communicate with the government, communities and residents. The activities carried out by an NPO are closely related to the daily life of the residents, thereby forming a new type of mutual assistance and cooperation relationship with the government in the process of community revitalization. Although it is not easy to maintain its own operations, an NPO that can independently generate income must be indispensable to future social development. In Japan, NPO s have been essential to community revitalization - from the perspective of historical development, they have been playing an increasingly extensive and active role, from initiating historic district protection campaigns and participating in the government’s legislation, to promoting the implementation of community revitalization regulations.

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Ensure the orderly development of communities through legislation. In the process of community revitalization in Japan, targeted legislation will be made according to different periods and different issues to avoid problems in a timely manner. At the same time, legislation will increase the enthusiasm of community residents and returning residents, so as to achieve the orderly development of community revitalization. 4

Concluding Remarks

In the era of globalization, with the rapid development of the Internet and the information revolution, people’s lifestyles and ways of thinking are changing, and they tend to pursue convenience and engaging experience. In the information society, mass information keeps emerging, widening people’s vision and giving them more choices, so their ways of thinking are also changing accordingly. Under this context, information is communicated and shared much faster and smoother, art and life are getting closer and people are becoming more enthusiastic in participating in new art forms and life styles, which gives more possibilities for art involvement in community revitalization. Through investigation and study of three cases in Japan, this chapter attempts to express from the conceptual level that art is the visual expression of culture and the representation of local cultural symbols. Nowadays creating new cultural landscapes through art projects has formed a new driving force for community development, and this new trend has aroused great interest among community residents. It is a process where the natural and humanistic environments of a community are inspired and utilized as resources by contemporary art and then presented as art works to promote local community development. It has provided new ideas for community reconstruction, created new lifestyles and values, and changed the lives of locals. This has inspired us in many ways. For example, we should break the traditional art display paradigm, integrate art into our daily life and create an international art language; respect the subjective initiative of community residents, and develop ‘expert workshops’ and ‘resident-participating workshops’; establish a number of NPO s (non-profit organizations) for rural construction; and guarantee the orderly development of communities through legislation. Of course, in this process, we should properly handle the relationship between art and local community culture and residents and also encourage more art criticisms. With the continuous practice and research of art involvement in community revitalization, more cases will emerge, and more theories and experience will be developed and summarized, which we are looking forward to.

PART 4 The Rise of Chinese Aesthetics

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Chapter 12

Identity and Hybridity – Chinese Culture and Aesthetics in the Age of Globalization Karl-Heinz Pohl 1

Introduction: Culture and Identity1

Thirty years ago (1977), Thomas Metzger published a book which became well known in Sinological circles: Escape from Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China’s Evolving Political Culture. In this book, Metzger discusses a serious problem that Chinese scholars were confronted with at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century: the modernization of China without giving up two thousand years of culturally valuable Confucian teachings. From the 1920s on, Confucian thought was replaced by Marxist ideology and, with the beginning of the Peoples’ Republic in 1949, the latter was firmly established as the new order of discourse. Metzger argues persuasively, however, in spite of the new leftist ideology that poured into China after the May Fourth Movement of 1919, that Confucianism was not relegated to the museum of History of Philosophy in China as Joseph Levenson (in his Confucian China and its Modern Fate, 1958) had predicted. Instead, Confucian thought – as an integral part of the Chinese cultural psyche – survived and remained influential, though not visible, in shaping modern China. Even radicals of that time, such as Mao Tse-tung, although they attempted to give China a completely new ideological order, were formed by their cultural tradition in such a way that it also influenced their political action.2 The above historical example is significant for our theme. It concerns the question of persistence of culture in the face of cultural encounters – both of the hostile kind, such as the first ‘clash of civilizations’ between China and the West in the 19th century (after the Opium Wars), as well as of the latest and somewhat more amicable sort, the process of mingling and interpenetration of 1 An earlier version of this article appeared in: Antoon van den Braembussche, Heinz Kimmerle and Nicole Nolte (eds): Intercultural Aesthetics. A Worldview Perspective, Springer 2009, p. 87-104. 2 For this phenomenon see also Yü-sheng Lin, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness. Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth Era, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979. © Karl-Heinz Pohl, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_014

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cultures called globalization.3 Hence, the significance of culture and cultural identity in the age of globalization remains an issue to be addressed. In present day debates, we find a variety of opinions on this question – all reflect, in one way or the other, the broader and much contended issue of ‘global’ vs. ‘local’ or universalism vs. particularism (or cultural relativism). Whereas some postmodern theoreticians assume that culture, generally, will become a museum piece, others claim that it is no longer politically correct – in an age of global assimilation and universal standards (such as human rights) – to speak of national cultures. They warn of the trap of essentialism, point to the rise of fundamentalism and terrorism and advise, instead, to focus on hybridity, migration, multiple identities and cross-overs – in short, the US immigrant experience and ideology of the melting pot on a global scale. Other critics again, who do not belong to the postmodernist camp, object that the notion of a global hybrid humanity, however politically correct it may be, might meet certain difficulties in practice. Michael Walzer, for example, warns: Societies are necessarily particular because they have members and memories, members with memories not only of their own but also of their common life. Humanity, by contrast, has members, but no memory, and so it has no history and no culture, no customary practices, no familiar life-ways, no festivals, no shared understanding of social good.4 Can we thus still speak of culture and cultural identity in this new context? Another question is, though, whether people in other parts of the world, let’s say in the Arabian countries, in African countries, India, Oceania or China, share the (post-)modern Western man’s (and woman’s) anxieties to speak assertively about culture. Or is the postmodern focus on hybridity and multiple identities not something that belongs solely to the postindustrial and increasingly multicultural Western societies – a discourse that doesn’t have much relevance to people who have not ventured from these regions to the new promised lands of Western civilization? Walzer only talks about the shared understanding of the ‘social good’ but what about the shared understanding of art and aesthetics? Aesthetics, as an epistemic discipline, is part and parcel of sciences and humanities which, 3 This is, however, only one side of globalization. As is well known, there is a dialectics of globalization at work bringing forth equally strong forces of localization such as the rising fundamentalism in many corners of the world. 4 Michael Walzer, 1994. Thick and Thin. Moral Argument at Home and Abroad. Notre Dame, Ind./London, p. 8.

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though set up by Western academics, have now become systems with universal or global significance. But other than in natural sciences such as physics, where there can only be one global and common to all forms, there are still significant differences in humanistic disciplines such as philosophy, literature or aesthetics as well as in the arts, for they are much more bound to social conditions and developments in the respective countries. Arts and aesthetics form particularly significant parts of a culture: Apart from language, the cultural framework of myths, images, allusions as well as references to literature, art, religion and philosophy, in short, the symbolic and aesthetic orientation (shared literary or artistic sensibilities) have, thus far, formed the basis of any cultural identity. In the following, the way of Chinese aesthetics shall be pursued – integrating today’s discussions about culture and identity – from the traditional into the modern period. The first section deals with the main characteristics of traditional Chinese aesthetics which were (and often still are) considered to be the basis of a Chinese cultural identity. In the second, the position of modern Chinese aesthetics shall be explored with reference to new debates about Chinese culture in the context of postmodernism and globalization. In the third and final section, the tension between Chinese tradition and Western modernity will be exemplified by a work of Dong Wei, a surrealistic artist now living in the US. His work shall illustrate the cross-cultural and postmodern characteristics of dislocation and cultural hybridity in modern Chinese art. 2

Traditional Chinese Aesthetics

‘Traditional Chinese aesthetics’ is a modern perspective on pre-modern Chinese art which includes not only poetry, calligraphy and painting (as the most prominent scholarly arts) but also architecture, pottery, bronzes, music, martial arts and so on.5 Although it would be impossible to find common traits to all of these disciplines, the three above mentioned scholarly arts do share some common traits (particularly in the combination of poetry and painting, on the one hand, and painting and calligraphy, on the other); and these traits did have an impact on a cultural identity for Chinese.6

5 See Zehou Li’s overview on traditional Chinese aesthetics in his popular book The Path of Beauty: A Study of Chinese Aesthetics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 6 For a detailed discussion of Chinese aesthetics and literary theory see Karl-Heinz Pohl, Ästhetik und Literaturtheorie in China – Von der Tradition bis zur Moderne, Munich: Saur, 2006.

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A first, characteristic of traditional Chinese aesthetics is to value ‘suggestiveness’ as a poetic quality in a work of art. In poetry itself, this quality can be observed in a metaphorical language which is, first of all, determined by images from nature; second, the focus is on meaning behind the language and the images. Hence, we find notions such as ‘meaning beyond words’ (yan wai zhi yi) or ‘images beyond images’ (xiang wai zhi xiang).7 A suggestive quality is also required in painting: Ideally, a painting should convey a poetic image, something that reverberates beyond the actual painted scene (miao zai hua wai – ‘the intriguing quality is beyond the painting’).8 Hence, traditionally, Chinese painting does not aim at mirroring the world in the sense of mimesis (realistic representation of a scene), and it thus lacks the feature of linear perspective which became dominant in European painting since the Renaissance. Instead, the perspective, for example in a hand-scroll, unfolds from scene to scene as it is unrolled.9 A second characteristic is the demand for a ‘vital quality’ (qi) which should convey a sense of liveliness in a work of art. Here, specifically painting and calligraphy are implied (although ‘vital quality’ is also discussed in poetry). Such traits are not only in accordance with the first principle of Chinese painting: qiyun shengdong – ‘vital resonance and live movement’, formulated by He Xie in the 6th cent. AD,10 but also touch upon cosmological ideas concerning a work of art, i.e. notions of natural creativity: A work of art should – ideally – come into existence like a work of nature, by the workings of the inexplicable dao – the ‘Way’ of the universe (of which the said force qi is only an agent). Intrinsic to this idea is the importance of the calligraphic line – the contrast of black and white and the preference for painting in black ink which emphasizes the dynamic liveliness of the brushstroke. Movement and dynamics in black and white are taken to be aesthetically more interesting than static colour. 7 These phrases have been coined by Tu Sikong (837–908); see Maureen Robertson, “‘…To Convey What is Precious’: Ssu-k’ung T’u’s Poetics and the Erhshihssu Shihp’in”, in: Susan Bush and Christian Murck (eds.), Theories of the Arts in China, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 3–26. 8 Yue Huang, “Ershisi huapin”, in: Zhongguo gudai meishu congshu, Peking 1993, vol. 4, p. 23; Günther Debon, Grundbegriffe der chinesischen Schrifttheorie und ihre Verbindung zu Dichtung und Malerei, Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1978, p. 75. 9 Traditionally, the Chinese knew three ‘distances’ (yuan) which can be likened to the European notion of perspective. Xi Guo (c. 1020–1090) discusses them in his treatise ‘The Great Message of Forest and Streams’ (Linquan gaozhi), in Yutang Lin’s translation: ‘Looking up from below is called the “high perspective” (gaoyuan); looking from the rim at the interior of mountains is called ‘deep perspective’ (shenyuan); looking toward the distance is called “level perspective” (pingyuan)’. Yutang Lin, The Chinese Theory of Art, New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1967, p. 79. 10 Yutang Lin, The Chinese Theory of Art, New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1967, p. 34.

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A third characteristic refers to the cosmological ideas already mentioned which promote the balance between binary opposites in a work of art. In poetry, for example, we observe a predilection for parallelism through which certain couplets in a poem are antithetically juxtaposed and connected. This inclination toward harmonizing mutually not opposing but rather conditioning forces derives from the pervading influence of yin-yang-thought. This can also be observed in a Chinese landscape painting (called in Chinese shanshui hua – ‘mountain and water painting’): A landscape painting unites the two said forces yin and yang as mountain (shan, a manifestation of the male yang-­ quality) and water (shui, a manifestation of the female yin). Hence a landscape painting catches the harmonious cosmological order of the world and its forces in a microcosmic way. A fourth characteristic in Chinese poetics and art theory gives weight to two seemingly contradictory notions: to naturalness (ziran) and regularity (fa). The stunning aesthetic effect of this unity of opposites can best be observed and studied in the so-called ‘regular poems’ (lüshi), flourishing in the golden age of Chinese poetry, the Tang Dynasty (7th-10th cent.). These poems have to follow a strict set of rules concerning length and number of lines, tone patterns, parallelism and the like. And yet, while reading the works of not only the greatest poets of that time, one has the impression of absolute naturalness and ease in style. Similar characteristics can be observed in Chinese painting which also, traditionally, was defined by certain rules. Yet in the works of great masters, one experiences a sense of freedom from rules and restrictions. Thus, the painter Shitao (c. 1641–1717) proclaimes: ‘The highest rule is the rule of no rule (zhi fa, nai wei wu fa zhi fa)’.11 It basically means that all rules become so internalized that they turn out to be natural. The secret to this mastery lies in the notion of gongfu (‘Kungfu’), i.e. excellence after arduous practice leading to a ‘perfect intuitive control’12 over the artistic medium which, traditionally, has been called ‘spiritual’ (shen). It was particularly the so-called poet-painters of the literati class13 who laid down lasting standards of Chinese aesthetics. Because of their preference for calligraphic qualities and disregard of realism (mimesis), they not only appreciated scholarly characteristics such as painting in black ink (remindful of 11 12 13

Ibid, p. 142. Richard John Lynn, “Orthodoxy and Enlightenment: Wang Shih-chen’s Theory of Poetry and Its Antecedents”, in: William Th. DeBary (ed.): The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1975, pp. 217–269. Scholars had to be familiar with calligraphy and composing poetry; when they painted, they did so as amateurs and for pleasure (not for money), in contrast to professional painters.

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calligraphy), but also developed an amateurish unrealistic quality which can be described as ‘cultivated clumsiness’. Because of their reverence of great past scholar-painters, together with their love for allusions (not only in poetry but also in painting), much of the art of the later centuries became what Max Loehr once termed ‘art-historical art’.14 Traditional Chinese aesthetics, with its attributes of ‘suggestiveness’, ‘liveliness’, ‘harmony of opposing (cosmological) forces’, ‘cultivated clumsiness’ and, lastly, a ‘spiritual’ quality of naturalness and freedom achieved by strictly training according to set rules (fa), constitutes an entirely different world of art in comparison to the Western tradition (although there are certainly overlapping elements). It is no wonder, then, that these characteristics were understood by the Chinese themselves as the most sublime features of Chinese culture. These features served, well into the modern period, as fundamental elements of a Chinese cultural identity. Hence, in their monumental (though not completed) History of Chinese Aesthetics (Zhongguo meixue shi), Zehou Li and Gangji Liu marked as the last and most important characteristic of traditional Chinese aesthetics the idea that an ‘aesthetic consciousness’ (shenmei jingjie) was regarded as the ‘highest and noblest consciousness to be attained in life’.15 2.1 Aesthetics in Modern China – Encounters with Western Thought In modern times, aesthetics assumed a special place in Chinese grappling with Western thought: First, aesthetics constituted a realm relatively free of politics. For this reason, it attracted Chinese to explore freely and without political restraint occidental thought. Second, philosophy of art as part of aesthetics offered Chinese intellectuals the possibility of linking up with their own traditional ideas. This was important because – unlike the mainstream of Chinese traditional social and political thought, particularly Confucianism – the Chinese aesthetic tradition had not been discredited by the reception of Western ideas and the radical antitraditionalism of the May Fourth period (1917–23). Quite the contrary, when the Chinese at the beginning of the 20th century began to define themselves in relationship to the West, they understood their own culture as an essentially aesthetic one. Thus, the encounter with Western thought, on the one hand, brought the Chinese a wealth of fascinatingly new ideas; it allowed them, on the other, to look for familiar concepts which could be aligned with their own tradition. 14 15

Max Loehr, “Art-Historical Art: One Aspect of Ch’ing Painting”, in: Oriental Art N.S. 16 (Spring 1970), pp. 35–37. Zehou Li and Gangji Liu, Zhongguo meixueshi (History of Chinese Aesthetics), I, Beijing: Xinhua, 1984, p. 33.

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The president of Peking University during the May Fourth period, Yuanpei Cai (1868–1940), was one of the first to formulate the idea of the mentioned cultural-aesthetic self-understanding of the Chinese. Through his studies in Germany he was familiar with occidental philosophy, particularly with Kant. He regarded Westerners to be largely shaped by religion, whereas for China he held aesthetics (a combination of ritual, art and ethics) to be the functional ‘spiritual’ equivalent to religion in the West. For this reason, he demanded modern China for ‘aesthetic education in the place of religion’.16 As it was popular among culturally conservative intellectuals at this time17 to posit a Chinese ‘spiritual’ against a Western ‘materialistic’ culture, the affirmation of ‘spiritual’ aspects in Chinese aesthetics added to this understanding of Chinese culture. A famous scholar, Guowei Wang (1877–1927), represents the early encounter of Chinese with European ideas. He coined basic aesthetic concepts for the 20th century such as jingjie (‘aesthetic state or consciousness’) or yijing (‘­aesthetic idea’) to denote a perfect aesthetic fusion of artistic idea (or feeling) with a concrete scene.18 Wang first used the term jingjie only with regards to poetry and without any theoretical explanation; but this term (as the above quote by Zehou Li and Gangji Liu illustrates) soon gained a general aesthetic meaning, signifying both an aesthetic idea as well as a most sublime state of mind. Guowei Wang derived his concepts from Chinese tradition (using Buddhist vocabulary), but they are also imbued with meaning that he found in Kant and Schopenhauer (Kant’s ‘aesthetic idea’); hence, they represent early intercultural exchanges of thought between China and the West. In his article, ‘The Spreading and Influence of German Aesthetics in China’, Gangji Liu showed that modern Chinese aesthetics was largely formed by the reception of German idealism.19 The discourse of Chinese aesthetics of the 20th century, thus, was shaped by the questions of German philosophy of the 18th and 19th century. Due to many reasons (extensive periods of war, enormous problems of translation, etc.), this tradition of aesthetics – from 16 17 18

19

Gangji Liu, “Verbreitung und Einfluss der deutschen Ästhetic in China”, K.-H. Pohl (ed.), Trierer Beiträge. Aus Forschung und Lehre an der Universität Trier, July 1996 (Sonderheft 10), pp. 8–13. Particularly influential was Shuming Liang and his book Dong xi wenhua ji qi zhexue (Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies), published in 1922. Adele Rickett, Wang Kuo-wei’s Jen-chien Tz‘u-hua hua – A Study in Chinese Literary Criticism, Hongkong: Hong Kong University Press, 1977, p. 23ff, and Hermann Kogelschatz, Wang Kuo-wei und Schopenhauer: Eine philosophische Begegnung – Wandlung des Selbstverständnisses der chinesischen Literatur unter dem Einfluß der klassischen deutschen Ästhetik, Wiesbaden: Steiner 1986, p. 245ff. Gangji Liu, pp. 8–13.

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Baumgarten and Kant to Marx – was received in China with a delay of about 100 years. As a result, and in a significant departure from their own tradition, modern Chinese aestheticians focused on categories derived from European history such as beauty or tragedy, issues that had been completely absent in pre-modern Chinese thought on art. Hence, the encounter with Western aesthetics led Chinese scholars to unfamiliar ground, a situation that also resulted in a few creative misunderstandings of European ideas. Guided by the translation of the term aesthetics into Chinese as meixue: the ‘study of beauty’,20 much of modern Chinese aesthetics was to become – with the literal translation of the term aesthetics into Chinese: ‘beautology’.21 The prominent scholars in Chinese aesthetics in the middle of the 20th century were Guangqian Zhu (1897–1986) and Baihua Zong (1897–1986) both of whom had studied in Germany and were quite familiar with Western thought. The former introduced Hegel’s aesthetic to China and tried to bridge Western and Chinese ideas; the latter, though a translator of Kant’s Third Critique and an admirer of Goethe, was equally focused on Chinese traditional resources and developed these ideas and concepts further (i.e. the notion of yijing which Guowei Wang had introduced but left without any theoretical elaboration22). Pursuing further the history of modern Chinese aesthetics, it is worth noting that, even in the ideologically rather rigid period of the 1950s (between 1956 and 1962), aesthetics was a field that allowed for a relatively free debate – within the confines of a Marxist materialist approach to aesthetics.23 Apart from the concept of beauty, it was now also the Marxian idea of ‘practice’ that was added to the discussion by Zehou Li (1930–2021), one of the leading scholars of aesthetics in modern China. Taking his ideas from Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, the practice was for Li’s materially productive activity, such as making and employing tools.24

20 21 22

23 24

Like many terms from Western thought, aesthetics as ‘study of beauty’ was first coined in Japan and from there introduced to China. Karl-Heinz Pohl, “Chinese Aesthetics and Kant”, in: Mazhar Hussain and Robert Wilkinson (eds.), The Pursuit of Comparative Aesthetics – An Interface Between the East and the West, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, pp. 127–136. Gangji Liu, pp. 15–19. Representative is a collection of essays entitled Yi Jing (Realm of Art), Peking: Peking University Press, 1987. The notion of yijing, (lit.: ‘realm [jing] of ideas [yi]’), in fact, goes further back in history than Guowei Wang (the yi in the title of Baihua Zong’s book has a different meaning: ‘art’). For Chinese aesthetics of the modern period see also Liyuan Zhu and Gene Blocker (eds.): Contemporary Chinese Aesthetics, New York: Lang, 1995. Jianping Gao, “The ‘Aesthetics Craze’ in China – Its Cause and Significance”. Dialogue and Universalism, 3–4/1997, pp. 27–35. Ibid, p. 30.

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During the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), aesthetics ceased to exist as a topic of discussion. Nevertheless, in the year this turmoil broke out in mainland China, one of the most influential books on Chinese aesthetics was published in Taiwan by Fuguan Xu: The Spirit of Chinese Art (1966). It discusses Chinese art and aesthetics as it had been prefigured by Yuanpei Cai and others, that is, highlighting its spiritual dimension and its connection to a Chinese cultural identity. After the Cultural Revolution (in the 1980s), China experienced an unprecedented ‘aesthetics craze’ mainly brought about by the writings of prominent aestheticians such as Guangqian Zhu, Baihua Zong and – most of all – Zehou Li. The latter was the towering figure of this period. On the one hand, he introduced new concepts such as subjectivity and practice, derived from a fusion of Kantian and Marxian ideas,25 and, on the other, he offered stimulating interpretations of the Chinese artistic tradition in his widely read The Path of Beauty (Mei de licheng) for which he had also employed ideas from Clive Bell and Susanne Langer. This craze was facilitated by the political thaw after the arrest of the ‘Gang of Four’ in 1976: Having experienced a decade of chaos and disaster due to radical leftist politics, the Chinese Communist Party slowly departed from ideological notions such as class struggle and introduced the slogan ‘Practice as a sole criterion for truth’ (shishi qiu shi). Zehou Li’s idea of ‘practice’ in the field of aesthetics only added to this new explorative climate. Furthermore, his coinage of other concepts, such as ‘sedimentation’ (jidian) as a fusion of the social with the individual in a historical process, resulting in a ‘cultural-psychological formation’ (wen hua xinli jiegou), significantly enriched the aesthetics debate of that period. These ideas led the way to a broader debate about aesthetics to include politics and culture – the ‘culture craze’ (wenhua re) of the 1990s.26 2.2  Aesthetics as Part of the Debate on Postmodernism and Culture in China Today With the introduction of postcolonialism at the end of the 1980s, the focus shifted from theoretical aesthetics in the European tradition to culture.27 The 25

26 27

Gangji Liu, pp. 19–32. Particularly influential was Zehou Li’s book on Kant: Pipan zhexue de pipan: Kangde shuping (The Critique of Critical Philosophy: A Study of Kant), Peking: Renmin chubanshe, 1979. See also Jane Cauvel, “The transformative Power of Art: Li Zehou’s Aesthetic Theory”, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 49, No. 2 (April, 1999), pp. 150– 173; Woei Lien Chong, ”Combining Marx with Kant: The Philosophical Anthropology of Li Zehou”, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 49, No. 2 (April, 1999), pp. 120–149. See Jing Wang, High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Jianping Gao, “Chinese Aesthetics in the Past Two Decades”, In: Some Facts of Chinese Aesthetics, Keping Wang and Jianping Gao (eds.), Peking: Chinese Society for Aesthetics, 2002, p. 41.

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90s saw a flood of assertive studies concerning Chinese culture (guoxue) of which arts and aesthetics, but also ethics, feature as prominent parts. Interestingly and ironically, this interest in Chinese culture was triggered again by new trends in Western thought: by the reception of Michel Foucault, and hence of postmodernism and post-structuralism, as well as the notion of ‘orientalism’ by Edward Said and the ensuing postcolonial criticism. All this resulted in peculiar tensions, ambivalences and ironies for aesthetics in China today – in the context of debates on culture and identity – that will be briefly looked into below with reference to the so called ‘postist craze’ (houxue re). A major thread running through the 150 year long history of Chinese modernity – from the Opium war up to today – is to ‘seek the “truth” from Western ideas in order to “save” China’.28 The ‘craze’ about ‘postist studies’ (houxue) in the so-called ‘post-new-period’ (houxin shiqi) fits right into this scheme. The reception of postcolonial criticism led to the awareness of a hundred year long ‘self-colonization’ of the Chinese in terms of Western thought. As Kuan Zhang, one of the earliest Chinese postcolonial critics (now living in the USA), puts it: ‘The main stream of Chinese modernity discourse has always been enchanted by the magical spell of the Western colonial discourse’.29 With the help of Western postcolonial thought, the focus of the Chinese debate thus shifted from defining Chinese modernity along the Western enlightenment paradigm (including ideas such as rationality, humanism, etc.) to recover a Chinese ‘subjectivity’ or ‘Chineseness’ (zhonghuaxing). This ‘Chineseness’, as was now understood, had been buried and almost forgotten by a politically correct Western modernity discourse, which became the dominant new tradition since the May Fourth Movement (1919). Hence, the new cultural assertiveness led to a critique of the May Fourth paradigm – a delicate task, as the Chinese Communist Party defines itself with particular reference to this movement. Interesting in our context is the notion of ‘Chineseness’ as it entails not only a specific Chinese way of thinking but, in particular, also Chinese ethics and aesthetics as part of a Chinese cultural identity.30 28

29 30

Min Lin, The Search for Modernity. Chinese Intellectuals and Cultural Discourse in the PostMao Era, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999, p. 185. There has been a heated debate in (and outside of) China as to the relevance of postmodernism in China. For an overview see, for example, Arif Dirlik and Xudong Zhang (eds.), Postmodernism & China, Durham: Duke University Press, 2000, as well as Min Lin’s book. Kuan Zhang, “The Predicament of Postcolonial Criticism in China”, In: Karl-Heinz Pohl (ed.), Chinese Thought in a Global Context. A Dialogue Between Chinese and Western Philosophical Approaches, Leiden: Brill, 1999, p. 61. Fa Zhang, Yiwu Zhang, and Yichuan Wang, “Cong ‘xiandaixing’ dao ‘zhonghuaxing’ – xin zhishi de tanxun” (From ‘Modernity’ to ‘Chineseness’ – An Inquiry into New Knowledge), Wenyi zhengming 2/1994, pp. 10–20.

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This position, however, remained not unchallenged. Not only postmodern critics accused their postcolonial colleagues of essentialism – one of the gravest accusations possible in the postmodern discourse – also New Humanists criticized the postcolonial position as neo-conservative and hence contradicting the Enlightenment paradigm of the May Fourth tradition, and, lastly, it was criticized (mainly from Chinese critics residing outside of China) for joining into the anti-Western rhetoric of the Chinese government. Regarding this last aspect, the charges are somewhat ambivalent, for the Chinese Communist Party considers itself, as mentioned, to be an essential part of the May Fourth legacy.31 As a result of this criticism, however, the debate lost some of its momentum. Through the depicted developments, however, and in contrast to the early phase of engagement with European philosophy, Chinese aesthetics has, by now, entered the sphere of politics. Summarizing, two characteristics are worth savouring: First, both positions in the controversy refer to Western thought – either promoting or challenging it: In the former case, we have a continuation of the discourse of ‘complete Westernization’ (quanpan xihua), prominent since the May Fourth Movement; the latter can be called ‘expelling Western ideas with Western ideas’ (yang paiwaizhuyi). Second, we can observe a phenomenon that Edward Said once labelled as ‘travelling theory’: A theory or a worldview, while being adapted at a place different from its origin, might not only change some of its features, it might be used to serve a completely different purpose than originally intended by its inventors.32 In China, postmodernism and postcolonialism as ‘travelling theories’ serve to promote discourses on identity and even nationalism – a new ‘Chineseness’ – with arts and aesthetics as its basis. This twist of thought is something that probably neither Michel Foucault nor Edward Said had in mind when they put forth their ideas. However, as their ‘theories’ are also not without internal contradictions,33 this development can be taken as a natural 31 The CCP was founded in 1921, i.e. during and through the intellectual forces of the May Fourth Movement. 32 Edward Said, The Word, the Text, and the critic, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983, p. 227. As a well known historic example of a ‘travelling theory’, Marxism lost its internationalistic orientation when adopted by Mao Tse-tung; instead it served a nationalistic purpose in China, intending of ridding China of its domination by Western (and Japanese) colonial powers. 33 The internal contradictions in the thought of Foucault and Said have been mentioned time and again by others. Particularly ironic is Foucault ‘flirtation’ with Maoism during the Cultural Revolution; see Jian Gao, ”Wenge sichao yu ‘houxue’” (The Ideological Trend of the Cultural Revolution and ‘Postist Studies’), Ershiyi shiji (Twenty-first Century), 35 (June 1996), p. 116; see also Longxi Zhang, Mighty Opposites. From Dichotomies to Differences in the Comparative Study of China, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 138, 207. As to Said, see Kuan Zhang, p. 64.

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course in the life-cycle of a theory – or as just another creative misunderstanding the way they are encountered frequently in intercultural loans and exchanges. After the nineties, intellectual fashions (not only) in China changed again. With the turn toward the new millennium, Chinese debates on culture, art and aesthetics are dominated by the notion of globalization. First of all, postcolonial critics, although they managed to put traditional Chinese aesthetics back on the agenda, did not succeed in ending the infatuation of the Chinese intelligentsia with the West. It seems that it is still mostly Western writings that attract Chinese scholars at the moment. Ironically, Western audiences, particularly concerning aesthetics, would be very much interested in ideas genuinely Chinese but, first of all, there seems not much to be published with a significant Chinese touch. Secondly, because of the language barrier, little has been translated from Chinese into Western languages. Instead, the Chinese, not only those who have studied abroad, are busy in what Jianping Gao calls the ‘translation industry’.34 Theoretical works in aesthetics and many other disciplines are frantically translated from Western languages (mostly English) into Chinese and are being just as eagerly sold and bought on the market. As a result of this predilection for Western theory, Chinese aestheticians feel a certain degree of isolation, as their work is not being acknowledged outside of China.35 Even a figure such as Zehou Li, who had in the meantime moved to the USA (he published in both English and Chinese) and whose popular books have been translated into other languages, hardly finds in the West an audience adequate to his acknowledgment in China.36 Surely, his concepts such as subjectivity and practice, as refreshing they might have been for a Chinese public in the 1980s, do not cause the same stir here in the West: After all, ‘subjectivity’ had long been debunked by postmodern trends such as 34

Jianping Gao, “Chinese Aesthetics in the Context of Globalization”. International Yearbook of Aesthetics, 8 (2004), p. 65. 35 Ibid. 36 His book The path of Beauty (Mei de ichen; cf. footnote 4 above) was also translated into German: Der Weg des Schönen – Wesen und Geschichte der chinesischen Kultur und Ästhetik, ed. Karl-Heinz Pohl and Gudrun Wacker, Freiburg: Herder, 1992; new and updated edition: Bochum: Europäischer Universitätsverlag, 2022. His work, does, however play a role in Sinological circles. For example, in 1999, the journal Philosophy East and West devoted a whole issue on Zehou Li’s notion of subjectivity. See the articles by Cauvel and Chong mentioned above in footnote 25 as well as Timothy Cheek’s introduction as guest lecturer of this special issue: “Introduction: A Cross-Cultural Conversation on Zehou Li’s Ideas on Subjectivity and Aesthetics in Modern Chinese Thought”, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 49, No. 2 (April, 1999), pp. 113–19, and Zehou Li’s response to the articles: “Subjectivity and ‘Subjectality’: A Response”, pp. 174–183.

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deconstruction, whereas ‘practice’ as a Marxian idea lost its allure ever since the collapse of the Communist regimes East of the Berlin Wall after 1989. Thus, there is a certain risk facing these theoreticians to end up dealing with ‘outdated’ concepts and to lag behind with their thought in comparison to the ‘West’, as there still is a considerable time-lag in introducing the latest trends of Western theory to China. Therein lays, however, also a chance, that is, to pursue ‘classical’ ideas without zeitgeist-conditioned anxieties and demands of the newest and most fashionable ‘theories’. Be that as it may, Western centeredness will probably not be changing too soon. The ‘West’ has defined the terms of discourse in the sciences and humanities, and thus also in philosophy and aesthetics; these disciplines are being practised under conditions set up by European and American scholars, and it will still take a while until they might also be set by the Chinese themselves. Hence, there is no alternative for the Chinese to participate in the meanwhile ‘global’ debates on aesthetics, culture and identity – taking place mainly in the world of Western academics. A crucial question is, if they would be able to bring a particular experience or perspective to bear in these discussions, giving them somewhat of an exceptional point of view. As is well known, some Indian born intellectuals, such as Homi Bhabha or Gayatri Spivak, are now at the vanguard of postcolonial criticism, teaching at major US universities. With their Indian colonial background, in addition to being ardent deconstructionists, they were able to leave their mark in this field. What are the possibilities for the Chinese (and not just for them)? Will they only follow these intellectual fashions (as the ‘postist craze’ suggests), or will they be able to criticize and challenge them, setting different marks, inspired, for example, by their own rich philosophical and aesthetic tradition? Chinese thought could (and should) be as much a common frame of reference as the thought of other ‘local’ thinkers, from Plato to Derrida and Heidegger. After all, Western modernity is also nothing but a creative transformation of a long and rich ‘local’ tradition, and modern Western theorists most naturally refer to this tradition in their writings, but they don’t have a clue of non-European history of ideas. Another question is, however, if Chinese (or scholars from other non-Western countries) will have to move to the West for this purpose. Surely, no Chinese scholar would decline a professorship at Harvard or Columbia, as one can see by the many excellent Chinese already teaching there. The prospects are though, that this focus will, in the long run, only further cement the Western centeredness in the humanities. Thus far, intercultural exchange – because of an asymmetric power relationship between the ‘West’ and the ‘rest’ – took place mainly on a one-way street; and in spite of all the emphasis on cross-cultural issues within the last decade, it will most likely remain this way for still a long time.

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Chinese Art and Aesthetics in the Context of Globalization

There is a saying, ‘Art knows no borders’. This slogan appears to be appropriate for the new age of so-called global modern art. And yet, even in modern art, we might also only see what we know or, put differently, the more we know, the more we see. Modern artists, regardless where they live, if in China, India, Africa, America or Europe, seem to maintain similar ideas about art, derived from the Western tradition: A work of art should have an original concept; its purpose should be self-expression and/or socio-political criticism. But this is only the ideal side of global modern art; the real one is that art has become an integral part of the global marketplace. Hence, what can be observed around the most recent debates about postmodernism and globalization (not only) in China, is the trend towards consumerism: Art is a commodity much sought after. Although we can find a vibrant ‘art scene’ in China, dominated by the above-mentioned Western trends and characteristics, in terms of Chinese art, the Western audience with its money is interested in Chinese art ‘with Chinese characteristics’ – however they may be defined. And where there is a demand, there is a supply. Chinese artists are moving along with the global streams of capital, that is, they move to the West, particularly to the US, and thus it is not surprising that Chinese avant-garde artists, generally speaking, are known better in the West than in China.37 Here they can supply ‘local’ art (politically critical or not) for a ‘global’ market and – on top of it – make a far better living than at home.38 Although the Western audience is interested in art with a native touch (one may call this predilection ‘exoticistic’ or not), sophisticated as it is, it also demands that this art has caught up with Western modernity. Hence, the supply must satisfy this double demand. At the end of these musings about Chinese aesthetics from tradition to modernity, a painting, dated 2002, by the Chinese artist Dong Wei (born in Inner Mongolia, now living in the US) shall be discussed as an example of the trend toward a fusion of traditional Chinese and modern Western elements. It bears the title – not without relevance to our topic – ‘Culture Culture’.39 Many of Dong Wei’s paintings, particularly those painted before 2003, show young half naked Chinese women who pose in front of traditional Chinese 37 38 39

Jianping Gao, Chinese Aesthetics in the Past Two Decades, p. 43 Jianping Gao, Chinese Aesthetics in the Context of Globalization, p. 71. http://www.chinesecontemporary.com/art.php?image_id=427 (May 2, 2007). On Dong Wei’s art, see also Henry Steiner’s introduction to “CrossEyes. Three Painters and a Designer”, Ex/Change, Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies, City University of Hong Kong), No. 12 (Feb. 2005), pp. 14–15.

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Figure 12.1  Dong Wei: ‘Culture Culture’ (2002)

landscape paintings, and the painting in question is no exception. In contrast to Western tradition, portrait paintings and depictions of human beings in general have never been considered prominent works of art according to Chinese traditional aesthetics (in comparison to landscape or bird and flower painting). ‘Culture Culture’ shows a girl leaning on a Chinese garden rock in front of a monumental traditional Ming Dynasty landscape. The picture is a bewildering mix of details (Chinese landscape background, female figure and her accessories), lacking fantastic Dali elements but nevertheless appearing estranged and somewhat surrealistic. The female figure shows a number of remarkable features: Her scantily dressed body is painted in a realistic manner remindful of renaissance

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paintings; the colour of her skin appears rather white than yellow; blue veins are showing through the skin at many places, and the fingernails are coloured red. She wears a skimpy pink outfit that somewhat resembles a loosely fitting bathing suit with many folds. Altogether, the figure comes across as very female, except for head and face. Although she wears lipstick and has halfopen braids hanging at the sides of her head, the rest of the face appears rather masculine, with a broad nose, a big left ear and the top of the head being half bald – the baldpate, in fact, is remindful of Mao Tse-tung (many of the women in Dong Wei’s paintings are half bald). There are a few interesting accessories: A red band is wrapped around her left arm indicating the ‘student on duty’, as was popular in the Mao period. A school bag with the red star of the Red Guards hangs over her left side, and a walking cane with a Mao head is squeezed under her right arm – it is the only object in the painting which eerily casts a thin shadow on the ground. In her décolleté she has – on one side – a bottle decorated with a traditional bird motif which we usually find in the hands of the Bodhisattva Guanyin, the Chinese Buddhist goddess of mercy. In traditional iconography, Guanyin uses the bottle to sprinkle water in order to bless the believers; in Dong Wei’s picture the bottle is sealed with a Communist red star. On the other side of her bosom, two bundles of 10 Yuan bills are exposed – some of the bills are flying around in the air on the left side of the picture. With her hands, she clenches a book of which one can detect (when zooming into the picture) a few hints concerning title and content: a capital A and D – the insignia of Albrecht Dürer – as well as the last three letters of Dürer’s name (‘…rer’). Thus, we have a medley of elements of traditional Chinese culture and religion, of the Cultural Revolution as well as of Western tradition and modernity – all in front of a traditional Chinese landscape painting. In the depiction of the figure, not only Western and Chinese elements, but even male and female elements are fused together. Hence, the doubling of the term ‘culture’ in the title of the picture might have an ironic meaning, suggesting a parody of culture or a postmodern cultural hodgepodge: a culture of bodily exposure, remnants of a cultural tradition (including art, an almost forgotten religion and reminiscences of the Mao period), a culture of money and, finally, a barely detectable artistic homage to one of the greatest German Renaissance painters: Albrecht Dürer.40

40

According to an interview, Dürer (next to Delacroix and Cezanne) belongs to Dong Wei’s models of the past. See http://www.jerseycitymuseum.org/exhibitions/virtualCatalogue /dong.html. Regarding Dürer’s insignia, see http://www.schaepp.de/duerer/in.html.

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The painting can probably be interpreted in different ways, depending on the focus – the meaning is in the eye of the beholder. If we give weight to its title then it successfully reflects the dislocated, hybrid and trans-cultural (or cultureless?) situation of postmodernity. The picture does not, however, transmit any definitively negative or positive signals. Hence the viewer is left with a strange but ambivalent impression of cultural alienation. In an earlier picture, interestingly, Dong Wei used the identical female figure but placed her in front of a different background. This painting (dated 1998) is part of a four-part polyptych with the title ‘My Attendants’, showing altogether four half-naked and half-bald young women (two of them armed!) in front of an overarching monumental traditional Chinese landscape painting.41 Another picture, dated 2000, with the title ‘Dragon and Businessman’ shows a (business) woman, half dressed in a traditional Chinese outfit and embraced by a benevolent looking dragon, hovering upside down on a Chinese garden rock in front of a largely empty traditional Chinese landscape.42 A few ­American accessories – such as Marlboro packages and playing cards floating

Figure 12.2 Dong Wei: ‘My Attendants’ (1998) 41 See http://www.chinalink.be/MCAF2.htm. The head of the second ‘attendant’ from left – the only one without braids – is strikingly similar to that of Mao Tse-tung. 42 See http://www.plumblossoms.com/WeiDong/CX0141a.htm.

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Figure 12.3 Dong Wei: ‘Dragon and Businessman’ (2000)

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through the air (in other paintings it is the motif of the American stars and stripes) – hint at the dislocation of Chinese culture, suggesting that Chinese culture has finally arrived in America or – vice versa – American culture has made it to China. The above focus on (post-)modern Chinese works of art which, moreover, have not been painted in China but in the USA, do not offer any general conclusions concerning the situation of contemporary Chinese art and aesthetics. And yet, they illustrate, on the one hand, the trend toward a fusion of traditions; on the other, they also reveal a lasting preoccupation with aspects of the Chinese tradition. In the pictures discussed, there seem to be a few culturally relevant elements, such as allusion to the past, i.e. to traditional Chinese landscape painting, to the tension between emptiness and fullness, hints of a cultivated clumsiness, etc. The love for details in the painting is remindful of detailed depictions in the Chinese tradition of an ‘aesthetics of fullness’;43 in their combination with elements of Western style painting they convey a surrealistic impression. In any case, these aspects of Chinese culture – even if they are dislocated, if they appear alienated and if they are only ironically employed – suggest that they still possess a certain relevance for Chinese artists: as cultural memory, regardless of their residences: in or out of China. 4

Final Remarks

Around the world, we now have Western priorities, also in arts and aesthetics. According to these standards, art has to be conceptionally innovative, it has to serve a liberating function or should, at least, be politically critical – not to mention the ‘achievements’ brought about by Dadaism and such. In contrast to these tendencies, we have a – largely extinct – Chinese tradition with different priorities. There, a work of art, first of all, should possess suggestive poetic qualities – an enriching capacity beyond the actual work (painting or poetry). Also, an artist ought to have ‘perfect intuitive control of the artistic medium’ through long and arduous practice (as in Chinese calligraphy), only then will 43

An example for ‘aesthetics of fullness’ (in contrast to the ‘aesthetics of emptiness’, prevalent in much of Southern Song painting of the Ma-Xia-School) is the famous hand-scroll: ‘Along the River on the Qingming Festival’ (Qingming shanghe tu) by Zhang Zeduan (1085–1145). The c. 10m long scroll (now in the Palace Museum of Peking) depicts life in its fullness in the Song capital Pianjing (now Kaifeng).

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he be able to create great works of art with a ‘spiritual’ impact. The majority of Chinese artists – in and out of China – follow the Western trend, consciously or unconsciously.44 But just as Western modernity is unthinkable without a constant re-engagement with its own long history and tradition, so too is there a possibility that China, on her way into global modernity, might also become more aware of her cultural tradition as an object of active engagement. Because of the increasing Western interest, the rediscovery of her tradition might even serve as a means for further cultural and artistic exchange. There is already an over hundred year long history of stimulation of Western artists by East Asian art (from Art Nouveau in the 19th century up to Mark Tobey and others in the 20th). The encounter of cultures has not just begun in the last decade, it has only gained a new dimension in the age of globalization. It has to be seen how artists will arrange themselves in their moves between different cultures and traditions as well as in their gaining multiple identities. And thus only time will tell to which hybrid forms of art – and of aesthetics – this will lead to: if there will be great works of art resulting from this fusion, and whether or not the rich Chinese artistic and aesthetic tradition will still play a significant part in this encounter. 44

The predominance of installations over paintings also illustrates this tendency.

Chapter 13

The Kowtow and the Eyeball Test Mario Wenning Taking its departure from the kowtow controversy following the Macartney embassy to the Chinese emperor, the chapter illustrates the ethical and aesthetic challenge of expressing respect between people from different cultural traditions. The ethics of humility in Confucianism is contrasted to forms of respect among free and equal citizens in the liberal republican tradition from Kant to Pettit. Republican conceptions of respect, paradigmatically expressed by standing tall and looking one another in the eye as part of an ‘eyeball test’, reflect a specific European history. Culturally inflected forms of showing respect should not be naively universalized. The chapter argues that radically different expressions of respect and civility, paradigmatically expressed in greeting rituals and the normative grammar they emplify, are a major challenge for cosmopolitan forms of political and ethical theorizing. 1 Introduction The first part of this essay will reconstruct the metaphors used to characterize respectful encounters among free and equal citizens in the republican tradition from Immanuel Kant to Philipp Pettit (I). These metaphors, one might object, can be easily ignored as insignificant with regard to the normative core of republican theorizing. And yet they strongly inform what we have in mind when imagining how free and equal citizens who are respectful of one another and can command respect think, feel and act. These images capture the imagination and play a crucial role in conceiving of what a republican utopia, including ideal conceptions of republican forms of civic life, ought to be like. The chapter aims to challenge the assumption that the guiding metaphors – metaphors of standing tall and looking one another in the eyes without fear and deference – are as neutral and independent of specific cultural presumptions as republican theorists suggest they are. The culturally refracted root of these images poses a challenge with regard to the transcultural and cosmopolitan scope of the republican project. To further expose the normative implications of greeting rituals, the second part of this chapter juxtaposes republican notions of respect among free and equal citizens with Confucian conceptions of respect expressed in acts © Mario Wenning, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_015

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of deference and humility (II). For Confucians, in contrast to the republican tradition as it emerged in Europe, certain types of deference and humility are not only legitimate, but also form an integral component of a harmonious society (hexieshehui). The deep-seated cultural difference between societies shaped by republicanism and those significantly influenced by Confucianism poses a distinct challenge as well as a significant opportunity that any republican theory with a cosmopolitan vision should take seriously (III). Before addressing these challenges let me begin with an anecdote. On September 14th, 1793, the British Diplomat George Macartney petitioned for an audience with the Chinese emperor. Sent by King George III of England, Macartney was to congratulate and extend gifts to the emperor Qianlong on his 83rd birthday. The underlying motivation for this mission to the imperial court was the British crown’s desire to expand trading rights from Canton in the South to the entire Chinese empire and to establish a permanent diplomatic presence in Beijing. The meeting at the emperor’s mountainous summer palace in Chengde turned out to be nothing short of a diplomatic disaster. Judging in hindsight, it marked the turning point in the relationship between the British and the Chinese Empire and initiated the latter’s decline that was accelerated during the opium wars and sealed in the unequal treaties. The touchstone of the discord was the question how to receive visitors from afar.1 Prior to the meeting, Macartney was asked to perform the ceremonial kowtow (叩頭) ritual—in Cantonese, ‘kautau’—, a traditional greeting rite that consists of throwing oneself three times on one’s knees and touching the ground with one’s forehead nine times in front of the ‘son of heaven’.2 Macartney, a proud diplomat of Irish descent who was educated according to the convictions of the Enlightenment and recently elevated into the aristocracy, was challenged by how to deal with ‘genuflexions, prostrations and other idle oriental ceremony’.3 While or precisely because Macartney was aware of the importance of protocol and keen on placing his sovereign as the equal of the Chinese emperor, he refused to engage in what he considered to be a demeaning ritual that would have put George 1 Hevia, James L. 1995. Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Coates, Austin. 2009. Macao and the British: 1637–1842. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 2 An alternative form of kowtowing is dedicated to one’s parents, one’s spouse or close friends. It has survived in contexts such as traditional wedding rituals or reunions among friends until today and usually consists in kneeling and touching the head to the ground four rather than eight times. 3 Harrison, Henrietta. 2017. The Qianlong Emperor’s Letter to George III and the Early-­ Twentieth-Century Origins of Ideas about Traditional China’s Foreign Relations. American Historical Review, 111: 680–701.

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III into a lower position than that of the Chinese emperor. Instead of performing the kowtow as other delegates paying tribute to the emperor next to him, Lord Macartney ingeniously offered to perform what one could call a kowtow among equals: he would kowtow to the Chinese emperor only if a Chinese representative of equal rank would simultaneously kowtow in front of a picture of king George III. What would have turned out to be a truly memorable—as well as unintendedly humorous—episode of an East-West ritual of respect did not come about. The Chinese side considered the proposal utterly unacceptable. As a result, rather than throwing himself to the ground just like the other foreign solicitors next to him, Macartney only bent one knee while slightly lowering his head before the seated Chinese emperor, a respectful gesture he would have also performed in front of his own king. Interestingly, the Chinese records state Macartney had indeed kowtowed. While both sides thus dealt with the situation somewhat flexibly, the failed encounter triggered significant repercussions. This event developed into a kowtow controversy in which Europeans came to reflect on what the kowtow means and whether one should or should not engage in it without, from the British perspective, losing one’s honor and dignity.4 From the Chinese perspective, what was at stake in failing to perform the ancient kowtow ritual was the threat of undermining the quasi-colonial tributary system centered around the middle kingdom, if not the continuity of the cosmic order with the emperor, the son of heaven, at its exclusive center. In his letter of response to king George III, the highly cultivated Manchu emperor responds to the solicitor from the small island off the Western periphery of the Eurasian continent as if dealing with an imposing child. The celestial emperor acknowledges that ‘the earnest terms’ in which the King George’s proposal was presented ‘reveal a respectful humility’.5 Nevertheless, emperor Qianlong did not concede an inch with regard to the proposal to expand diplomatic and economic relationships and rebukes George III by harshly dismissing the requests to intensify Sino-British commerce, stating that he neither had use for nor interest in strange and costly British goods. As Macartney had 4 Interestingly, Buddhists, who usually only bow to the Buddha and to Buddhist monks, also had difficulty of performing the kowtow ritual in front of the emperor. On the parallel between the controversies of Christians and Buddhists on this issue see Eric Reinders 2015. 5 Austin Coates contends that the Macartney embassy’s result was not as disastrous as it might appear from the British perspective since ‘to have elicited a business letter from the Dragon was, like being presented to him without the kowtow, a unique achievement.’ (Coates 2009, p.89) Henrietta Harrison has argued that ‘up until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, the focus on diplomatic protocol during the Macartney embassy was a primarily Western concern, while published Chinese accounts emphasized the British threat and the military measures taken to deal with it’ (Harrison 2017, p.690).

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Figure 13.1 James Gillray, ‘The reception of the diplomatique and his suite at the Court of Pekin’, 1792. source: National Portrait Gallery, London

just demonstrated, the British, even if they were to try to acquire the rudiments of Confucian civilization, would prove themselves incapable of correctly implementing Chinese ceremonial rites at the Western periphery of the middle kingdom. Emperor Qianlong concluded by asking king George III to ‘respect my sentiments and to display even greater devotion and loyalty in the future’ and to ‘tremblingly obey and show no negligence’.6 For the longest time, the emperor’s rejection of the British embassy’s request has served to ridicule Chinese arrogance and its inability to acknowledge the rising power of the West. Confronted with the rise of China and the geopolitical but also philosophical implications it has, we might also reinterpret what is at stake in the kowtow controversy. During his lecture tour in China in the 1920s, Bertrand Russell suggested that ‘no one understands China until this letter has ceased to seem absurd’.7 The encounter between the British crown and the Chinese 6 Ibid. 7 Russell, Bertrand. 1922. The Problem of China. George: Allen & Unwin, p.51.

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emperor demonstrates how to miscommunicate by exchanging insults.8 At a deeper level, the episode of a marvelously failed encounter raises significant questions concerning the proper degree and expression of respect when individuals from radically different cultural backgrounds meet. What forms and expressions of respect should be adopted between people from different cultural traditions? Is it at all legitimate to speak of respect in an intercultural context? Who is setting the terms for what counts and what does not count as a respectful encounter? Following the Macartney embassy, the kowtow became the symbol of a despised ritual gesture of submission that was unacceptable for free men and women (from Europe). In 1777, the Vatican declared the kowtow as intrinsically superstitious and thus forbidden. Especially in the tradition of republicanism, the kowtow came to symbolize the very opposite of how free and equal citizens would meet and greet. This has not changed until today. Philip Pettit, a contemporary republican political philosopher, elegantly summarizes the ideal of the free and independent person when he writes: In the received republican image, free persons can walk tall, and look others in the eye. They do not depend on anyone’s grace or favor for being able to choose their mode of life. And they relate to one another in a shared, mutually reinforcing consciousness of enjoying this independence. Thus, in the established terms of republican denigration, they do not have to bow or scrape, toady or kowtow, fawn or flatter; they do not have to placate any others with beguiling smiles or mincing steps. In short, they do not have to live on their wits, whether out of fear or deference. They are their own men and women, and however deeply they bind themselves to one another, as in love or friendship or trust, they do so freely, reaching out to one another from positions of relatively equal strength.9 The republican tradition that cherishes the image of the free person that does not need to bend has been built on two connected ideals, one negative and one positive. The negative ideal is expressed in the principle of non-domination: human beings should not be subjected to arbitrary forms of subjugation at the will of others. Republicanism goes beyond this protection of individual liberties by stipulating the positive normative ideal: human beings should be capable of 8 See Footnote 5. 9 Pettit, Philip. 2012. On the People’s Term: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.82.

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determining their own lives on an equal basis. The kowtow seems to violate both of these connected convictions in that it appears to involve subjugation to others and appears to be at odds with free and equal self-determination. Philip Pettit, who is in this respect closer to the cosmopolitan republicanism of Kant than to, say, Machiavelli, defends the trans-cultural reach of the joint ideals of non-domination and equal liberty.10 Despite the historical roots of republicanism in especially Roman antiquity and early European modernity, more recent republicans, including Pettit, tend to consider themselves cosmopolitan. While vast diversity exists among cultures, the transculturally valid ideals of non-domination and equal liberty respond to a structural, interpersonal need that one can find in otherwise highly diverse cultural contexts. This universal need is, for Pettit, a need for respect: ‘there is neither a geography nor a history in our deepest, interpersonal needs, and nothing is deeper than our need to be able to command the respect of others, in particular the respect that ensures us a publicly acknowledged realm of ability and authority’.11 In broad agreement with the normative pillars of equality and freedom that are rooted in a shared human need for respect, this chapter pursues the question what is involved in, to use Kant’s familiar terms, treating the other, including persons from other cultural traditions, as an ‘end in itself’ (Selbstzweck) with dignity (Würde), a member of a shared kingdom of ends (Reich der Zwecke). It will raise questions about the transcultural reach of the specific imagery as well as the suggested practices in characterizing what such respect entails. 2

Standing Tall and the Eyeball Test

The cultural roots of political theories are most obviously expressed in the metaphors employed to represent their guiding normative ideals. Pettit introduces a number of images to illustrate what it means to be a free citizen among equals. Under conditions of republicanism, he contends, ‘you can walk tall and assume the status of an equal with the most powerful in the land. At least, you can do so provided that you do not count under local criteria as excessively timid or paranoid’.12 The metaphors Pettit repeatedly employs for the 10 11 12

On the parallels and differences between Pettit’s and Kantian republican conceptions of non-domination see Rainer Forst (2013). Pettit, Philip. 2015. ‘Republicanism across cultures’, in Jun-Hyeok Kwak and Leigh Jenco, eds., Republicanism in Northeast Asia. New York: Routledge, 15–38. Pettit, Philip. 2014. Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World. New York, W.W. Norton and Co, p.26.

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r­epublican kind of life that free and equal citizens enjoy—subjectively and objectively—include ‘walking tall’, ‘standing on par with others’, and ‘standing on equal footing’.13 Conversely, the greatest evil for a free citizen of a republic, a liber, consists in being subjugated to the will of another person perceived as master or dominus.14 These vertical metaphors, which characterize the ideal form of an upright body posture during a respectful encounter between equal citizens, are complemented by a visual metaphor. Equal citizens, on Pettit’s account, stand ‘eye to eye’ with their fellow citizens; ‘(t)hey can look the other in the eye; they do not have to bow and scrape’.15 Perhaps with a touch of irony, Pettit elevates to the level of a test the ideal of standing tall and especially highlights the practice of looking into the eyes of the other as a yardstick for social relationships free of domination. What he calls ‘the eyeball test’ is remotely similar to Rawls’s heuristic devise of the original position insofar as both devises are supposed to provide a method for determining what is required in a just socio-political order. However, in contrast to Rawls’s image of free and equal subjects who stand behind a veil of ignorance, Pettit’s eyeball test is supposed to map on to existing intuitions and real-life practices. Drawing on this test is supposed to determine what it means to live a free life of respect among equals. Rather than an abstract philosophical thought experiment, Pettit’s eyeball test is supposed to be rooted in and applicable to evaluating actual political decision-making processes. To take one of his examples, determining the laws governing samesex marriage during the Spanish government under the Zapatero presidency involved the evocation of an imagined eyeball test between legislators and those fellow citizens whose lives would be significantly affected by same-sex marriage legislation. The eyeball test is supposed to determine whether citizens are indeed equal: ‘At the level set by this test, the safeguards should enable people, by local standards, to look one another in the eye without reason for fear or deference. The achievement of that discernible and applicable ideal would make, intuitively, for the equality of people in their status as free persons or citizens: that is,

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Ibid, p.57, 99, 60, 80. In the preface to his Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, Pettit recounts that his conception of freedom as nondomination is a reaction to his early education as a seminarian who was prevented from being able ‘to look the authorities in the eye’ as well as his reading of Mary Wollstonecarft writing on the subjugation of women ‘who learned to bow and scrape, and to achieve their ends by ingratiation.’ (Pettit 1997, p.viii) Pettit, Philip. 2014. Just Freedom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World. New York, W.W. Norton and Co, p.5, 87.

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in the free status that has long been an ideal in republican thinking’.16 Pettit insists that local standards are supposed to determine whether minimal conditions of being able to command respect among equals are being met. The test is intended to combine universal as well as local dimensions. It is intended to be both culturally deep and interculturally wide. In addition to identifying an ideal republican society, the test is supposed to allow for an evaluation, comparison and even a ranking of cultures: ‘While we can use the principle for identifying an ideally just society – say, a society that is just enough to pass the eyeball test – we can also use it to evaluate and rank the rather less than ideal systems with which the real world presents us and to track piecemeal progress within them’.17 One could think that the very search for a test to determine the degree of intracultural as well as intercultural respect is a nonstarter that could only be evoked in an ironic way. Assuming it is intended as a serious suggestion how to measure a culture’s level or extent of freedom, Pettit’s proposed testing device raises a number of questions as previous commentators have worked out.18 How can the presence of rational fear and devotion be measured? From which perspective would an evaluative ranking take place? Can ranking be performed only by someone who already lives in situations in which the eyeball test would turn out to be successful? Does the evaluator have to be part of – or at least closely familiar with and immersed in – the local cultural environment of the compared societies? I will not discuss these technical questions in any detail here and will leave aside the possibility that the eyeball test is set up in a viciously circular way. Instead, by way of a detour, I will focus on whether the ideal of walking tall and looking another in the eye is indeed a transcultural expression of what it means to show respect among equals. A quick genealogical review shows that the ideal of rectitude and the corresponding dismissal of lowness and bending are deeply rooted in the European imagination. In the Allegory of the Cave from book VII of Plato’s Republic, the prisoners are bent over, shackled and ignorant of the mechanisms producing the shadows they consider to be true. The philosopher, by contrast, stands up and turns his head around, leaves the shadow-world of the cave and, directing his gaze upwards to the sun, contemplates the idea of the Good. Ever since Plato, verticality became the default posture for a liberated form of life that 16 17 18

Pettit, Philip. 2012. On the People’s Term: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.47. Ibid, p.242. Bögner, Frieder, Jörn Elgert and Carolyn Iselt, “Focusing on the Eyeball Test: A Problematic Testing Device in Philip Pettit’s Theory of Justice”, in: S. Derpmann, D.P. Schweikard (eds.), Philip Pettit: Five Themes from his Work, Münster Lectures in Philosophy 1, Springer 2016, p.123–131.

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is capable of standing tall. As Heidegger has argued, the Allegory of the Cave marks the transition from the notion of truth as the unhiddenness of the immediately disclosed world of shadows to that of ‘orthotes’, truth understood as, literally, straightness and, in its Roman derivative, rectitude or correctness (rectum).19 This new conception of truth rests on a distinction between what is true and what is false and privileges the former over the latter. In his Rhetoric Aristotle emphasizes that obeisance in the form of lowering oneself is a sign of honor only among barbarians.20 In Roman times kneeling was identified with the discriminated-against religious practices of Jews and Christians. Jews and Christians bowed and prostrated themselves while free and equal Roman citizens stood tall.21 As a consequence of emancipation processes, the practice of lowering oneself in acts of bowing, genuflection or prostration has been criticized and became largely extinct from the public realm, especially in modern republican societies.22 In republican theorizing, Immanuel Kant has been most influential in identifying inclination (Neigung) with the moral immaturity of following one’s natural desires rather than acting out of duty and respect for the moral law. Autonomous subjects are those who relinquish their natural instinct to bend over, an instinct that frequently is associated by Kant with children, women and Asians. In a republican spirit, Kant objects not only to the acting out of inclination, but to servility more generally. In a section of Metaphysics of Morals titled ‘Kriecherei’, servility, or ‘on the crawling that is genuine to worms and other insects’, being servile (knechtisch, animo servili) violates self-esteem (Selbstschätzung), which is a duty of humans against themselves (Pflicht des Menschen gegen sich selbst). The capacity of being able to command respect rests, for Kant, on one’s capacity for self-esteem. Since human beings partake in a sublime grandeur (Erhabenheit), acts of kneeling or, in his expression, crawling violate their sense of dignity: ‘Kneeling down or groveling on the ground, 19 20 21

22

Heidegger, Martin. 2002. The Essence of Truth: On Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theaetetus, trans. Ted Sadler, New York: Continuum. Aristotle. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Especially the New Testament recounts numerous cases of (1) prostration in front of God, (2) falling to one’s knees before another as well as (3) kneeling while praying. It mentions the word for kneeling, ‘proskynein’, alone fifty-nine times to characterize a liturgical gesture that was performed by Jesus and whose significance transcends, according to Christian belief, any merely cultural practice (Ratzinger, p.184–93). The outdated phenomenon of genuflection survives, if at all, in the private realm, i.e. in the self-consciously old-fashioned – and also predominantly male – practice of proposing in marriage rituals.

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even to express your reverence for heavenly things, is contrary to human dignity ... Bowing or scraping before another seems in any case to be unworthy of a man. ... Whoever makes himself a worm cannot complain when he is then trampled underfoot’.23 Kant does emphasize a moral justification for politeness and especially humility. He distinguishes two senses of humility (Demut). False humility (humilitas spuria) is distinguished from true moral humility (humilitas moralis) in virtue of the relationship to the moral law. The ‘false’ form consists in submissiveness (Unterwürfigkeit) to others, which undermines self-esteem that is essential for an ethics of autonomy. Subjects who determine their lives first need to possess a sense of their own dignity that contradicts submissive forms of self-humiliation. Even the true form of humility can easily succumb to arrogance or an excess of ambition (ambitio). This happens when a sense of pride for possessing virtue (Tugendstolz) replaces the process of measuring oneself against the structurally higher moral law. True self-esteem consists of an unfinalizable elevation (Erhebung) to the moral law rather than a comparison with others. Kant prefers to speak of reverence (­Achtung) rather than respect (Respekt) or awe (Ehrfurcht) when it comes to intersubjective relationships of respect since the latter two notions are based on a sense of fear. Awe, in particular, denotes an unbridgeable distance that is characteristic of relationships to the vastness of nature as well as the moral law. Another instance documenting the association of genuflection with pre-modern or pre-Enlightenment culture comes from Hegel. The defender of Prussian constitutional monarchy, in the slightly melancholic tone of voice, claims that the epitome of veneration’s decay in modernity is most visible in the realms of art and religion: ‘our knee does not bend’24 in front of even the most religious artworks after they have seized to be the highest expression of a culture of advancing equal freedom. To be modern, on this account, means to be no longer capable of keeping one’s self-esteem and sense of dignity while genuflecting.

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It was a common trope to identify such expressions of servility with Asian cultures influenced by Confucianism. For example, the anthropologist Ruth Benedict writes about the bowing gestures in Japanese families, ‘the one who bows acknowledges the right of the other to have his way in things he might well prefer to manage himself (…). Hierarchy based on sex and generation and primogeniture is part and parcel of family life’. (­Benedict 2005, 49) In addition to the imperial ritual of the kowtow and the various forms of bowing in different social contexts, Asian practices of meditation were also commonly interpreted in the European tradition as an undignified desire to make oneself small. Hegel, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm. 1975. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 3 vols., trans. by T.M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p.142.

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This tour de force shows that the metaphor of standing or walking tall is no doubt prevalent especially, even if not exclusively, in the European republican tradition that Pettit holds dear.25 Republicanism has repeated, in a normative register, the anthropological evolution from forms of bent-over four-legged animals to current forms of bipedal standing humans. Four-legged pre-­humanoids have been superseded by the seemingly more progressive homo erectus, homo habilis and, ultimately, homo sapiens. Uprightness, being straight and having rectitude are only a few of the many metaphors that suggest a correlation between one’s vertical corporal posture and the possession of dignity and moral integrity. And indeed, it can hardly be denied that human practices of kowtowing, kneeling and bowing have most often served the purpose of providing symbolic expression to hierarchical power relationships. Subjects usually kneel before superiors such as emperors, who are more important – and thus in need of more respect – than their subalterns. They might also kneel before their God who is imagined infinitely greater than them and bow to religious authorities who claim legitimacy within religious institutions. In the European tradition, the ideal of walking tall has been closely linked to the process of the emancipation of self-conscious citizens who have liberated themselves by rising up and becoming steadfast in their struggles against the powers of domination.26 The citizens demanding a republic broke with the yoke of older traditions of deference that required its practitioners to make themselves small in front of elites such as the aristocracy.27 Bowing or kneeling, as well as other acts of publicly displayed deference, are the behavioral codes that have been increasingly regarded as forms of non-republican subjugation and domination, in which hierarchies were established and protected by elites against egalitarian aspirations. In extreme cases of domination, the enforcers of such political systems, metaphorically and even literally, break the backs of their 25

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In Chinese cultural contexts it is also common to praise great human beings while ‘small’ or ‘petty human’ is a demeaning term. However, in spite of this figure of speech, normative achievement consisted in the seemingly paradoxical practice of making oneself small in practices revealing humility (see next section). A different kind of emancipation consists in the democratization of the right to be seated. In pre-republican times, the right of sitting in public and political ceremonial contexts was reserved to officials of superior rank such as kings and popes while citizens had to bow and stand below the throne. Nowadays the inflation of sitting and the transformation of homo erectus into homo sedens is identified as a major civilizational health risk (Eickhoff 1993). Bayertz, Kurt, Der aufrechte Gang: Eine Geschichte des anthropologischen Denkens, Munich: Beck, 2013. Warneken, Bernd Jürgen, ‚Biegsame Hofkunst und aufrechter Gang‘, in: Ludwig-Uhland Institut (ed.), Der aufrechte Gang: Zur Symbolik einer Körperhaltung, Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 2010.

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subjects. To cut a long story short, the assumption that the person who does not stand tall is subjected to an illegitimate hierarchical relationship in which he or she is systematically dominated by others has been deeply rooted in the Western political imagination and the republican tradition in particular. Rituals of lowering oneself are connected to an aristocratic ritual that has become empty of meaning while continuing to protect hierarchies. The modernist artist Paul Klee created an ironic rendition of a ‘kowtow among equals’. In his etching ‘Two Men Meet, Each Believing the Other to Be of Higher Rank’, Klee depicts two naked men who engage in referential rituals. The informed spectator is able to identify them as the Austro-­Hungarian emperor Franz Ferdinand I and the German emperor Wilhelm II. Since both are nude, they are incapable of determining the other’s rank. Rather than dismissing protocol, they show excessive forms of ritualistic deference. Klee ridicules the emptiness of aristocratic rituals and thereby makes fun of the submissiveness that characterizes aristocratic regimes from head to toe. These examples confirm: free and equal citizens walk tall.28 But is this decay of deferential rituals indeed shared across cultural boundaries? As the opening anecdote about the (failed) kowtow during the Macartney Embassy in China suggests, deference has been an integral part of the Confucian tradition to which I shall now turn.

Figure 13.2 Paul Klee, ‘Two Men Meet, Each Believing the Other to Be of Higher Rank’

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One noteworthy exception are Sartre’s reflections on being seen (Sartre, p.340–400). The ambivalent consequences of becoming visible through self-rectification have been largely ignored by philosophers. The person who looks the other into the eye becomes visible, vulnerable and at the same time intransparent in that his intentions do not need to coincide with his facial expression (Blumenberg 2006).

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The Challenge of Confucian Deference

While one needs to be careful not to introduce an East-West dichotomy and to simplify a manifold of internally complex and pluralistic traditions, a look beyond the Western political imagination to the classical—and recently revived—Chinese tradition of Confucianism shows that the emphasis on standing tall and looking someone in the eye without deference is far from self-evident.29 The kowtow anecdote referred to at the beginning of this chapter illustrates the centrality of ritualistic forms of deference in traditional Confucian culture. After Maoism had identified modernization with an overcoming of traditional Chinese culture during the ‘cultural revolution’, more recently we can witness a return, some speak of a renaissance, of the classical Confucian tradition. This return is not simply state orchestrated, but is also rooted in grass roots initiatives such as the founding of Confucian academies devoted to studying and applying the Confucian classics throughout China.30 In the most recent wave of modernization, China is rediscovering its ancient traditions, especially Confucianism, which are being branded as promoting distinctively Asian values. This renaissance of the old no doubt draws on a sense of Chauvinism connected to the rise of China and a self-assertive differentiation from supposedly Western values including excessive forms of individualism. However, the cultural renaissance is also being fueled by a critical diagnosis of a one-sided process of modernization in terms of an expansion of markets and the destructive consequences of an economy exclusively based on ambition and competitiveness.31 One can witness a widespread sense of existential void and lack of identity as a consequence of the latest stage of Chinese development after the Maoist promise of equality has been overshadowed by a widening gap between rich and poor. There is not one single equivalent to the notion of deference in Confucian sources, but a number of related notions that fall under the broader umbrella concept of deference. They include ci 辭, to decline politely, rang 讓, to yield or defer to others, shun 順, to be compliant, xiao 孝, to practice filial piety, ti 悌, to hold brotherly respect, jing 敬, to show reverent respect, as well as the entire rituals collectively known as li 禮. The rituals take on a significant role in the 29 30 31

Recent reconstructions of the political dimensions of the Chinese Confucian tradition include Angle 2012, Bell 2015 and Chan 2014. Wenning, Mario, and Wu, Jinting. 2016. ‘The postsecular turn in education: Lessons from the mindfulness movement and the revival of Confucian academies’, in Studies in Philosophy and Education, 35(6): 551–571. Osnos, Evan. 2014. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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recent renaissance of Confucian culture and political philosophy. As Herbert Fingerette has argued, Confucianism can be understood as conceiving of the secular as sacred by way of attributing a transformative role to everyday rituals, especially civil rituals expressing politeness. Interestingly, Fingerette’s key example for a social ritual’s binding force is a handshake. He was keenly aware of the role of greeting rites, but unfortunately borrowed the ritual greeting that is associated primarily with Western culture. Handshakes emerged in ancient Greece and served the purpose of showing to the other person that one was not carrying a weapon. Different modes of deference were not only seen as being instrumentally efficacious in sustaining a harmonious society, but were also considered to possess intrinsic value by Confucians.32 The kowtow belongs to the classical ritual system that is laid out in the three Rites canons, the Yili 儀禮, the Liji 禮記, and the Zhouli 周禮. It goes beyond mere custom in that it, when conducted in a sincere manner, expresses a sense of humility and modesty that is considered an important comportment of human excellence independent of cultural background. Confucianism conceives of human beings as inherently bound by social relationships which need to be cultivated. Learning to properly bend one’s body to the other person as if done in a natural manner takes on a central role in this distinctive form of subjectivation. The etymology of the Chinese character for human being, ren 人, is often claimed to represent a walking person. However, if one traces the etymological roots in the Shang dynasty bronze scripts used since the 2nd millennium BC, one sees that the character originally resembles a bowing person:

Figure 13.3 A bowing person 32

Neville, Robert Cummings. 2008. Ritual and Deference: Extending Chinese Philosophy in a Comparative Context. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Acts of bodily inclination are a major component of a traditional Chinese mode of life. Their importance has been particularly emphasized in the tradition of Confucianism. In the most influential collection of Confucian sayings, the Analects, Confucius emphasizes the importance of performing the kotow ritual even against trends to transform or overcome it: A subject kowtowing on entering the hall is prescribed in the observance of ritual propriety (li). Nowadays that one kowtows only after ascending the hall is a matter of hubris. Although it goes contrary to accepted practice, I still kowtow on entering the hall.33 The modification of the rituals known as li, while sometimes justified, is not to be taken lightly, especially when it comes to the cultivation of moral competences.34 While some flexibility in performing rituals is not only allowed for, but also recommended, what should be the motivating reason when making such changes is that the performance of rituals is to be conducive to the cultivation of one’s moral character. For Confucius, ritual is important in the process of self-cultivation because it allows the person engaging in it to step back from and thereby curb immediate individual desires.35 The cultivation of genuine humility and modesty expressed in a deferential attitude and practice is a central component of self-cultivation, which is identified as a taking-­oneselfback or, literally, a lowering of oneself. In analogy to the eyeball-test, one could conceive of an analagous Confucian testing devise, a ‘kowtow test’ that would determine the degree and scope of Confucian forms of respect in a society in a harmonious society. The scope of respect would be reflected in the degree of practices of humility which citizens cultivate to varying degrees of virtuosity in a variety of social as well as other contexts differentiated according to the addressee of respect. According to the classical Chinese and especially the Confucian tradition, one ought to be deferential to the standards of heaven (tian 天) and the course of the world (dao 道) because they exceed the individual’s will and control while providing a normative reference point for evaluating one’s ethically relevant performance. One owed respect to one’s ancestors and more mundane 33 34 35

Ames, Roger T. and Henry Rosemont Jr. 1999. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, New York: Ballentine Books. Lai, Karyn. 2006. Li in the ‘Analects’: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility. Philosophy East and West, 56(1): 69–83. Ames, Roger T. and Henry Rosemont Jr. 1999. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, New York: Ballentine Books.

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forms of respect within the five significant human relationships (wulun) between government and citizens, parents and children, spouses, siblings and friends. For a Confucian, the inability to genuinely feel and adequately express deference in front of one’s parents and ancestors, but also to people holding a certain rank or office worthy of esteem, is a serious character flaw. It is considered an impediment to moral development and a flourishing community. Respect, as expressed in greeting rituals, is not limited to intersubjective relationships, but extends to the natural world. One example are depictions of the famous artist and critic Mifu (1051–1107). Mifu is said to have reacted to a stone by greeting and bowing to it out of a sense of respectful awe and referring to the stone as shixiong 石兄 (elder brother stone).36

Figure 13.4  Chen Hongshou, Mifu praising a rock (first half of the 17th century)

36

Welsch, Wolfgang, Blickwechsel: Neue Wege der Ästhetik, Stuttgart: Reclam 2012.

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Figure 13.5 Jen Po-nien, The Poet Mifu (19th century)

On the other hand, the capacity of being polite and deferring to others worthy of respect is a sign of an exemplary person and extends to all areas of life, including those that do not appear to be characterized by ritual encounter. In Analects 3.7. Confucius states about the junzi 君子, the exemplary person or gentleman, i.e. the one who has cultivated virtuous manners and learned to be polite within ritual encounters such as archery competitions: ‘Exemplary persons (junzi 君子) are not competitive, except where they have to be in the archery ceremony. Greetings (zui yi, i.e. bowing with hands folded in front of the chest, MW) and making way for each other (rang), the archers ascend the hall, and returning they drink a salute. Even in contesting, they are exemplary persons’.37 Practices of deference involving bending and bowing to the other were very common and an integral part of showing respect. In the archery ceremony, the winner was expected to prepare the drink for the person who lost. For the Confucian, deference as well as a trusting commitment to the other person and a 37

Ames, Roger T. and Henry Rosemont Jr. 1999. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, New York: Ballentine Books.

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faith in the possibility of goodness precedes the striving for recognition that has been dominant in the Western ethical tradition at least since Hegel.38 The striving for recognition and competition was to be constrained and replaced by an aptitude for learning and for being humble. In classical Chinese culture, looking another person straight in the eye would violate a sense of respect, which is closely associated to shame. Performing the eyeball test, as Pettit suggests, would put unnecessary pressure on the other and could be perceived as, if not disrespectful, at least tactless or rude. Even in English, ‘to eye’ or ‘to eyeball’ someone suggests either a degree of suspicion or indicates an excessive (often sexual) interest concerning the person that is the object of one’s gaze. The very setup of the eyeball test closely resembles a duel in which two people measure each other with piercing stares while always remaining ready to strike if needed. From a Confucian perspective, respect as measured in the eyeball test, would be a continuation of warfare by other means. In contrast to engaging in staring contests, Confucian cultures have often been characterized as shame cultures in which it is considered paramount not to lose face or make the other lose face by engaging in direct visual confrontation. In contrast, Western guilt cultures focus on direct face to face confrontation.39 In the contemporary world, it is highly problematic to uphold such binary conceptions of cultural difference centered around the notions of shame and guilt.40 It makes more sense to conceive of shame and guilt as different dispositions that are developed to a lesser or greater extent in different cultural contexts and, perhaps more significantly, in different social settings and different personalities. Yet, in our context of inquiring into different cultural expressions of as well as different normative grammars of what respect entails, it is important to note that shame-based ethical codes that flourish in cultures that have been strongly influenced by Confucianism are to be distinguished from the unreasonable forms of fear, timidity and paranoia that Pettit mentions as potential obstacles for performing the eyeball test. Not being inclined to look the other into the eye could be an expression of existential humility rather than a sign of unreasonable fear, timidity or paranoia. In contrast to fear, timidity or paranoia, shame is closely linked to a distinctively moral sensitivity. It emphasizes the desire not to violate one’s own and, 38 39 40

Procyshyn, Alexei and Mario Wenning. 2019. Recognition and Trust: Hegel and Confucius on the Normative Basis of Ethical Life, in: Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy. Benedict, Ruth, The Crysanthenum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, Cleveland: Mariner Books, 2005. The simplistic juxtaposition of an inward-directed sin- vs. an outward-directed shame cultures does not even hold true for classical formulations of Chinese ethics (Roetz 2011).

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even more so, the other person’s sense of being exposed, visible and thus existentially vulnerable. A person with a capacity for shame organizes her life by anticipating and keeping in mind the feelings and evaluations of others, real or imagined. It is precisely out of deep respect of the other person that a direct encounter at eye level is being circumvented. It might be objected to an insistence on ritualized forms of deference that it can easily be misused to establish and protect privileges of elites while it is blind to those at the bottom of hierarchies. Deference, its critics argue, is an obstacle to bottom-up emancipation movements. It is incompatible with democratic forms of contestation and dissent. Paying respect by performing deferential rituals would violate the egalitarian spirit of modern republicanism. Admittedly, from the perspective of republicanism, the Confucian insistence on rituals of deference could appear like an outdated ethic of a subservient feudalistic society stratified into distinct social classes with the son of heaven at its center. It seems to be at odds with the egalitarian spirit of modern republicanism. An anecdote has it that Sun Yatsen, the founder of the Republic of China, raised to his feet a visitor saying that one need not kowtow to the president of a republic.41 As Eske Møllgaard has argued, the main function of Confucian ritual consisted in enforcing those social hierarchies, which were already outdated remnants of the Western Zhou dynasty when being promoted by classical Confucianism.42 According to Møllgaard, Confucian ritual is incompatible with the salient features of modern civility. Modern civility, in contrast to traditional forms of family loyalty that are praised by Confucians, consists in a bond among free and equal citizens.43 And yet, it seems that the Confucian insistence on cultivating interpersonal forms of deference are at least remotely related to and compatible with civility in that both are responses to the fact that human beings depend on each other, including the good will of others, in a degree which can never be discharged or paid back. Some of the intuitions concerning deference, when it is being understood as reverence to fellow humans one depends on, are not fully foreign to the republican tradition. Republicans also have emphasized the importance of 41 42

43

Harrison, Henrietta, The Making of the Republican Citizen: Political Ceremonies and Symbols in in China 1911–1929, New York: Oxford University Press 2000, p.54. The emphasis on ritualized forms of lowering oneself and taking oneself back has been one of the primary reasons for the contested thesis of the existence of an ‘­oriental despotism’ (Wittfogel 1957) that prevented Asian societies from democratization and from embracing republican principles as well as genuinely civic virtues. Pippin, Robert B. 2005. The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath, ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.231.

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cultivating interpersonal bonds, most notably in the form of civic virtues, including a sense of civility with regard to others.44 Simple acts of civility do not have to count as kowtowing or submissiveness in the derogatory republican interpretation of the term analyzed above. Civility can manifest itself in being considerate of others such as when holding the door open or letting the other person speak first. Such acts of politeness or kindness cannot be demanded in that civility is not a duty or an entitlement. Yet, being civil does not merely reflect a free choice of subjects independent of each other. Civility involves, in Robert Pippin’s terms, an ‘appreciation of the dependence of my life on others within some community of dependence and the enactment of social forms appropriate to that dependence’.45 Such an appreciation is an important good that is cherished as much as it is not a moral or legal entitlement. Civility is not identical with morality and yet it can be efficacious in contributing to a shared social space in which agents express and cultivate mutual respect.46 4

A Confucian Supplement to Republicanism

Are republicanism and a Confucian ethics of humility thus incompatible just as the paradoxical formulation of a kowtow among equals seems to suggest? The answer to this question depends on whether it is possible to imagine a society that would cherish the normative ideals of equality and freedom as non-­ domination while also inviting the cultivation of virtuous forms of deference. From a republican point of view, the most significant drawback of an ethos of deference appears to be that it prevents contestation and dissent, which are integral parts of democratic civil societies. It is difficult to imagine emancipatory movements that grow out of overly deferential practices such as kneeling 44 45 46

Pettit, Philip. 1997. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pippin, Robert B. 2005. The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Perfectionist reconstructions of Confucian civility have argued that it is necessary to assign different degrees of respect according to merit as well as a person’s contribution to the common good (Chan 2014, 93–94). This proposal contradicts widely shared egalitarian conceptions of moral worth. The perfectionist assumption of the common good as a yardstick for measuring whether a person is worthy of more or less respect can hardly be defended in highly complex civil societies marked by a plurality of conceptions of the good among citizens who participate in democratic forms of life, i.e. citizens who are free and equal while acknowledging their mutual dependence.

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and deference might even help sustain problematic forms of hierarchy. And yet such practices of expressing dissent by way of bodily deference do exist. Acts of kneeling, for example, have been used to express political resistance.47 The Confucian could respond to the objection that practices of deference, while they may not always be symmetrical, are nevertheless not one-­ dimensional. Practicing deference puts the recipient of the deferential act into a relationship of bearing responsibility for the role or office with which he or she is being identified. For example, if one shows a deep level of respect to someone who holds an official office, such as a judge, the person who holds an office imbued with this status will likely be reminded of the responsibilities and expectations that come with performing his or her position well, for example listening to multiple perspectives without bias and considering human beings as innocent unless proven guilty. In an imagined Confucian republic, it would be essential that citizens are able to refrain from being deferential if the office holder fails to live up to his or her responsibilities or if one has other convincing reasons to do so. Acts of defying rituals of politeness can for example involve the refusal to accept gifts where receiving the gift would put oneself into a potentially unwanted situation of forced gratitude to a donor who could then use his wits to bribe the recipient. Mengzi, one of Confucius successors, mentions that one of his role models, Zisi, refused to accept repeated gifts from the duke because it would have involved kowtowing to the duke’s messenger (5B6), which he preferred not to do. Similarly, we read in the Kongzi jiayu, Zengzi (Zeng Shen) in his worn-out clothes worked in the fields in Lu. When the Duke of Lu heard of this, he offered him a domain. Zengzi refused it with polite, yet determined words. Somebody said to him, “The ruler wants to give it to you by his own initiative without your having asked for it. Why do you refuse it so determinedly?” Zengzi said, “I have heard: He who accepts the favors of another, will always live in awe before him. And he who gives something to another will always look down upon him. And even if the ruler graciously should not look down upon me—would I 47

To demonstrate against police brutality and racial inequality in the United States, the NFA player Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the playing of the US national anthem. Other athletes have emulated this practice to express solidarity with and respect for the victims of inequality and excessive forms of police violence. The kneeling has been interpreted as a sign of disrespect by some, including president Trump, while president Obama emphasized the right to kneel and not to stand as a form of legitimate protest.

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Figure 13.6 Empire of Signs

myself be free of awe before him?” When Confucius heard of this he said, ‘Shen’s words suffice to keep his moral integrity intact’.48 From a republican perspective, these Confucian accounts suggest that what is essential when engaging in acts of deference is that (1) those acts are being performed in a voluntary manner and (2) that the rituals engaged in preserve or help to establish equality or at least significant levels of reciprocity among those that show respect to each other. In Empire of Signs, Roland Barthes characterizes the act of bowing and gift giving as follows: ‘in order to give a present, I bow down, virtually to the level of the floor, and to answer me, my partner does the same: one and the same low line, that of the ground, joins the giver, the recipient, and the stake of the protocol, a box which may well contain nothing—or virtually nothing, a graphic form (inscribed in the space of the room) is thereby given to the act of exchange, in which, by this form, is erased any greediness (…) The salutation here can be withdrawn from any humiliation or any vanity, because it literally salutes no one; it is not the sign of a communication—closely watched, condescending and precautionary—between two autarchies, two personal empires (each ruling over its Ego, the little realm of which it holds the ‘key’); it is only the feature of a network of forms in which nothing is halted, knotted, 48

Roetz, Heiner. 1993. Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age: A Reconstruction under the Aspect of the Breakthrough toward Postconventional Thinking, Albany: State University of New York Press, p.298.

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profound’.49 Interestingly, for Barthes the performance of rituals as both void constitutes a substitution of religion by politeness. Rituals of radical politeness are subversive of the tendency to humiliate others or to worship one’s self in acts of vanity. As the above image demonstrates, radical rituals such as bowing to the floor do not need to preserve the status quo. Indeed, they can level hierarchies. As Michal Nylan has argued, rituals can have a transformational and even utopian impact: ‘The ritual proper highlights the aura of change by its temporary inversions of the social order (…) ritual practices, because of this attempt at union, tend to evoke a coherent picture of ideal worlds in which hierarchy is always offset by reciprocity, so that the social order may become entirely equitable, if not entirely equal in the modern Euro-American sense’.50 The transformative power often derives from placing the other person into a position where he or she is invited to take on an obligation. The obligation is not necessarily fulfilled, but the ritual context creates the possibility for its realization. It establishes a context in which the participants of the ritual are measured by how well they fulfill the duties they take on as part of being treated in a respectful and reverential manner. By way of conclusion, some of the directions in which an imagined contemporary version of Confucian republicanism could justify the inclusion of deferential practices include: 1. The Confucian notion of deference is rooted in the fact that, under usual circumstances, human beings depend on and owe more to others, especially their parents and ancestors, than they are capable of returning directly. Deference is the proper expression of a sense of existential humility, modesty and gratitude in light of being born into forms of life that are being passed on. These forms are open to even radical forms of revision and transformation. 2. While bowing, kneeling or kowtowing are classical expressions of deferential rituals, deference comes in different degrees and shapes and is closely connected to civility. Expressions of civility include handshakes, giving way to another person and other gestures of reverence. While one might initially cultivate forms of deference and civility in small circles such as families, under favorable conditions the interpersonal level can gradually spread outward to include forms of curtesy and friendliness and care to distant strangers. 49 50

Barthes, Roland. 1989. Empire of Signs, trans. by Richard Howards. New York: Hill and Wang, The Noonday Press, p.65–66. Nylan, Michael. 2001. The Five ‘Confucian’ Classics, New Haven: Yale University Press, p.191.

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4.

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In contrast to classical Confucianism, deference in a modern Confucian republic would not presuppose fid hierarchical relationships. This does not preclude that some expressions of deference are asymmetrical, for example gift giving or treating the elderly with respect. At a transgenerational level, however, these forms of asymmetrical deference are part of a reciprocal process of taking turns.51 Each generation is burdened with the task of appropriating, preserving and transforming and passing down traditions and forms of life that they have inherited. Genuine deference is performed out of a sense of voluntariness. To count as genuine, deference flourishes in contexts free of domination as well as free from the blind following of rituals. Everyday ritual invocations such as saying ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ recognizes the other person’s power to decline. In many contexts declining might not be a real option and yet acts of speaking and acting in a civil manner is essential to create the illusion of a shared civil space that is necessary for a flourishing community of free and equal citizens. Such illusions, in contrast to lies or ideologies, are not intended to deceive, but create a shared ‘subjective’ space of reciprocity in which human beings can feel and act as free and equal players.52 The cultivation of playful forms of deference could serve as an important corrective in many social contexts. Understood as a spiritual exercise of taking-oneself-back by stepping-back-from-oneself and making-­oneselfsmall, it could counteract the pernicious tendency of ‘standing tall’ to appear as snobbery and self-assertiveness. The Confucian emphasis on deference is a radicalized version of such acts of cultivating a culture of humility and respect. It invites us to imagine a republic in which the kowtow would indeed be performed among equals.53 Fritsch, Matthias. 2018. Taking Turns with Earth: Phenomenological and Deconstructive Approaches to Intergenerational Justice, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Seligman, Adam B., Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett, Bennett Simon. 2008. Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerety, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.21–22. I am grateful for receiving constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article from the participants of presentations at the Free University of Berlin, Nankai University and Sun Yatsen University (Zhuhai). Particular thanks are due to Georg Bertram, Nahum Brown, Dina Emundts, Guangxin Fan, Hans Feger, Stefan Gosepath, Yong Huang, Jun-Hyeok Kwak, Hilge Landwehr, Kai Marchal, Philip Pettit, Alei Procyshyn and Wolfgang Welsch. For earlier drafts, please see Wenning, M. (2021). The Kowtow and the Eyeball Test. Kritike, 15(3): 13–39.

Chapter 14

Intermediality in Qing Ming Shang He Tu: from Visual Image to Music Germán Gil-Curiel 1 Introduction In this presentation I will be using the term ‘mediation’, or ‘intermediality’ to refer to the process whereby a work of art is transformed when passing from one medium to another, considering in particular the passage from painting into music in the case of the Qingming Shang He Tu, originally painted by Zhang Zeduan during the reign of Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty and the Chinese Symphonic Picture composed by Shi Zhiyou in 2006. Drawing from the work of Linda Hutcheon on intermedial adaptation as a cultural meme,1 I contend that mediation is the precondition to ‘live’, in the sense of keeping and transmitting the meaning and relevance of a fundamental piece of culture alive over time.2 2 Along the River during the Qingming Festival: Liveness and Mediation from Painting to Music and into Virtual Reality Scholars such as Linda Hutcheon have theorised the phenomenon of adaptation across the media in terms of cultural units that evolve and mutate, with the prior work of art enjoying, as it were, an afterlife in its new incarnation.3 She has proposed three qualities as needed for high survival value in these works of art, namely longevity, fecundity and copying fidelity, although she acknowledges that in a cultural context copying means changing with each repetition.4 In this chapter I shall borrow from this theory to discuss ‘Along 1 Hutcheon, Linda, 2007. A Theory of Adaptation. London: Routledge. 2 For a fully developed version of the arguments on this essay please see Gil Curiel, Germán. 2023. Liveness and Mediation in Chinese Art Music: From ‘The Map’ to ‘Along the River During the Qingming Festival’. In Hui, Yu and Stock, Jonathan P. (Eds). The Oxford Handbook of Music in China and the Chinese Diaspora. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3 Ibid, p.176. 4 Ibid, p.167. © Germán Gil-Curiel, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_016

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the River During the Qing Ming Festival’, a work of art that started its life as a painting, then turned into a symphony, and is at the moment of writing being converted into a virtual reality digital experience that will allow users to ‘enter’ its world, of which music is a large constitutive part. 3

Source: the Painting

The painting Qingming Shang He Tu, translated as ‘Scenes along the River during the Qingming Festival’, or Qingming Scroll, and also known as ‘The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival’, is a monumental masterpiece in a lightcoloured silk scroll 528 cm long and 24.8 cm high, running from right to left as is typical of this genre of painting of the Northern Song Dynasty. It was made by famous court painter Zhang Zeduan (1085–1145)—also known as Zhengdao— a native of Dongwu, today’s Zhu Cheng in Shandong Province. He was a court painter during the reign of Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty, who travelled and studied in Bianliang, today Kaifeng in Henan Province. The quality of longevity is thus evident in this case. Using traditional Chinese realistic manner of painting in detail, this work of art focuses on everyday life, depicting the natural scenery along the banks of the Bian River, the social activities during a very prosperous period of Chinese history and the hustling and bustling life in the early twelfth-century city of Bianjing, then the capital, during the celebration of the Qingming festival. The Song Dynasty was a period in Chinese history ‘when commerce began to flourish in the cities. At the time Bianjing became the capital of China, businesses and shops gradually began to set up in traditionally residential areas, with stores and wine shops springing up in city streets, bringing newfound trade and prosperity with them. Qingming Shang He Tu vividly depicts this new prosperity of the emerging cities of the period. It is thus the parallel situation in the present, with China living a new period of business, trade and prosperity, that might have made it an ideal time to ‘copy’ these cultural units with high fidelity in musical (and other visual) forms. Qingming Shang He Tu has three sections. The first section depicts some scenes on the outskirts of Bianjing. These opening scenes set the tone for the entire painting as it features realistic depictions of the natural environment and portrays people engaged in activities that are typically associated with the early spring and the Qingming Festival. The second section, in the middle, depicts the Bian River, especially the boats that are seen plying back and forth under the Rainbow Bridge. Finally, the last section shows the streets overflowing with traffic and pedestrians, typical of the hustle and bustle of the flourishing city in Bianjing: a ‘magnificent, imposing city gate is in the centre, with crisscrossing

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streets and clusters of buildings on both sides. The bridge, ships, carriages, wine shops, teahouses, temples and stores of all kinds are meticulously depicted in detail, every imaginable trade, as well as a great diversity of busy characters ranging from physicians, fortune tellers, seers, monks, jugglers, storytellers and so on, to officials, scholars, innkeepers and barbers, among others. In sum, considered one of the most magnificent works in Chinese art history, Qingming Shang He Tu is a masterpiece of realism that restores to life in detail the pulse of a thriving, historical town, interweaving small scenes into a unified whole. Consequently, ever since its creation, the painting has experienced a great number of unbelievable counterfeits, replicas, and copies and even has at times gone missing. As a matter of fact, and according to official records, there have been so many different versions of the painting that it is difficult to state which one is the original painting by Zhang Zeduan. 4

Mediated by Music: the Symphony

The scroll painting Qingming Shang He Tu was adapted into a Chinese ‘symphonic picture’ entitled Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival in 2006, revitalizing, after about 900 years, an instant of historical Chinese ancestry through music. This is a collaboration between three renowned Chinese musicians, namely Song Fei the leading master of Chinese music; Shi Zhiyou, a notable contemporary music composer; and Li Xiaopei, the top-class recording director, as well as the Asia Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the principal orchestras in Beijing. Song Fei is an accomplished soloist of Chinese traditional music instruments, whose virtuosity represents the highest level of Chinese instrument Huqin nowadays in China and abroad. Mr Shi, based on the regional colour of the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival, musically portrays the local particularities of history and culture, evoking ‘Henan Opera, Qu Opera, Yue Tune, Si-ping tune and materials of folk songs’. The instrumentation of the Chinese Symphony Picture includes various Chinese instruments from the Huqin family, with their particular and powerful sound, in particular Erhu, Zhuihu, Gaohu, Zhonghu and Banhu; also Pipa, Sheng, Guqin, Guzheng, Gehu, Xiao, Bichord, Trichord; and for the Western musical instruments: Harp, Oboe, French Horn, Trumpet, Trombone, Flute, Synthesizer, Percussion and Strings. The Symphonic Picture, following some features of the symphonic poem, becomes a piece of orchestral music based on a literary, poetic, or other extra-musical narrative. As a creation of Romantic period in the second half of the 19th century, usually in one movement, it advocated pictorial, literary and dramatic associations in music. Eventually, the symphonic poem or ‘tone-poem’ developed into a form of ‘programme music’, a genre that kept the

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same postulation of expressing an illustrative extra-musical image, whether of mood, narrative, literary, or pictorial image in contradistinction to ‘absolute music’, instrumental music that is created and appreciated simply as such. In this chapter, I explore the Qingming Shang He Tu symphonic picture through an ekphrastic process. Ekphrasis has been defined as a type of verbal description of a work of art that essentially turns it into a powerful and creative aesthetic verbal representation of it. In this way, the fertile act of narrating and mirroring on the essence of an artwork, whether musically or visually, the artist amplifies and expands its meaning. Broadly speaking, ekphrasis is also considered as a stylistic tool that allows one artistic medium to relate to another throughout a synergetic process of interaction and fusion, in such a way that the arts involved mirror each other. Drawing from Cody Chan and Gyon Woo, I will here describe in an ekphratic way the overture and finale, feelings, characters, activities and tasks, and finally the sceneries and settings of the painting, turned into music. Let us begin with the Overture and the Finale, which respectively open and close the Symphonic Picture. With respect to the former, the description focuses on the dialogue between the Sheng and the Erhu on the background of the orchestra: When the instrument Sheng emotively plays the leitmotif of the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival, the moment the orchestra bursts in seems to unroll the ancient scroll painting of the flourishing age for the whole audience. Then, the Erhu sets about ‘painting the years of hardships, tracing the haps and mishaps of both individuals and society, behind the flourishing harmony’ (Chan, 2006 n.p.). In the coda of the movement, the confiding Sheng reappears. The rhythm is slowing, indicating the music will be continuous, just as the story itself, which is being told tirelessly and from one medium into another. As for the Finale, the strings, charged with enthusiasm, present the leitmotif of the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival, while the bass area of the Erhu intensly speaks up China’s attachment, memory and yearning, in such a way that the prosperous age of the days when Bianliang was the capital of the country are strongly evoked. These days made a deep impression on all generations, while also garnering the world’s admiration at the time. The symphony comes to the cadenza of the finale, but the story is never-ending. In the final sounds of the music work, leaving the ancient flourishing age behind, listeners now face a new flourishing age of harmony and refulgence, which is the Age of Modern China. I shall now move on to the the theme of ‘Characters’. Two scenes constitute this theme. First, there is a ‘Frightened Horse’, which deals with the incident of a bolted horse in fright, originally depicted on the painting and thus musically transposed into music. Following the neighing of the horse, the rhythm suddenly changes. The movement is intruded by unknown tension and panic. In such an urgent context, both the Erhu and the orchestra indicate the incoming danger. The Erhu’s sounds mirror the horse’s gallop in quick tempos. The quick

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rhythm lasts as needed to propel the upsurge of tense emotions. In the middle movement, the tutti warns listeners of the danger in the following second. After the middle section, the cadenza transmits the vision of the frightened horse’s gallop. Looking after the horse running away, the scattered people are still alarmed and surprised. Though the neigh has faded away along with the sound of the erhu, the effect is meant to signal that the hearts of both onlookers and audiences listening are still filled with fear. Other characters from this section are the ‘Fellow Townsmen’. On the painting, these fellow townsmen are depicted having a conversation under the willows of the south bank of Bian River. Their conversation could either be about their everyday life at Bianliang, or perhaps about the festival itself, since they appear joyful. Then, the musical movement opens with a characteristic prelude, bringing the audience into the dialogue. At that point, two male ‘voices’ are heard starting a conversation in the Henan folk dialect, given that instruments from the region are employed here. We can thus state that the first voice is undoubtedly from Henan, given the ‘local accent’. It is as if words were heard, praising the beautiful scenery, the local customs and in general the men’s hometown, with the sweetest yearning. The mellow rhythm of the Erhu and the dialogue are in sharp contrast. Next in the symphony is the section on ‘Activities and Tasks’. Here, the movement entitled ‘Serving Guests’ at a local tavern begins with the string band playing an agile pizzicato, setting a joyful mood for listeners and guiding them into a suitable state of mind. The wide-leaping intervals by the Chinese cello represent the joyous motif of the picture, which foregrounds the wine and cuisine. At the climax of the movement, the successive transitions add many unexpected colours to the music, just like the various flavours of the meals. The movement enters the phase of modulation and comparison in the middle part, associated to the scene inside the tavern, and focuses on the dining table, at which the wine and dishes are being tasted by various diners. The dialogue between the orchestra and the Chinese cello would also seem to echo the diners’ conversation, as with the scene on the ‘fellow Townsmen’. Following there are two tableaus related to water. The first one is entitled ‘Fighting with Waves’. Here a fierce glissando of harp leads the movement into another burst of tension. The warning of fight is conveyed by the brasses, and a heart-quake battle seems to immediately begin. ‘The surging river is gushing towards the bow […] The rhythm of successive dots plays the cantus of boatmen’s fighting with fierce waves, as well as a scene of human-in-water danger’5. 5 Chan, Cody and Woo Gyeon. 2006. “Chinese Symphonic Picture: Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival”. Symphony Guide. Edited by Chan Cody and Woo Gyeon. Guangdong: Guo Xuxuan/Shi Zhiyou.

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The movement however is determined and conveys a sense that victory will be achieved. Towards the end of the movement, the orchestra and the Erhu respectively play a triumphal rhythm. The second river-related tableau is called ‘Sailing Far off’. Here, two cargo ships can be seen sailing away through the rainbow bridge. The smooth legatos of the string band illustrate the undulation of waves along with the trail left by the cargo ships. The sprays waver under the ship. Melodiously, the Erhu plays a song of long voyage. The melody conveys ease and the anticipation of the futur. The idea is to convey that wherever the ship may be going, it is bound to be a peaceful place, full of affluence, happy and harmonious. Last in the section of activities and tasks is ‘Carrying a Sedan Chair’. People from all walks of life can be seen on the painting, as mentioned above. The street is crowded and bustling with a wide variety of people: the dealing vendors, dawdling gentries, an officeholder on horse and peddling packmen. On the sides, two sedan chairs with the attendants clearing the way, are being carried through the street. The sound of Banhu performs the theme of traditional Henan Opera ditty entitled Carrying the Wedding Sedan Chair. The sedan carriers walk swiftly, and their steps are in accordance with the rhythm of the ditty. The Zhonghu joins the performance. The interlude of the ditty is scored on the basis of the cross-sectorial interlude of Henan Opera. The entrance of Zhuihu after the interlude adds the cadence from the Yellow River area, performing tunes based on the exquisite tones from the traditional Qu Opera Rolling up the Mat. The movement is composed as a Rondino. The materials from Yue Tune and Si-ping Tune are continuously arranged, symbolizing the public mood, under the harmony of society, and are swiftly merged into the flourishing age. Last, the section entitled ‘Sceneries and Settings’ comes at the end of the symphony, and here the Bian River takes centre stage. The Bian River has been the theme of many legends for a long time. During the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) poet Pi Rixiu wrote about it in his ‘Treasured memories of the Bian River’. The introduction via the flowing figure by the celesta depicts the silver waves of the Bian River into the sunshine. The bass strings play the leitmotif of the river. The Erhu sings an ode of the mother river accompanied by the wave-like figure of strings. When the motif enters the second half, the music also follows a wave-like figure. The melody sounds like the current of Bian River in the sun. And then, when the ‘colourful harmony of the orchestra accompanying the song of Erhu pushes the ode to a eulogy, the tutti of brasses pushes the music to the climax’. At the end, the undulation of triplets from the strings illustrates the magnificence and effulgence of the mother river. The movement entitled ‘Viewing Fish’ appropriately follows then. The colour of featuring bichord sketches a picture of people viewing fish almost instantly. Starting from the active rhythm of a triple tome, the prelude of plucking music introduces the

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rhythm of the bichord, at times ascending and at times descending. The resulting sound is just like a stream of water, and the bouncing rhythm sounds as if they were fish competing for food in the water. As we can see from the detailed description of some key pieces above, by setting up movements focused on characters, actions and scenes the symphonic picture closely matches the images depicted on the famous scroll, presenting as it were an adaptation of the content into the medium of music, all the time insisting on the parallelism between the period originally depicted and present day China. The idea that the characters on the painting have been brought to life by the symphony is powerfully expressed by Song when he says that: For hundreds of years, those people are still living in the scroll. They are waiting for escape. They are looking forward to rebirth. They are hankering that the world will one day hear the sound of their age again, or discover their culture after the passing of almost a thousand years. Only music, the wonderful spiritual wealth of the human race, can read such a surpassing fineness, affecting hundreds of millions of people who listen. Most recently, the scroll was digitised, incorporating into the process the traditional arts of painting and music and also the contemporary technology of digital animation.6 The animated version of the painting, occupying a full wall about 30 times the size of the original scroll, was shown for a three-month period in the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 at the China Pavilion. It is a 3D animated, viewer-interactive digital version, entitled River of Wisdom. Subsequently, it was exhibited at the Asia World–Expo in Hong Kong in 2010; in Macau in 2011; in Taiwan, at the Expo Dome in Taipei in 2011; and also at the Singapore Expo, in an exhibition entitled A Moving Masterpiece: The Song Dynasty As Living Art. In this way, the artwork continues to live its prolific afterlives. 6 As I have argued elsewhere, another clear example of animating paintings in which music is essential can be found in the work of Peter Greenaway. In particular, his multimedia installations lead us to the realm of painting interacting with cinema, digital visual technology, music and literature. For instance, the project entitled ‘Classical Paintings Revisited’, which involves the re-creation of nine iconic Western art paintings by means of various media. The Wedding at Cana by Paolo Veronese is one of these paintings. The performance, set to soundtrack, consists of superimposing digital imagery and projections, such as close-up images of faces and diagrams onto the painting, showing interrelations and similarities between cinema and painting, in relation to the painter’s mastery of perception, as ‘cinema is nothing if it is not to be considered as the manipulation of light’. Also, music and dialogues for the 126 characters painted in Veronese’s Wedding at Cana—wedding guests, servants, onlookers and wedding crashers—interact with the visual effects. Greenaway’s project sets in motion a high-tech-mediated dialogue with the original paintings.

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5 Conclusion I have argued that mediation can be understood as the process whereby a work of art is adapted from one medium into another one, gaining additional ‘liveness’ in the process. I have discussed this using the painting and the symphonic painting made after it entitled ‘Scenes Along the River During the Qing Ming Festival’ mostly by means of ekphrasis. Therefore, I have paid attention to the ways in which the painting was mirrored into the music, or to put it another way, corresponded to it. As French critic Charles Baudelaire put it in a much quoted passage: ‘I discover on hearing music an analogy and an intimate connection between colours, sounds and perfumes […] The scent of red and brown marigolds […] causes me to fall into a deep reverie, in which I seem to hear from afar the solemn, deep tones of the oboe’ (cited in (Vergo, 2011, p.70). It would seem that the digital animations and virtual reality remediations of the scroll painting are finally making these correspondences available for audiences to engage with all their senses, giving perhaps the chance to experience Chinese art fully and synesthetically. Art and audience can both gain from these mediations.

Chapter 15

New Research Directions of Marxist Aesthetics: a Case of Contemporary China Zheng Shen Since the publication of Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1932), Marxist aesthetics has gone through the course of the 78th anniversary. With the acceleration of globalization in the 21st century and the development of new media technologies, the contemporary issues of Marxist aesthetics research have attracted scholars’ attention. Among them, in China, where the market economy is developing rapidly, studies on how Marxist aesthetics respond to the real world and integrate with the development of the Chinese context are especially worthy of scholars to explore further. In the early 20th century, with the translation of Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto (1848) and other important theoretical works, Marxist thought and its literary theory began to spread in China. Looking back on this century, Marxist thought and its literary theory have always been an essential subject in the study of Chinese aesthetics and other humanities. For example, Mao Zedong’s The Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art (1942), Professor Zhu Guangqian’s Letters on Beauty (1980), and Professor Baihua Zong’s Strolling in Aesthetics (1981) have become the cornerstones of studies on Marxist aesthetics in China. With the advent of the 21st century, the research status and future of Marxist aesthetics have gradually attracted the attention and interest of Chinese scholars. Marxist aesthetics caused heated discussions, such as Professor Gangji Liu’s Marxist Aesthetics in Contemporary (2007), Professor Wang Jie’s Aesthetic Basis of Contemporary Chinese Literature and Art Policy (2018), Professor Xiang Li’s Utopian Power: Political Turn of Contemporary Aesthetics (2017), etc. Therefore, we took Chinese Marxist aesthetics as an example and reviewed theories and methodologies of aesthetics for new research directions of current Marxist Aesthetics. Mainly, we discussed them from three aspects: the crisis of aesthetic research, the fundamental issues of studies on contemporary aesthetics, and the reconstruction of aesthetic research.

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The Crisis of Aesthetic Research

In the late 1980s, the crisis of Marxist thought and aesthetic theories emerged. The core of Marxist thought was the equality of social class and formed a communist society. Thus, British working class responded to the thought actively and carried out a miners’ strike in 1984–1985, but unfortunately ended in failure. The failure of the strike severely damaged the left-wing ideology, which was dominated by Marxism. Since then, the relatively small British Communist Party had been in trouble. Within the party, the British Communist Party began to split; outside the party, the relationship between the British Communist Party and the left of the Labor Party broke down. As a result, Marxist thought missed the opportunity to enter the mainstream labor movement. With the influence of right-wing thought during Reagan and Thatcher’s administration and the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, Marxist thought further lost its original position in academia or the broader cultural field. In addition, due to various events such as post-structuralism and post-modernism that became popular in academia, Marxist theory was no longer fashionable in the West. Affected by the crisis of western Marxist theories, Chinese scholars also began to discuss the crisis of aesthetic research. There are three main characteristics of the crisis: (1) Aesthetic discourse presents a fracture at the academic level; (2) A linguistic turn in aesthetic research; (3) A psychological turn in aesthetic research. First of all, the fracture of aesthetic discourse at the academic level refers to the coexistence of aesthetic culture that tends to be popularized and literary criticism that reflects the human spirit in the study of aesthetic theory in the late 1980s. From a theoretical point of view, aesthetics has always been a marginal discourse, which exists in opposition to the modernization process in the social material realm.1 That is to say, the essence of aesthetics reflects that it differs significantly from material requirements and social mainstream desires. The study of aesthetic culture respects the aesthetic theories in real popular culture and daily consumer culture, which is quite different from the primary connotation of aesthetics. Although the study of aesthetic culture has made aesthetic research transition from the cultural edge to the center, the aesthetic research that has become one of the social discourses has lost the superiority of academic discourse on its own. Thus, it forms a crisis in the relationship between aesthetic theory and ideology.

1 Bell, Daniel. 1989. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. New York: Basic Books, p.260.

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Secondly, western aesthetics has gone through the process of the linguistic turn, and Chinese aesthetics has also demonstrated the linguistic turn. However, the linguistic turn of aesthetics cannot be regarded as a substantial development of aesthetics. Instead, there will be a crisis of aesthetics turning into literary criticism. Taking Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson’s binary opposition as an example. Although aesthetics is intrinsically related to literary criticism, literary criticism can only be a part of the aesthetic composition rather than all. Finally, there is a theoretical crisis in aesthetic research that turns to psychology. Psychological aesthetics is guided by theories such as Freud’s psychoanalysis, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and Lacan’s psychological methods. Individualism and narcissistic tendencies are the essential characteristics, but the academic motivation of these theories has been exhausted and needs to re-find cultural motivation. As far as psychology is concerned, its theory has already been established. Since it cannot find other theoretical resources and methods, it has been unable to develop to a higher level. Therefore, aesthetics based on psychology should also have the same crisis. The performance of crisis in these aesthetic studies has prompted scholars to rethink the study of Marxist aesthetic theory. Especially with the acceleration of globalization in the 21st century and the development of new media technologies, Marxist aesthetics presents a contemporary crisis. Contemporary is a qualitative definition of the historical period of human development. It usually refers to the social and historical development process from the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, to the present. Social reality and specific contexts at different historical stages are the foundation of aesthetic research. Therefore, the practical significance of the 78th anniversary of Marxist aesthetics research in the current development of Chinese society and history is worth pondering by scholars. 2

Fundamental Issues of Studies on Contemporary Aesthetics

In order to deal with the current crisis of aesthetic research, we can start with correctly understanding and solving the underlying problems of contemporary aesthetics. In response to this, the further development of aesthetics must first get rid of the confusion or misunderstanding of the two concepts, otherwise the research work will hardly make substantial progress. The two misconceptions specifically refer to, on the one hand, aesthetics in China is limited to its discipline classification system. At present, aesthetics is defined as a thirdlevel discipline under the second-level discipline of literature and art, and is an emerging interdisciplinary discipline. For an emerging interdisciplinary

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discipline, the contemporary nature of aesthetic theories cannot be discussed if aesthetic research cannot think outside the box and just stands still in its disciplinary system. Due to the rapid development of the humanities and social sciences, aesthetics relates to other disciplines. For this reason, its research theories and methods also show a diversified trend. Thus, it is challenging to study aesthetic theories based on linguistics and psychology only. On the other hand, the mainstream of Chinese academia believes that aesthetics is a theoretical discipline that focuses on the study of artistic experience and the study of the aesthetic laws of literature and art. It is an aesthetic theory that has been rigidly adapted from aesthetic theories in western modernization to study Chinese aesthetics. Following this stream, the particular problems and academic mechanisms of Chinese aesthetics are easily ignored. Therefore, we put forward the fundamental problem of contemporary Chinese aesthetics is how to establish a theoretical framework of Chinese aesthetics that is different from western aesthetics. On this basis, this fundamental problem can be further divided into the following questions for research: – Under the conditions of the rapid development of China’s market economy and opening to the process of globalization, what role does aesthetic research play? – At present, how to combine the Chinese culture model and Chinese aesthetic experience model with the theoretical principles of Marxist aesthetics? – What is the relationship between contemporary aesthetics and the governance of the Communist Party of China? For example: In the complicated relationship between the middle class, the ruling party, the market and the education system, how did China’s privileges and inequalities arise and continue? etc. 3

The Reconstruction of Aesthetic Research

To answer the fundamental questions of contemporary aesthetics, scholars need to reconstruct the existing aesthetic theories to build a theoretical framework of contemporary aesthetics with Chinese characteristics. To this end, we introduced the framework of two aspects as a reference. 3.1 Theoretical Research Theoretically, we proposed that the theoretical research of contemporary Chinese aesthetics can be reconstructed from two main directions: contemporary Chinese tragic aesthetics and contemporary Chinese political aesthetics.

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– Contemporary Chinese Tragic Aesthetics: Looking for Utopia The spirit of pessimism has a long history in the history of western aesthetics. For example, Oedipus Rex created by the ancient Greek writer Sophocles and others critically reflects on ancient Greek mythologies through tragic art and aesthetics. Ancient Greek mythology is a bridge connecting individual aesthetic hallucinations with ideological identity in reality. That is to say, ancient Greek mythology created an unrealistic illusion of reality. Individuals can only accept this illusory reality as a real reality because they are isolated from the real external world, so as to achieve identification with illusory reality. However, the individual’s tragic consciousness destroyed the bridge, which is the result of the awakening of human self-consciousness. In Chinese academic circles, whether or not there is a sense of tragedy has always been an essential topic in the study of Chinese aesthetics. Terry Eagleton’s Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2002) and Zhu Guangqian’s Psychology of Tragedy (2009) both hold a negative view on this, pointing out that China has no strict tragedy. However, scholars represented by Wang Guowei and Zhou Laixiang believe that China is conscious of tragedy. They borrowed western theory of tragedy, combined with Chinese aesthetic experience and artistic practice, to make a theoretical analysis and demonstration of Chinese tragedy concept and tragedy form. In this regard, we agree with their view. China’s concept of tragedy is reflected in the marketization process since the 1980s. It is precise because China has a strong sense of reflection and self-criticism that it has promoted the profound transformation of Chinese society. Further, in contemporary China, tragic humanism is the core concept of the re-creation and modern transformation of Chinese culture. The tragic concepts and tragic theories of Marxist aesthetics are the theoretical basis for explaining contemporary aesthetic problems and contemporary tragic concepts. Since the theoretical construction of modern Chinese tragedy is still an unfinished process, this provides a possible research direction for contemporary aesthetic theory. In constructing the theory of contemporary Chinese tragic aesthetics, the search for Utopia is its core connotation. In the 16th century, the British scholar St.Thomas More first proposed the concept of ‘utopia’ in Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia, which is used to refer to an imaginary and ideal society.2 Since then, Utopia has many forms and variants. 2 More, Thomas. 2015. Utopia. Claremont, California: Pomona Press, p.56.

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For example, Jameson’s discussion of Marxism is a ‘Utopian plan’, but no scholar has proposed ‘personality utopia’ or ‘thinking utopia’. Therefore, we proposed the concept of ‘emotional utopia’, which is composed of ‘red utopia’ and ‘nostalgic utopia’ and presented as a dual-core driven double helix structure. ‘Red Utopia’ refers to a utopian impulse to create socialism with Chinese characteristics starting from the Chinese New Cultural Movement; ‘Nostalgic Utopia’ refers to a complex emotion that bravely and resolutely confronts the sufferings of modernization with nostalgia by returning to the past. In the process of modernization of Chinese society, these two utopias influence each other and form the basic emotional structure of Chinese aesthetic modernity. Due to the particularity of Chinese social modernization, this expression of ‘emotional utopia’ is tragic. Theoretically, it is the inevitable requirement of history pointed out by Marx and Engels and this tragic conflict that cannot be realized temporarily. Consequently, ‘emotional utopia’ provides a new theoretical interpretation of Chinese tragic aesthetics. In other words, looking for Utopia is one of the effective ways to explore the theory of contemporary Chinese tragic aesthetics. – Contemporary Chinese Political Aesthetics: Popularization of Literature and Art In the era of cultural economy and aesthetic capitalism, there has been a political turn in aesthetics. There are two reasons for this political turn. First, the relationship between art and politics. In the past two decades, Chinese aesthetic scholars such as Zhu Guangqian have tended to deny the relationship between aesthetics and politics, and emphasized that ­aesthetics has nothing to do with politics.3 However, foreign scholars such as Terry Eagleton emphasized the close relationship between aesthetics and politics in Aesthetic Ideology (2013). As a result, the relationship between aesthetics and politics has become one of the topics of intense discussion among Chinese aestheticians. Second, the popularization of literature and art. The term ‘popularization of literature and art’ comes from Mao Zedong’s The Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art (1942). In the article, Mao Zedong ­proposed ‘a question for the masses and how to serve the masses’, and advocated the use of ‘revolutionary literary and artistic ­movements to advance the revolutionary work’.4 Since then, the concept of ‘popularization of ­literature and art’ has been formally established, and Mao Zedong has 3 Gu, Yuqing. 2005. History of Chinese Contemporary Literary Theory Criticism, Shandong: Shandong Literature and Art Publishing House, p.168. 4 Mao, Zedong. 1991. The Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press.

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emphasized the popularization of revolutionary literary experience with a new theoretical concept. The popularization of literature and art exemplifies Marxist aesthetics from the edge to the center, showing the trend of ‘people’s aesthetics’. The ‘people’s aesthetics’, which has become a theoretical weapon, reflects the close relationship between Marxist aesthetics and Chinese politics. Therefore, the political turn to contemporary Chinese aesthetics can be defined as: ‘The transformation of aesthetic experience and cultural transformation to promote more reasonable development of mankind’. That is to say, the transformation of society through aesthetic activities is a mainstream trend, and the interaction of art, literature, music, film and reality is already a basic cultural fact of contemporary social life. In other words, contemporary Marxist aesthetics can govern social and political relations by using the popularization of literature and art. It is mainly because Marxist aesthetics can demonstrate the political and ideological demands of the development of contemporary Chinese society. People are born to express themselves to meet the need of being known and recognized in society and groups. Literature and art provide a way to liberate this nature of the people. People can express their demands on social development and political ideology through literature and art. In this case, art and politics are a bottom-up relationship (art → politics). The aesthetics of literature and art demonstrate the public’s recognition of this political and ideological appeal, and ultimately the people gain a place in society and groups. In the same way, art and politics can return in this way, resulting in a top-down relationship (­politics → art). That is to say, the aesthetics of literature and art influence the people’s political and ideological appeals for social development, and ultimately achieve the use of transformed aesthetic experience and culture to promote more reasonable development of humankind. As a consequence, the topic of aesthetics and politics can become the new research focus of Chinese scholars. 3.2 Research Methods Research methods can be divided into three primary categories-the methods of the humanities, the methods of the social sciences, and the methods of the natural sciences. The methods of the human sciences mainly use the methods of interpreting theories, such as hermeneutics, psychology, etc.; the methods of the social sciences mainly through empirical research and field investigation; and the methods of the natural science include statistics and analysis methods such as experiment, model, hypothesis, induction, deduction, etc. Also, the methods of natural science sum up the knowledge with regularity, and

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make a systematic elaboration of the theory. The traditional aesthetic research methods mainly belong to the methods of the humanities. With the advent of scientific development, the Internet and globalization, only methods of the humanities have been unable to satisfy the study of contemporary Chinese aesthetics. Therefore, we suggested the use of interdisciplinary research methods in aesthetic studies. In essence, aesthetics itself is an emerging interdisciplinary. For this reason, it has no pure research methodology, which further confirms the possibility that aesthetics can be studied by using various interdisciplinary methods. Terry Eagleton believes that there is no separate Marxist school and methodology from the perspective of classic Marxist literary criticism or aesthetics.5 There are two main reasons for this. First, literary criticism and aesthetics are not disciplines established by Karl Marx himself. The history of aesthetics can be traced back to the aesthetic concept proposed by German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in 1750. Baumgarten proposed that art needed to be given a proper place in the philosophical system, and thus, a discipline was established to study perceptual knowledge.6 Finally, it was called perceptual science, which is now called aesthetics. Later, Plato’s Hippias Major and others made significant contributions to the development of aesthetic research from various perspectives such as philosophy and psychology. Therefore, the history of aesthetics demonstrates that aesthetics is a discipline that can be studied across disciplines. Second, the Marxist works on aesthetics are originally fragmented rather than systematic. For example, Karl Marx did not explicitly discuss the concept of ‘aesthetic ideology’, but connected aesthetic issues with social production methods and ideologies, and clarified the concepts of social existence and social consciousness, social labor and human being, ideology and social production, the alienated reality of capitalist society and the split of human nature, etc. It shows that Marxist aesthetics from different perspectives can produce different theoretical understandings. Hence, a new interdisciplinary methodology can help develop new aesthetic theories. Although scholars may not be aware of the concept of interdisciplinary research methods, scholars are already trying to use different research methods to solve aesthetic problems. Scott Lash proposed to apply the methods of social sciences to aesthetics. He believes that Wang Xiaoming ’s research has exceeded the traditional significance of research and entered a new research 5 Eagleton, Terry. 2013. Aesthetic Ideology. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 6 Baumgarten, Alexander. 2013. A Critical Translation with Kant’s Elucidations, Selected Notes, and Related Materials translated, edited by Courtney D. Fugate and John Hymers. ­Metaphysics. London, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.

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dimension after combining the method of geographical tracking and Stuart Hall’s traditional cultural methods.7 Taking Professor Wang Xiaoming as an example. Lash further explained that scholars needed to use different research methods to explore the aestheticization of industry and the industrialization of aesthetics. The key to the problem is the coexistence of various phenomena. On the other hand, we have social structures and superstructures, and in today’s context, all of this flows around the world. For this reason, we need new research methods. Similarly, Terry Eagleton pointed out that Marxist theory was showing a variety of situations.8 For example, Jameson used many different research methods though his work belongs to Marxism at the same time. Following the trend, Eagleton also has combined Marxist analysis methods with feminism, semiotics, post-structuralism, acceptance theory and other research methods in his works. On this basis, we formally proposed the interdisciplinary research method of aesthetics. The interdisciplinary research methods should be the basic methods of contemporary aesthetic research. They integrate humanities, social, and natural science research methods in aesthetic research, so as to further explore major cultural issues such as aesthetic appreciation, faith, and ethics. For instance, text mining techniques and building a corpus online are feasible. Text mining is a technique used to derive high-quality information and identify hidden patterns.9 It is considered to be a valuable tool for analysing research because current literature highlights three reasons: (1) extracting unknown and valuable information from massive text data; (2) discovering patterns by categorizing the text; (3) reducing time and efforts on the exploration of big data. As a result, text mining has been widely utilized in different fields such as education, politics and arts. Consequently, it is promising to apply text mining techniques to future studies on aesthetics. Also, associate professor Macdonald Daly at the University of Nottingham is working on building a Marxist aesthetic corpus based on text mining techniques, which shows the possibility of further research on Marxist aesthetics.10 We believe that interdisciplinary research methods have three significant implications for contemporary 7 8 9

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Keith, Michael, Lash, Scott, Arnoldi, Jakob, and Rooker, Tyler. 2014. China Constructing Capitalism: Economic Life and Urban Change. London: Routledge. Eagleton, Terry. 2013. Aesthetic Ideology. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. McCaig, Duncan, Bhatia, Sudeep, Elliott, Mark T., Walasek, Lukasz, and Meyer, Caroline. 2018. Text-mining as a methodology to assess eating disorder relevant factors: comparing mentions of fitness tracking technology across online communities. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 51(7): 647–655. Wang, Jie and Xu, Fangbin. 2009. Contemporary Marxist Issues-Dialogue with Dr. Mike Sanders. Theory and Criticism of Literature and Art, 4: 24.

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aesthetic research. First of all, in the current crisis of aesthetic theory, the primary task of aesthetic research is to ask questions again according to the actual internal needs and make a systematic elaboration of the theory. Therefore, the interdisciplinary research method will be one of the ways for contemporary aesthetic research to get out of the theoretical crisis, and help scholars to grasp the theoretical research of contemporary aesthetics as a whole. Secondly, in the past, the theoretical research of aesthetics was mainly based on the traditional research methods of humanities, excluding research methods of social and natural sciences. Mainly, it is because scholars had a wrong consciousness of this discipline-aesthetics, as a subordinate of the humanities, should be a human-related subject. If it leaves the study of human-related issues, then the theoretical study of aesthetics will lose its underlying significance. However, with the advancement of science and technology, scholars began to have a deep understanding of empirical research, and gradually realized that interdisciplinary research methods are an essential foundation for contemporary aesthetic research. As a result, the introduction of interdisciplinary research methods helps to construct contemporary aesthetic research. Finally, due to the limitations of research methods in the humanities, the issue of human nature was once regarded as an unprovable and unfalsifiable false proposition. Therefore, the emergence of interdisciplinary research methods can facilitate the active research of contemporary aesthetics on issues of human nature, thereby providing new solutions and strategies for the aesthetic research crisis. Hence, the theoretical framework of contemporary aesthetics can be reconstructed from the perspective of interdisciplinary research methods. 4 Conclusion We reviewed the current crisis of aesthetic research, the fundamental problems of theoretical research, and the theories and methods of rebuilding aesthetics in detail, which pointed out the direction for future Chinese aesthetic research. Aesthetics is universal, especially Marxist aesthetics is still the driving force of contemporary art and aesthetic activities. It affects the existence of humankind and the development of society, and transforms the world in a way that cultivates sentimentality. For this reason, this will be of considerable significance to the study of aesthetic theory and the development of social humanities if the current academic ideas and methods can be used to study Marxist aesthetics theoretically and systematically.

Chapter 16

Aesthetic Modernity: a Preliminary Exploration of the Ethnography of Emotions in Contemporary China Jie Wang and Tian Shi Contemporaneity is a vibrant, dynamic, and critical theoretical field full of debates, arguments, and questions which have remained inconclusive. Chinese academics, critics, cultural administrations, and policymakers do not know enough about contemporary Chinese society’s feeling structure. In Chinese aesthetics and literary theory, theoretical research on the feeling structure is relatively not enough. Consequently, literary and artistic policies were formulated without acknowledging the feeling of ordinaries towards failures or unsatisfactory results. Insufficient understanding of the feeling structure and the lack of systematic and in-depth knowledge have led to the failure of literary creation, literary criticism, policy-making, and keeping pace with the times. This chapter prompts emotional ethnography to grasp the vital feeling structure of contemporary Chinese society – its basic structure and dynamic trajectory – to study the common aesthetic objects of diverse social and ethnic groups, and explore the aesthetic schema of Chinese aesthetic modernity. In doing so, aesthetic research can gain its subjectivity and play an active role in leading future social development. This chapter proposes that artworks can be studied as objects to examine contemporary Chinese society’s feeling structure. Contemporary arts are very pioneering and popular, and constantly cause extensive social controversies, such as the films Youth (2017), Mr. Six (2015), Wolf Warrior 2 (2017), The Wandering Earth Beyond (2019), and Wild Goose Lake (2019), etc. And these complicated and complex controversies can reflect the feeling structure in contemporary Chinese society. This chapter introduces some research methods on contemporary Chinese cinema, throwing light on the subject that more experts will shed more light on the emotional ethnography in contemporary China.

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Feeling Structure and Emotional Ethnography

Anthropology and aesthetics have studied the ‘feeling structure’ and emotional ethnography from their disciplinary perspectives. Still, there is a lack of research on whether and how the two are related to fulfilling the purpose of studying contemporary society. The anthropology discipline has been collecting the emotional expressions of its subjects, such as the excitement and tension among the Trobriand Islanders in Malinowski’s ethnography.1 Since the 1970s, the study of emotion has gradually become an important field in social and cultural anthropology. Scholars have drawn on their field notes and theoretical resources to explain how diverse cultural and social mechanisms shape the appropriate expression of emotions and feelings and the individual and collective meanings of emotional expression.2 Renato Rosaldo’s study of the Filipino Igloos and his grief after his wife’s tragic death has become a classic anthropological analysis of emotions.3 In contemporary aesthetics, a critical theoretical turn includes the affective theory turn. Raymond Williams has proposed the theory of feeling structure in his significant works, such as The Long Revolution, as a crucial approach to contemporary aesthetics. The cultural critic Lawrence Grossberg suggests that cultural studies today encounter a challenge in that we are in a reality where multiple cultural contexts overlap. Hence, it becomes challenging to grasp the true feeling structure of the era.4 How anthropology and aesthetics can ‘join hands’ to capture contemporary society’s feelings is the current research need of the humanities, and this is also the direction that this chapter tries to explore. Under the noisy status quo of multiple overlapping contexts and various overlapping discourses, emotional ethnography may serve as a critical theoretical approach to grasp the fundamental feeling structure of the times we live in. Scholars such as Aleš Erjavec believe that aesthetics and art criticism is carried out by studying new feeling structure in contemporary artworks.5 A new feeling structure represents the future and the direction of social development. By criticizing and analyzing the avant-garde art representing the new 1 Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1984. Argonauts of the West Pacific. Holland, MI: Waveland Pr. Inc. 2 Hong, Zhou. 2019. Anthropological Study for Emotions and Sentiment. Local Culture Research, 4: 100–106. 3 Rosaldo, Renato. 2013. The Day of Shelly’s Death: The Poetry and Ethnography of Grief. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 4 Zheng, Yiran. 2016. Poltics, Contexts and Complications in Cultural Studies. Interview with Lawrence Grossberg. Literature and Art Studies, 8: 72–81. 5 Erjavec, Aleš. 2015. Aesthetic Revolutions and Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Movements. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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feeling structure, we can change the contemporary people’s feeling structure and then change society. Hence, this change is the revolutionary power of Marxist aesthetics. We believe that in the study of contemporary aesthetics, theoretical goals are needed to grasp the feeling structure and characterize the future. It is theoretically essential and feasible to conduct in-depth, scientific, and systematic studies of feeling structure, a new area for aesthetics and possibly for anthropological studies. Contemporary ethnographic and anthropological studies are seriously fragmented, with abundant cases and local materials lacking theoretical overview and generalization. Philosopher Zizek and linguist Jakobson once debated whether fieldwork and empirical methods are limited to contemporary humanities and social sciences. Jacobson then argued that empirical research could solve all problems; Zizek disagreed totally. Perhaps philosophical anthropology could provide some theoretical tools for ethnographic and anthropological research on contemporary issues. Philosophical anthropology once asked a question, perhaps an important one for our time: namely, is there still trust between people, and is it still possible to form common beliefs? To answer this question requires an analysis of the feeling structure of the era. The study of feeling structure originates from aesthetics and literary art criticism; emotional ethnography comes from anthropology and ethnology, each of which has its strengths and disadvantages. ‘Feeling structure’ theory is highly subjective and difficult to be fully justified theoretically, especially when summarized at the level of aesthetic perception from the individual to the group, and its objectivity needs further verification. Emotional ethnography is better at tracking and analyzing a certain group’s emotional expressions, such as microscopic analysis of ‘jealousy and envy’ in Chinese society,6 or fieldnotes on why workers in the rust belt region of America are angry and then rush into the arms of conservatives.7 Thus, ‘feeling structure’ theory and emotional ethnography could combine theoretical generalizations with objective pieces of knowledge to study contemporary societal issues. In contemporary society, what are the issues of the times? According to Taiwanese scholar Cho-yun Hsu, the fundamental cause of the 2008 financial crisis is the trust problem of people and society. In contemporary art, a large number of artworks precisely express this crisis and the possible mechanism 6 Zhang, Hui. 2016. Envy and Windfall Wealth: An Anthropological Study. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. 7 Cramer, Katherine J. 2016. The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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of rebuilding trust in the crisis. In contemporary society, among the cultural systems consisting of literature and art, cinema is a rather complex type of art. Supported by science and technology, contemporary cinema has a strong emotional impact and penetrating power. Therefore, through the emotional ethnography of contemporary cinema, the real feeling structure of contemporary society can be captured. Contemporary cinema is the cultural form with the greatest commonality in contemporary society. Alain Badiou proposed that there are four ways for human beings to know the truth: art, science, love, and politics.8 In contemporary society, love in the artistic and anthropological sense is what can grasp the complex truthfulness of social life in the present. Therefore, it is possible to study contemporary society’s feeling structure through the emotional reflection and aesthetic perception of art. 2

The Cultural Needs of Contemporary China

Ethnographic research through contemporary artworks should be an approach to understanding the feeling structure and making a more conscious effort to build the traditional culture in contemporary Chinese society. Ethnographic research is usually based on long-term participant observation of a research group to understand and interpret the social structure, social organization, and cultural behavior. However, American anthropologist Laura Nader suggests that ethnography has the potential to do much more and that it can be used as a theory to contribute to the production of knowledge and the understanding of human society as a whole.9 Anthropology has developed to the present day, and many scholars have analyzed films, documentaries, and videotapes, exploring the values, emotional space, and social responsibility behind the screen.10 Nowadays, big data on viewing can also be used to understand social factors and emotional expressions beyond audience-watching.11 In contemporary society, art has become a common psychological language. During the pandemic of Covid-19, the ‘Wuhan Twelve Gongs’ composed by Chinese musician Tan Dun was performed by global artists online; the basis of this global synchronized musical performance is a common emotional expression. 8 9 10 11

Badiou, Alain. 2012. In Praise of Love. London: Serpent’s Tail. Nader, Laura. 2011. Ethnography as theory. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 1 (1): 211–219. Zhu, Jingjiang. 2020. Marginality and Subjectivity: Reflections on Film & TV Creations about Ethnic Groups from the Perspective of Visual Anthropology. Journal of Shanghai University ( Social Sciences), 3: 18–27. Lie, Wei, and Du, Liang. 2020. Big Data on Films and Virtual Ethnography of ‘Town Youth’. Academic Forum, 4: 23–29.

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Similarly, contemporary cinema has the most profound commonality in artistic expression. In contemporary Chinese culture, we have noticed a phenomenon in which new commercial films often create huge controversies. For example, films like Sacrifice (2010), Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014), Youth (2017), and The Eight Hundred (2020) have attracted audiences on both sides with a wide range of seemingly irreconcilable arguments. We argue that this tumultuous and heated debate presents a phenomenon of contemporary Chinese society’s feeling structure. Raymond Williams argues that any culture consists of three elements simultaneously: the residual, the dominant, and the emergent cultures. For contemporary culture, the situation is more complex, with various subcultures, national cultures, etc. Therefore, any era is a context of multiple cultural overlapping, where the expression of diverse voices and the presentation of different values together constitute the polyphony of the age. In such a context of the times, thinking about humankind’s future is inseparable from the analysis of the current conflicts and the interpretation of the ‘clamor of voices’ to grasp reality and get out of the cultural fog of the multiple overlapping contexts. In the present time, by revisiting historicism, we can explore the contradictory relationship between the feeling structure and aesthetic relationship of the times through the study of continuity and obtain the pursuit and imagination of the future. In the cultural economy era, the symbolic economy shapes the meaning of life, and there is a divorce from the real world. Literature and art are an imaginative cultural system, so they do not directly reach the artistic reality and may be an illusion in today’s Marxist aesthetics. Contemporary Chinese mainstream culture is in a profound crisis. After the Sino-Japanese naval war, there was a precipitous disruption in Chinese culture, and this disruption is particularly evident in appreciating artworks. For example, the film The Assassin (2015) narrates a story taken from a Tang legend. Director Hsiao-hsien Hou has crafted a contemporary movie, but the content is not entirely accessible to contemporary audiences. In the modernization process, the disruption of Chinese culture has caused a fracture of feeling structure and a fragmented existence, which is also the form of individualized existence in contemporary China. The peaceful state of life experience and interpersonal communication no longer exists, but the contemporary humanities and social disciplines lack further understanding of the deep cultural roots in modern society. Our research team has noticed that tragic humanism obtained through the sense of the sublime inspired by tragic works of art, is probably the essential kind of cultural character and cultural resource in this era. If we want to rebuild values in this era, we need to study

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and elaborate on the meaning of tragic humanism in traditional and contemporary artworks. After the rupture of traditional culture in social modernization, conflicts emerged between different groups, communities, and nations, making this era a time full of tragedies and sadness. The study of Marxist aesthetics deals with three crucial themes: class, race, and gender, full of conflicts in contemporary society. The process of industrialization and urbanization in China is still ongoing to this day, and many problems arise in this process which still need more theories to explain. Therefore, there is a social need for cultural self-awareness at present. Anthropology emphasizes the ‘aesthetic man’, and through the transcendence of aesthetic experience, a high level of faith can be reached, with the greatest communicability and commonality, and the deepest identity. In doing so, the aesthetic community can be established. 3

The Fourth Avant-Garde in Contemporary Art

There is a feature in contemporary art that should be noticed, namely, the simultaneous, pioneering and popularity. Aleš Erjavec points to the third form of the avant-garde, a phenomenon that emerged in Russia, Eastern Europe, and China, the socialist countries.12 But we believe that starting from the Yan’an period in China, a phenomenon that might be called the ‘fourth form of the avant-garde’ emerged in Chinese artistic creation, producing a new feeling structure, a new perception of the world, and a certain innovation in artistic form. For example, the Yellow River Cantata of the Ya’an period produced a new feeling structure and was innovative in its musical technique, combining Chinese and Western musical forms.13 The pioneering of feeling structure and skills and the popularity is the fourth form of avant-garde art. Since the debate on expressionism in the 1930s to the contemporary theory of avant-garde, the phenomenon of the avant-garde has been discussed semantically. We believe that there is a fourth form of the avant-garde in China, which is both pioneering and popular, such as the woodcut art of the Yan’an period, street theater and ‘potato’ literature etc., all of which were loved by the 12 13

Erjavec, Aleš. 2015. Aesthetic Revolutions and Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Movements. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Wang, Jie and Wang, Zhen. 2019. Critical Analysis on Core Concepts of Chinese Tragic Humanism and Its Significance in Modern Context—In Commemoration of Yellow River Chorus Composed by XIAN Xinghai. Journal of Hubei University (Philosophy and Social Science), 3: 36–45.

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public, but at the same time were revolutionary and pioneering. We can find many examples, such as The Yellow River Cantata, which is both pioneering and popular.14 Our team has studied many contemporary films, such as The Wandering Earth Beyond (2019), Wolf Warrior 2 (2017), Wild Goose Lake (2019), etc., which represent some of the most modern ideas.15 Most of the previous studies of avant-garde works have focused on interpreting the content or artistic expression of artworks. But there is a lack of results based on empirical research. Contemporary art creation has a wide range of numerous creative practices, so this chapter will not elaborate on them all, but only on commercial films. An interesting phenomenon in contemporary Chinese culture is that various debates emerge after the release of each film. Therefore, it is possible to study contemporary aesthetics or the feeling structure of contemporary society by studying the emotional ethnography of contemporary Chinese cinema. Precisely, such a study grasps the essential existence of an object through longterm, multi-faceted research and fieldwork. Regarding aesthetic phenomena and aesthetic experience, abstract, timeless essence does not exist today, deconstructed by deconstructionism. Aesthetics and literary studies have the paradox of certainty and uncertainty. Because aesthetics is linked to emotion and imagination, that is to say, its state of existence is uncertain, so is aesthetics or aesthetic experience deterministic or not? This is an important question for contemporary emotional ethnography, that is, is there any certainty in the feeling structure? Are there any essential properties? Some scholars of affective anthropology argue that emotions are indeterminate. In a historically evolving society, the question is not so simple. Marxist aesthetics believes that in a certain space and time, in a certain historical stage, or in a certain social structure, the emotional structure is determined. Therefore, it is in the midst of uncertainty that we study its relative certainty. If in such an era there is no longer certainty between people and society, and all that is solid has gone up in smoke, then the basis of trust between people becomes problematic; the faith that human beings are trying to establish is perhaps no longer possible. In such an era, it is all the more important to strive for certainty, for some essential property of aesthetics and literary art. 14 15

Wang, Jie and Wang, Zhen. 2019. ‘Most Modern Thought’—The Methodology of the Concept of Modern Chinese Tragedy. Study & Exploration, 11: 154–161. Wang, Jie and Wang, Zhen. 2019. The National Spirit in Contemporary Chinese Fashion: Taking the Social Reaction of Two Contemporary Films as an Example. Journal of Yangzhou University (Humanities & Social Sciences), 3: 78–87.

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Research Methods

There is an urbanization turn in contemporary anthropology and ethnography. Traditional anthropological studies mainly focus on small societies, presenting the daily life and communication interactions of that group at the microlevel, which is also essential. But without studying urban space, urbanized residents, and their ways of being, it is, in fact, impossible to make a correct understanding of contemporary society. After the Chicago School, anthropologists have traced the interaction between groups in urban environments, and many classic works have had a significant impact outside of academia.16 In contemporary cultural contexts, even small societies inevitably involve issues of urbanization and modernization. For example, the construction of villages in contemporary China is embedded in social change; ethnic minority communities in remote mountainous areas are also under the impact of mass media such as television and cell phones;17 traditional culture is facing the challenge of reinvention and transmission.18 An ethnographic study of films could understand the specific feelings and perceptions of diverse audiences in such a context. Contemporary Chinese cinema may be an excellent text to study the dynamic structure of feelings. In the current cultural system, both producers and consumers of cinema are on the move; there is a delicate design of scripts, the shooting, the acting, post-editing, etc. By introducing ethnographic methods to contemporary film studies, we can focus on how the audiences form their own opinions and ideas, communicate with others, and how these opinions and statements are transmitted through community culture.19 The audience is like an ocean, with a great variety of personal backgrounds and a flow of personal opinions. In the analysis of contemporary emotional ethnography, big data provides basic information on gender and age. For example, youth in second and third-tier cities are the main part of audiences and the box office

16 17 18 19

Hannerz, Ulf. 1983. Exploring the City: Inquiries toward an Urban Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press. Wu, Fei. 2008. Fireplace, Church and Television: Social Communication Network in an Ethnic Minority Community. Guangming Daily Press. Peng, Liuying. 2020. The Introduction of Virtual Ethnography as a Method for Film Studies. Film Art, 1: 61–67. Lie, Wei and Du, Liang. 2020. Big Data on Films and Virtual Ethnography of ‘Town Youth’. Academic Forum, 4: 23–29.

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Euro-centralism

Modern Tragic Humanism Communism

Capitalism

Nationalism

Socialism Experiments

Traditional Cultures

Figure 16.1 Basic dimensions of the emotional structure of ­contemporary Chinese society

market’s main force.20 The complex feeling structure of contemporary society can be analyzed through emotional ethnography, providing an in-depth interpretation. Regarding the social and aesthetic relationships in contemporary society, Alain Badiou has proposed a philosophical perception of modern society. We have proposed a theoretical conception of the feeling structure (Figure 16.1). The in-depth interpretation of these two structural relationships is, we believe, an important foundation for the expansion of contemporary Chinese aesthetic studies in terms of emotional ethnography. In recent years, our team has conducted some research projects by combining anthropological and ethnographic approaches. First, after we chose a target film for our study, we collect online evaluations of the film, including producers’ remarks, advertising phrases, comments, and so on. Then, we conducted multidisciplinary discussions and debates on the film, inviting the ­producer team to participate if possible and inviting discussants from diverse social classes to attend the film viewing and discussion. On this basis, we made transcripts for publication and further research. Meanwhile, ­ethnographic materials are cross-referenced with literary and aesthetic analyses to conduct complex research and deep-descriptive readings of film texts, 20

Wang, Jie and Wang, Zhen. 2020. Aesthetic Revolution and Value Reconstruction in the New Era of Technology. Literature and Art Forum, 4: 125–131.

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ultimately resulting in a theoretical understanding of contemporary Chinese society’s feeling structure. So far, we have collected the published articles and discussion papers and published the book What We Talk about When We Talk about Cinema.21 However, this is only the initial of our research so far. We would like to further explore research methods in the future, conduct emotional ethnography on contemporary cinema, literature, and art, and interpret the feeling structure of contemporary Chinese society. We believe that, for the development of contemporary aesthetics, we need empirical research and theoretical self-awareness to distill and summarize aesthetic relationships from the complex contemporary Chinese social phenomena and artworks. 5

Concluding Remarks

Aesthetic studies and literary art studies have long been concerned with the study of emotions. Since Raymond Williams’ ‘feeling structure’ theory, the feeling structure study has become an important approach in contemporary aesthetic studies. However, many new phenomena have emerged in the three domains of contemporary Marxism (class, race, and gender). Racial and ethnic issues have frequently erupted in Europe and the United States. In contrast, in the study of contemporary Chinese literature and art, theoretical debates have continued. The theory of ‘feeling structure’ has some limitations, lacking in historicity and empirical evidence. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce the ethnographic approach to the study of ‘feeling structure’. Taking contemporary Chinese literature and artworks as an example, the study of contemporary Chinese society’s feeling structure through anthropological and ethnographic methods is innovative and theoretically groundbreaking due to the complexity of the research object and the profundity of the issues involved. The theoretical significance of this study is to explore the possibility of reconstructing the feeling structure of contemporary Chinese society and the value chain of Chinese culture, to respond to real-life problems, to try to build a theoretical system of Chinese contemporary art criticism, and to promote the research of aesthetic anthropology forward. 21

Shi, Xiaolin and Wang, Zhen. 2020. What we talk About when We Talk About Films. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House.

PART 5 Multidisciplinary Aesthetics: Converging of Fields

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Chapter 17

What Does It Mean to Be Human? A Critique of Design Thinking Harold P. Sjursen These days we witness frequently the proclamations by world influencers of the inherent salutary and redemptive potential of modern technology to resolve the multivalent crisis clouding the world. For example, Steven Pinker in his recent and widely read The Better Angels of our Nature calls out ‘technological progress [which permits] the exchange of goods and services over longer distances and larger groups of trading partners,’ as contributing significantly to overcoming acts of ‘demonization and dehumanization’.1 This assertion is supported, Pinker argues, by extensive longitudinal data that shows a global decline in violence coextensive with the rise of information technology. This kind of analysis is used to bestow the guise of moral legitimacy and political neutrality on the promotion of technology products as instruments of liberation and the improvement of human flourishing. Current attempts to reconcile technology with something deeper and more enduring than the gratification of immediate desire, to produce value at once novel and reaffirming of traditional conceptions of human value, has led to what is called design thinking. This may be an approach to design insofar as it specifies steps and procedures to be followed when developing something, whether it be a consumer product, a building, or even a service or business. The intent of the term is to place more emphasis on how something is created rather than design in the sense of a drawing to show the look and function of an object. The design in design thinking is meant primarily in the second of the dictionary definitions below and not at all in the first: 1. an arrangement of lines or shapes created to form a pattern or decoration: pottery with a lovely blue and white design. 2. purpose, planning, or intention that exists or is thought to exist behind an action, fact, or material object. Design thinking is the process, its advocates argue, that best assures innovation. Innovation in this sense is different from invention, which may be 1 Pinker, Steven. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Viking Books. Grand Haven, MI: Brilliance Audio. © Harold P. Sjursen, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_019

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spontaneous, and which may not have as one of its objectives the satisfaction of clients or customers. Whether or not we wish to call the enactment of the design thinking protocol an activity of designing, it surely should not be regarded as an example of thinking in an elevated sense of the concept. Design thinking is rather a kind of calculation in order to achieve a goal. But product design in the first sense of the term is the goal or intended outcome. Moreover, this kind of design is supposed to be pleasing, gratifying or satisfying, in a way that integrates with human purpose. Understood in this way, several features of design thinking are noteworthy: 1. It portrays creativity, at least in relation to design, as a routine that can be easily mastered and performed by anyone (or actually teams) devoid of any hint of genius or passion. 2. The process bears a strong analogy to a computer’s run-time. 3. It presumes that design is more than appearance and is more than just pleasing but the source of deep human satisfaction and value. In other words, design thinking is a strategy for the manufacturing of human feeling with both aesthetic and ethical dimensions. In this discussion I will reflect on some of the implications of this so called design thinking from the perspectives of human value and aesthetic value. I will take my clues from Heidegger and then Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, György Lukács and Louis Althusser. In general, I will try to show how the attitude of design thinking presents a highly reductionist view of humanity that in turn degrades the idea of the work of art. Coincidently, it will be clear that in virtually all respects design thinking is at odds with Marxist analyses. Let us begin with a contemporary definition of design thinking: ‘Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by understanding the human needs involved, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, by creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and by adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing’.2 This definition is from the Interactive Design Foundation, a Danish nonprofit organization that offers practical career training online. It collaborates with some universities and businesses under the moto ‘education wants to be free’. IDF disseminates a widely held and increasingly popular view about how through technology we can design a better, peaceful and enduring world. The organization adheres to the view that because technology is widely distributed 2 Interactive Design Foundation: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5 -stages-in-the-design-thinking-process

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and relatively inexpensive it provides the platform for innovative solutions to local problems. This assumption overlooks many economic and social factors. The definition conflates thinking with problem solving and states that ­problems can be solved through design. The five stages of this kind of design thinking as taught by IDF follow the principles developed at the Hasso-­ Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (d. school). The approach says little about the technical aspects of engineering design but rather emphasizes collaboration and sensitivity to human needs and desires. The five stages of Design Thinking, according to the d. school curriculum, are as follows: ­Empathize, Define (the problem), Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Our questions are: 1. Whether these five activities together constitute original thinking, or will simply advance existing norms; 2. What kind of society and built environment would the application of these principles and methods lead to (would there be any difference?); 3. Do the claims that this process honors and develops the genuine desires and interests of the people (users) stand up? As a kind of thought experiment, we will pose these questions to several thinkers who, with the exception of Heidegger, represent a Marxist perspective. Heidegger makes a clear distinction between thinking on the one hand and the kind of calculative activity that is employed for problem solving on the other. Scientific reasoning is not thinking; rather thinking is what pursues Being, i.e., the source of what we are and what we can become. We can call it openness to what is and what is possible. It is a kind of gift, Heidegger asserts, and thus thinking is a kind of thanking. One might see what we ordinarily mean by ­creativity as an aspect of thinking. When Heidegger questions technology and poses the question concerning technology, he is asking if technology leads us to pursue this way of openness to Being, or on the contrary occludes it. For Heidegger modern technology is not merely a matter of efficient action, it changes our relationship to Being and possibly compels our choices both in respect to the environment and to our own work. In a sense, modern technology alienates the craftsman from his own work. Thus Heidegger questions technology with one goal being to understand the possibility of a free relation to technology. Thus from a Heideggerian perspective unless design thinking were actually a mode of thinking it would not be the path to the creative and non-alienating satisfaction suggested by its proponents. Design thinking seems to begin from an assumption that we can discover a free relationship to the products of our labor through technology by the relatively simple process of assessing the interests (actually desires and needs) of one’s clientele. These needs and desires are taken to be the pure expression of

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uncoerced human interest (suggesting that the clientele represents a suitable surrogate for the people). The argument of design thinking is that through a reiterative consultative process, entities – including devices, systems, buildings, playgrounds, and so on, that meet consumer expectations and standards, can be developed in a manner that is truly responsive to what people want; in this sense, technology will not determine what we think we want but will enable us to control technology for our own free purposes. This is an implied criticism of both centrally planned economies and market driven capitalism dominated by large corporations. The dispiriting need to accept and conform to the commodities of mass production can be avoided through the application of design thinking principles to the use of personal technology. This is a lot to claim but the proponents of design thinking go further in their assessment of the putative benefits of this process. The products of design thinking will be aesthetically pleasing and our response to this quality will be satisfying. This claim would seem to concur with the kind of satisfaction that inheres in the work of art according to Heidegger. In The Origin of the Work of Art, he argues that Art … is a way in which truth comes to “happen” and “be” in the “real” world, a way in which “that which is” is revealed and clearly preserved in a work. In the art work, he said, the creator discloses the truth-of-allbeing within a design and illumines a new, unfamiliar world beyond the existing realm.3 The IDF/Stanford version of design thinking appeals to the freedom and independence of the tech designer such that both producer and consumer participate in this free relation to technology. In this approach, a step beyond the constraints and alienation characterized as the culture industry? Is this kind of freedom and independence achieved, indeed even surpassed through design thinking, bringing an opening to the clearing of Being as Heidegger would have it? According to Heidegger, the answer is no. Next, we turn to Adorno. As critic of both Heidegger and Popper, his view at once addresses both the enlightenment project of western modernity and its antecedents in the Greek and Hebrew traditions. In The Culture ­Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Adorno and Horkheimer declare that: ‘­Interested parties explain the culture industry in technological terms. It is alleged that because millions participate in it, certain reproduction p ­ rocesses are necessary that inevitably require identical needs in innumerable places to be satisfied with identical goods. The technical contrast between the few 3 Stulberg, Robert B. 1973. Heidegger and the Origin of the Work of Art: An Explication. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 32(2): 257–265.

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production centers and the large number of widely dispersed consumption points is said to demand organization and planning by management. Furthermore, it is claimed that standards were based in the first place on consumers’ needs, and for that reason were accepted with so little resistance. The result is the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger. No mention is made of the fact that the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is greatest. A technological rationale is the rationale of d­ omination itself. It is the coercive nature of society alienated from itself. Automobiles, bombs, and movies keep the whole thing together until their leveling element shows its strength in the very wrong which it furthered. It has made the technology of the culture industry no more than the achievement of standardization and mass production, sacrificing whatever involved a distinction between the logic of the work and that of the social system’.4 Clearly, design thinking seeks to refute the notion that technology reproduces identical goods to service identical needs, although Horkheimer and Adorno already anticipate this by pointing out that an appeal to consumer’s needs only establishes a ‘circle of manipulation’ manufacturing as it were ‘­retroactive needs’. The more serious challenge to Horkheimer and Adorno presented by design thinking advocates is whether nowadays, because technology is so widely distributed and the price relatively low, it is no longer purely the instrument of the economic power elite. Here perhaps we see signs pointing both ways. In favor of the design thinking hypothesis is the growing influence of open source software that can be modified freely by any competent user, the simplification of the prerequisite skill set needed to join the ranks of those with access to those opportunities, and the availability of equipment in public spaces such as libraries, as well as schools and universities and the growing number of incubator maker spaces in communities around the world. Pointing in the other direction, of course, is the fact that the hardware and basic software necessary (especially) for networked, collaborative computing is made by only a very few extremely wealthy and powerful corporations. In some parts of the world tight control in the form of censorship limits and prohibits some activities. Still one cannot deny that technology has changed in ways that could hardly be imagined in Adorno and Horkheimer’s day. The multi-functionality and ease of use of today’s smartphone combining, as it does, modes of instant communication, high order calculating capabilities, photography, music, gaming, health-monitoring, shopping, and planning, the list continues to grow, in a portable device is genuinely breathtaking. Everyone has a library, studio, 4 Adorno, Theodor W., and Horkheimer, Max. 1944/1997. Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso.

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laboratory and dedicated assistant and faithful companion in their pocket: the tools to unleash our creative selves ready to hand. Doesn’t this fact alone substantiate the design thinking paradigm? Yet the very success of devices such as the smartphone suggest another kind of concern that brings together two distinct topics: ubiquity and reproducibility. Both attack the idea of the unique. When something is ubiquitous, i.e., is there everywhere, it is no longer surprising, delightful, inspirational or provocative. It becomes, simply and obstinately, ready to hand. It, however beautiful or powerful or ingenious in itself, is degraded to something for the sake of something else but not valued for its own sake. Something else is not disclosed and the powerful presence of the mediating technology dampens our imagination. It is not only that technology exists in multifold forms and representations, it is that its primary function is to replicate. One no longer travels to the world’s great libraries to discover information hidden within, it is there instantly in our smartphone; this does not surprise us, it is just simply and unceremoniously there for us, present at hand but ready to recede into the background. In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin adumbrates this issue. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass ­movements.5 The premise of design thinking does not include reference to ‘the domain of ­tradition’. The unexamined assumption is that potential consumers know what they desire and need on their own, uncontaminated by either the ­omnipresent forces of socio-economic utility or their own cultural heritage. The claim is, if someone who is culturally, historically, linguistically and politically French desires a product different than someone who is in all those ways 5 Benjamin, Walter. 1969. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In: Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, from the 1935 essay. New York: Schocken Books, p.4.

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Chinese it is because of their rational response to the design thinker’s inquiry. The product is to be contemporary and immediate and in this way fulfill the desires that flow beyond the need for an efficient solution to a particular problem. In the case of a work of art, its nucleus of authenticity, its originality, and its uniqueness may be its most prized trait. Going beyond the age of m ­ echanical reproduction to the age of automated creativity this quality is lost. In an interesting discussion of the concept of Shanzai,6 Han Byung-chul argues that this factor of authenticity of the work of art began only in the Renaissance in the West, and has never been much of a factor in China. However, this difference rather than obliterating the significance of the domain of tradition only serves to reinforce it. Han recounts conflicts between curators of Western museums of art and their Chinese counterparts over the question of authenticity of works of art on loan for exhibition in Europe and the United States. In the world of instantaneous mechanical/digital reproduction/creativity this dispute would not even come up. One notes as well that the term shanzhaiism has been coined to denote the process of tinkering leading to the adaptation of genuine brands into counterfeit. This tinkering resembles engineering and to an extent resembles the five stages of design thinking. The impulse to counterfeit products is driven by the needs/desires of consumers who want something that strongly resembles (ideally without any discernible difference) and is as good as that which it reproduces. To put the question into more classical Marxist terms we should consider again how the needs and desires of what design thinking sees as its target clientele are developed. According to Lukács, ‘it is not men’s consciousness that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness’.7 This concept is contrary to the premises of design thinking wherein people are supposed to possess autonomous consciousness capable of rising above whatever limitations social existence may impose. Lukács is, like Marx, highly critical of the individualist (bourgeois) philosophy of the subject which is precisely the starting point of design thinking. The Marxist view of consciousness is dialectically opposed to that of design thinking, and opens a consideration, where the contrast between Lukács and design thinking is most evident. In short design thinking exhibits a kind of commodity fetishism that reifies what it claims to dissolve.

6 Han, Byung-Chul. 2017. Shanzhai: deconstruction in Chinese. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 7 Lukács, György. 1923. History and Class Consciousness. Bexar County, Texas: Bibliotech Press, p.5.

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Finally, the issue is further problematized by a consideration of consciousness itself. In Louis Althusser’s revisionist or neo-Marxist reading, ‘ideology is profoundly unconscious – it is a structure imposed involuntarily on the majority of men’.8 That is, from a structuralist standpoint the actual lived relationship between people and the world – between potential clientele and the presentations of design thinking – is one determined by the economic ­structure. The claims of design thinking that it allows for free determination of priorities and goals that are an expression of autonomous rational choice seems entirely unfounded. The reasons why design thinking cannot achieve it promised objective has been suggested by several thinkers from diverse, although not inconsistent perspectives: 1. Heidegger: Narrow, shallow, limited to ontic entities and events, not thinking but scientistic calculation. 2. Adorno/Horkheimer: Another example of the functioning of the culture industry. 3. Benjamin: Acceleration and broadening of mechanical reproduction. 4. Lukács: Social existence determines consciousness. 5. Althusser: The ideology is determined by the structure of the relationship, not by the proclaimed purpose of the conscious transaction. Conclusion: Design thinking is not an advance in thinking about our relationship to technology nor does it revise the dynamics of capitalist society. 8 Brewster, Ben. Althusser Glossary 1969 [with Althusser’s interpolations] https://www.marxists .org/reference/archive/althusser/glossary.htm

Chapter 18

Aesthetic Anthropology: Constructing a New System of Contemporary Aesthetic and Art Criticism Jie Wang and Fanjun Meng The past two or three decades have witnessed increasing interconnection between anthropology and cultural studies, theory of aesthetics, and art criticism. A trend is under way to combine ontology and methodology.1 In addition to Grosse, Frye, Strauss, and others, Chinese scholars such as Yuanpei CAI, Xiaotong FEI, and Huixiang LIN also have made significant contributions to aesthetics and offered aesthetic considerations in classic anthropological works. Many contemporary researchers have made significant achievements in aesthetics using the concepts and methods of anthropology, a movement which constitutes the building blocks of a new discipline. We are lucky to be among those who inherit, become involved in, and benefit from this trend. The time has come for a systematic summary and reflection on this historical trend in aesthetics, which may help solve complex aesthetic problems in this era and beckon scholars down a promising path of aesthetics and art criticism. The goals of this chapter revolve around the core issues and basic methodologies of aesthetic anthropology, and then summarize and extend its application to art criticism, with an aim to perfect the theoretical structure and methodology and stress its practical, operational value. By virtue of self-­reflection and others’ criticism, we respond to trends in this emerging field while underscoring the vitality, practical value, and future creativity of aesthetic anthropology that has drawn ideological inspiration from Marxist aesthetics.

1 Wilfried van Damme, Anthropology of Aesthetics: Perspective and Methods, Chinese Literature Association Press, Beijing 2015, 22–26, 44–55. Feng Xianguang and Fu Qilin, Formation of Aesthetic Anthropology: Current Situation and Future in China, Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities, zv.5, 2004, 26–35. Xiang Li, Towards Interdisciplinary Aesthetic Research: A Summary of Aesthetic Anthropology Research in Recent Years, Ethnic Arts Quarterly, zv.3, 2006, 81–89. Xiang Li, Developments of Overseas Aesthetic Anthropology, Social Sciences Abroad, zv.2, 2010, 59–68. © Jie Wang and Fanjun Meng, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_020

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The Context for Proposing Aesthetic Anthropology

The pervasiveness of consumerism, Internet plus, globalization, and excessive entertainment have an impact on every discipline, causing steadily growing obstructions with which scholars must cope. Aesthetics is among those disciplines confronting this fourfold complex problem. Consumerism brings beauty and artwork into everyday life in the form of commodities. The ubiquity of cultural object imagery is becoming an important subject for aesthetic research, moving beyond the previous interest in fine art and niche socio-culture. The Internet-based dissemination of knowledge and aesthetic emotions makes it possible for aesthetics, a traditionally philosophical humanistic discipline, to become cross-disciplinary, integrating humanities and social sciences, and even natural science in complex ways. Amid the conflicts and reconciliation between globalization and anti-­ globalization, the latest aesthetic experience belonging to the common people remains the main dynamic power in the generation of aesthetic cognition and emotion. The constant collision between local aesthetic experience and global aesthetic emotional unity highlights the regular inclinations that dominate the aesthetic emotions of earth-dwellers. Excessive entertainment places new fetters of everyday aesthetics on humans, who are deprived of fetter-­breaking capacities as they immerse themselves in sensory pleasure. It is therefore urgent for aesthetic scholars all over the world to reiterate the need for free, well-rounded, balanced human development. Correspondingly, studies on the tragic humanism deserve high priority in Chinese aesthetics and art criticism. The theories and methodologies of aesthetic anthropology may help tackle these four challenges in the new era. Specifically, aesthetic anthropology is grounded in the concepts of philosophical anthropology and the methods of cultural anthropology: it takes local aesthetic experience as the core subject; it studies aesthetic mechanisms in specific historical and cultural circumstances, and seeks a solution to track down problems among the collection of local aesthetic experiences from now into the future. 2

Analysing the Key Concepts of Aesthetic Anthropology

Modern anthropology has existed for more than 150 years. It differs greatly from classical anthropology in both core concepts and signature methodology. In this section, we present a run-down of core issues to consider when constructing the new system of aesthetics and art criticism based on the combination of differences in concept and methodology. These core issues constitute the primary

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aesthetic differences between modern and classical anthropology. Modern anthropology is characterized by the pursuit of objective scientific concepts and empirical research in the field, both of which serve to identify the material foundation and social historical traditions of the human spiritual world – that is, to elaborately depict local aesthetic experience and aesthetic institutions. In a sense, however, aesthetic anthropology has followed the value orientation and behavioral patterns of classical anthropology, adopting the humanistic ideals of the latter. In the space-time continuum, aesthetic anthropology refers to the past, the present, and the future simultaneously. It represents a commemoration of the past, a pursuit and respect of utopian ideals, and an action for the present. Built on the past, aesthetic anthropology has also improved upon the past. In a nutshell, aesthetic anthropology is based on empirical evidence, while its value orientation is humanistic. Three aspects may introduce the core issues and key concepts of aesthetic anthropology: 2.1 Field: the Very Place within Which Local Experience and Dominant Culture Interact Field investigation is an iconic method used in modern anthropology. However, anthropologists have yet to provide an ontological definition of ‘field’. Therefore, ‘What is a field?’ is the first question posed in anthropology and aesthetic anthropology, a necessary and unavoidable question for the establishment of either discipline. In anthropology, ‘field’ is considered a natural, self-evident space, a space ‘beyond our living’ where field investigation is conducted. From an everyday perspective, this definition presents no error of principle. Given the need to construct a discipline, if the concept of ‘field’ has not undergone ontological construction and dialectical interpretation, and if the field has neither a summary of its universality in the broadest sense nor an analysis of its specialty in the most specific sense, then it cannot serve as a first cornerstone for either anthropology or aesthetic anthropology to become a rigorous discipline. This lack is clearly unacceptable. Given the spatial traits of field research in the past, we may offer both a closed and an open definition of ‘field’. Both definitions represent a summary of physical experiences and must be conceptualized metaphysically. As the first space to generate original human experience, ‘field’ is primitive, simple, and relative; it also is the very space wherein local experience and dominant culture interact with each other. All field research seeks to obtain original experience as its first aim, as such experience is the liveliest and simplest for human sensation and cognition to comprehend.

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As we analysed the dialectical relationship between local experience and dominant culture, we explored the ontological meaning of ‘field’. In the ­primitive space, local experience is not only considered to be the knowledge, emotion, tradition, and institution of a barren land, but also essential to include communication with and infiltration into dominant culture. There are two ways to understand this notion: On one hand, local experience is not culturally insulated, but rather influenced by the dominant culture at the periphery. Ripples of this peripheral influence reach the dominant culture, causing new influence. Such is the interaction between local experience and the dominant culture. In From the Soil: The Foundation of Chinese Society by Xiaotong FEI, the ‘Elderly’s Politics’ is not a primitive cultural phenomenon in a feudal rural institution. Instead, it is a specific form of Confucian culture like ‘governance with the power of virtue’ or ‘government as parents’ in rural political structure.2 Cultural concepts found in places of dominant culture and in rural institutions are like two same seeds of thought, one planted in the royal court and the other in the countryside – the difference in environment leads to the difference in presentation. This was demonstrated in a case in our field research. In a local performance gathering at Fuli Town, Yangshuo County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, there was both a reference to mainstream political ideology – commodity economy – plus the local culture, which is the main way of telling cultural stories among the Zhuang nationality. The local tales of filial piety and the value system of mainstream political ideology were seamlessly knitted into one during the local performance.3 On the other hand, indigenous cultures in South America or Africa are entirely strange, if not marginal, to Westerners. Indigenous local experience seems unrelated to mainstream Western culture, but at the moment it is observed and chronicled, it becomes a component of and a reference frame for the mainstream culture. That is to say, being local is relative to being global and dominant. If there’s nothing global, there’s nothing local. For instance, the Law of Proximity and the Law of Similarity seem to be basic patterns of the savage mind, but how can there be any such pattern without the comparison frames of experimental thinking and modern categorical thinking? Therefore, local experience and the dominant culture coexist and communication between them occurs in the ‘field’. 2 Fei, Xiaotong. 2006. From the Soil: The Foundation of Chinese Society. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House, pp.40–43. 3 Wang, Jie. 2014. On Modern Aesthetics: Anthropological Reflections. Beijing: Peking University Press, pp.11–14.

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Based on the discussions above, we believe that, although field is home to a host of primitive and simple human experiences, it is the very place in which local experience and the dominant culture are communicated. In a relatively mobile field culture, field is not a fid closed-off space but a moving system of spatial coordinates. From a theoretical point of view, it’s necessary to attach a contemporary meaning to this ‘mobile field’. Field is not only the peripheral area of the Third World or a forsaken ancient village, but exists in every nook and cranny of our modern life, in geographical spaces like residential areas, hospitals, schools, cinemas and malls, and in special geographical spaces of humanistic interest. These are the basic features of ‘field’: any place that offers primitive experience, any place that offers conflict or communication between local experience and the dominant culture, and any modern geographical space that is primitive, simple, and relatively mobile. The understanding of field has undergone an ontological transition from a specific wilderness to the modern mobile field concept. ‘Mobile field’, which we propose as an ontological assumption, has the historical support of anthropology. ‘From 1979 to 1995, Xiaotong FEI proposed the juxtaposition of sociology, ethnology, and anthropology, during which the three disciplines regained vitality in China’.4 FEI proposed the need to develop this trio of studies in a cross-disciplinary, fitting, and concerted way.5 In fact, the closed-off concept of field to which we previously referred is similar to the subject of ethnological studies; the open concept of field is similar to the subject of sociology studies. Alongside the ontological pursuit of the definition of ‘field’ the subjects of aesthetic anthropology extend to every part of society – the untouched ethnic spaces as well as the unique urban spaces. Therefore, combining the disciplines avoids the mistake of studying only the ethnic minority or the wild for aesthetic anthropology. Clarification is also made in the local experience of aesthetic anthropology by studying spatial location and spatial range. There is an additional need, however, to clarify the specifics of local experience, including material life of daily necessity and cultural life like arts, traditions, and institutions. Once a researcher refines aesthetic experiences by collecting and interpreting local experience, the subject of aesthetic anthropology obtains a firmer, stronger foothold, for example, the continuous field investigation on contemporary Chinese films conducted by Professor Jie Wang’s team at ­Zhejiang University.

4 Hu, Hongbao. 2005. History of Chinese Anthropology. Beijing: China Remin University Press, pp.6–7. 5 Ibid, p.5.

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2.2 Context: Cultural Space for the Interaction between Aesthetic Institutions and Social Customs Compared to the notion of ‘field’ context is a concept of recycling, cultural history, and flexible compulsion. Context is the cultural sphere of field, the immaterial manifestation of field specific to the space and time. Context holds sway in the generation, development, and change of local aesthetic experience. Microscopically, the generation of context is based on human practice and cognition. Macroscopically, its generation is dually driven by the aesthetic institution of ideology and the social customs of daily life. We have amassed massive raw materials representing the experience of Heiyi Zhuang Nationality6 in the studies of social customs, and conducted comparative research in aesthetic institution between Chinese and Western aesthetic experience.These two types of work concur with field research, using context analysis as the primary method. Context analysis occupies a prominent position in aesthetic anthropology. If field investigation targets the material basics of local aesthetics, context analysis places greater focus on the cultural sphere of local aesthetics. Revolving around the dialectical relationship between local aesthetic experience and the dominant culture, field research and context analysis are geared toward objective, empirical foundation and humanistic values. The two methods are complementary and provide methodological support for the theoretical system of aesthetic anthropology. 2.3 Style of Practice and Orientation of Values: Inheritance and Innovation When it comes to value orientation, aesthetic anthropology advocates the humanistic concern and tragic complexity espoused by classical anthropology. With human dignity, freedom, and emancipation as its mission, aesthetic anthropology requires aesthetic researchers to evaluate the decisive function of capital and ideology properly; to follow trends closely and grasp the subtle relationship between local aesthetic experience and global transmission of aesthetic culture; and to strike a balance between compulsory influence and respectful protection. In the process of globalization and modernization, tragic clashes are inevitable. This inevitable cultural logic in real life compels us to raise the banner of tragic humanism and provide theoretical support and guidelines for those who support the good life. The quest for local aesthetic experience draws upon researchers’ memories of the idyllic lifestyle, childhood, hometown, space of the weak, and traditional 6 Fan, Xiujuan. 2013. Aesthetic Anthropological Study on Folksongs of Zhuang Ethnic in Black Suit. Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press.

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agriculture life, and stimulates their hope that by finding a connection between marginal cultures and the dominant culture; they will find a way to improve and adjust the relationship between the two cultural forms while also contrasting, balancing, and coordinating those forms. While exploring local aesthetic experience, scholars of aesthetic anthropology may on one hand trace back to a nostalgic past in their hometown; and on the other hand, assume a futuristic utopian new world. If the nostalgic past is tantamount to obsessing on the primitive experience of agricultural society, the utopian new world portrays the pragmatic expectation of industrial capitalism or other social forms, such as communism in the future. These two value orientations lead to two modes of practice for aesthetic anthropology: inheritance and innovation. Given the four challenges of the times, the protection and inheritance of ‘local aesthetic experience’ pose a global difficulty. We cannot make ‘local aesthetic experience’ develop in pace with the times simply by offering protections. ‘Local aesthetic experience’ cannot truly grow into a solid cultural entity with only the help from others. In the globalization and Internet era, every local culture is challenged by invading foreign cultures. When a local culture fails to resist or absorb a foreign one, a significant objective remains finding ways to make the traditionally closed-off ‘local aesthetic experience’ more adaptable, and to strengthen the capacity of ‘outward transmission’. The excellent quality of local aesthetic experience cannot be obtained solely dependent on others. Indigenous innovation is truly needed. There is an urgent need to pass on and improve traditional aesthetic experiences, to utilize modern cultural capital, and to take an effective approach to overcome the crisis of fissures between value and value-in-use of ‘local cultural and art forms’ brought about by cultural capital. 3

Major Ways to Enhance Aesthetic Anthropology

3.1 The Shortcomings of Current Cultural Anthropology Methodologies and the Solutions 3.1.1 To Strengthen the Philosophical Anthropology Dimension When local knowledge is guided by philosophy, general knowledge will precede local knowledge. Without philosophy, all acquired knowledge is simply scattered attempts at understanding reality; it is not science.7

7 Kant, Immanuel. 1996 [1798, 2006]. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. New York: Cambridge University Press, p.3.

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Claude Levi-Strauss ‘gave anthropology a rational training and won respect for the first time for social science’. This respect was extended because LeviStrauss adopted structuralist concepts to systematically analyse scattered anthropological records, thus making anthropology a systematic discipline.8 When interpreting and analysing anthropological records, which philosophical stance or school of thought is the correct one upon which to rely? Is it structuralism or psychoanalysis? Is it hermeneutics or existentialism? It is hard to settle upon one single answer. Inevitably, multiple philosophical approaches must be taken to analyse complex anthropological records. During this process we, on one hand, resort to thinking from a ‘meta-philosophical perspective’ to critique the prerequisite of materials and construction of aesthetic anthropology; on the other hand, we take Marxism’s historical materialism as the starting point and main objective. In the final evaluation, we conduct an effective analysis of the basic subject – local aesthetic experience based on all the actual materials of aesthetic anthropology, with an aim to generate holistic aesthetic experience and interpretation. 3.1.2 To Break through the Limits of Simple Fieldwork and In-Depth Interviews By placing aesthetic anthropology in a philosophical context, we aim to solve the methodological defects of being scattered and shallow. Fieldwork includes observation, one-on-one interviews, in-depth interviews, and group questionnaires, etc.; these methods yield a daunting amount of first-hand materials representing local aesthetic experience. The first issue that arises is how to interpret those materials. Generally speaking, simple analysis, summary, and deduction after fieldwork seldom enable us to explore local aesthetic experience at a deep level. Summative local knowledge, also known as ethnography,9 offers a panoramic view of indigenous residents’ culture. As the field of anthropology grows, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of indigenous residents – immerse ourselves in their experiences – to enable such in-depth exploration. Only then can we understand their understanding, and find the very structure of aesthetic cognitive emotions in the field.

8 Wang, Jie. 2014. On Modern Aesthetics: Anthropological Reflections. Beijing: Peking University Press, pp.71–72. 9 Wang, Mingming. 2003. What is Anthropology. Beijing: Peking University Press, pp.64–65.

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3.1.3 To Transcend the Limits of Empirical Research Limited to Contemporary Aesthetic Studies? The foundation of anthropology as an empirical social science lies in having first-hand empirical research materials. Empirical materials are drawn from anthropological methods like field investigation, in-depth interviews, thick-­ description ethnography, and so on. However, empirical research in anthropology cannot cope with every problem. On one hand, we must ask whether it is possible to collect objective first-hand materials; on the other hand, we must study and ponder the structure of contemporary Chinese people’s aesthetic emotion and its complex presentation. First, we believe that neither ‘Zero Degree Writing’ nor ‘­documentaries’ can be totally objective, and the same is true of ‘thick description’ in ­anthropology. Any scholar who knows the relationship between subjective stance and objective description and who grasps the nature and structure of subjective-­ objective relationships can achieve relative objectivity while conducting empirical research. The Team of Contemporary Aesthetics and Art Criticism at Zhejiang University conducts a study on the very place where contemporary Chinese aesthetic experience occurs – contemporary Chinese films. By accumulating, classifying, and sublimating aesthetic experience, the Team combines empirical data with aesthetic experience, reviews comments by candidates for graduate and postgraduate students or by post-doctoral research fellows, truthfully presents the public’s common aesthetic responses to contemporary Chinese films, and thus chronicles the structure of the audience’s aesthetic emotion. The Team has discussed the following movies: Lost, Hidden Man, Ash Is Purest White, The Great Buddha and Long Day’s Journey into Night. By performing a thick description of aesthetic cognitive emotion, the Team seeks to find a path toward ethnic aesthetics and provide cognitive and emotional support for practical ethics. On the other hand, aesthetic research is bound to come to an assumption of ethical outlets, and it is impossible to grasp the value stance of any research without having a direction for ethical practice. Hermeneutic anthropology master Clifford Geertz said, ‘The basic mission of hermeneutic anthropology is not to answer our deepest questions, but to let us know the answers of other people who graze other sheep in other valleys, so that these answers can be put on records of anthropology open to inquiry and retrieval’.10 The mission, then, is to set up a platform for equal interaction between hosts and guests. Thick description in itself is both the process and the result of this interaction. 10

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays by Clifford Geertz. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Publishers, pp.33–34.

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Geertz also advocated ‘the need to put oneself in these predicaments’, but his approach is fundamentally different from Marxist historical practice. The former ends in ‘thick description’, while the latter must perform social practice for cultural governance, spiritual and social innovation, and even the free and equal development of all human beings. The living soul of Marxism lies in paying attention to, critiquing, and transforming reality. From Marx and Engels all the way to modern or contemporary Western and Chinese Marxists, these researchers are not concerned about reality but rather engaged in social revolution and constructionist movements.11 The humanistic stance we advocate is rooted in the social and historical practices of Marxism, mirroring the connection between theoretical research and social practice. It also can be seen in the integration of theoretical research into people’s real concerns. This represents the ethical and practical outlet for aesthetic anthropology. 3.2 Basic Methodology of Aesthetic Anthropology The basic methodologies of aesthetic anthropology are threefold: 1) To study the aesthetic significance of primitive experience and art texts in the specific cultural context rather than simple form studies; 2) To pay special attention to avoid any form of culture-centrism or cultural superiority and to conduct field work flexibly (e.g. via observation, interview, dialogue, writing aesthetic ethnography), using the series of discussions on contemporary Chinese films as ethnographic research of contemporary aesthetic and emotional structure; and 3) To return to the original intention of anthropology, which is to study and expound upon humanity and humanism. Tragic humanism is still of importance to contemporary Chinese aesthetics. 3.3 Coping Strategies of Aesthetic Anthropology To cope with the ubiquity of entertainment in everyday aesthetic life, we call for a return to the awakening of tragedy in aesthetics and art criticism, and the all-round development of people in a humanistic structure. To settle down the converging power of the global community of aesthetic culture, we expect self-assertion of the subjectivity of local aesthetic experience and that local culture to become more adaptable and to be transmitted outwardly under the premise of diversity. To reject the pervasiveness of artwork in the era of consumerism, we insist upon adhering to and perfecting the metaphysical principles of aesthetics, and propose that art criticism be critical in nature. To cope with the presence of Internet-based aesthetics and art criticism, we 11

Wang, Jie. 2011. Questioning Style of Aesthetics to Social Reality. Social Scientist, 3: 6.

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are developing a multi-disciplinary methodology for aesthetic research and a multi-disciplinary path to art criticism. 4 Film Criticism with Aesthetic Anthropology: the Examples of Wolf Warriors II and The Wandering Earth 1.

The box office earnings of Wolf Warriors II amounted to 5 billion yuan, a great case of phenomenal film in recent years. The amazing box office yield of contemporary Chinese films stems from the public’s need for better cultural life. Yet much remains to be done before the caliber of local culture is presented accurately in films. The Team at Zhejiang University has invited expert and scholarly deliberation; presented multi-­ dimensional, comprehensive discussions of Wolf Warriors II; analysed the single case for advantages and weaknesses; and sought growth points for Chinese culture under critiques.12 After the critical debate, we have offered a comprehensive presentation of the film’s success and dilemmas and provided constructive opinions of the film with thick local features. Those who engage in the debate believe that the film’s domestic success has multiple cultural or contextual causes; for instance, the film was aired on several important historical memorial days, which triggered emotional responses among the Chinese. However, the film’s overseas box office earnings are not as good as in domestic areas, which means that the aforesaid ‘local aesthetic experience’ cannot be grasped by overseas audiences – i.e. it is not globally adaptable or capable of good outward transmission. The team suggested that in order to increase the film’s worldwide acceptability, filmmakers should find a balance between ‘local experience’ and ‘global acceptance’. The traditional Kungfu representation of national pride satisfies the psychological needs of domestic filmgoers, and creates an aesthetic mode of fighting back as opposed to non-resistance which mirrors the lack of masculinity in China’s major metropolitan areas. The expression of emotional nuances in the film is somewhat rough, given the film’s setting of international humanitarian relief; and makes it difficult to touch people with the power of tragic humanism. A truly worldwide film may be achieved by depicting simple events in a simple life.

12

Wang, Jie, Gao, Youpeng and Zhou, Xiaoyan. 2017. Utopia: A Story of Man–A Discussion on Warrior Wolf II. Shanghai Art Review, 5: 4.

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After comparing the film with other classical movies made in China and elsewhere (such as 007), debaters have offered critiques on the choice of a main social theme versus a marginal one; the expression and moderation of nationalism; the balance of aesthetic-cognitive structures in third-world countries, developed countries, and China specifically; the choice of main character image; and the audio-visual presentation of the film. As in this case, we have encouraged group discussion and presented the source of local aesthetic experience in contemporary reality. We have borrowed from anthropological critiques to explore the generative rules and future orientations of phenomenal Chinese films. The box office income of The Wandering Earth reached 4.6 billion, and it is a subsidiary of Wolf Warriors II. It has become another phenomenal Chinese film. Our film reviewing team at Zhejiang University conducted an aesthetic anthropological analysis of it. Although the film has achieved tremendous box office success, it is not judged as a landmark Chinese science fiction film by discussion. On one hand, the film meets the rational needs of the current Chinese film market, but violates its own presupposed rational context and becomes the product of irrational emotions. On the other hand, the success of emotional control in industrial film can be attributed to the absence of profound tragic humanism. The industry has controlled human emotions to a precise degree. But this kind of manipulation is based on the technical level of cultural industry, which is far from true aesthetic emotion itself. This technique of industrialized and technical emotional manipulation is actually a manifestation of aesthetic ethical imbalance. This imbalance directly leads to the distortion of aesthetic emotion and its separation from reality. It is a kind of spiritual and cultural stimulant that breaks away from the daily emotions of the masses and from the simple state of human nature, and attempts to have a direct impact on human perception with extreme emotions. This mood comes and goes quickly, and this kind of emotional control is ubiquitous in movies. In the era of fast food culture, this effect is beyond reproach. It’s like eating an ordinary breakfast – you don’t experience a residual aftertaste for three months afterwards. However, if the film proposes to depict a significant theme, which represents death and despair to all audiences, the public will be disgusted if the filmmaker presents it in this fast-food way. Take this film as an example. Imagine that the earth’s population has dropped from more than 7 billion to 3 billion, each family has been cut in half directly, and each family must face the choice of which family member lives or dies. The grief would be enough to immerse mankind in despair for decades, or even

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centuries. For example, the losses of the Tangshan and Wenchuan earthquakes still cause people pain. In this film, more than 3 billion people died: what should be the state of collective emotions? We cannot imagine that kind of sadness on earth, with corpses littering the landscape, and death ice sculptures of relatives, friends, neighbors, and colleagues everywhere. We really cannot imagine how long it would take for human beings to appease from this disaster. In such a context, the lyric words and sentences that middle school students blurt out – such as ‘hope is something as precious as a diamond’ – seem so frivolous; the phenomenon of father-hatred brought about by the adolescent rebellion seems so childish; the fact that teenagers wandering around during the rebellious period happen to save the earth, seems that much more comical. In the film, all these features are important to plot cohesion. The emotional atmosphere stems from the context of the death of 3 billion people. Of course, this sentimental manipulation technique is not only seen in The Wandering Earth, but also in many other Hollywood blockbusters. The crux of industrial movies lies in breaking away from the presupposed context, but also from the context of the times. This phenomenon is similar to direct injection of emotional hormones to stimulate the audience. Filmgoers want to enjoy aesthetic spiritual products, but they only buy industrial cultural hormones – sometimes stimulants, sometimes tear bombs, which lack the ethical and moral construction of the future. From this point of view, many of the emotional complexities of this film are the products of ethical imbalance, which fails to satisfy the needs of the masses for a better life. In addition, misunderstanding of modern tragedy creates a problem in positioning the emotional outlet of the film. The film presupposes a disaster in human history. This vast martyrdom brings pain, destruction, and despair. Resistance and salvation are human instincts. The essence of tragedy lies in the incompleteness of salvation. After all, the old times will pass and the new society will come. Between the old and the new, the result of salvation is not important. The process of salvation represents the glory of humanism, due to the release of individual or collective cognition, emotion, and will. Thus the suspenseful ending will be more meaningful. Although the absence of modern tragedy leads to so many problems in the creation of this movie, Chinese-style misery provides another kind of spiritual choice. Rooted in Chinese experience, Chinese-style misery inspired the collective efforts of the characters to fight against their fate, whatever the result would be. This is more valuable than despair and failing to act caused by physiological oppression in disaster movies. From this perspective, this film shows its unique value.

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Reflections on Aesthetic Anthropology Theoretically, aesthetic anthropology and art criticism are similar; however, differences remain, mainly in that the research subject of aesthetic anthropology is active aesthetic experience, rather than material artwork. Therefore, aesthetic meaning flows amid multiple contexts and forms the object of aesthetic anthropological research. Thus the discipline is obviously contemporary. Aesthetic anthropology has the systematic structure of aesthetic theory; boasts metaphysical critical thinking; and features the completeness, systems, and unity of ontology, methodology, and value theory. Art criticism is the application of aesthetic and philosophical theory, with stress placed on theories that are critical, practical, and guide the future. In terms of methodology, aesthetic anthropology combines the empirical research methods of philosophical anthropology with those of cultural anthropology, and strives to solve complex issues of contemporary aesthetics by taking a multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach. Both Chinese and Western anthropology boast long histories. Anthropology, through the course of its development, has different priorities and means of expression, but is consistent in research perspectives and the openness and inclusiveness of research methods. In the Internet era, aesthetic anthropology has become a system open to any research on humanity’s aesthetic issues, so there are enough academic resources to solve complex issues in contemporary aesthetics. There is a prejudicial view that aesthetic anthropology can only study the aesthetic culture of ethnic minorities and cannot study the complex problems of contemporary aesthetics, which we believe is a slightly biased misunderstanding of the discipline. With our metaphysical arguments of field, we have opened up more space for research: aesthetic anthropology methodology includes methods from both ethnic aesthetic studies and sociological aesthetic studies. After a long period of accumulation, aesthetic anthropology has gradually developed a theoretical system. Through ontological construction and reflection on methodology, we are basically able to solve the aforementioned four complex problems of our times. We expect more aesthetic researchers to discuss aesthetic anthropology with us, so we may promote contemporary aesthetics together.

Chapter 19

Crafting an Aesthetics of Science: Textile Artwork and Science Communication Armida de la Garza and Zheng Shen 1 Introduction Aesthetics and Science are not often considered in relation to each other. Although there was no real distinction between the two until the Renaissance, during the positivist period in the philosophy of science both fields were in fact kept apart, and no value was seen in attempting to connect them. Calls to ‘bridge’ the ‘two cultures’ were rare.1 Science was taken to be objective, not psychological at all, even though some general connections with the arts were occasionally noted—for instance both science and aesthetics relate to creativity and imagination. Brown et al. illustrate this well when highlighting the role of both in evolutionary biology and taxonomy: they contend that the classification of life forms by Linnaeus, which differed significantly from those of Aristotle before him and Darwin after him, was possible thanks to ‘leaps of creativity’ in formalised science. ‘For each inquiry across the ages, a flight of the imagination led to fresh scientific concepts and images which changed the interpretation of reality’.2 More recently, the subjective has been reassessed for its possible value to science. Research has shown that some scientists, in particular those devoted to the study of nature but also in other scientific fields, have viewed their task as an aesthetic project, one in which subjectivity was paramount.3 Similarly, neurologists Oliver Sacks and Alexander Luria have famously advocated for a ‘Romantic’ rather than an objective science, by which they meant a literary form at the intersection of fact and fable, which Sacks employed with great success to introduce lay readers to the complexities of

1 Snow, Charles Percy. 1998 [1959]. The Two Cultures. Cambridge University Press. 2 Brown, Valerie A., Harris, John A., and Russell, Jacqueline Y. 2010. Towards a Just and Sustainable Future. In V. A. Brown, and J. A. Harris, Tackling Wicked Problems Through the Transdisciplinary Imagination (pp.3–15). London: Routledge. 3 Wragge-Morley, Alexander. 2020. Aesthetic Science: Representing Nature in the Royal Society of London, 1650–1720. Chicago: University of Chicago. © Armida de la Garza and Zheng Shen, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_021

248 DE LA Garza and Shen the brain.4 It is argued that science does not, as is sometimes said, disenchant the world, but on the contrary ‘it re-enchants: it requires a willingness to find strangeness and surprise in the mundane’.5 By the same token, art critics too have at times appealed to metaphors from science and engineering to elicit aesthetic judgement of artworks, and modern art: Just as cells are the building blocks of an organism’s life, so too an artwork’s elements are the building blocks of its life. Essential to the life of an organism […] are the tensions among ligaments and muscles, the circulation of fluids, the strength and density of bone […]. Those interdependent elements of the body, if they are not purposeful, healthy, and working together, could become useless, if not dangerous, to the organism as a whole. So too an artwork’s unique, interdependent elements (its points, lines, movements, shapes, forms, colours, structures, energies, tensions, light, and rhythms) must be present, healthy, functional, and purposefully fused—working together in harmony, subservient to the greater whole—in order for that work of art to have life.6 Today, research on the relation between aesthetics and science is less uncommon (see for example7 etc). It has been suggested that aesthetics enters science at three different levels.8 First, the objects of scientific enquiry, be they cells, numbers, solar eclipses, the diffraction of light rays and so on, may instantiate aesthetic values. Scientific instruments such as the sextant and early microscopes have also at times been regarded as works of art in their own right.9 Second, the products of science, i.e. theories and models such as Einstein’s relativity, or Newton’s 4 ‘Romantic’ in the sense that narrative could be used to describe the subtleties of human nature, in contrast to the Enlightenment values of rationalism and quantification. 5 Ball, Philip. 2021. The Beauty of Chemistry: Art, Wonder and Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 6 Esplund, Lance. 2019, January 16. To Understand Art, Think Biology. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/01/art-looking-living-organism /580177/. 7 Kemp, Martin. 2016. Structural Intuitions: Seeing Shapes in Art and Science. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press. Ivanova, Milena, and French, Steven. 2020. The Aesthetics of Science: Beauty, Imagination and Understanding. London: Routledge. Ball, Philip. 2021. The Beauty of Chemistry: Art, Wonder and Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Potts, John, and Helyer, Nigel. 2022. Science Meets Art. Singapore: Jenny Stanford. 8 Ivanova, Milena, and French, Steven. 2020. The Aesthetics of Science: Beauty, Imagination and Understanding. London: Routledge, p.6. 9 Cartelle, Javier P. 2017. Estética de la Ciencia. Chicago, IL: Independently published.

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mechanics, Watson and Crick’s double helix model of DNA molecules and others, are sometimes described in aesthetic terms. And third, scientific practice, that is, constructing or evaluating theories or designing experiments, may also be guided by aesthetic experiences and judgements. For instance, experiments are described as ‘elegant’ when discoveries made are not the outcome of chance, but rather of the ingenuity and creativity displayed by the scientists.10 Moreover, in science, visual representations are not always mere illustrations that are redundant expressions of information presented in words, but in fact may convey essential information and aim to be attractive in order to persuade.11 It has been argued these (in a way, artistic) images make genuine and sometimes even indispensable contributions to epistemic practices12 and argumentation, while some art for its part, in particular figurative painting of the natural world, also shows influences of the scientific theories of the day, such as evolution.13 Science enters art in various ways as well. First, artists may themselves work with scientific techniques or instruments, such as electron-scanning microscopes, image-processing telescopes, gel electrophoresis trays and so on. Their work thus produced contributes to the act of rendering the scientific visible in a representative way, which has been ‘a traditional purview of the artist’.14 Second, engagement with scientific theories or technology has had an impact on the oeuvre of many artists, (especially visual artists15 but also writers and others, see for instance16). There are artists today that straddle the fields of art and science or combine them, in what has been termed ‘sciart’, ‘bioart’ and digital art, among others. It is worth mentioning here artist Ali ­Schachtschneider, 10 11

12 13 14 15 16

Glynn, Ian. 2010. Elegance in Science: the beauty of simplicity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. For example, the colourful images produced by cosmologist Andrei Linde, who studies the inflationary universe, are entitled ‘Pollock Universes’ and ‘Kandinsky Universes’, referencing the painters to indicate the beauty of his theories (Elkins and Fiorentini, 2021, p.152). Mößner, Nicola. 2018. Visual Representations in Science: Concept and Epistemology. London and New York: Routledge. Marshall, Nancy R. 2021. Victorian Science and Imagery: Representation and Knowledge in Nineteenth Century Visual Culture. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Halpern, Megan K., and Rogers, Hannah S. 2021. Art-science collaborations, complexities and challenges. In M. Bucchi, and B. Trench, Routledge Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology. London and New York: Routledge. Kemp, Martin. 2016. Structural Intuitions: Seeing Shapes in Art and Science. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Henry, Holly. 2003. Virginia Woolf and the Discourse of Science: the Aesthetics of Astronomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.1–2.

250 DE LA Garza and Shen a fashion-trained designer, who explores the aesthetics and consequences of the process of growing materials using both biology and fashion design to create extensions of the body. Her project ‘vivarium’ includes the growing and consuming of second-skins, and producing swallowable pills that cause cellulose-material to form on the surface of skin.17 In addition, interdisciplinary developments in higher education are increasingly bringing art into a dialogue with science. The emerging field of medical humanities, STEAM teaching (i.e. syllabi designed to combine Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Medicine/Mathematics), or some types of object-based learning/material history projects, where an artistic product is engaged from scientific perspectives such as for the restoration of a painting or sculpture, are cases in point.18 Moreover, it has been noted that the aesthetic concept of the sublime can be applied to instances of scientific objects, products, and practices as mentioned above. Although there have been many variations of this concept, ranging from the Greeks, who applied it to rhetoric, to Kant, who applied it to mathematics, to Schopenhauer, who focused on the emancipatory potential of the aesthetic contemplation of the sublime, the concept is most frequently employed as in Joseph Addison and Edmund Burke’s work. In Addison’s famous formulation, the sublime is ‘that which fills the mind with an agreeable kind of horror’, an experience in which we feel ourselves in relation to something larger than ourselves. Burke added to this two more features: the source eliciting sublime feelings would have to be incomprehensible or difficult to imagine; and the sublime object must have superiority over the subject in terms of power. In art, it has long been associated with depictions of nature as an overwhelming and uncontrollable force—storms, volcano eruptions, tsunamis. Sublime experiences elicit a sense of vastness and grandeur that can be unsettling. In science, these same emotions may be triggered by the contemplation of colonies of bacteria, or the blastulation process of an embryo. Judgements of sublimity may ‘draw the attention of scientists to highly challenging phenomena and domains of enquiry [and these] judgements may then contribute to the evaluation of a theory as innovative or ground breaking’.19

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Halpern, Megan K., and Rogers, Hannah S. 2021. Art-science collaborations, complexities and challenges. In M. Bucchi, and B. Trench, Routledge Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology. London and New York: Routledge. As these developments are driven by a societal need to tackle ‘wicked’ problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss and so on, the cultivation of an aesthetics of science may even become a central part of higher education. Ivanova, Milena, and French, Steven. 2020. The Aesthetics of Science: Beauty, Imagination and Understanding. London: Routledge.

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To discuss these intersections of science and aesthetics, this chapter combines insights from two fields, namely aesthetics and the philosophy of science, from a feminist perspective. One reason is that feminist perspectives have been instrumental in the reassessment of the role of creativity, imagination and subjectivity in science, as these had traditionally been regarded feminine traits and were thus undervalued. Another reason is that both feminist aesthetics and philosophy of science draw attention to, and seek to redress, gender bias. Feminist philosophy of science documents the under-representation of women among professional scientists, showing how this has influenced what research problems are pursued and the way they are framed.20 It aims to counter bias when it is epistemically harmful, and also to identify when feminist values can improve scientific research. Feminist aesthetics for its part also concerns the way in which aesthetic objects […] experience and standards/ taste serve to construct, enforce and perpetuate often intersecting systems of oppression.21 That racist comparative anatomy was taught to male artists in the 19th century is an example of how inextricably the arts and the sciences at the time were linked, and of how ways of representing lead to ways of knowing, which in turn generate frameworks of power and control.22 Feminist aesthetics also reject the view that art must be segregated from practical concerns, which results in the art/craft distinction that has led to the systematic depreciation of the sorts of artefacts customarily produced by women, such as textiles. The paragraphs below thus discuss textile art produced by women as an ideal interface to engage science and the aesthetic simultaneously. In particular, the essay takes up the aesthetic theme of the body and the concept of the sublime to explore how textile artworks convey scientific ideas or concepts in the realms of microbiology, anatomy and developmental biology. 2

Textile Art and Science: Biology and Medicine

Let us start by outlining the various reasons why textiles are an ideal medium to communicate science aesthetically. First of all, they provide a connection to everyday life, so it is easy to relate to them. While few may have had contact 20 21 22

Rolin, Kristina. 2021. Philosophy of Science. In Oxford Handbook of Feminist Philosophy (pp.226–236). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eaton, A. W. 2021. Feminist Aesthetics. In Kim Q. Hall, & Asta, Oxford Handbook of Feminist Philosophy (pp.295–311). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marshall, Nancy R. 2021. Victorian Science and Imagery: Representation and Knowledge in Nineteenth Century Visual Culture. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

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Figure 19.1 Herpes Virus doily by Laura Splan

with agar or other such laboratory-based media, everyone is clothed in, and constantly in contact, with textiles. Thus, when seemingly crocheted doilies reference virus DNA (see Figure 19.1 Herpes Virus by Laura Splan), or when embossed quilts are infected with bacteria colonies for display, the juxtaposition is powerful. The familiar is rendered unfamiliar in the fashion Berthold Brecht claimed was at the heart of all art, so as to enable audiences to see the world differently and gain new perspectives. Rapp and de Lutz express this in terms of semiotics: the textile artist ‘willingly creates an explosive overlap of denotation and connotation with seemingly incomparable entities of signs: The signifier (science) touches the signified (whitework textile); and the scientific message is (re)translated and inscribes itself into the language of embroidery’.23 Second, in line with feminist aesthetics that focuses on touch and smell in addition to sight and sound, there is also the haptic, tactile element. It has been argued that textile art attracts viewers partly because of the ‘hands on’ quality of fabric, which offers an approach to science that is quite unconventional. For instance, the authors of Hidden Beauty: Exploring the Aesthetics of Medical Science describe the growth of fungi in terms of embroidery: ‘We see beauty in the delicate lacework of fungal hyphae invading a blood vessel […] describing visually stunning patterns. Ultimately, these images […] leave the viewer with 23

Rapp, Regine, and de Lutz, Christian. 2014. Anna Dumitriu: The Bacterial Sublime. Berlin: Schering Stiftung and Arts Council England, p.29.

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an understanding and appreciation of visual beauty inherent within the field of modern medical science’.24 A third reason is that the history of fabric dyes also provides an interesting mirror into human knowledge of microbes and antibiotics, as both have been used for millennia in the dying of fabrics.25 Many natural dyes including madder root, safflower and walnut, have also been used as medicines, with an intrinsic link found between the two. Methylene blue for example was first considered a kind of ‘magic bullet’ against micro-organisms. Textile artists often use dyes purposefully, to bring the role of science to the forefront while also advancing aesthetic intent. Pioneering visual artist Anna Dumitriu has run participatory workshops where audiences use fabric dyes to make bacteria become visible. Antibiotics applied to fabric may also play an aesthetic role in the design, as the bacteria would not grow in those spaces. A further reason why textile is an ideal medium to communicate science aesthetically is that, when shaped into garments, i.e. fashion, the potential for communication to a much broader and diverse audience is enhanced. From a different perspective, namely that of computer science, the garments designed by Giorgia Lupi are also worth mentioning. They depict data visualisations showing the achievements of Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer in history—and two other women in science, namely Rachel Carson, who spearheaded the environmentalist movement, and Mae Jemison, the first African American woman astronaut. In the case of Lovelace, Lupi analysed and visualized the structure and mathematical form of the algorithm Lovelace wrote with a colourful geometric pattern, featured on the fabric of dresses, jumpers (See Figure 19.2) and blouses.26 As it is in close proximity to the flesh, dress has an intimate relationship to the body, outlining, emphasising, obscuring or extending it. In fact, dress partly determines our experience of the body, expressing or constraining it.27 As Joan Entwistle noted, ‘different techniques of dress produce different bodies […] the dressed body takes on very different shapes and forms, largely as a result of the tailoring of the cloth: Comme des garçons clothes often obscure the line of the body creating space between the body and the fabric, while [Vivienne] 24 25 26 27

In a similar vein, Mackowiak has produced an alternative history of art, from the perspective of how paintings have depicted patients and disease. See (Mackowiak, 2019). Rapp, Regine, and de Lutz, Christian. 2014. Anna Dumitriu: The Bacterial Sublime. Berlin: Schering Stiftung and Arts Council England. Lupi, Giorgia. 2019. Giorgia Lupi & Other Stories. Retrieved from http://giorgialupi.com /giorgia-lupi-otherstories. De la Garza, Armida. 2022. STEAM at Work: ‘Translating’ Science into Dress. Textile: Cloth and Culture, 20(2): 117–133.

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Figure 19.2 Dress depicting visualizations of the first algorithm by Ada Lovelace

Westwood’s tailoring exaggerates the body’s lines and curves’.28 Noting the strong correlation between surgery and bespoke tailoring, Roger Kneebone, Professor of surgical education at Imperial College London, and Joshua Byrne of Mayfair tailors Byrne & Burge, argue that at the juncture between these two practices there is knowledge of anatomy, where thread is used to both cloth and heal the human body. A deep understanding of materiality—of fabric in 28

Entwistle, Joanne. 2011. The Dressed Body. In Linda Welters, and Abby Lillethun, The ­Fashion Reader (pp.138–149). Oxford: Berg.

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one case, and flesh in the other—is vital to the craft of both, which require delicacy and dexterity. In surgery, the body can be seen as layers of textiles (tissue) being mended (or, in plastic surgery, ‘beautified’). Professor Kneebone further engaged lace maker and embroiderer Fleur Oakes as artist-in-residence. Their work together resulted in sharing techniques ‘on how to avoid the tangling of threads and ideas for improving surgeons’ control over the fine sutures used to join arteries’.29 The notion of the fashion designer as anatomist is not a new one, and art is also at its root. It can be traced to a piece of garment designed by Elsa Schiaparelli in collaboration with Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí in 1938, in which they incorporated the spine as a decorative detail. Witty and playful rather than dark and sinister, ‘the skeleton imagery is described by the technique of trapunto quilting a fine matt black silk surface, with the ‘bones’ outlined in stitching through two layers of padded fabric’.30 In the same vein (no pun intended), Olivier Theyskens collection in the Autumn/Winter 1998 featured forensic representations of the heart along with a tracery of red veins and arteries on transparent fabric, and in 2011 Iris van Herpen printed in 3D a technically accomplished ‘skeleton dress’, an incandescent, lightweight structure, using computer-controlled pulsed laser that consolidates powdered polymers or metals into a layered form. As can be seen from the above examples, from biology to chemistry to computer science, textile art and fashion have many advantages for the dissemination of science, and provide, as it were, an aesthetic interface into it. 3

The Scientific Sublime on Textile Art

Related to the discussion on anatomy above is the present feminist aesthetics concern with actual bodies, as opposed to their representation. ‘Body aesthetics explores ways in which a wide array of aesthetic standards pertaining to bodies can play a central role in systems of oppression and privilege, as well as ways in which the aesthetic dimension of bodies can be sites of resistance’.31 Developing new methods and aesthetic concepts, feminists interpret and 29 30 31

Butchart, Amber. 2020, April 17. Frieze. Retrieved from What Can a Surgeon Learn from a Tailor? Harnessing the Healing Art of Thread : https://www.frieze.com/article/what-can -surgeon-learn-tailor-harnessing-healing-art-thread. Fogg, Marnie. 2014. The Dress: 100 Ideas that Changed Fashion Forever. London: Goodman, p.96. Eaton, A. W. 2021. Feminist Aesthetics. In Kim Q. Hall, & Asta, Oxford Handbook of Feminist Philosophy (pp.295–311). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

256 DE LA Garza and Shen explain the aesthetic dimension of bodily phenomena, including the aesthetics of mothering and birthing. A prime example of this is the work of Sheila Lintott, who has researched whether and how gestating might consist of experiences that may be called sublime, leading to a reconsideration of the term. Traditional formulations of the sublime as outlined above are gendered, in that the forces of nature that thrill in an irrational and excessive way are associated with the feminine and need to be subdued.32 Further, in traditional formulations of the sublime, a self-other dichotomy is required, as the frustration or threat causing the feeling is external. According to Lintott however, pregnancy, which can be experienced as ‘the extinguishing of an earlier self’, may bring the same feeling from within. Moreover, the nature of the division between a pregnant woman and the being she gestates is ambiguous, so, the self-other dichotomy that arouses the sublime feeling is not required.33 For this reason, a feminist conception of the sublime would be able ‘to convey the existential centrality and importance of gestating […] without reducing the experience to one of domination’.34 The feminist sublime is ‘embodied and decidedly not abstract. It does not enjoy the safety or the ‘disinterestedness’ demanded by more traditional’ conceptions of the sublime.35 But it can lead to confronting the myths of individuality and personal autonomy that are more generally shared throughout Western culture. Textile art dealing with the same topics necessarily takes us back to the realm of representation. Reproductive technologies and interventions have been a central theme for many artists working with science, including those in textiles. Much of this work takes a feminist perspective. For example, for the project ‘The Art of Cells’ by Gibco, cell scientists from around the world were paired with an artist to interpret their science by means of artistic expression. Textile artist Meredith Woolnough produced a 3D embroidered model of the embryonic stem cells (See Figure 19.3) for Dr Marietta Hartl, who aims to understand how symmetry is broken and how cells self-organise in embryonic development.

32 33 34 35

McIver, Gillian. 2016. Art History for Filmmakers: the Art of Visual Storytelling. New York: Bloomsbury, p.160. Lintott quotes the umbilical cord as evidence of this event after birth, since for this shared organ it is unclear where ‘she’ ends and ‘s/he’ begins. Lintott, Sheila. 2013. The Sublimity of Gestating and Giving Birth: Toward a Feminist Conception of the Sublime. In Lintott, Sheila, and Sander-Staudt, Maureen, Philosophical Enquiries into Pregnancy, Childbirth and Mothering (pp.237–250). London: Routledge. Ibid, p.249.

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Figure 19.3 Embryonic stem cells pictured by Marietta Hartl (left) and textile-crafted by Meredith Woolnough (right)

Using a domestic sewing machine as an unconventional drawing tool, Woolnough draws on soluble fabric, thus allowing her to create work that is almost sculptural in design. For this work every individual cell was mounted separately on pins of different heights, giving it its distinctive look. Woolnough’s embroidered traceries, described as ‘elegant’—a term, as mentioned above, also employed in science to describe certain experiments or formulations—are said to capture ‘the beauty and fragility of nature in knotted embroidery threads’.36 In the artist’s words: ‘the fact that this cell would eventually evolve into other cells and organs and eventually into an entire organism was just mind-blowing, it was a beautiful image, a beautiful structure […] the start point of life’.37 While the first image evokes perhaps feelings of the mathematical, Kantian sublime, the second might be more akin to John Muir’s conception of the objects themselves being sublime, rather than our experience of them, with less of a focus on the terror, power and darkness that Addison and Burke ascribed to the idea. In this sense, both images are closer the feminist sublime as per Lintott outlined above. Also impressive is the exhibition entitled Primitive Streak, a collection comprising 26 dresses and a hat, which represent 9 key events that take place during the first 1,000 hours of the life of the embryo, from fertilisation to the appearance of recognisable human form. Created by Helen Storey, fashion designer and Professor of Fashion Science at the University of the Arts London, and her sister 36

Roseo, Maria R. 2022, 08 07. Artemorbida. Retrieved from Textile Arts Magazine: https:// www.artemorbida.com/intervista-con-meredith-woolnough/?lang=en. 37 Ibid.

258 DE LA Garza and Shen Kate Storey, a developmental biologist and Head of Division of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Dundee, the collection has been touring museums, galleries and university exhibition spaces since 1997, with some late additions. Macdonald and Basu have traced an interesting parallel between experiments and exhibitions. They argue that just as the purpose of a scientific apparatus is ‘to make visible the invisible’, the purpose of an exhibition is also that of showing, displaying.38 This can definitely be said of Primitive Streak. Determining the mechanisms behind the early development of embryos is key to understanding the causes of a number of birth defects, as well as disease in later life. The primitive streak is formed during gastrulation, one of the earliest and most critical stages of development. The streak ‘results in the establishment of the main body as, and is accompanied by extensive cell rearrangements, driving large scale three dimensional tissue deformation and reorganisation’.39 There is an aesthetic dimension to the biological phenomenon itself. The range of aesthetic experiences is expanded by medical imaging techniques and the questions they raise, which challenge aesthetic reflections and highlight political dimensions: This can ‘create an aesthetics, a new “distribution of the sensible”, to use Jacques Rancière’s expression’. Rancière argues that aesthetics deals with time and space rather than with taste and beauty.40 As for the Hartl-Woolnaugh project, MRI histology can now be used to visualise the complex 3D morphology of the development of embryos in detail. This dimension is further highlighted when the phenomenon is actually represented, through visual hybrid metaphors, by means of dress. Multimodality, which a dress exhibition enacts, appears to offer unique opportunities for creativity at the level of representation, due to the distinctive properties of the different modes and the possibility of combining them in unexpected ways.41 In the study of metaphor, visual hybrids have been deemed more powerful than simple pictorial similes. This is because visual hybrids leave the viewer no choice but to understand one thing in terms of another, whereas pictorial similes merely invite. ‘Artificial semiosis’ is based on entirely unrealistic combinations of objects. 38 39 40 41

MacDonald, Sharon, and Basu, Paul. 2007. Exhibition Experiments. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, p.15. Hill, Grant. 2015. Watching the Primitive Streak. Retrieved 11 18, 2020, from https://www .dundee.ac.uk/news/2015/watching-the-primitive-streak.php Casini, Silvia. 2010. The Aesthetics of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): from the Scientific Laboratory to Artwork. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7523862.0008.022 El Refaie, Elisabeth. 2017. Analysing Metaphors in Multimodal Texts. In E. Semino, & Z. Demjén, The Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language (pp.148–162). London: Routledge.

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Objects, or rather materials, are combined in exactly these ways to make up the dresses and hats of the Primitive Streak collection. The basic tool is the analogy between the materials and the volumes of the gowns and what happens at each stage of the biological process of embryological development. An example of this is the ‘Spinal Column’ dress, for day 33. It is made from a patterned fabric showing DNA sequence combinations and features a resin-cast spine, recalling the Schiaparelli gown. It was hand plated with foil and 8,000 fibre optic endings representing the nerves extending out to the body are threaded through. Artificial semiosis is also invited in ‘Lung Dress’, for Day 28, which shows how the lungs develop from two small buds branching out, into a shape that resembles the wings of a butterfly, almost magical. The dress is made from soft, shiny sponge and the branching representing the lungs is printed onto the velvet and chiffon. Multimodality is involved in that ‘due to their characteristic of softness, weight, flexibility or gloss, the fabrics can convey special sensations through the ear (the rustle of silk), touch (the roughness of hemp), the smell of certain natural dyes and, first among the senses, sight’.42 All in all, Primitive Streak is a highly creative, powerful interpretation of embryological development, which also brings the sublime to mind, for both the science and the artwork. 4 Conclusion Despite the fact that ‘art’ and ‘science’ have been constructed as separate fields in the West, this separation did not exist prior to the Renaissance, when the pursuit of knowledge was more holistic, and arguably it is now becoming less sharp. The fields called ‘art’ and ‘science’ today have always had a need for creativity and imagination in common. Moreover, the value of subjectivity, traditionally regarded a feature of the arts and undesirable for science, is being reassessed to some extent. Feminist approaches have been central to this reassessment. Today it is possible to speak of an aesthetics of science, for example in terms of beauty and the sublime, as this chapter has shown. Importantly however there are other aesthetic dimensions also applicable to science. There is the political dimension—art that emancipates, as per Rancière, and art that makes audiences question—the opposite of what Marcel Duchamp famously called ‘retinal art’. The artwork described here can also be said to bring these two aesthetic dimensions to the science they help to communicate 42

Ventosa, S. 2005. Art and Science. In H. Storey, & K. Storey, La línia primitiva (pp.94–95). Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona.

260 DE LA Garza and Shen and disseminate. A feminist perspective is naturally political. It aims for equity and inclusion: by highlighting and combating bias it aims to contribute to socially responsible science.43 The strategies employed by the artists in the creation of their work—constructing multimodal metaphors that invite ‘artificial semiosis’, for example, or deploying the distanciation techniques advocated by Brecht, certainly invite questioning. Moreover, while it is usually philosophers who advise scientists and administrators or politicians on issues related to ethics, artists, including feminist artists, bring the possibility of an ethics based on practice as much as theory, going beyond ‘guidelines’ into ‘difficult questions’.44 As Rapp and Lutz argue, in the 21st century, artists working with science have become ‘heuristic and diagnostic’ ethicists of scientific, technological, and artistic innovation. They bring added value to a practice that may be called an aesthetics of science, for more than its beauty. 43 44

Rolin, Kristina. 2012. A Feminist Approach to Values in Science. Perspectives on Science, 20(3): 320–330. Rapp, Regine, and de Lutz, Christian. 2014. Anna Dumitriu: The Bacterial Sublime. Berlin: Schering Stiftung and Arts Council England, p.3.

Chapter 20

Contemporary Aesthetics from the Perspective of Cognitive Neuroscience – Centered on ‘Aesthetic Cognitive Mode’ Yushui Liang Since the 1990s the rapid development of natural sciences, especially brain science research, has caused the transformation of traditional consciousness theory, leading to the ‘scientization’ tendency of the basic issues of the humanities. A new and more conscious ‘scientific’ research trend has also emerged in aesthetics research, which crosses and merges the two disciplines of ‘­cognitive neuroscience’ and ‘aesthetics’ with an effort to make aesthetic research ‘­naturalized,’ ‘scientific,’ ‘experimental,’ ‘quantitative,’ and ‘­modeling.’ The ‘­scientific trend’ and ‘interdisciplinary characteristics’ of ­aesthetics research are becoming increasingly obvious. In the West, this research paradigm is called ‘­Neuroaesthetics,’ ‘Cognitive Science Aesthetics,’ ‘The ­Cognitive Neuroscience of Art,’ and so on. The new ‘empirical’ aesthetic trend has gradually reconstructed the pattern of contemporary aesthetic research in the era of ‘Big ­science’ and ‘Big discipline’ with its irresistible revolutionary influence. A large number of cognitive neuroscientists and estheticians believe that, through multidisciplinary, technical, and experimental research methods, ­carrying out the study of neurophysiological bases and cognitive psychological mechanisms from the level of genes, molecules, and circuits to human consciousness activities (such as sensing, perception, memory, emotion, imagination, experience, emotion, thinking, judgment, etc.) will make the basic problems of traditional aesthetics completely new in the knowledge framework and subject extension. In actual research, more and more attention has been focused on the issue of ‘aesthetic cognition,’ and to a certain extent triggered the ‘aesthetic cognition’ turn in aesthetic research.1 The philosophical research and scientific exploration of the ‘aesthetic cognitive mode’ have also become a core theme of contemporary aesthetics research based on the ­perspective of cognitive neuroscience. 1 Liang, Yushui, and Zhang, Rui. 2012. The Development of Scientific Aesthetics and the Turn of Aesthetic Cognition – Also Discussing the Three Inherent Research Orientations of ­Chinese Contemporary Aesthetics, Jinyang Journal, 2: 60–64. © Yushui Liang, 2024 | DOI:10.1163/9789004685925_022

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1 Contemporary Aesthetic Research: from the Essence of Beauty to the Model of Aesthetic Cognition Overall, criticism of the essence of beauty is a starting point for the historical advancement of contemporary aesthetics research. From the study of reflection, criticism, and sublation of the ‘essence of beauty’ through linguistic and semiotic analysis and critical investigation of cultural anthropology, the ‘truth’ of the issue of ‘beauty essence’ is constantly ‘falsified’ by some aesthetic researchers. Changes in philosophical ideas and the advancement of natural science research have allowed us to alter our perspective of aesthetic research, that is, to evolve from the ontological search and epistemological research of ‘what is beauty’ to the study of anthropological understanding and individual occurrence of ‘aesthetic activity.’ The new research perspective focuses on the core question of ‘why do we regard an object as beautiful?’ or ‘why is the object understood by us to be beautiful?’ From the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, critically inheriting the ideological resources of aesthetic research and absorbing the research findings of many disciplines, such as philosophy, ­cognitive psychology, information science, neurobiology, anthropology, and evolution theory, we may seek answers to the ‘mystery’ of beauty. According to Zehou Li, a famous Chinese esthetician, ‘the research of ­origination is not only an empirical science, but also has the philosophical ­significance of ontology.’2 For the aesthetics principle, ‘whether the problem of aesthetic occurrence can be explained reasonably is the touchstone for testing whether a theoretical system is reasonable.’3 The occurrence research on aesthetic activities mainly focuses on two questions: ‘How is human aesthetic activity possible?’ and ‘How do we achieve individual aesthetic activities?’ In the ‘Four Lectures on Aesthetics,’ Zehou Li pointed out, ‘We should distinguish between how beauty comes from (the essence and root of beauty) and why you feel beautiful about a certain thing, that is, why a certain thing becomes your aesthetic object (individuals or groups of a specific society and era).’4 These are two different levels of research on aesthetic occurrence. The former question is the basis and premise of the latter question. Taking cognitive neuroscience as the research horizon and historical materialism as the philosophical basis, we could reach the intelligent premise that 2 Li, Zehou. 2007. The Criticism of Critical Philosophy – a review of Kant’s Philosophy. Shanghai: Shanghai Joint Publishing Press, p.71. 3 Li, Zhihong. 2011. Principles of Cognitive Aesthetics. Beijing: Guangming Daily Press, p.98. 4 Li, Zehou. 2003. Four Lectures on aesthetics. Tianjin: Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences Press, p.460.

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the occurrence of human aesthetic activities should be based on the generation and development of human abstract thinking ability. The fundamental reason for animals’ and early humans’ lack of aesthetic activities lies in the underdevelopment of intelligence.5 As a result, an aesthetic intelligent anthropology viewpoint based on the theory of survival evolutionism and the concept of life-practice has formed; that is, only humans with abstract thinking ability in the ‘modern’ sense can take ‘symbolic’ operations and make an observation of pure ‘form.’ This is what Piaget called the ‘formal operational stage’6 of human development, only in this way, ‘an activity that purely perceives the appearance of things and forms Non-utilitarian or disinterested pleasure’7 is possible. As a judgment rule, this viewpoint also redefines the historical and logical starting points of human aesthetic development in the sense of ‘­intelligent anthropology.’ The study of aesthetic ‘intelligent anthropology’ is a supplement to the study of aesthetic ‘practical anthropology.’ At the same time, ‘Intelligent ­Anthropology’ pays attention to intelligence, so that the ‘hominology’ of ‘­Physical Anthropology’ has been challenged in the sense of ‘Developmental Epistemology’ or ‘cognitive development theory.’ This line of thinking also opens up research space for studying the aesthetic problems of groups or individual members that meet the requirements of ‘Physical Anthropology’ but have low intelligence or mental disabilities. In this sense, the concept of aesthetic ‘intelligent anthropology’ is a historical advancement of aesthetic research on the basis of Zehou Li’s anthropological historical ontological ­aesthetics (or ‘practical aesthetics’ as we call it). If we adhere to historical materialism, reflect on the basic theories of aesthetics, and critically examine Hume’s empirical psychology, Kant’s transcendental psychology, Arnheim’s Gestalt psychology, Piaget’s developmental psychology, and modern cognitive development psychology or neuroscience, the theoretical viewpoint of the ‘aesthetic cognitive mode’ will inevitably arise. In other words, the realization of individual aesthetic activities is due to the existence of an ‘aesthetic cognitive mode’ in the individual inner mind. When the ‘aesthetic cognitive mode’ is established, the subject, in the ‘non-­ utilitarian state,’ perceives the appearance of things that ‘conform’ and ‘fit’ the existing ‘aesthetic cognitive mode’ and generates non-utilitarian pleasure; thus the individual aesthetic activities are completed. ‘The word ‘beauty’ that people use to describe this pleasurable experience is now called aesthetic pleasure 5 Li, Zhihong. 2011. Principles of Cognitive Aesthetics. Beijing: Guangming Daily Press, p.54. 6 Piaget. 1981. Principles of Generational Epistemology. Beijing: The Commercial Press, p.52. 7 Li, Zhihong. 2011. Principles of Cognitive Aesthetics. Beijing: Guangming Daily Press, p.45.

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or the feeling of beauty. The objects that cause aesthetic feeling are called beautiful things and regarded as ‘beauty’; the general attributes of beautiful things (including natural attributes and social attributes) are called aesthetic attributes; and the effects of things that can cause aesthetic feeling are called aesthetic values.’8 The non-utilitarian, intuitive, and pleasurable nature of ­aesthetic activities, as well as the national, epochal, regional, universal, and diversified characteristics of aesthetic activities, all can be discussed reasonably within the ‘aesthetic cognitive mode’ theory. 2 Aesthetic Cognitive Mode Based on the Perspective of Cognitive Neuroscience If we define one of the characteristics of aesthetic activity as the intuition of the ‘form’ of the object, then the prerequisite for human aesthetic activity to occur is that humans have the ability to separate the ‘form’ and ‘content’ of things. That is, ‘formal operational ability’ or ‘formal perception ability,’ using Marx’s words, is the ability to construct ‘representation.’ In ‘Das Kapital,’ Marx ­examined the difference between the activities of humans and animals, and pointed out that ‘the kind of labor that belongs to humans’ is ­characterized by ‘representation.’ ‘The spider’s activity is similar to that of the weaver, and the bee’s skill in building hives shamed many architects, but the most lame architect was better than the most dexterous bee from the start, and it was he who built the hive in his own mind before building it with beeswax.’9 That is to say, ‘the results obtained at the end of the labor process already exist in the laborer’s mind at the beginning of the process, i.e. conceptually exist.’10 It is this ability that distinguishes between man and animal, and ultimately makes human activities free, conscious, and purposeful. Paleoanthropology and neurobiology have shown that human brain ­capacity has tripled from the Australopithecus era about 3.5 million years ago to modern times. The greatest contribution to this growth has been the increase in the prefrontal cortex, which is important for judgment and planning. In a sense, this increase in brain capacity provides proof of neurobiological hominology

8 9 10

Ibid, p.142. The Collected Works of Marx and Engels. Volume 5. People’s Publishing House, 2009, p.208. The Collected Works of Marx and Engels. Volume 5, People’s Publishing House, 2009, p.208.

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among modern people compared with the ‘human’ characteristics of ancient people. Formal operational ability can be molded because it is closely related to the evolution of human life, the preservation of species and the struggle for survival, and the practice of life in the process of natural and social selection. In the process of forming this ability, self-preservation, profit-seeking and harm avoidance, and ‘using it or losing it’ constitute the basic principles. Formal operational ability is a prerequisite for the formation of a formal operational mode. Through the long practice of ‘interestedness’ based on survival and life, utilitarian ‘reinforcement’ (Skinner’s words), and experiential ‘repetition,’ human beings have established a relatively stable relationship between ‘form,’ ‘meaning,’ and ‘emotion.’ Things then take on the so-called ‘third nature,’ that is, emotional attributes. This relatively stable and solid ‘form-perception-emotion’ connection forms a certain ‘schema,’ ‘template,’ or ‘pattern’ in the brain, namely the cognitive nervous system, which is called the formal perception pattern. According to the results of cognitive neuroscience research,11 one can determine that formal perception patterns ‘are more stable neuron activity patterns in cognitive structure corresponding to specific forms of objective information and associated with specific emotional tendencies.’12 ‘If the neural activity carried out in a particular way is deep enough, a specific pattern of perception is formed in the neural network through internalization’.13 Thus, the form perception mode is a kind of psychological imprint and psychological pattern which can reflect the ability of ‘pattern recognition’ and ‘selective matching,’ and it is also a kind of nerve trace or neural contact method. The American scholar Gerald Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS) or neuronal Darwinism argues that the development of neural channels in the brain is the product of a constant selection process,14 and our brain is a natural ‘choice’ system, not something ‘designed’ by God. Edelman also points out that ‘selective brains must operate under the constraints of the value system. Value system is the evolutionary genetic structure in the brain that determines reward and punishment.’15 This value system is located in the brain as a product of natural selection, such as the substrate nuclei and brain trunk, which provides 11 12 13 14 15

Wang, Naiyi, Luo, Yueja, and Dong, Qi. 2010. The Neural Mechanism of Aesthetics. Advances in Psychological Science, 1: 19–27. Li, Zhihong. 2011. Principles of Cognitive Aesthetics. Beijing: Guangming Daily Press, p.104. Ibid, p.109. Edelman, Gerald. 2010. The Second Nature – The Mystery of Consciousness. Hunan: Hunan Science and Technology Press, p.16. Ibid, p.36.

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‘preferences’ and ‘rewards’ and ‘releases a neurotransmitter or neuromodulation in a particular situation,’16 such as dopamine. Value systems provide the brain foundation for our perceived discernment, conditional judgment, situational memory, emotional responses, and behavioral types. We must study and understand this value system, which has evolved to constrain the brain’s selection system, in combination with the principles of ‘interestedness’ in life survival, biological evolution, and social practice. Based on the ability of formal perception, the form perception mode – which is constantly constructed, developed, changed, and remodeled in the activities of survival and social practice – is a dynamic, constructive structure. In general, this mode has the following characteristics, and these characteristics can be proved in psychological research:17 first, the formal perception mode has relative stability. After the formation of formal perception mode, it will reach certain stability which reflects the consistency and universality of ethnic groups, eras, and regions, and also the constant nature of the individual perception mode. But this stability is not absolutely fid; it is only relatively stable. Second, the formal perception mode has inner concealment or implicitness, which reflects the characteristics of automation18 at the non-conscious level, as well as intuitive characteristics without reasoning and knowledge judgment. In the sense of cognitive neuroscience, that is, ‘the movement of related neural activity is presented as an automated process, not perceived by human consciousness.’19 Third, the pattern of formal perception has the absolute nature of change. ‘The form perception mode is constructed and developed dynamically.’20 With the development and change of human existential evolution and individual life practice and corresponding experience, the form perception mode will be constantly changed and remodeled into the new form perception mode by the new experience content. Finally, the formal perception mode has tendencies of ‘classification’ and ‘generalization.’ When many beneficial things form groups due to the similarity of their characteristics, the corresponding formal perception patterns can also form clusters, that is ‘­formal perception patterns.’21 This group of clusters of formal perception

16 17 18 19 20 21

Ibid, p.18. Liang, Yushui. 2011. How to Understand Contemporary Cognitive Science and Aesthetics, Journal of Jianghan University, 30(6): 93–97. The theory of attentional resource allocation and the principle of survival efficiency can effectively explain the automatic characteristics of formal perception mode. Li, Zhihong. 2011. Principles of Cognitive Aesthetics. Beijing: Guangming Daily Press, p.115. Ibid, p.114. Ibid, p.113.

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patterns formed by the tendency of ‘classification’ will form ‘analogies,’ ‘covers,’ and ‘migrations’ to individual formal perception patterns. 3 The Problem of Utilitarianism and Non-utilitarianism in Aesthetic Cognitive Mode As mentioned earlier, the form perception pattern – that is, the formation of the ‘form-perception-emotion’ reaction link – follows the principle of ‘interestedness,’ which is determined by human survival evolution and social needs. For all things that are beneficial to people’s survival and life, people will have a sense of positive value and ‘good feeling.’ On the other hand, for those things not beneficial to human survival, humans form a negative sense of value, ‘evil feeling.’ Only the formal perceptive mode, which is associated with positive emotion, can construct the aesthetic cognitive mode of human beings. ­Aesthetic cognitive mode ‘is based on favorableness and from the perception mode connected with good feelings.’22 When people are in the state of non-interest, once they encounter the appearance of things consistent with the existing formal perception mode, they will form a kind of correspondence relationship, and the favorable pleasure of the appearance of things and the content evoked by the appearance of things will be transformed into pleasant emotions. This pleasurable emotion allows us to judge things as beautiful. In the history of aesthetic studies, philosophers and estheticians, based on the introspection and experience of aesthetic feeling, have described the characteristics of aesthetic experience and aesthetic perception as non-utilitarian, intuitive, and pleasurable. Kant emphasizes ‘pure observation’ and ‘no sense of interest,’ saying: ‘Everyone must admit that a judgment about beauty, as long as there is a very little sense of interest in it, there will be preference rather than pure appreciation of judgment. One must have no preference for the existence of this thing at all, but a pure indifference to it in order to be able to be a judge in appreciation.’23 The unexamined acceptance of this point of view makes people give too much ‘pureness’ imagination to the non-utilitarian characteristics of aesthetic activities. The notion seems to be contaminated with utilitarianism: aesthetic activities have flaws, or are not pure enough, so aesthetics is infected with squeamish ‘cleansing,’ giving rise to the prejudice of ‘arrogant humanism.’ Objectively speaking, ‘interestedness’ is not only a category of economics, 22 23

Ibid, p.108. The Western Aesthetician on Beauty and Aesthetics. The Commercial Press, 1980, p.153.

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sociology, political science, and ethics, but also a category of biology, psychology, and anthropology. We should study it in the sense of academic analysis instead of narrow understanding. In line with the Marxist materialism view and the development law of psychological occurrence, we can emphasize the role of ‘interestedness’ in the formation of formal perception mode and the significance of ‘interestedness’ as a potential and implicit value dimension. Taking the formation of aesthetic cognitive mode as the watershed, the formation of aesthetic cognitive mode can be seen as closely related to ‘­interestedness’ or ‘utilitarianism.’ Without the existence of the interested and utilitarian values of the object itself, the form perception mode and then the aesthetic cognitive mode become difficult to construct effectively. However, in the process of aesthetic activities, the aesthetic cognitive mode has n ­ othing to do with ‘interest’ or ‘utility,’ but rather embodies the characteristics of ­intuition and non-utility, which is consistent with the implicit characteristics of the ­formal perception mode. This also explains why aesthetic activities have characteristics of ‘non-­ utilitarianism.’ According to the point of view of cognitive aesthetics, the ­formation and effective use of the aesthetic cognitive mode should be based on advantage. Under the intermediary effect of the advantage, the form perception mode corresponding to the form of things is established, which prepares the precondition for aesthetic perception. Under the supervision of interest, a ‘harmless’ consciousness is formed, which provides the non-interested state necessary for aesthetics.24 That is to say, ‘aesthetic non-interestedness refers specifically to the formation process of aesthetic feeling and the nature of aesthetic experience, which determines the essential attribute of aesthetic activities. Aesthetic interestedness refers to the preconditions and guarantees conditions.’25 Zhu Guangqian once clearly said, ‘Aesthetic activity is by no means limited to the abstract and pure perceptual observation of form which does not involve purpose and interests, nor the rational concept. As Kant had ever said, if those who study aesthetics understand this truth thoroughly, they will realize that this practice-view must lead to a complete revolution in the field of aesthetics.’26 Zhu Guangqian’s ‘practice-view’ refers to Marx’s standpoint that human activities are ‘conscious, purposeful, free and conscious activities’ on the basis of distinguishing characteristics of ‘labor’ between animals and human beings. According to Marx’s understanding, labor is first of all the activities of man ‘to possess natural matter in a form conducive to his own 24 25 26

Li, Zhihong. 2011. Principles of Cognitive Aesthetics. Beijing: Guangming Daily Press, p.139–140. Ibid, p.139. Zhu, Guangqian. 1981. Aesthetics. Beijing: Commercial Press, p.362.

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life.’27 In fact, this labor is a kind of value activity based on survival interest and life interest. As Zhu Guangqian said, if we master the truth about the real relationship between aesthetic activities and people’s ‘purpose,’ ‘interests,’ and ‘rational concepts,’ a complete revolution will inevitably take place in the field of aesthetics. 4 Conclusion The study of contemporary aesthetics from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience is a correction or supplement to the study of contemporary aesthetics based on conceptual philosophy and cultural research. Actually speaking, the study of aesthetics should be based on the study of the human mind as well as the human body; and should scientifically explain the connection between mind and body, which is the research field of current cognitive neuroscience. According to Schusterman, ‘Usually, ‘somaesthetics (sensibility)’ is mainly a common term for neurophysiology,’28 and somaesthetics ‘explores primarily the inner perception and consciousness of the body itself.’29 In a sense, the study of somaesthetics must be based on the interdisciplinary research of physiological psychology, psychophysiology, cognitive neuroscience, and ­aesthetics in order to achieve substantial progress. In the 21st century, the development of brain science and biological ­science is extremely rapid. The field of aesthetics must respect the great historical achievements made by natural science and complete its contemporary changes to the subject, paradigm, method, viewpoint, and theoretical form. Further, only the aesthetics of respecting the achievements of natural s­ cience research are aesthetics with the spirit of historical materialism. In view of the trends in the development of cognitive neuroscience and aesthetics, it is ­inevitable to move toward a research topic of ‘aesthetic cognition,’ and the study of ‘­aesthetic cognitive mode’ will become the central problem of cognitive neuroscience and aesthetics research in the future. As far as current research is concerned, the substantive integration of cognitive neuroscientists and aestheticians has just begun due to their respective subject barriers and even prejudices. At present, it is only through the relevant research results of cognitive neuroscience that aesthetic activities are understood and explained in the cognitive neuroscience sense, and this kind of 27 28 29

Ibid, p.362. Shusterman, Richard. Body Awareness and Somaesthetics, translated by Cheng Xiangzhan. Beijing: The Commercial Press, p.12. Ibid, p.4.

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research is only theoretical and qualitative to date, based on the understanding of the ‘practice-viewpoint’ from Marxist materialist history. With the development of cognitive neuroscience and the advancement of scientific aesthetics research, researchers may in the future, ‘from the perspective of aesthetics,’ put forward to cognitive neuroscience the research topic and the research target; carry out the experimental design; attempt to establish the neural computing model of human aesthetic activity; and reveal how the human brain calls on all levels of physical components – including the molecular, cellular, tissue, and whole brain area – to realize the aesthetic cognitive activity and eventually unlock the mystery of human aesthetic cognition. From the philosophical inference of the ‘aesthetic cognitive mode’ to the scientific construction of an ‘aesthetic cognitive model,’ this process will represent the development of the aesthetic research of cognitive neuroscience from qualitative research to quantitative research.30 As Gerald Edelman put it, ‘When science discovers fundamental principles or mechanisms, it often develops engineering applications based on that knowledge.’31 After aesthetics research enters the quantitative stage, it will have a wide range of applications, such as industrial design, advertising, consumer cognition, education and training, medical rehabilitation, academic exchanges, cultural security, spiritual construction, urban development, and other aesthetics-related fields. Of course, the study of aesthetic cognitive mode and model is not only a scientific problem, but also a philosophical problem at a deeper level. The ­naturalized study of aesthetics by cognitive neuroscience is not the discovery of ‘ultimate existence’ from the standpoint of extreme reductionism. As Hume said, ‘ought’ cannot be derived from ‘is,’ and life in this world has more ‘ultimate value’ to seek. Naturally, there will be many issues to be further studied and clarified. In the era of rapid development and remarkable achievements in brain science and biological science, the study of aesthetics from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience and the study of cognitive neuroscience from the perspective of aesthetics are logically and historically focused on the practical understanding and empirical research of an ‘aesthetic cognitive mode’, which is a logical and historical ‘necessity.’ This makes the ‘aesthetic cognitive mode’ a theme and keyword to which contemporary aesthetics should pay attention. 30 31

Zhao, Lingli. 2011. Aesthetic Cognition: the marriage of aesthetics and cognitive psychology – on the informatization, digitization, scientization and integration of aesthetics. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 2(4): 12–18. Edelman, Gerald. 2010. The Second Nature – The Mystery of Consciousness. Hunan: Hunan Science and Technology Press, p.80.

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Index Subject 3D 201, 255, 256, 258 absolute music 198 aesthetic appreciation 10, 211 aesthetic engagement 2, 15, 18 aesthetic experience 13, 15, 18, 19, 85, 127, 128, 130, 131, 206, 209, 218, 219, 234, 235, 237–242, 244, 246, 249, 258, 267, 268 aesthetic field 14, 123 aesthetic inquiry 9–11 aesthetic perception 2, 3, 13, 14, 215, 216, 267, 268 aesthetic sensibility 13, 15, 269 aesthetic situation 12, 14, 18 aesthetic theory 9, 15, 204–206, 212 aesthetic value 9–11, 15, 17, 41 aesthetic research 2, 5, 17, 203–205, 210–213, 234, 243, 261, 262, 270 aesthetic issues 3, 89 aestheticization 93, 211 anatomy 251, 254, 255 racist 251 anti-corruption consciousness 89, 98, 100 antitraditionalism 156 algorithm 75, 253, 254 antibiotics 253 appreciator 13, 14, 16, 18 appreciation 10, 13, 127, 190, 211, 253, 267 art bioart 249 calligraphy 128, 153–156, 169 modern Chinese 169 poetry 10, 125, 138, 153–157, 169 painting 5, 10, 14, 117, 125, 126, 153–156, 164–167, 169, 195–202, 249, 250 retinal 259 sciart 249 art and politics 208, 209, 211 Art Nouveau 170 Asia Philharmonic Orchestra 197 audience 13, 14, 16, 18, 33, 34, 37, 39, 45, 48, 54, 55, 104, 126, 162, 164, 172, 198, 199,

202, 216, 217, 220, 241, 243–245, 252, 253, 259 bacteria 16, 250, 252, 253 colonies 250, 252 microbes 253 BBC 34, 36 British Broadcasting Corporation 34 belief 68, 104–112, 179, 215 Bian River 196, 199, 200 Bianjing 196 Bianliang 196, 198 biology developmental biology 251, 258 microbiology 251 blastulation 250 body 14, 16, 83, 124, 128, 165, 177, 184, 248, 250, 251, 253–255, 258, 259, 269 Bodyguard 37, 38 capitalism 2, 3, 35, 57, 59, 60, 62, 64, 67, 69, 70, 76–78, 84, 85, 92, 116, 118, 208, 221, 228, 239 cells 248, 256, 257 China 3–5, 41–47, 49, 51–55, 89, 94, 96, 113, 115, 116, 118, 119, 122, 125, 133, 135, 136, 143, 151–154, 156–160, 162–164, 169, 170, 172, 174, 182, 183, 189, 196–198, 201–203, 205–207, 211, 213, 216–218, 220, 231, 233, 237, 243, 244 Chinese aesthetics 4, 5, 153, 154, 156–159, 162, 203, 205–207, 209, 213, 234, 242 Chinese Communist Party 159, 206 Chinese painting 5, 126, 154, 155 Cinema 23, 54, 213, 216, 217, 219, 220, 222, 237 civil society 89, 91, 95, 96, 99, 117 clash of civilizations 167 cognitive neuroscience 277, 262, 264–266, 269, 270 Confucianism 151, 155, 156, 171, 172, 180, 183–185, 188, 189, 194

288 Consumerism 117, 164, 234, 242 contemporary aesthetics 1–6, 89, 132, 203, 206, 212, 214, 215, 219, 238, 241, 246, 261, 262, 268 craft 113, 114, 128, 138, 251, 255 creativity 2, 114, 115, 137, 145, 154, 226, 227, 231, 233, 247, 249, 251, 258, 259 crisis of aesthetic research 204, 205, 212 crochet doilies 252 culture Chinese 119, 128, 151, 153, 156, 157, 160, 166, 169, 183, 188, 206, 207, 217, 219, 243 persistence of 151 global assimilation of 152 cultural meme 195 cultural relativism 152 cultural revolution 42, 159, 166, 183 Dadaism 169 Dao 154, 185 deperiferization 89, 100 disinterested contemplation 11, 15 DNA 249, 252, 259 dyes 253, 259 madder root 253 safflower 253 walnut 253 methylene blue 253 economic aesthetics 4, 6, 89, 91, 100 economic sociology 89–93, 95, 99, 100 ekphrasis 198, 202 embroidery 252, 257 embroidered model of embryonic stem cells 256 lacework 252 lace maker 255 whitework 252 embryo 250, 258 embryonic stem cells 256 development 256, 258, 259 empiricism 10 engagement 2, 9, 15, 18, 22, 29, 82, 86, 117, 119, 161, 170, 249 English novel (18th century) 39 enlightenment paradigm 160, 161 environmental aesthetics 17 environmental ethics 89, 91, 93, 95, 99

index essentialism 129, 130, 152, 161 ethics 93–95, 98, 157, 160, 171, 180, 190, 211, 241, 260, 268 everyday aesthetics 234 evolution 15, 25, 62 fable 247 fashion 19, 35, 59, 62, 113, 114, 117, 162, 163, 250, 252, 253, 255, 257 Comme des garçons 253 Vivienne Westwood 253 Fiction 3, 40, 80, 83, 103–112, 244 ‘Firing Line’ 36 Fleabag 38, 39 Fundamentalism 152 fungi 252 Gang of Four 159 gastrulation 258 gender 218, 220, 222 bias 191, 251, 260 gendered 256 gestate 256 globalization 69, 76, 92, 93, 129, 148, 151–153, 162, 164, 170, 203, 205, 206, 210, 234, 238, 239 postmodernism and 60, 153, 159–161, 164 and modern Chinese aesthetics 157, 158 global problems 89, 99 global transformation 90, 93 gongfu 155 Guanyin Bodhisattva 166 human rights 95, 152 humanism 160, 207, 217, 218, 221, 238, 242–245 imagination 16, 20, 23, 26, 28, 75, 80, 83, 86, 88, 103, 104, 107, 110–112, 178, 182, 183, 217, 219, 230, 247, 251, 259, 267 interdisciplinary research method 5, 22, 210–212 labor 29–31, 89, 91–93, 95–99 labor culture 91–93 landscape painting 155, 165, 167, 169 lifelong learning 89, 91, 96–98, 100 literary criticism 204, 205, 210, 213 lüshi 155

289

index make-belief 105–107, 111, 112 Marxist aesthetics 3, 203, 205–207, 209, 215, 217–219, 233 Marxist critics 40 Marxism 204, 208, 211, 222, 240, 242 in communist China 206 May Fourth Movement (1919) 151, 160, 161 melting pot 152 memory 19, 20, 23–26, 61, 68, 75, 108, 141, 145, 152, 169, 198, 261, 266 mental models 107, 112 microbes 253 mimesis 30, 103, 154, 155 Miners’ Strike of 1984–85 (UK) 36 mode of aesthetic perception 266 music 5, 10, 14, 19, 21, 22, 30, 114, 117–119, 125, 153, 195–209, 229 nationalism 161, 221, 244 naturalness (ziran) 155, 156 neuroaesthetics 5, 6, 261 New York School 13 nouveau realism 13 Opium Wars 151, 172 organizational culture 89, 91, 97–99 parallelism 155, 201 particularism 152 perceiver 13, 14, 123, 124 perceptual experience 10, 11, 24 political aesthetics 208, 209, 258 positivist period 247 postcolonialism 159, 161 postist studies 160 postmodernism 60, 153, 159–161, 164 philosophy of science 247, 251 Feminist 251, 252, 255–257, 259, 260 Primitive Streak 257, 258, 259 qiyun shengdong 154 rationalism 10 rationality 28, 30, 31, 77, 160 realism 15, 35, 71, 78, 155, 197 Red Guards 166 regularity 155, 209 relational aesthetics 17 religion 153, 157, 166, 180, 193

Renaissance 123, 154, 165, 166, 183, 184, 231, 247, 259 research method 1, 5, 211–213, 220, 222, 246, 261 rhetoric 161, 179, 250 ritual 127, 138, 157, 171–173, 175, 182–187, 189, 191–194 Romantic Science 247 sculpture 14, 16, 125, 135, 141, 245, 250 sensual 13, 26 situation model 107, 111 Song Dynasty 195, 196 sublime 128, 156, 157, 179, 217, 250–253, 255–257, 259 subjective, the 6, 26, 29, 85, 123, 124, 145, 147, 148, 194, 215, 241, 247 Subjectivity 19, 25, 67, 70, 147, 159, 160, 162, 213, 242, 247, 251 skeleton dress 255 STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics/Medicine) 250 surgery 67, 254, 255 symphonic picture 195, 197, 198, 201 tailoring Byrne and Burge 254 Tang Dynasty 155, 200 Television 3, 19–21, 27, 33–40, 53, 55, 56, 107, 220 terrorism 37, 38, 69, 152 text mining 5, 211 textile 6, 113, 247, 251–253, 255–257 quilts 252 trapunto quilting 255 ‘The Troubles’ (Northern Ireland) 36 theater-in-the-round 13 theoretical discourse 89, 99 tragic aesthetics 207, 208 travelling theory 161 Understanding Media 34 Universalism 152 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders 36 Utopia 62, 171, 207, 208 viewer 14, 16, 34–36, 39, 47, 54, 167, 252, 258 viewer-activated 16 virus 70, 72, 73, 78, 252

290 vital quality (qi) 154 western aesthetics 1, 4, 6, 128, 158, 205, 206 yin-yang 155

Name Addison, Joseph 250 Adorno, Theodor W. 19, 28 culture industry 19–23, 26–29, 42, 82, 228, 229 and Horkheimer, Max 19, 28, 70 Dialectic of Enlightenment 23, 26 Negative Dialectics 22, 29 “The Schemata of Mass Culture” 20 Aristotle 179, 247 Baumgarten, Alexander G. 123, 158, 210 Bell, Clive 159 Benjamin, Walter 3, 31, 54, 226, 230 One-Way Street 31 Bergson 11 Bhabha, Homi 163 Brecht, Bertolt 88 Brecht, Berthold 252 Bourriaud, Nicholas 17 Burke, Edmund 250 Buckley, William F. 36 Byrne, Joshua 254 Cai, Yuanpei 157, 159, 233 Carson, Rachel 253 Christie, Agatha 37, 38 Coplan, Amy 107 Crick, Francis 249 Currie, Gregory 105 Dali, Salvador 255 Darwin, Charles 247 Davies, David 110 Derrida, Jacques 21, 24 Pharmakon 32 Descarte 10, 11 Dewey 11 Di Suvero, Mark 16 Duchamp, Marcel 259

index Dumitriu, Anna 253 Dürer, Albrecht 166 Durkheim, Émile 90 Eagleton, Terry 207, 208, 210, 211 Einstein, Albert 248 Fei, Song 197 Fielding, Henry 39 Foucault, Michel 160, 161 Freud, Sigmund 20, 205 Freudian 20, 21, 62 Psychoanalysis 20, 205, 240 Friend, Stacie 111 Gao, Jianping 162 Goethe, Johann W. von 158 Hartl, Marietta 256 Hegel, Georg W.F. 29, 125, 129, 158, 180, 188 Heidegger, Martin 21 Dasein 25, 26 fundamental ontology 26 inauthenticity 25 Herpen, Iris Van 255 Horkheimer, Max 19, 28, 70 Instrumental reason 29 “Means and Ends” 29–31 The Eclipse of Reason 29 Hume 10, 11, 263, 270 Husserl, Edmund 21, 24 The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness 25 primary retentions 24 secondary retentions 20, 24, 25 temporal objects 21, 24 Hutcheon, Linda 195 Jemison, Mae 253 Kant, Immanuel 11, 171, 179 Kantian 2, 20, 26, 29, 122, 123, 159, 257 Schematism 23, 26, 28, 29 Kind, Amy 103, 112 Kneebone, Roger 254 Lamarque, Peter 104 Langer, Susanne 159

291

index Leroi-Gourhan, André 19 Levenson, Joseph 151 Li, Xiaopei 197 Li, Zehou 156–159, 162, 262, 263 Lin, Maya 16 Linnaeus, Carl 247 Liu, Gangji 156, 157, 203 Loehr, Max 156 Locke 10, 11 Lovelace, Ada 253 Lukács, Georg 29 Reification 29, 30 Luria, Alexander 247 Mao, Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) 151, 166, 203, 208 Marx, Karl 90, 203, 210 McLuhan, Marshall 34, 43, 61 Mercurio, Jed 37 Merleau-Ponty 11 Metzger, Thomas 151 Moore, Henry 16 Muir, John 257 Müntzer, Thomas 35 Newton, Isaac 248 Oakes, Fleur 255 Olsen, Stein 104 Parsons, Talcott 90 Plato 10, 163, 178, 210 Pi, Rixiu 200 Polanyi, Karl 90 Pollock, Jackson 129 Potts, George 108 Rancière, Jacques 258 Reid, Jimmy 36 Sacks, Olivier 247

Said, Edward 160, 161 Schachtschneider, Ali 249 Schiaparelli, Elsa 255 Schopenhauer, Arthur 157, 250 Schumpeter, Joseph 90 Shi, Zhiyou 197 Shitao (Daoji) 155 Simmel, Georg 90 Simondon, Gilbert 19 Spivak, Gayatri 163 Splan, Laura 252 Sterne, Laurence 39 Stiegler, Bernard 3, 19, 26, 28 Technics and Time 23, 25, 26 tertiary retentions 24, 25, 28 synchronization 23 Stock, Kathleen 109, 110 Storey, Helen 257 Storey, Kate 257 Theyskens, Olivier 255 Tobey, Mark 170 Walton, Kendall 103 Watson, James 249 Woolnough, Meredith 256 Waller-Bridge, Phoebe 38 Walzer, Michael 152 Wang, Guowei 157, 158, 207 Wang, Xiaoming 210, 211 Wei, Dong 153, 164–167 Wittgenstein 11, 129, 130 Xu, Fuguan 159 Zhang, Kuan 160 Zhang, Zeduan 195–197 Zhengdao 196 Zhu, Guangqian 158, 159, 203, 207, 208, 268, 269 Zong, Baihua 158, 159, 203

25 mm

edited by

 tca792

the College of Media and International Culture of Zhejiang University. He is also the editor-in-chief of the journal Research on Marxist Aesthetics.

zheng shen is Associate Professor in the Shi Liangcai School of Journal-

ism and Communication at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. She has published 11 ssci/cssci/a&hci papers and 2 books, including Contemporary Marxist Aesthetics and Criticism: Interviews with Western Scholars.

armida de la garza is Director of International Strategy for the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, and Associate Professor in Digital Humanities at University College Cork, Ireland. She is the author of one monograph and 42 journal articles and book chapters. Jie Wang, Zheng Shen, and Armida de la Garza (Eds.)

ISBN 9789004685918

issn 2773-0921 brill.com/tca 9

789004 685918

tr ans cu ltu r al aes thetics

jie wang is Qiushi Distinguished Professor and Yangtze River Scholar at

Controversy and Construction in Contemporary Aesthetics

The inclusion of this volume in Brill’s Transcultural Aesthetics : An International Association for Aesthetics Book Series, a book series devoted primarily to multidisciplinary Western and non-Western aesthetics, is indispensable to enrich the nature and scope of contemporary aesthetics. Time and again, many aesthetic controversies have not been adequately addressed, and this has become a common concern among scholars in contemporary aesthetics. This volume therefore seeks to contribute new perspectives to these controversies by shedding light on some of the fresh views among the leading theorists working in the field today.

jie wang, zheng shen, and armida de la garza

Controversy and Construction in Contemporary Aesthetics