Description
Book SynopsisIn this new book, Florian Klinger gives readers a basic action-theoretical account of the aesthetic. While normal action fulfills a determinate concept, Klinger argues, aesthetic action performs an indeterminacy by suspending the action's conceptual resolution. Taking as examples work by Tino Sehgal, Kara Walker, Mazen Kerbaj, Marina Abramović, Cy Twombly, and Franz Kafka, the book examines indeterminacy in such instances as a walk that is at once leisurely and purposeful, a sound piece that is at once joyous and mournful and mechanical, or a sculpture that at once draws one in and shuts one out. Because it has irresolution as its point, aesthetic action presents itself as an unsettling of ourselves, our ways, our very sense of who we are. As performers of such action, we don't recognize one another as bearers of a shared human form as we normally would, but find ourselves tasked anew with figuring out what sharing a form would mean.
In conversation with philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Anscombe; political thinkers such as Marx and Lorde; and contemporary interlocutors such as Michael Thompson, Sebastian Rödl, and Thomas Khurana, Klinger's book makes a case for a conception of the human form that systematically includes the aesthetic: an actualization of the form that is indeterminate and nevertheless rational. The book gives the project of Western philosophical aesthetics a long-overdue formulation for our present that aims to do justice to contemporary aesthetic production as it actually exists. It will appeal to those working in philosophy, art, and political thought.
Trade Review"With ingenious, stunning readings, Klinger breaks new ground in aesthetics. This is a philosophy of art with which thinkers and scholars will contend for years to come."—Henry W. Pickford, Duke University
"
Aesthetic Action offers a highly original and substantial outline of a new understanding of aesthetics. This is an important and rigorous contribution to emerging conversations in philosophy, of highest interest for readers interested in giving an account of contemporary art."—Rüdiger Campe, Yale University
"Klinger gives us an entirely new way of understanding the indeterminacy of our encounters with art. In his incisive analyses he offers a truly fresh view of art, one that opens the fields of interaction each work creates."—Niklaus Largier, University of California, Berkeley
"This book rethinks action through aesthetics and aesthetics through action, providing us with a new insight into the kind of unsettling that the aesthetic is and affords."—María del Rosario Acosta López, University of California, Riverside
Table of ContentsPreface
ONE.
The Unsettling 1. The Thought of Aesthetic Distinction
2. Life Form and Settledness
3. Aesthetic Unsettling
4. The Use of Unsettling
5. The Account
TWO.
Accounting for Ourselves 1. Determinacy
2. The Original Scene of Self-Determination
3. Form as Answer: Hegel's Conception of the Aesthetic as Determinacy
4. Form as Question: A Conception of the Aesthetic as Indeterminacy
5. The Task of a Unified Accounting
THREE.
A Three-Way Capacity 1. Rationality and Indeterminacy
2. A Rational Capacity
3. Failed Attempts at Conceiving Indeterminacy
4. Indeterminacy as Part of Our Form
5. Indeterminacy
as Such FOUR.
Logical Account of Aesthetic Action: Aspectual Irresolution 1. The Concept of Aesthetic Action
2. Distinction through Aspectual Irresolution
3. Internal Unity in Crisis
4. Aesthetic Indeterminacy
5. External Unity with Action at Large
FIVE.
Material Account of Aesthetic Action: Bond without Terms 1. Logical and Material Accounting
2. Bond without Terms
3. Aesthetic Interaction
4. Life as Such
5. The Question of Who We Are
SIX.
Aesthetic Transformation 1. Aesthetic Action as Transformation
2. Performance without Resources
3. The Work of Aspectual Irresolution
4. Transformation That Includes Its Terms
5. The Aesthetic Self
SEVEN.
The Use of the Aesthetic 1. The Political as Example
2. Our Form as Political Task
3. Tino Sehgal: Genus Politics
4. Kara Walker: Politics of Difference
5. Mazen Kerbaj: Politics of Life as Such
Notes
Bibliography
Index
