Somaesthetics and Democracy: Dewey and Contemporary Body Art

Autor/in	Jay, Martin
Titel	Somaesthetics and Democracy: Dewey and Contemporary Body Art
Quelle	In: Journal of Aesthetic Education, 36 (2002) 4, S.55-69 (15 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0021-8510
Schlagwörter	Self Actualization; Democracy; Museums; Aesthetics; Aesthetic Education; Art Expression; Painting (Visual Arts); Artists + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Self actualisation; Selbstverwirklichung; Demokratie; Museum; Museumswesen; Museen; Ästhetik; Ästhetische Bildung; Malerei; Artiste; Artist; Künstler; Künstlerin
Abstract	Perhaps no twentieth-century philosopher was as favorably inclined towards the role of aesthetic experience in building a democratic culture as was John Dewey, the preeminent public intellectual in America during the first half of the twentieth century. His vision of democracy necessitated a robust commitment not only to an open-ended process of unimpeded free inquiry, which emulated that of the scientific community, but also to the self realization that came through active participation in the public sphere. The model of that self-realization he saw best expressed in the sensually mediated, organically consummated, formally molded activity that was aesthetic experience. For Dewey, the full potential of aesthetic experience and of its political counterpart would be realized only if three fundamental changes were effected. First, art had to leave the elite world of museums and private galleries behind and become part of the everyday life of the masses. Life lived aesthetically would overcome the gap between means and ends and abet the inclusion of the many in the pleasures heretofore enjoyed only by the few. Second, aesthetic experience had to wean itself from the Kantian notion that it was inherently contemplative and spectatorial. Third, aesthetic, or rather artistic, experience involved the whole body and not just the mind and imagination or even the senses as receptors of stimuli from without. Although in eclipse for a generation after his death in 1952, pragmatism in general and Dewey in particular have had an extraordinary renaissance of interest in the past two decades. One of the reasons for this renewed interest is precisely his theory of aesthetic experience and its larger implications. Building on Dewey's argument, the contemporary pragmatist philosopher Richard Shusterman has proposed an ambitious project of what he calls "somaesthetics." Shusterman cites rap and hip-hop music as embodiments of a democratic and inclusive practice that repudiates the purist claims of aesthetic autonomy and belies the stereotype of popular art as inherently conservative and conformist. Whatever one may think of Shusterman's celebration of rap as a successful realization of the Deweyan ideal, it raises the question of the relation between contemporary artistic practices, broadly defined, and the realization of democracy. Turning elsewhere for evidence of the plausibility of Dewey's ideas, this author examines contemporary body art, which he claims has something useful to tell us about democratic culture, or at least the challenges to it. He contends that this is an art that resolutely resists the contemplative stance of disinterestedness associated with aestheticization at its furthest remove from moral and political problems, an aestheticization which paradoxically can have the anesthetic function of numbing us to the real pain outside. It makes one aware, as Dewey would have hoped it would, that the interests of life break through the frame of art, no matter how fierce the attempt to keep them at bay. (Contains 31 notes.) (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	University of Illinois Press. 1325 South Oak Street, Champaign, IL 61820-6903. Tel: 217-244-0626; Fax: 217-244-8082; e-mail: journals@uillinois.edu; Web site: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/main.html
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10