Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2024-03-25DOI: 10.1177/07255136241240093
Domonkos Sik
{"title":"Justifying the paradoxes of modernity: On the emergence of contemporary cynical discourses","authors":"Domonkos Sik","doi":"10.1177/07255136241240093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136241240093","url":null,"abstract":"Late modern existence is built around ambivalences: subjects experience the structural paradoxes of global capitalism or information society as social suffering; yet they follow behaviour patterns reinforcing the unsustainable trajectories. The article explores the discourses justifying such structural paradoxes, while normalizing the related suffering. First, the pragmatic theory of justification (Boltanski, Thévenot) is reinterpreted from a modernization theoretical perspective: a distinction is drawn between traditional, classic and late modern ‘tests’, ‘critique’ and ‘cités’. In the second and third sections, the gradual emptying of critique is analysed: as disillusionment reaches the sphere of subjective experiences, not even personal suffering can ground critique any more (Berlant), thus the impossibility of critique is demonstrated in a cynical manner (Sloterdijk). In the fourth section, the various cynical modalities of justification fitting the ambivalent contemporary existence are overviewed. Finally, a way out from the naturalized, quotidian cynicism is sketched: by turning cynicism’s logic against itself, the dialectics of justification can move forward.","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140300318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2024-03-21DOI: 10.1177/07255136241229230
David Roberts
{"title":"From modernism to presentism: On the destination of art","authors":"David Roberts","doi":"10.1177/07255136241229230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136241229230","url":null,"abstract":"The idea of modern art presupposes the rise of historicism and the sense of progress since the Enlightenment. Once art, however, conceives itself as progressive and hence modern, it is confronted by the paradoxes of progress: progress renders the modern obsolete at the same time as it seeks to give itself meaning by positing a goal, a destination that would be the end purpose and hence the end of progress. As a consequence, modern art is impelled to constantly transcend its own achievements and limits in a utopian quest for the artwork of the future, the ultimate work of art. But what happens to art when the grand art-historical narrative of modernism collapses? I argue that the ‘modern’ mutates into the ‘contemporary’ and that art now defines itself not in relation to the future but to the present. Contemporary art understands itself as operating in the present, that is, as an art for the present. It finds its destination now in the latest institutionalization of the paradoxes of progress: the museum of contemporary art.","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140300392","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2024-02-28DOI: 10.1177/07255136241227675
Rob Shields, Nicholas Hardy
{"title":"Practical aesthesis","authors":"Rob Shields, Nicholas Hardy","doi":"10.1177/07255136241227675","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136241227675","url":null,"abstract":"Aesthesis, the classical term for sensing and perceiving, is at the heart of innumerable problems that plague global society. The purpose of this article is to open a conversation on aesthesis. We survey the roots and relevance of aesthesis as a direct albeit contested relation and engagement with the world and with Others. From its pre-Socratic origins, aesthesis has been both a pragmatic, somatic concept, prompting a re-evaluation of the distinction between experience and abstraction. We trace its ongoing repression from Plato through ‘western’ theories of formal Aesthetics. Drawing on a relational interpretation of Protagoras’ aesthesis, we argue that modern pragmatists and radical empiricists, as well as more contemporary critics of the ‘colonization’ of aesthesis (Mignolo and Vasquez) by formal Aesthetics recognize and develop the relational and ethical aspects of aesthesis. We consider the role of the body, affect, and of the intangible or virtual qualities of aesthesis. The ethics of obligations (Weil) in the polis (Arendt) shows how aesthesis informs politics despite its repression in favour of moral and legal norms. We argue this is relevant to contemporary crises such as xenophobia and ecocidal climate warming.","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"90 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140034033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2024-02-21DOI: 10.1177/07255136241233351
Jonathan Fardy
{"title":"Book review: The Poverty of Philosophy: Readings in Non and Other Philosophies or Arts of Immanence","authors":"Jonathan Fardy","doi":"10.1177/07255136241233351","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136241233351","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139948398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2024-02-21DOI: 10.1177/07255136241233350
Zeger Polhuijs
{"title":"Book review: My Life in Fragments","authors":"Zeger Polhuijs","doi":"10.1177/07255136241233350","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136241233350","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139948470","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.1177/07255136231215564
Peter Vale
{"title":"Beilharz in South Africa – jottings","authors":"Peter Vale","doi":"10.1177/07255136231215564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136231215564","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":" 12","pages":"251 - 254"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138614473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Thesis ElevenPub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.1177/07255136231213707
Eric Ferris
{"title":"Learning through and from Peter Beilharz","authors":"Eric Ferris","doi":"10.1177/07255136231213707","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/07255136231213707","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54188,"journal":{"name":"Thesis Eleven","volume":"35 1","pages":"152 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138622132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}