Title: Aesthetic Encounters of a Collective Consciousness
Abstract: In this essay I would like to outline some of the significance of the critical properties of the aesthetic and explore its application for any examination of postmodernist theatre and culture. My objective, however, is not to enter the extensive terrain of the debate in performance studies regarding the analysis of particular readings of aesthetics as features of historical period, genre or semiotic effect. Rather — insofar as the task here is the elucidation of a concept — the limits and possibilities of the aesthetic as a valid critical category and artistic practice in postmodern culture — I want to use existing critiques simply as the occasion to reflect upon the postmodernist anguish in matters of the aesthetic through which we might effect a reassessment of this critical position that has denied the aesthetic legitimate application. To pursue this aim I will first attempt to explicate, even though in a rough and limited manner, the source of resentment that endows the aesthetic from its postmodernist critique — what has claimed for itself the space of the anti-aesthetic. Then, I will examine the implications of simulation in postmodernist culture, and, particularly, in performance. Yet without this being aimed as an analysis of its theoretical properties in relation to performance, instead what interests me is the question of what simulations serve to prove in relation to revalidating the aesthetic and what aesthetic structures within simulacra allow them to produce this proof.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot