The Aesthetics of Desire and Surprise
Phenomenology and Speculation
By (author) Jadranka Skorin-Kapov
Not available to order
Publication date:
08 October 2015Length of book:
220 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9781498518475
The Aesthetics of Desire and Surprise: Phenomenology and Speculation covers issues central to contemporary continental philosophy (desire, expectations, excess, rupture, transcendence, immanence, surprise). The proposed term desire||surprise captures the phenomenological-speculative character of the pair not yet and no longer. Non-obvious parallels between different thinkers are drawn, and the argumentation is organized around philosophical figures relevant in the sequence desire – excess –pause (rupture, break) – recuperation (surprise). The works of Levinas, Žižek, Bataille, Blanchot, Foucault, and Ricoeur are interpreted and positioned according to the proposed template of desire - excess - pause. The consideration of limit experiences involves authors fascinated by transgression, and the question of whether excess is immanent or transcendent. This discussion considers works by Nietzsche, Deleuze, Žižek, and Foucault. The analysis of surprise and the beginning of recovery after the pause considers works by Fink, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, Lyotard, Dufrenne, Bachelard, and Seel. The provocative argument elaborated in this work is that surprise starts with indifference. Furthermore, the argument is that surprise begins where the concept reaches its ending, hence that the limit of speculative thinking at its ending is the limit of aesthetics at its beginning. The work of Hegel, Schelling and Jaspers are discussed in order to argue for the beginning of aesthetics there where knowledge ends.
Philosophical thematic is contextualized via sections on artists such as Duchamp and Mondrian, and on some films, provoking interest of aestheticians working in art history and cultural studies departments.
Philosophical thematic is contextualized via sections on artists such as Duchamp and Mondrian, and on some films, provoking interest of aestheticians working in art history and cultural studies departments.
Jarred by endless war and jaded by decades of ‘culture industry’, one might think of surprise as a quaintly exotic or even extinct experience. Yet in proving the irrepressible character of what she calls ‘the desire for the unexpected’ and its intrinsic tie to the ‘Aha!’ experience, Jadranka Skorin-Kapov rekindles hope in a seemingly hopeless world.