Poetics/Politics 551R

Week 1
Post-humanism agency in things such as biology, technology, mineralogy,
Donna Haraway rejected the term as it decenters the human. Grosz is okay
with the term. She sometimes calls herself postmodernist.
Judith Butler precarity, performance hold them together. Precarity and
vulnerability. Relational ethics focus on relationality also important.
Challenging new dualisms. Dualism between art and ethics or politics
challenged by writers today how politics might be defined might
challenege how we understand art.
Neoliberalism counter-cultural movements in 60sneoliberalism coming in
after the rise of financial capitalisms critiques of capitalism dont have a
clear place to go people in 90s responding to that challenges to
neoliberalism
High art and low art differences critique of capitalism, popular art also may
be critique of capitalism --Relational Ethics beginning in 1994
- People looking in some kind of ethics turn to Levianas turn to
alterity
- Inspired by Levinas. Ethics of response. alterity. ethics based on moral
laws. Affilitaed to moral theory based on rule. Why otherness is
emphasized. Those who would be always unknowable to us. Ethics of
responsibility. Understanding the stranger. The other.
- Anglo-philosophy used in the USA care ethics. Not concepts,
subjects, rules but focus more on relations.
- Vulnerability ethics care ethics responsibility ethics has a lot of
focus on agency.
- Respond to radical passivity, vulnerability etc. passivity in you and the
other person that you are responding to.
- Emphasizing agency
Winnburst influenced by Foucault. Trying to move away from European
thinkers.
18th century art through some kind of appreciation. Dualism between
science and art. Science judgment, theory, perception, epistemology.
Aesthetics of comedy and laughter aesthetics came off of post-feudal
elites. Academics useless class. Practicality and religious value. There is
some kind of judgments but not like science.

Scottish enlightenment came out with the notion of sense. Not judgment or
perception in between the two. Sense of humour.
Judgment in Kant.
David Hume trying to understand the appreciation of beauty. Refinement of
what is sensed. But that may not be fully defined. Nietzsche rejects that.
Even the term aesthetics is rejected.
Kant talks about beauty of sublime. Sublime associated with some kind of
violence it is not physical volence, it is sheer intensity. That is what come
forward Nietzsche and Elizabeth Grosz.
Sublime through the avant garde movement through the modern art. That
whole period is defined by some critique as estrange. Shock of the New.
Western art trying to break out from representations. In some ways to
address the estrange.
In the 1990s a shift occurring. Turn to Relational Ethics.
Arts is not about shocking. It talks about collaboration between arts and
non-artists Art is not necessarily something only the skilled have.
In the 1990s two big tendencies come forward
- Agency including in arts --- Some emphasizing collaboration and others emphasizing nonhuman agencies.
- Technology versus Arts dualism is also questioned
Elizabeth Grosz influenced by Luce Irigaray. She is adding sexual difference
as the engine of art and creativity. Art is a form of seduction. Does that?
Irigaray critiqued the western canon on art does not emphasize the sexual
difference, even ontologies. Pivotal point in nature is sexual difference. Going
to biology to understand that. Post-structuralist Deleuge focus on high
modern art.
Real concern about the limitations about western canon on arts etc.
Going to Irigaray allows her to address the elemental, something more
fundamental, impulse to art. Not just explain modern art. How well does she
do that? She likes to do close readings of spinozabut not identifying with
what she is reading. Impulse to artalmost sounds like foundationalism,
transcendentalism
She looks at Australian aboriginal art as example of non-European