Pleasure: Reflections on Aesthetics and Feminism

Author(s): Carolyn Korsmeyer

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 51, No. 2, Aesthetics: Past and
Present. A Commemorative Issue Celebrating 50 Years of The Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism and the American Society for Aesthetics (Spring, 1993), pp. 199-206
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/431386
Accessed: 29-09-2017 15:06 UTC

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 CAROLYN KORSMEYER

Pleasure: Reflections on Aesthetics and Feminism

For much of this century two questions gov-
erned the formulation of theory in aesthetics:
What is aesthetic experience? and What is a
work of art? Theories of perception and appre-
ciation were framed in response, along with
correlative concepts of the objects of apprecia-
tion, notably works of fine art. The more spe-
cific questions of the field-involving topics
such as expression, criticism, interpretation,
and ontology-were cast as corollaries to these
two basic questions. The overall result was a
collection of theories that by 1951 John Pass-
more found "dreary" in its attempt to generalize
about experience and impose unity upon the
diverse riches available from actual works of
art. I
Whatever the justice of Passmore's original
complaint, as the century nears its close, one
can hardly object that there is too much unifor-
mity in the subjects addressed by aesthetics.
Only remnants of interest in aesthetic experi-
ence remain, and questions about the nature of
art have been transformed by an interlude of
Wittgensteinian skepticism about definability.
While some would laud the diversity present in
aesthetics today, others might decry its cost.
Indeed the field presently displays such variety
that it is hard to discover any obviously central
questions defining it at all. Unified theory has
given way to an anarchic if fascinating assembly
of concerns perhaps only loosely related.
One of the most obvious signs of the break-
down of confident, systematic theorizing is the
prevalence of suspicion that the quest for a com-
mon foundation for taste and critical apprecia-
tion that had propelled philosophy of art for cen-been such a major presence in kindred fields,
turies is in principle not a fruitful endeavor. This such as literary criticism, for so long that one
doubt has arisen from multiple sources, though
surely one of the strongest has been feminist
scholarship: its challenge to claims about uni-
versal human nature, its support for pluralist
interpretations of art, and its own brand of skep-
ticism regarding "the canon" of great works.
For some time my own interests in aesthetics
and in feminism appeared to run parallel yet
mutually exclusive courses, but it seems to me
now that philosophical aesthetics and feminist
views of culture have begun to dovetail and to
share certain concerns and orientations. Philo-
sophical aesthetics is not by and large taking
note of this, however, and in the first section of
this essay I argue that feminist perspectives pro-
vide a vantage from which the appearance of
breakdown in unified theorizing can be seen to
have an underlying order and pattern.2 Thus at
first I shall emphasize a potential harmony be-
tween feminist critiques and recent directions in
aesthetics. Then in the second section I shall
focus on one of the subjects that has all but
dropped from view in the reshuffling of the-
oretic concerns: aesthetic appreciation or plea-
sure. I argue that this concept is urgently in need
of reexamination, a need that is especially evi-
dent when we consider feminist alternatives to
the traditional idea of aesthetic pleasure.
Because explicitly feminist scholarship and
analyses of gendered concepts have appeared
only recently in the principal publications for
philosophical aesthetics, to credit feminism as a
source for changes in aesthetic theory might
seem simply wrong. Of course, feminism has
could argue plausibly for an indirect route of
influence. However. I am not interested in chart-

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51:2 Spring 1993

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 200 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
ing causal chronology. I suspect that feminist
perspectives are sometimes partial contributors
to the shifts that have occurred in aesthetics over
the past two decades, though sometimes there is
less influence than coincidental kinship of con-
clusions. My aim is to outline several feminist
challenges to concepts of art and cultural value,
noting their congruence with changes in similar
concepts and approaches operating in aesthetics.
I hope that these considerations will suggest
areas where awareness of gender issues ought to
prod aesthetic theory to further revisions.
I begin with an observation about philosophy
in general and the recent dramatic rise of interest
in theories of emotions in this discipline. This
new attention to emotion can be found in moral
theory, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and
philosophy of science, as well as in aesthetics.
Moreover, many of these analyses are devoted to
refuting the bad reputation emotions have had
since antiquity and to arguing for their cog-
nitive, moral, and aesthetic value. In this aspect
of their work, the vindicators of emotion are in
stride with feminist critiques of the way the
concept of reason operates in traditional philo-
sophical discourse.
A deep, basic claim of feminist scholarship in
virtually all its guises is that a good portion of
the history and tradition of philosophy is flawed
by gender bias, often because of its reliance on
concepts of rationality. Rationality-as a philo-
sophical concept-is a human trait that has been
delimited by its contrast to other mental capaci-
ties, such as appetites, desires, and emotions.
Classically (and medievally and modernly) the
powers of the rational mind are conceived as the
highest achievement of man. There is some ge-
neric connotation to this claim (for rationality
distinguishes men from beasts), but also a good
dose of the specific, for rationality fully achieved
is usually cast as a preeminently masculine ac-
complishment. Just how equal is the potential
for rational activity between males and females
is a point of dispute. Plato gets a lot of credit for
arguing for equal mental talents in Republic V;
Aristotle comes in for a lot of blame for found-
ing a pernicious and powerful tradition that lim-
its the rational capability of females.3 In the
Renaissance there is a flurry of debate over this
issue, including arguments for complete equal-
ity of rationality between the sexes.4 In spite of a
history of debate on the subject, when it comes
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to characterizing the field generally, there is an
intransigent alignment of feminine temperament
with the "less rational" regions of sensation,
appetite-and emotion.5 Feminist scholars have
discovered gender bias in basic philosophical
concepts and argued that the reliance on ration-
ality and correlative concepts like objectivity
belies the putative universal scope of philosoph-
ical claims, revealing their gendered tailoring.
This has opened the way to explorations of
concepts less arrogated to males. Thus many
feminist philosophers have turned their atten-
tions to studies of the emotions. Perspectives
emphasizing care rather than justice are being
explored in ethics, and degrees of affect and
subjectivity in epistemology and philosophy of
science are inspiring theories of knowledge that
acknowledge that gendered points of view may
be built in to investigatory strategies.6
In aesthetics, interest in emotions is probably a
less radical departure from tradition than it is in
ethics and epistemology. But there is an important
shift toward analyses that (re)establish emotional
reactions as integral to the experience of art. This
is not the rarified "aesthetic emotion" so care-
fully distinguished from "lived emotions" by
Clive Bell, but real reactions of being moved by
art. This departs not only from old-fashioned
formalism, but also from a basic tenet of analytic
expression theory: that expressive predicates
refer solely to properties of art and not to the
affective state of the perceiver. Feminist philoso-
phy coincides with recent moves in aesthetics and
philosophy generally to establish emotional
responses as integral to the experience of art and
emotive judgments as legitimate critical assess-
ments.7 As they have developed, feminist argu-
ments have moved from sideline to center in phil-
osophical theory, though they are not always
recognized as feminist in their new position.
In short, a feminist vantage on the opening of
emotions as a major focus of philosophical de-
bate draws together many changes: a new em-
phasis on the importance of emotion in com-
parison with reason; an interest in the particular
over the general (which is discussed further be-
low); and a questioning of the universality of
standards for artistic judgments. This third ten-
dency has made deep inroads in aesthetics, cast-
ing doubt upon the nature and scope of judg-
ments of taste, as well as the catalogue of works
held to be the highest examples of "art."
 Korsmeyer
Given this reconsideration of the dominance
of "universal reason" in philosophy, the politi-
cal dimension of feminist thinking, which in its
early days seemed at odds with the tradition of
philosophical inquiry, now comes into focus as
having been right on target all along. "The per-
sonal is political" was a rallying cry of the
1970s. It urged women to give credit to their
own experience rather than to social conventions
that advised how they ought to feel in their
various assigned roles. Referring to one's own
experience is a practical way of challenging the
general from the standpoint of the particular,
and consequently what began as a galvanic slo-
gan has lingered as a method employed by the-
oreticians who question universal claims about
the appreciation of art.
One of the stock terms of aesthetics to which
feminism gives new dimension is the very idea
of experience. Feminist consciousness ("raised"
consciousness) altered the ways many people
actually experienced art. And they didn't alwayswomen created that continues to be overlooked?
find it the object of timeless value it was sup- Such questions have redirected attention to prod-
posed to be. Appreciation of "the" (often fe- ucts typically crafted by women that do not
male) nude, for example, was suddenly recog-
nized to force female spectators into a masculine
position of viewing in order to become "the
ideal spectator." In literature, the standard mar-
riage plot was shown to carry ideological weight
to which female as well as male readers had been
previously all but blind. These experienced ad-
justments to appreciation, validated by analysis
and theoretical support, have required new and
more complicated theories of viewer response,
making the already fading category of pure aes-
thetic appreciation even more suspect than be-
fore. Feminist skepticism about such entities as
an abstract, ideal viewer-the aesthetic equiv-
alent of a "view from nowhere"-has been fol-
lowed by insistence that a point of view is always
particular and always from some discernible so-
cial position. This in turn has led to analyses of
the cultural sustenance of the "great works" of
art over other possible candidates for admiration.
When confidence in generally accepted stan-
dards of artistic appreciation begins to erode,
questions about the objects of that attention
arise. This direction of inquiry has led to two
approaches to the question so much discussed in
education circles these days: the revision of "the
canon" of works of art.
First of all, the near absence of women from
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Pleasure 201
the lists of great authors, artists, and musicians,
has led to the discovery and rediscovery of for-
gotten women artists, and to scholarship on
these neglected contributors to the recognized
histories of the arts. This in turn has encouraged
the expansion of the category of canonical works
of art; it also has awakened interest in certain
neglected art forms in which women are notable
participants, such as diaries and letters. Although
much of interest has been uncovered by research-
ers investigating forgotten women artists, these
discoveries by themselves can do little to modify
the concept of art or to challenge categories of
judgment of artistic quality.
However, turning attention to the work of
women artists has led to more radical questions.
For example, what circumstances account for the
limited practice of women in the various art-
worlds? Does some supportive conceptual appa-
ratus overdetermine the elimination of females
from the ranks of great artists?8 And what have
match the types of object standardly called art-
needlework, quilts, domestic decoration, and
other items the value of which depends on their
functional suitability and use.
When objects traditionally crafted by women-
as opposed to standard works of fine art that are
made by women artists-are put at the center
rather than the margins of the notion of "artistic
creativity," the very concept of art is shifted.
When creativity is directed to beautifying a use-
ful object, for example, the distinction between
art and craft is challenged, and the idea of aes-
thetic contemplation as the ideal mode of appre-
ciation becomes inappropriate. Nor is this the
only conceptual division that blurs: traditional
rituals involving meal preparation, or group par-
ticipation in dance, for example, collapse the
distinctions between creators and audiences.9
Such activities are not well suited for the devel-
opment of a canon and the selection of a few
items as great and enduring examples of their
kind.
In certain respects these are familiar ideas,
reminiscent of the arts and crafts movements of
the past century or of Dewey's pragmatist aes-
thetics. What gives them a new theoretical vigor
is their emergence from critical approaches
which place women at the center of analysis.
202 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

The traditional concept of art is revealed to II

describe not some basic human activity but a

historically specific role for (male) profession-
als. If we focus attention on the artistic activity idea of aesthetic pleasure has all but slipped from
that is, because of conventions and patterns of
social organization, likely to be female, then the However, theories of pleasure have been given
root concepts of creativity, aesthetic impulse,
and work of art are duly altered. In such situa-
tions, the standard canon is not so much revised
as unmasked. Rather than an expression of uni-
versal artistic values, it appears as the expres-
sion of particular social values which have been
assigned precedence over other cultural activ-
ities to which we have been blinded by the awe-
some glare cast by the concept of "Art."
The areas outlined here-the role of emotion
in uncovering gendered concepts relevant to aes-
thetics, universal standards of taste and the ac-
tual appreciation of art, and the concept of art
and its evaluative criteria-represent several areas
in which feminist perspectives enhance or dra-
matize changes in philosophical aesthetics. So
far I have called attention to aspects of feminist
theories that dovetail with recent non-feminist
work in aesthetics. Feminism is in stride with the
recent contextualist orientation of philosophy of
art, for example, in which cultural facility in
apprehending art is emphasized as a part of
learning to discover artistic properties, and plu-
ralist interpretations of art may be accommo-
dated. 10 The ideological, political dimension to
critical appreciation that is often part of feminist all intrinsic value in that a negative description is
analyses is potentially congruent with these ap-
proaches to analyzing cultural entities, and,
indeed, could add specificity and detail to them. or desire, not a pleasure in practical achieve-
But there is another dimension to feminist
speculation that I believe is harder to fit with
recent philosophical aesthetics, and that has to
do with the premise that perception and appre-
ciation not only entail some particular social
standpoint, but are also formed out of the re-
sponsive dynamic operating within an embodied
viewer. In fact, the whole phenomenon of appre-
ciation has been eroticized as gender finds its
way into theories of aesthetic pleasure. I believe
that the new understandings of pleasure in the
text and, especially, of visual pleasure open up
immensely complicated and provocative terrain
that has not yet received the philosophical inves-
tigation it deserves.
Formerly a stock item in aesthetic theories, the
sight among philosophers of art in recent years.
new currency by feminist analyses, and the old
topic of aesthetic pleasure is an area that demands
reassessment in light of feminist analyses of the
gender position of the perceiving subject.
Historically there is much variation in the
terms employed to examine aesthetic apprecia-
tion. I shall chiefly use the language of pleasure,
both because modern theories of aesthetic ap-
preciation began as analyses of pleasure taken in
beauty, and because this is the most direct route
to comparison with feminist alternatives. For
similar reasons, I shall focus my argument on
theories of visual perception. (Obviously this
limits the types of art that may be pertinently
accommodated, a problem that aesthetics has
often confronted because so much of it has em-
ployed visual perception as the standard model
with which to compare aesthetic perception.)
The conventional notion of aesthetic pleasure
is an entry in the catalogue of philosophical con-
cepts that looks to be gender-neutral. But suspi-
cion has been cast on its neutrality through con-
sideration of the original contrasts that were
employed to distinguish aesthetic from other plea-
sures. Aesthetic pleasure shares the problem of
easier to draw than a positive one. It is not a
pleasure that indicates the satisfaction of a goal
ment, not a moral approval; and in strict con-
structions it is not a cognitive pleasure, nor a
sensuous or sensual pleasure. In its purest form
(e.g., in Kant) this is pleasure in the apprehen-
sion of form unsubsumed by concept; but it is
easily expanded to encompass the enjoyment of
art for its sheer appearance to the imagination or
to the senses-a contemplative state varying from
a mild moment of noticing pattern (Dewey, Du-
casse) to the transportive absorption of the sub-
ject in the object of attention (Schopenhauer).
Whatever its form, in these rigorous contrasts
aesthetic pleasure is structurally similar to the
concept of rationality discussed earlier, and thus
it invites a similar suspicion that in its purity
there is a honing away of the characteristics that
are conventionally designated "feminine." 1 I

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 Korsmeyer
Theories of aesthetic pleasure developed along-
side the philosophies of mind of the traditions
that gave rise to the discipline called "aesthet-
ics"-empiricism and Kantianism at first, and
later phenomenology. While such theories come
in a variety of forms, they customarily operate
along four lines of thought which combine both
the goals and the methods of inquiry. First and
most obviously, such theories are intended to be
descriptive of the experience that in modern
times is labeled "aesthetic." The articulate theo-
rist thus casts the quality of appreciation or aes-
thetic pleasure in language that is recognized by
anyone who has had a similar experience. Thus
the method heavily relied upon to test and con-
firm a description is introspective, and this re-
quires that the source and quality of this pleasure
is open to fairly ordinary self-scrutiny. Third, the
concept of aesthetic pleasure is also normative:
the sites and objects that inspire it among
qualified perceivers are recommended to others.
In order to support this point, these theories are
also explanatory, sometimes even guardedly
causal. The idea that there is some publicly
confirmable quality that gives rise to aesthetic
pleasure grounds the claim that the object pos-
sesses aesthetic value as well as the demand that
others ought to share in the experience of appre-
ciation, even though no law-like causal claims
are appropriate for aesthetic explanations.
This model of aesthetic pleasure posits the
perceiver as a generic consciousness that takes
in the physical world through the senses, reflects
on that world with intellect and imagination, and
evaluates its own "mental contents" by intro-
spection. The expectation is that conscious ex-
perience is optimally the same in all individuals
due to similarities of sensory apparatus and ra-
tional structure. And thus, ceteris paribus, ex- perceiver is always gendered. Moreover, the gen-
periences of value will be similar too.
Of course, when it comes to evaluative judg-
ments, all other things frequently are not equal;
one often suspects that the stock ceteris paribus
phrase operates dismissively to sweep aside the
most stubborn problems of perception and appre-
ciation. Feminists have argued that gender as
well as other differences are not incidental to
perception and consciousness, but systematic phe-
nomena that must be taken into thorough account
in order to determine the genesis of pleasure.
(This is part of what is involved in the claim that
perception entails an embodied perceiver.)
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Pleasure 203
In none of its forms has the philosophical
tradition within which aesthetics arose inspired
widespread feminist adaptation; this is because
none of them accommodates more than a super-
ficial understanding of the development of gen-
dered consciousness. Many feminist theorists
have turned instead to psychoanalysis for a dy-
namic model of consciousness that links gender
to the development of the subject. This theoreti-
cal move follows the realization that gender asym-
metry is a far more intransigent fact of culture
than sociological description can explain, and
that the sources of gender difference lie far deeper
than the reaches of legislation or social reorgani-
zation. Therefore, feminist theorists, seeking a
way to account for the formation of gender divi-
sions at their earliest stages, have cast another
look at Freud, whose philosophy of mind, though
originally focused on the developing psyche of
male children, employs a model of the subject as
split into conscious and unconscious processes
that take into account the development of gender
identity.
In addition to a theory of mind, psychoanaly-
sis affords an approach to interpretation and
criticism. Feminist employment of psychoanaly-
sis is often historicized, read as a key to the de-
velopment of the bourgeois family and male or
female ego identity formation therein.'2 Thus
many feminists explore the construction of gen-
der as it reveals patriarchal elements of culture.
This approach offers another route to the stan-
dard feminist challenge to the use of generic pro-
nouns and the idea of a neuter "self": because
the sense of self is formed through the processes
of development that culminate in identification
of oneself as male or female, and because erotic
identification persists in the unconscious, "the"
dered point of view implicit in art and cultural
production is the masculine one privileged ac-
cording to patriarchal values. Since it appears in
neutral guise, however, females as well as males
come to adopt it. In Lacanian terms, "the phal-
lus can play its role only when veiled."'I3 This
use of psychoanalysis enhances the common
feminist observation that points of view pre-
sumed in art overwhelmingly assume a mas-
culine position on the part of the audience.
In the fields of literature, art history, and film
theory, where this approach has been especially
rich, feminist psychoanalytic critics have devel-
204 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

oped theories that are deeply challenging to tra- iety. At the same time, as an unconscious re-
ditional views of aesthetic experience, including minder of the maternal body, it serves to allay
visual perception and pleasure. Though in this that anxiety. Thus women become the objects of
brief account I emphasize pleasure, this is not fetishistic pleasure, the fetish being the object
always the central focus of these theories. But I that substitutes or stands in for absence.
focus on the idea of pleasure because through it What interests me especially about these theo-
we can see possibly irreconcilable differences ries is the implication that pleasure in the experi-
separating contemporary feminist scholarship ence of visual perception is formed from erotic,
on art from the goals of traditional aesthetics. unconscious desire; even if beauty appears to
Using Freud and Lacan eclectically to de- consciousness as pleasurable in and of itself, it is
velop a theory of the enjoyment of art, feminist really a displaced construct ultimately traceable
critics posit scopophilia as a phenomenon that to fetishistic scopophilia. By this analysis, the
accounts for aesthetic pleasure. This is Freud's terms that stand for the pinnacle of intrinsic value,
term for pleasure in looking, and it is rooted in such as beauty and other positive aesthetic quali-
a pre-articulate level of consciousness traceable ties, actually denote substitute pleasures that
to the experience of the infant looking at the either cover an anxiety or signal a pleasurable
mother while suckling. (This lingering image of satisfaction formed from infantile, now uncon-
plenitude and maternal union Lacan analyzes as scious drives. 15
the primitive and unattainable object of desire in It is obvious that this understanding of the
later life.) As the child develops a sense of its perceptual pleasures of art is thoroughly at odds
own separate identity, scopophilia takes the form with conventional theories of aesthetics that in-
of pleasure in looking at another. There is also sist such pleasure is independent of personal
pleasure in identifying with what is seen, in interest or interest in the instrumental value of
being the object of the look. The former, more the object that pleases. Feminist psychoanalytic
active position is labeled "masculine," and the challenges suggest that these theories disguise
latter "feminine." But since these are positions the actual well-springs of pleasure and plumb
of viewing and not designations of the sex of the neither its quality nor its meaning.
perceiver, gender identity is potentially fluid- In terms of the hallmarks of traditional analy-
another useful flexibility for feminist adapta- sis-description, introspection, recommenda-
tion. In visual art what is seen is controlled by tion, and explanation-feminist psychoanalytic
camera angles, depictive techniques, framing, theories of pleasure would seem to address only
and so on; therefore the pleasures of the au- the last, for they do provide an explanation of
dience of art, particularly the arts of film and the genesis of the perceptual pleasure that ap-
painting, may be analyzed by use of the concept pears to consciousness as intrinsically valuable
of scopophilia. 14 or beautiful. But they are diagnostic not descrip-
Because the developing subjectivity that ex- tive, and they resist introspective confirmation.
periences scopophilia is also forming gender And, rather than being normative, they subvert
identity, this visual pleasure is both eroticized the very idea of a norm-conceived, that is, as
and gendered. So is another aspect of pleasure an ideal standard of appreciation to be achieved.
which is offered by artistic representation. Sco- In this way they are apt theoretical armaments to
pophilic pleasure covers over a traumatic mo- deploy in the challenge to universal standards of
ment of identity formation: the realization that taste or canons of artistic achievement. But they
one is not a part of the maternal body and is do so on utterly different grounds, and it is not
forever separate from that experience of primal clear therefore that they should be understood as
unity. The discomfort at this realization of loss offering a thoroughgoing alternative to aesthetic
and incompleteness is an instance of what is pleasure, or rather just a sophisticated suspicion
referred to generally as castration anxiety, an that often aesthetic pleasure is not operating
anxiety about loss, separation, and absence, when it seems to.
which functions deeply in the unconscious and The model of mind which analyzes the source
colors the experience of pleasure. The image of of this pleasure makes use of the idea of an
woman, representing lost maternal plenitude unconscious dimension of mental activities where
and the absent phallus, prompts castration anx- images, desires, and aversions assemble before

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 Korsmeyer
being constructed into the patterns of signifi-
cance of which we are aware in conscious expe-
rience. At first it may seem that the chief incom-
patibility of these two approaches to aesthetic
pleasure simply lies in the fact that the explana-
tory history of pleasure is unconscious in the
psychoanalytic model. However, while it is true
that the philosophy of mind assumed by theories
of aesthetic pleasure does not explicitly include
an unconscious, there is no presumption that the
objective correlates posited for beauty (like pur-
posiveness without purpose or significant form)
are intentional objects of explicit awareness in
the experience of beauty. So I doubt that there is
any irreconcilable element of these two ap-
proaches that has to do solely with the positing
of an area of mind that is unconscious but oper-
ates over consciousness.
The salient difference, I believe, is that, on a
conventional aesthetic model, discovery of the
root generator of the experience of pleasure am-
plifies and accounts for the experience as it
appears to consciousness-that is, its phenome-
nal quality is congruent with the explanatory
principle, deepening it and bringing it more ex-
plicitly into experience. But on a psychoanalytic
model, the putative "cause" is likely to be quite
different from what it appears to be in conscious
awareness-to reveal an ulterior aspect to what
seems an experience of intrinsic value. In fact,
far from amplifying or bringing to clarity the
nature of experience, certain speculations-that
visual pleasure is a fetishistic cover for castra-
tion anxiety, for example-may be so far re-
moved from the conscious experience as to seem
unlikely or even preposterous. 16 But can we be
so sure?
This focuses the issue on a problem that has
always seemed to me a vulnerable yet necessary
aspect of conventional aesthetic theory: its ulti-
mate reliance at some point on an appeal to
introspection. Since these philosophies are sup-
posedly analyzing the nature of an experience,
and since experience is by definition the experi-
ence of some individual, theories of aesthetic
pleasure must have some grounding in-well, in
experience. Inevitably, therefore, some compo-
nent of an aesthetic theory will refer to the
experience of the audience by way of an appeal
to the experience of the reader of that theory.
On the other hand, introspection should hardly
stand as an unquestioned gauge as to the nature
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Pleasure 205
of conscious experience. Memory, for example,
is notoriously faulty even when vivid, clear and
distinct. And probably we have all had the expe-
rience of believing we "felt" one way (affection-
ate, for example), only to discover on subse-
quent reflection that the feeling contained an
unacknowledged element of jealousy or resent-
ment or boredom. In other words, while we are
the only witnesses of our own consciousnesses,
we are not infallible witnesses thereof. While
consciousness is a sort of "seeming," it is also
paradoxically sometimes more or less than it
seems to be. These worries make it impossible
simply to dismiss psychoanalytic approaches to
phenomena like pleasure.
However, it is also inadvisable just to cede
this territory. For one thing, if questions about
description, introspection, and recommendation
constitute legitimate philosophical inquiries,
then the psychoanalytic model simply will not
serve to answer all the questions we want to ask.
And I think this should be noted even by those
who are sympathetic to feminist psychoanalytic
scholarship. Yet feminist critiques of traditional
philosophy, and alternative theories that have
been developed to explore the formation of gen-
der, reveal how very thin the conventional mod-
els of mind are which ground older aesthetic
theory. And this, I think, should be recognized
even by those who resist psychoanalytic alter-
natives. It is hard to see precisely the course to
take that would be sensitive both to the complex
realities of gender construction and to the phe-
nomenological subtleties of aesthetic theory, but
there is a clear necessity to chart one.
I have limited my discussion to the topic of
aesthetic pleasure, partly because this concept
spans both conventional aesthetics and feminist
art theory, and partly because of the centrality of
ideas of perceptual pleasure in the history of
aesthetics. I end with an observation on the latter
point. In many respects, the situation of theory
at the present time reminds me of that ripe mo-
ment in the history of philosophy when aesthet-
ics was forming as a distinct area of inquiry. At
the end of the seventeenth century, the notorious
Hobbes served as the theorist to refute, for his
analysis of pleasure translated all experiences of
value into the imaginative satisfactions of appe-
tite. Since beauty and goodness were rapidly
being understood as types of pleasure, this posed
a considerable threat to the integrity and quality
 206 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

of these values. The result was the familiar de-
velopment of modern theories of moral and aes-
thetic sensibility.
We are at a similar point in the reformulation
of our understandings of pleasure, but the task
that lies ahead will be even more complicated.
Gender position is one of perhaps several aspects
of the development of consciousness which
needs to be accommodated carefully into philos-
8. Christine Battersby, Gender and Genius (Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1989).
9. Renee Lorraine (formerly Renee Cox), "A Gyno-
centric Aesthetic" in Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective, eds.
H. Hein and C. Korsmeyer (Indiana University Press, 1993),
and "A History of Music," The Journal ofAesthetics andArt
Criticism 48 (1990).
10. Such contextualist philosophy includes the very dif-
ferent theories of Nelson Goodman, Languages ofArt (Indi-
anapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968); Arthur Danto, The Trans-
figuration of the Commonplace (Harvard University Press,

ophies of mind and of experience, but without 1981); George Dickie, Art and Aesthetic: An Institutional
Analysis (Cornell University Press, 1974); and Joseph Mar-
slighting the traditional philosophical respect for
golis, Philosophy of Art (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester,
the need to analyze the contents of conscious- 1980). As with many theoretical movements, feminism has
ness in ways that are introspectively accessible. been generally influenced by Marxist observations about the
In the process we may learn more about not only links between cultural activities, ideology, and the material
conditions of society.
gender and pleasure, but also about the elusive
11. See, e.g., Paul Mattick, "Beautiful and Sublime:
and largely intuitive concept of intrinsic value. 17 Gender Totemism in the Constitution of Art," The Journal
of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48 (1990): 293-303; Mary
Wiseman, "Beautiful Exiles," and Jane Kneller, "Discipline
1. John Passmore, "The Dreariness of Aesthetics," Mind
and Silence," both in Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective, eds.
(1951); reprinted in Aesthetics and Language, ed. William
H. Hein and C. Korsmeyer.
Elton (Oxford: Blackwell, 1954).
12. This move avoids essentialist renderings of gender
2. I owe the insight that general changes in philosophical
identity formation, for many feminists desire a model of
theory can be ordered according to feminist perspectives to
consciousness that takes into account the body without im-
Virginia Held, whose paper "Feminist Moral Inquiry:
plying biological determinism.
Method and Prospects" elaborates such points in moral
13. Quoted in Jane Gallop, Reading Lacan (Cornell Uni-
theory. See chapter 2 of her Feminist Transformations:
versity Press, 1985), p. 21.
Morality, Culture, Society (University of Chicago Press,
14. The locus classicus of feminist psychoanalysis of film
forthcoming).
is Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
3. Sister Prudence Allen, R.S.M, The Concept of Woman:
in Feminism and Film Theory, ed. Constance Penley (New
The Aristotelian Revolution 750 BC-AD 1250 (Montreal:
York: Routledge, 1988). Griselda Pollock turns the ap-
Eden Press, 1985). On the other hand, contemporary vin-
proach to a treatment of Rossetti's paintings in "Woman as
dicators of emotive knowledge often find their ideas are
Sign-Psychoanalytic Readings" in Vision and Difference
supported by Aristotle's treatment of emotions. See Martha
(New York: Routledge, 1988). Mary Devereaux weaves
Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge Univer-
these analyses into a general feminist challenge to aesthetics
sity Press, 1986).
in "Oppressive Texts, Resisting Readers, and the Gendered
4. A History of Women Philosophers, ii, ed. Mary Ellen
Spectator," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48
Waithe (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989).
(1990): 337-347.
5. This is not a new observation. One of the first to
15. Mulvey writes that "fetishistic scopophilia builds up
complain about it was Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication
the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into some-
of the Rights of Woman (1792). A useful survey is Genevieve
thing satisfying in itself" (op. cit., p. 64). And Pollock asks:
Lloyd, The Man of Reason: 'Male 'and 'Female' in Western
"What role has beauty to play in securing visual pleasure? Is
Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 1984).
the beauty of the physical object, the painting, a defense
6. See, e.g., Sandra Harding, The Science Question in
against anxieties excited by the represented object, woman?"
Feminism (Cornell University Press, 1986); Helen Longino,
(op. cit., p. 126). The rhetorical answer to these questions is
Science as Social Knowledge (Princeton University Press,
"yes."
1990).
16. See Noel Carroll, "The Image of Women in Film,"
7. See, e.g., Susan Feagin, "Empathy and Fiction," paper
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48 (1990):
presented to ASA Pacific Division, Asilomar, California,
349-360.
April 1992, and her "Imagining Emotions and Appreciating
17. For their helpful comments on this paper I thank Betsy
Fiction," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18 (1988): 485-
Cromley, Hester Eisenstein, Claire Kahane, Liz Kennedy,
500; also Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make Believe (Har-
Suzanne Pucci, Peg Brand, and Susan Feagin.
vard University Press, 1990).

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