Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices: Dialogues with Tony O’Connor on Society, Art, and Friendship
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The contributions share a hermeneutical commitment to dialogue as both a model for critique and as a generator of community. Two conclusions emerge from this. First that one’s relationships with others will always be central in determining the social, political, and artistic forms that philosophical self-reflection takes. And second that our practices of aesthetic judgment are bound up with our efforts as philosophers to adapt ourselves and our objects of interest to the inescapably historical and indeterminate conditions of experience.
The papers address the issue that critical communities and aesthetic practices are never politically neutral and can never be abstracted from their particular contexts. It is for this reason that the contributors investigate the politics (not of laws, parties and state constitutions) of open, undefinable critical communities such as audiences, peers and friends.
The publication is distinctive and unique in providing a current selection of prominent positions (written for this volume). The result is a pluralist collection that, while not homogenized, brings into focus contemporary debates on critical and aesthetic practices.
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Francis Halsall is lecturer in the history and theory of modern/contemporary art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. His research focuses on theories of art after modernism (and in particular the systems-theoretical approach such as that of Niklas Luhmann). He is the author of Systems of Art (Peter Lang, 2008) and co-editor (with Julia Jansen & Tony O’Connor) of Rediscovering Aesthetics, (Stanford University Press, 2008). Recent articles include: ‘One Sense is Never Enough’ Journal of Visual Art Practice (October, 2004); ‘Art History versus Aesthetics?’ in Elkins, J, (ed.) Art History Versus Aesthetics, (Routledge, 2005); and ‘Chaos, Fractals and the Pedagogical Challenge of Jackson Pollock’s ‘All-Over’ Paintings’, Journal of Aesthetic Education, (2008)
Julia Jansen is lecturer in Philosophy at University College Cork, Ireland. Her current research explores the intersections of Kant’s Philosophy of Mind, Husserlian Phenomenology, Aesthetics, and Cognitive Science. Her recent publications include: "Husserl’s First Philosophy of Phantasy: A Transcendental Phenomenology of Imagination," in: Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (2005); "Schnittstelle und Brennpunkt: Das ästhetische Erlebnis als Aufgabe für eine Kooperation von Phänomenologie und Neurowissenschaft," in: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven der Phänomenologie, ed. by D. Lohmar und D. Fonfara (Springer, 2006). Currently she is finishing a monograph on imagination and transcendental philosophy in Kant and Husserl. She is the co-editor (with Francis Halsall & Tony O’Connor) of Rediscovering Aesthetics (Stanford University Press, 2008).
Sinéad Murphy lectures in Philosophy at the Newcastle University. Her background is in Aesthetics, Hermeneutics and literary theory, and her current research is into the extent to, and manner in, which hermeneutic philosophy exemplifies a constructive mode of philosophical practice. She is a regular contributor at the conferences of, for example, the Irish Philosophical Society, the Society for European Philosophy and the International Association for Philosophy and Literature, and has published on Kant’s sublime and on feminist literary theory.
