Search results
of the critical Enlightenment ideal of autonomy, or at least is a descendant of that ideal. But in modernist art the very idea of what is autonomous, what is new, is uncertain. Modern art and modernism specialise, so to speak, in the interrogation of newness. It is a matter of a questioning of the idea of the new, of creative ideals, and a questioning of enlightenment as much as a straightforward embrace of it. Modernist art typically distances itself, and self-consciously so, from mere ‘entertainment’, not for elitist reasons necessarily but in so far as
industries; Foucault, amongst many other concerns, conducts historical investigations of subjectivity, understood as a – more or less – cultural artefact; and Bourdieu attempts to demystify forms of cultural power. So much is obvious, and hardly distinguishes modern cultural theory from other genres of enquiry. Rather, modern cultural theory – as will be argued a little in Chapter 1 – is cultural in three quite specific ways: in so far as it is concerned with the critique of conventions of creative autonomy; in so far as it itself can be seen to be a cultural discipline
that to expect a ‘thick’, positive substance to be attachable to the concept of autonomy would be to misunderstand the character and aims of cultural theory in its status in terms of what we have awkwardly been calling educationality. The function of modern cultural theory is not, to put it bluntly, to tell us what to do but to help us, however restrictedly and modestly, in the exercise of our critical faculties: and, in tandem with that, in the exercise not so much of our creative faculties but of those faculties that work counter to anti -creativity
This book represents a synthesis of three distinct tendencies or directions that my academic and creative work has taken. One is an awareness of the need for reimagining the Caribbean in a world context. This concern can be summarised in the question: how can a small, increasingly ignored, dependent region contribute to the dominant debate of the late twentieth and twenty
Culture and subjectivation – Interpretations – Power – Creative singularity – Aesthetics of existence – Relevance – Truthfulness and ressentiment – Art and creativity – Pastoralism, bio-power and the artistic life – Asceticism – Creative ethics – Political ethos – Resistance – Liberalism as critique – Culture – Critical virtue – Educationality and style Michel Foucault wrote next to nothing specifically about the concept of culture, did not publish too much about art and barely addressed in a direct way the specific issue of creativity. He is
expression of divine love, yet other remains essential. If the other does not remain other there is no space for what I am here suggesting is Cixous’ agapic love, no space for becoming in difference with the other and, thus, no divinity for Cixous’ subjects of love. Are we not then being offered a picture of love here that looks utterly reminiscent of the agape of Anders Nygren that we considered in the first chapter, a love that is spontaneous, other-regarding, generous, and creative, albeit a love that is now expressed in fully human terms? Moreover, I do think that
hardly a person at all (Schleiermacher 1990 p. 264). ‘Poetic’ usage, creative initiatives in language are, then, not a special case, or deviations from a norm, but are instead inseparable from the very nature of language. It is for this reason that Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics is so closely linked to aesthetics. Probably the first explicit formulation of the ‘hermeneutic circle’, the attempt to understand the part of a text or utterance via the whole, and the whole via the parts, derives from the application of Schelling’s philosophy to the question of interpretation
extant circumstances. But at various points in its extensive history, melancholy has also been highly prized and glorified as a unique disposition that activates a creative ‘genius’ that would be otherwise inaccessible. In Book 30 of the Problemata (c. 350 bc), a follower of Aristotle famously asks: ‘Why is it that all men who have become outstanding in philosophy, statesmanship, poetry or the arts are melancholic, or are infected by the diseases arising from black bile?’ Simultaneously ailment and enabler, it is hardly surprising that melancholy has long been a
surprising that an interest in stoicism should return at a time when neoliberalism and its inherent crises have become ‘second nature’, our latest habitus. Both the modern-day Stoic and the neoliberal self are well trained in viewing conflict and adversity as not simply unavoidable, but valuable opportunities for ‘growth’. For the modern Stoic, one’s experience of hardship is creatively rebranded as a chance for personal and moral development, while for the neoliberal, major crises attest to the market’s tendency towards ‘creative destruction’, which again produces
sense, as Halperin says, referencing Foucault’s support, ‘to resist is not simply a negation but a creative process’ ( 1995 : 60). 5 Education must equip citizens with the tekhnē of power and politics constrained by the ethics of life continuance, which excludes hate speech, xenophobia, discrimination on the grounds of sexuality, gender, or race. In a complex structuration of the present, trial and error, problem solving (Dewey), and experimentation (Nietzsche) are all necessary as pedagogical methods. Continuance in this sense creates an ‘horizon of freedom