The Polish Journal of Aesthetics

News

Call for papers “The Affective Aesthetics of The Body in Pain”, 51 (4/2018)

Issue “The Affective Aesthetics of The Body in Pain”, 51 (4/2018). Editors: Luz Mar González-Arias (University of Oviedo, Spain), Monika Glosowitz (University of Silesia, Poland). Assistant Editor: Miłosz Markiewicz (University of Silesia, Poland).

The pivotal category of affective aesthetics allows for analyses of literary texts and visual art conjoined with an important set of questions about the national, social, familial and sexual dimensions of embodiment. Affects — through artworks — function as forces which enable subjects to move and to be moved and, therefore, have the capacity to transform both individual and collective subjectivities. Physical pain — in all its degrees of intensity — is a constant presence in human life. However, it can be argued that only recently has it started to attract sustained critical attention. Virginia Woolf’s On Being Ill (1926) is a precursor of what is now considered a turn to illness: Elaine Scarry, Susan Sontag, Leslie Jamison, Audre Lorde and Johanna Hedva are among the many critics and theorists who have worked on what it means to inhabit a dysfunctional and/or ill body. We might even contend that there is a tendency across cultures and geographies to inscribe the body in pain into the artistic text in order to call for active interaction with the readership/audience. Such interaction would resist a mere aesthetic contemplation of the object of the artwork (namely, the body in pain) and instead inspire empathic and ethical engagements as well as social interventions.

In this special volume of The Polish Journal of Aesthetics we would like to explore—from a multiplicity of perspectives, cultural and historical contexts—the ways in which artistic projects shape distinct affective states of experiencing pain and illness. The concept of pain is here extended beyond physical distress to also embrace illnesses that may not have an associated sensation of bodily discomfort. Far from considering “the body in pain” as a unified category, we start from the idea that each illness, each pathology and each painful body part is the result of individual experience as much as of socially constructed notions of what it means to be in pain or to experience illness. Therefore, the collective and political potential of pain interests us as much as its phenomenology as a personal and individual experience.

We invite articles, essays, artwork and fiction related to, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Aesthetics and Medical Humanities — alliances and/or incompatibilities

• The semiotics of pain

• Ethical responsibilities in representing pain

• Pain as more than lack — beyond negative hermeneutics?

• Gendered illnesses, gendered pains

• The racial factors of pain

• Pain and violence against women

• Feminisms and solidarity among vulnerable subjects, ethics of care, affective labour

• The politics of sickness: definition of normality versus deviation

• Chronic, visible and invisible pains

• Narratives of pain and illness

Submission deadline: July 15, 2018.

We invite all Authors to read the instructions, ‘For Authors’, and make sure that each article is complete (including an abstract, keywords, a bibliography, and note on the author) at the time of submission. Full papers should be submitted using the submissions page, which can be found here.

Call for papers “The Philosopher Franz K.”, 53 (2/2019)

Issue “The Philosopher Franz K.”, 53 (2/2019). Editors: Barry Smith (University at Buffalo), Monika Stępień (University of Warsaw), Sonia Kamińska (Jagiellonian University)

Franz Kafka is one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, and thus one of the writers most often discussed by philosophers. In this issue, we view the author of The Trial and Metamorphosis as a philosopher, drawing attention not only to the traces of philosophical thinking in his writings and correspondence, but also to his educational and cultural background.

We invite papers on topics such as the following:

• Kafka as student and heir of Franz Brentano and Anton Marty, and his relations to the so-called Brentano School

• Kafka and Prague (the Café Louvre: Christian von Ehrenfels, Hugo Bergman, Emil Utitz, Oskar Pollak, Oskar Kraus, Alfred Kastil, Berta Fanta, Ida Freund, Max Brod)

• Kafka as inspiration for existential philosophy

• Kafka and vegetarianism

• Did Kafka foresee totalitarian regimes?

• Kafka’s Jewish heritage

• Kafka and aesthetics

• Kafka and Nietzsche

• Kafka and Meister Eckhart

• Kafka’s influence on philosophy

Submission deadline: December 31, 2018.

Call for papers: “Behavioral Aesthetics. Techne–Desire–Savoir-faire”, 52 (1/2019)

Issue “Behavioral Aesthetics. Techne–Desire–Savoir-faire”, 52 (1/2019). Editors: Daniel Ross (Universidad de Investigación de Tecnología Experimental Yachay, Ecuador) and Adrian Mróz (Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland). Preface with Anaïs Nony (Florida State University).

This issue will explore answers to the question “what does art do?” rather than “what is art?”. Topics on behavioral modernity, psychology, ethics, politics, sociology, economics or axiology, the philosophy of technology, culture, the philosophy of art, media, video games, memes, and education or other interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary are all welcome as well as any others related to the behavioral dimension of aesthetics. We invite authors to explore the expansion of the notion of the aesthetic to include the ancient Greek (αἴσθησις, aisthesis) meaning of sensibility, sentience, and perception. Thus, the issue is not limited to art, but invites reflections on the various practices and behaviors involved with the aesthetic such as decision making, playing, desire, acting, judging, evaluating, the problem of intimacy, and also the body or soma, feeling, sensation, the ability to suffer, trans and ecstasy, trans-formative powers, symbolism and symbolic violence, synesthesia, anesthesia, and so on. This also encompasses new perspectives on the notion of art as experience, as well as any arts (τέχνη, techne) embodying knowledge (ἐπίσταμαι, epistemai) of doing or making (savoir faire). Furthermore, we would appreciate articles that address the problem posed by the Greek (φάρμακον, pharmakon) in art, as not only as drugs, poisons and medicines, but also as the painter’s paint, scapegoats (social catharsis–φαρμακός, pharmakós), cosmetics, magic talismans and spells, songs, charms and enchanting, as well as rites and rituals.

We may not agree on what art is in a strict metaphysical or ontological definition, but we act as if we do, since works of art and anti-art are commonly considered to be results of action. To behave could be looked at as a joining of being and having, to contain oneself, to be-have, sich behaben, or se porter. Such a “behavioral stance” explores methods of analysis of the manipulative, regulating, and steering aspect (ethics, politics, markets, and economy) of the aesthetic and arts, searching for neobehavioral points of view on symbols and sensation as well as inter-behavioral and intra-behavioral aspects on relations and relationships like in view of new materialism or through the concept of intra-action. Some anticipated topics include:

•Techne incorporates the philosophy of technics and technology in addition to traditionally understood art. What is the role of technology in aesthetics today? How do they impact our habits? How do they create systems of value and evaluation? How do laboratory technologies like brain-Internet connections, brain-to-brain connections, the SciFi hive-mind, or modern Artificial Intelligence impact art? What are the technics of aesthetics?

•The aspect of desire would not only include problems of will, but also of attention, care, forgetting and lack. What does the aesthetic do with desire? What does desire do with behavior? How are art, desire, and behavior related? Is art addictive? Can designer drugs be works of art? How is desire (distraction) depicted in art, such as the narcotic soma of Huxley's Brave New World.

•The notions of savoir-faire and can-do denote an active rather than passive form of achieving artistic or aesthetic affect, perhaps in opposition to simple behavioral drives, like the ones behind market values. What forms of knowledge are gained from artistic experience? Does the aesthetic wrought capabilities? What is the relationship between behavior and stimuli? Is a work of art the mind itself?

The search for the know-how of how to live (savoir vivre) and the can-do in response to such questions is an issue faced by all living in contemporary hyper-industrial culture and society. We hope to provide some reflection that will give society an ability to shape its own aesthetic habits.

Submission deadline: September 30, 2018.

CFP: “Phenomenology in relation to the challenges of contemporary art”, 49 (2/2018).

Issue 49 (2/2018) “Phenomenology in relation to the challenges of contemporary art”, editors Piotr Schollenberger (University of Warsaw, Poland) and Monika Murawska (Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland).

In 1907, Edmund Husserl wrote to Hugo von Hofmannsthal:

The artist who ‘observes’ the world, in order to gain knowledgeof nature and manfor his own purposes, relates to it in a similar way as the phenomenologist. […]When he observes the world, it becomes phenomenon for him, its existence is indifferent, just as to the philosopher (in the critique of reason). The difference is that the artist, unlike the philosopher, dosen’t attempt to found the “meaning” of the world-phenomenon and grasp it in concepts, but appropriates it intuitively, in order to gather, out of its plenitude, materials for the creation of aesthetic forms.

From its very beginnings, phenomenology has carefully treated art and aesthetic phenomena as a special sphere, depicting the fact of the appearance of things, and of the world, within its framework. The aesthetic attitude enables the phenomenal nature of an experience to be captured: ‘to be is to appear’. At the same time, since the time of Husserl, phenomenological descriptions, as a result of corrections made by Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and many others, began to account for not only objective but also existential andcorporal dimensions.The description of ‘pure essences’ was perhaps not as interesting for artists and viewers of works of art as new ways to characterise aesthetic experience, taking into account the corporeal, affective, temporal, spatial, and cultural dimensions of art. In the work of some contemporary art theorists and artists one can find traces of the revolution represented by the discovery of the phenomenological method, as well as of the evolution through which it passed. Today, in the context of the emergence of new forms of art, such as performance art, installations, and videoart, in the face of the changes that have occurred in thinking about architectural form and sculpture, in relation to the new languages of dance and new concepts of listening and responding to music, we are well aware that, following Heidegger, we should reject the notion thatart ‘belongs in the domain of the pastry chef. Essentially it makes no difference whether the enjoyment of art serves to satisfy the refined taste of connoisseurs andaesthetes or serves for the moral elevation of the mind.’ Involvement in the world –which appears to us in many forms and shapes of which artists attempt to make sense – is a common point of reference for contemporary phenomenologists as well as for those who, in contesting certain traditional theoretical assumptions, define themselves as post-phenomenologists.

We invite you to submit articles dealing with the issue of a meeting ground of phenomenology on one hand and assorted artistic practicesand models of viewing art from the second half of the twentieth century on the other. We are less interested in approaches justifying the ‘relevance of phenomenology’, since this need not be justified and therefore does not constitute a philosophical problem, than in those showing how an attitude regarding the sphere of ‘appearance’ can enable the discovery of new dimensions of art and new kinds of aesthetic experience.

Paper submission date extension. Due to the large number of request we have extended the deadline for full paper submissions to the issue 'Phenomenology in relation to the challenges of contemporary art'. All Authors who have not yet submitted their manuscripts are invited to submit up to Sunday 21st January 2018.