Classics 220 W08
THE MATTER OF AESTHETICS
Prof. James Porter
Tues. 2-5


This seminar will explore the materiality of art and aesthetics, as distinct from form and formalism (though we will entertain the idea of the materiality of form). The coverage will range from ancient to modern and especially contemporary thought, with an equally wide sampling of media and media-specific theories: texts, visual and sound objects, and mixed media that co-involve the senses, e.g., performance art. Readings will be drawn from the Presocratics (esp. Xenophanes), who coined the philosophical notion of matter, Plato and Aristotle (sel.), who resisted it, (briefly) Baumgarten, who coined modern aesthetics, Hegel (on sculpture), Delacroix and Baudelaire, who thought about pigment, lines, and surfaces, Pater (sel.), A. Riegel on post-classical and Byzantine aesthetics, Dewey (Art as Experience), who founded modern pragmatist aesthetics, Wm. James (Essays in Radical Empiricism, sel.), Shklovsky (essays), a sensualist wrongly labeled a formalist, Merleau-Ponty (sel.), M. Douglas on matter as disgrace and defilement, F. Jameson (sel.), S. Heath (sel.), J. McGann on textual materialism, J. Rancière, (The Division of the Sensible and The Flesh of Words, sel.), S. Stewart (Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, sel.), G. Bruns (The Material of Poetry), Laura Marks (Touch), Rei Terada (essays), Daniel Heller-Roazen (The Inner Touch: An Archaeology of Sensation), plus excerpts from poets, Homer and Pindar to the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, etc., though we won’t limit ourselves to texts, as part of the pleasure of materialism is its confrontation with matter in all its forms. I’d like to examine some visual art: Cycladic sculpture, Greek vases, modern painting, screen arts. The final shape of the class will depend on input from students, who will be asked to contribute two class presentations (one short, one on a research project) and a final seminar paper of article length. No language requirements. Students from all fields are welcome. Inquiries and suggestions to jport at umich.edu.