Aesthetic Anxiety analyzes uncanny repetition in psychology, literature, philosophy, and film, and produces a new narrative about the centrality of aesthetics in modern subjectivity. The often horrible, but sometimes also enjoyable, experience of anxiety can be an aesthetic mode as well as a psychological state. Johnson's elucidation of that state in texts by authors from Kant to Rilke demonstrates how estrangement can produce attachment, and repositions Romanticism as an engine of modernity.
Anxiety Aesthetics is the first book to consider a prehistory of contemporaneity in China through the emergent creative practices in the aftermath of the Mao era. Arguing that socialist residues underwrite contemporary Chinese art, complicating its theorization through Maoism, Jennifer Dorothy Lee traces a selection of historical events and controversies in late 1970s and early 1980s Beijing. Lee offers a fresh critical frame for doing symptomatic readings of protest ephemera and artistic interventions in the Beijing Spring social movement of 1978–80, while exploring the rhetoric of heated debates waged in institutional contexts prior to the '85 New Wave. Lee demonstrates how socialist aesthetic theories and structures continued to shape young artists' engagement with both space and selfhood and occupied the minds of figures looking to reform the nation. In magnifying this fleeting moment, Lee provides a new historical foundation for the unprecedented global exposure of contemporary Chinese art today.
A history of Kantian and post-Kantian thought and of a foundational stage of German orientalism. German orientalism has been understood, variously, as a form of latent colonialism, as a quest for academic hegemony in Europe, and as an effort to diagnose and treat the ills of modern Western culture. Nicholas Germana identifiesa different impetus for orientalism in German thought, seeing it as an effort to come to grips with the Other within German society at the turn of the nineteenth century and within the dynamics of subjectivity itself. Drawing largely on work by feminist scholars, the book uncovers an anxiety at the core of Kantian and post-Kantian thought, thus shedding light on its derogation (or elevation) of Oriental cultures. Kant's philosophy of freedom is a construction of modern, Western masculinity. Reason, which alone can make freedom possible, subverts and orders chaotic nature and protects the rational subject from the enervating influences of the senses and the imagination. The feminized, sexually charged Orient is a threat to the historical achievement of Western male rationality. Germana's book emphasizes aesthetics in the German orientalist discourse, a subject that has received little attention todate. In this tradition of German thought, aesthetics became a form of spiritual anthropology, ordering and classifying societies, races, and genders in terms of their ability to master the senses and the imagination, forces thatundermine rational autonomy, the very source of human (i.e., masculine) dignity. Nicholas A. Germana is Professor of History at Keene State College, New Hampshire.
Envy, irritation, paranoia—in contrast to powerful and dynamic negative emotions like anger, these non-cathartic states of feeling are associated with situations in which action is blocked or suspended. In her examination of the cultural forms to which these affects give rise, Sianne Ngai suggests that these minor and more politically ambiguous feelings become all the more suited for diagnosing the character of late modernity. Along with her inquiry into the aesthetics of unprestigious negative affects such as irritation, envy, and disgust, Ngai examines a racialized affect called “animatedness,” and a paradoxical synthesis of shock and boredom called “stuplimity.” She explores the politically equivocal work of these affective concepts in the cultural contexts where they seem most at stake, from academic feminist debates to the Harlem Renaissance, from late-twentieth-century American poetry to Hollywood film and network television. Through readings of Herman Melville, Nella Larsen, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Hitchcock, Gertrude Stein, Ralph Ellison, John Yau, and Bruce Andrews, among others, Ngai shows how art turns to ugly feelings as a site for interrogating its own suspended agency in the affirmative culture of a market society, where art is tolerated as essentially unthreatening. Ngai mobilizes the aesthetics of ugly feelings to investigate not only ideological and representational dilemmas in literature—with a particular focus on those inflected by gender and race—but also blind spots in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. Her work maps a major intersection of literary studies, media and cultural studies, feminist studies, and aesthetic theory.
After the "Black is Beautiful" movement of the 1960s, black body politics have been overdetermined by both the familiar fetishism of light skin as well as the counter-fetishism of dark skin. Moving beyond the longstanding focus on the tragic mulatta and making room for the study of the fetishism of both light-skinned and dark-skinned blackness, Margo Natalie Crawford analyzes depictions of colorism in the work of Gertrude Stein, Wallace Thurman, William Faulkner, Black Arts poets, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and John Edgar Wideman. In Dilution Anxiety and the Black Phallus, Crawford adds images of skin color dilution as a type of castration to the field of race and psychoanalysis. An undercurrent of light-skinned blackness as a type of castration emerges within an ongoing story about the feminizing of light skin and the masculinizing of dark skin. Crawford confronts the web of beautified and eroticized brands and scars, created by colorism, crisscrossing race, gender, and sexuality. The depiction of the horror of these aestheticized brands and scars begins in the white-authored and black-authored modernist literature examined in the first chapters. A call for the end of the ongoing branding emerges with sheer force in the post-Black movement novels examined in the final chapters.
This pioneering volume offers an expansive introduction to the relatively new field of evolutionary studies in imaginative culture. Contributors from psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, and the humanities probe the evolved human imagination and its artefacts. The book forcefully demonstrates that imagination is part of human nature. Contributors explore imaginative culture in seven main areas: Imagination: Evolution, Mechanisms and Functions Myth and Religion Aesthetic Theory Music Visual and Plastic Arts Video Games and Films Oral Narratives and Literature Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture widens the scope of evolutionary cultural theory to include much of what “culture” means in common usage. The contributors aim to convince scholars in both the humanities and the evolutionary human sciences that biology and imaginative culture are intimately intertwined. The contributors illuminate this broad theoretical argument with comprehensive insights into religion, ideology, personal identity, and many particular works of art, music, literature, film, and digital media. The chapters “Imagination, the Brain’s Default Mode Network, and Imaginative Verbal Artifacts” and “The Role of Aesthetic Style in Alleviating Anxiety About the Future” are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This book explores how states and traits of anxiety are reflected in the style and structure of certain works by three key figures of modern Scandinavian literature: August Strindberg, Inger Christensen, Karl Ove Knausgård. On the basis of particular literary analyses, it develops a literary phenomenology of anxiety as well as a hermeneutical theory of anxiety that considers the ways in which anxiety has been represented in various genres of modern Scandinavian literature from the last three centuries. Whereas the former uncovers the ways in which anxiety is reflected in literary form and style, the latter interprets the relationship between author, text, and reader as well as the effects of genre. As Strindberg’s works capture the tensions between existential indeterminism and naturalistic determinism and make way for negative aesthetic pleasure, poetry such as Christensen’s challenges scientistic and psychiatric conceptions of anxiety and instigates a change in how humans conduct themselves in relation to the experience of anxiety. Finally, Knausgård’s autofictive work gives voice to the socially anxious self of late modernity and incites moments of self-intensification and reorganizes the fragile self of contemporary society. In this way, it becomes clear that literature is an outstanding archive of representations and transformations in the cultural history of anxiety. Literature is an aesthetic medium of expression and reflection that represents anxiety in a number of ways that may enrich our understanding of anxiety today. This work thus contributes to cultural and literary scholarship that contests the subjugation of anxiety to a scientific world view and aims to expose the imaginative and creative dimensions of anxiety that are often ignored in contemporary public discourse and policy.
ESSENTIAL PSYCHIATRY FOR THE AESTHETIC PRACTITIONER Aesthetic practice requires an understanding of human psychology, yet professionals across cosmetic medicine and related fields receive no formal training in identifying and managing psychological conditions. Essential Psychiatry for the Aesthetic Practitioner provides concise yet comprehensive guidance on approaching patient assessment, identifying common psychiatric diseases, and managing challenging situations in cosmetic practice. This much-needed guide brings together contributions by dermatologists, plastic surgeons, psychiatrists, psychologists, and other experts to help practitioners understand the role of psychology in cosmetic practice and improve interpersonal relations with their patients. Assuming no previous background knowledge in psychiatry, the text provides cosmetic practitioners of all training and experience levels with clear guidance, real-world advice, and effective psychological tools to assist their practice. Through common clinical scenarios, readers learn to determine if a patient is a good candidate for a cosmetic procedure, enhance the patient experience, deal with difficult personalities in the cosmetic clinic, recognize obsessive compulsive and body dysmorphic disorders, and more. Describes how to use psychologically informed approaches and treatments for aesthetic patients Features easy-to-use psychological tools such as motivational interviewing, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, and acceptance and commitment therapy Includes extensive references and practical tips for understanding the psychological implications of cosmetic treatments Covers cosmetic consultations for female, male, and transgender patients Discusses the history and psychology of beauty as well as the role of cosmetics and cosmeceuticals Emphasizes the importance of screening for common psychological comorbidities Addresses the impact of social media on self-image and its role in a growing crisis in beauty and appearance Highlights the need to develop new guidelines to treat rapidly evolving patient populations Explores how gender fluidity and variations in ethnicity are changing the approaches to aesthetic patients Essential Psychiatry for the Aesthetic Practitioner is required reading for dermatologists, plastic surgeons, cosmetic doctors, dentists, nurses, and physician assistants and all other professionals working in aesthetic medicine.
Tracing the figure of Black Venus in literature and visual arts from different periods and geographies, Exploring the Black Venus Figure in Aesthetic Practices discusses how aesthetic practices may restore the racialized female body in feminist, anti-racist and postcolonial terms.
