Can't get away from Kant

-Kojin Karatani discusses “aestheti-centrism,” viewing an object, person, culture, etc. with disinterest for anything except aesthetic appreciation. An aestheticentrist brackets off all other concerns. “However, the characteristic of the aestheticentrists is that they forget to remove the brackets. They confuse the reality of the other with what is achieved by bracketing. Or they confuse their respect for beauty with respect for the other.” (153) Karatani's critique is centered around Kant's aesthetic theory of disinterestedness. How would utilizing Hanah Arendt's theory of political judgment alter/re-shape Karatani's argument? I am not overly familiar with Arendt's work, but when reading selections from Kant's third critique for the last section of 503 I recalled that she uses the third critique as the basis for her theory of political judgment. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Arendt, Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves explains that “it is only in Kant's Critique of Judgment that we find a conception of judgment as the ability to deal with particulars in their particularity, that is, without subsuming them under a pre-given universal, but actively searching the universal out of the particular.” With this in mind, in reference to last week's readings about mis-reading and misunderstanding, could we claim that aestheticentrists have misunderstood Kant's aesthetic philosophy? Or does his philosophy contain the possibility for both readings?

-Karatani's discussion about bracketing led me to reflect on Maha Marouan's luncheon talk last week. She mentioned how in the novel Tituba talking about her powers is meant to be a parody of her helplessness in real life. Maryse Condé gives a comic representation of Tituba as having supernatural powers. At the same time, Marouan said it is important to remember that there is a serious discourse in Condé's, that the novel contains both serious concern and parody. How might reading both of these elements in the novel illustrate a dynamic process of bracketing and unbracketing? How might the fact that Condé's husband translated the novel “to fit her into the European canon” relate to this idea of bracketing?

- Stuart Hall on the depiction of the “New World”: “At a moment's notice, Paradise could turn into 'barbarism.' Both versions of the discourse operated simultaneously. They might seem to negate each other, but it is more accurate to think of them as mirror-images. Both were exaggerations, founded on stereotypes, feeding off each other. Each required the other. They were in opposition, but systematically related.” (214) I keep running across descriptions of women as houris in the literature I am reading, for example, Wollstoncraft, Lippard's Quaker City, Pickney The Young Carolinians. This idea of the poles of Paradise and Hell (barbarism) as mirror-images is a useful concept when formulating feminist critiques of this literature, and in light of this concept, I want to reformulate my critique of Wollstoncraft (see my blog post on her). On the houris in Paradise Quran 52:20, “They will be reclining on thrones lined up, and We will marry them to fair women with large, [beautiful] eyes.” Other references are at Q 44:54; 55:72; 56:22.