2025 - The Impassible Face: A Semiotic Genealogy of Emotional Opacity

In 'Reality and Its Shadow' , Levinas dismisses knowledge as a whole from art. This has deep implications for the ethical. The aesthetic event has nothing to do with the ethical event – art does not seem to hold a place for ethical knowledge. This situation is problematic with respect to the conflicting phenomenological evidence (as beholders or readers we have extensive ethical experience) as well as with respect to Levinas himself, who occasionally relies on works of art in his ethical phenomenological analyses. My article aims to fill in the blank spaces by finding a place for the ethical in Levinas's model of ethical signification in art. To start with, I elaborate on the notion of ethical experience (falling short of the ethical event) by way of László Tengelyi's work on time-art and his conversation with Levinas. Next, I turn to Levinas's portrayal of the insomnia of art, where the traces of such an experience can be located in the ebb and flow of consciousness, in the vicinity of the anonymous event, and on the way to the critical articulation of this event. In the second part of the article, I try to capitalize on this genetic model of ethical knowledge with reference to the faces of art. I attempt to show how in the in-depth experience provided by film (for example, in Herbert Ross's classic, Play It Again, Sam) faces come alive and signify. Rather than tying them in with the sublime, I argue for a limited yet undeniable presence of exteriority in the faces of the movie.

Patrimonium.Mk, 2020

Two unique texts which are crucial for the cultural history of the face were published in 1919: “The Uncanny” by Sigmund Freud and the short story “The Erased Face” by the Czech author Richard Weiner. While Freud depicts his failure to recognize his own face in the mirror, Weiner’s text focuses on the image of a head-like “oval stub” devoid of any human features except the eyes. The paper deals with the phenomenon of disfiguration, both in the context of the peculiar aesthetics of “formless” and in relation to “broken faces” (gueules cassées) who suffered massive facial injuries in World War I. The central image of a face without a face is interpreted as an intermedial figure which connects literary, visual and historical memory while heralding the aesthetics of the post-modern portrait, especially in paintings by Francis Bacon, rendering identity through deformation. The narrative and images of losing one’s face are further discussed in connection with contemporary psychoanalysis.

Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art was published just over a century ago in 1911 and remains the seminal text by which the spiritual in art is historically considered. Both a representational and abstract painter, Bauhaus teacher and artist's artist 'prophet,' Kandinsky's theories were elucidated in numerous private and published texts and realised by his paintings. New art was resonating as a result of Impressionism throughout Europe, Russia, their Scandinavian neighbours, and the 'New World.' Paul Cezanne's statement: 'An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all' 1 reflected artists and intellectuals of Modernism were confronting 'feeling' and its ability to express traditional, new and folk religions through abstract symbolism. These works were avant-garde, non-traditional, and non-representational per se in appearance. Then as now, without research as a result of Habermas' address of the post-secular, much religious and spiritual works of art remain incognito in both art history and the history of religious art, which remains predominantly categorised by denominational orientations of representation.

Emotions: History, Culture, Society, 2018

What role do the arts play in the study of the history of emotions? This essay reflects on the position that aesthetic works and arts-oriented methodologies have occupied in the field's development since the early 2000s. It begins by connecting artistic sources to anxieties about impressionism within cultural history, before looking at examples from literature that help illustrate the advantages works of art can bring to the study of emotion over time. Chief among these benefits is the power of artistic sources to create emotional worlds for their audiences-including, of course, historians. Ultimately, in arguing for a greater use of aesthetic works in our field, the essay makes the case for a more overtly emotional history of the emotions.

Theory & Psychology, 2020

A significant number of articles published in Theory & Psychology have been inspired by, or discuss, Vygotsky’s contribution to psychology. However, most of the available publications and discussions on Vygotsky overlook his theory of art and emotions and, more broadly, his view on subjectivity. In this article we offer a reading of Vygotsky’s The Psychology of Art. According to our interpretation, art is conceived in this theory as a social technique for (re)constructing life and transforming bodies; human emotions are dialogical processes, culturally and semiotically created, and historically transformed. Our theoretical perspective differs from some other interpretations of Vygotsky’s work because of its emphasis on the centrality of emotions in psychological life, and particularly on the intertwining of sociogenesis and microgenesis. Through emotions, discourse practices and cultural techniques have transformative effects on bodily reorganization ( catharsis) and subjective expe...

This thesis analyses the concepts of affectivity and abjection in relation to contemporary art practice. Its main focus is the strategic use of notions of abjection by artists and theorists in relation to "abject art", particularly in Australia, America and Britain, from 1989 to 1998. In particular, the thesis examines the limits of the application of Julia Kristeva"s theory of abjection in art practice and discourse. It argues that the development of a strategy of abjection in art presupposes that "abject" bodily matter has a predetermined capacity to generate affect. This presumed capacity to affect audiences is regarded as investing the "abject" with a kind of "guarantee" of political efficacy. Thus, abjection has been understood as a template for a repeatable transgressive strategy for contemporary art practice.