Read on Twitter
Someone scoffed this week at "everything is political" so
AESTHETICS or WHY EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL
I. WHAT ARE AESTHETICS?
An aesthetic is a cluster of sensori-emotional values. To talk about “aesthetics” is to recognize and study these values. What does all that mean? [1/22]
AESTHETICS or WHY EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL
I. WHAT ARE AESTHETICS?
An aesthetic is a cluster of sensori-emotional values. To talk about “aesthetics” is to recognize and study these values. What does all that mean? [1/22]
“Sensori-” means that aesthetics are something we perceive: the look of graphic design or clothes, the sound of music, the taste of food, the smell of cologne. “Emotional” means that we have feelings about those sensations, whether learned or instinctual. [2/22]
These include gut-level judgments like attraction, nostalgia, repulsion, or fear, and can precede and bypass rational thinking. [3/22]
Aesthetics are clusters because there are lots of ways to express a sensibility: think of the music, food, color schemes, and ways of talking that can add up to categories like “All-American,” “indie,” or “metal.” [4/22]
And think of how many clusters you recognize (as styles, looks, or identities) but don’t have names for. [5/22]
II. WHAT DO AESTHETICS DO?
Aesthetics are subtle but powerful tools of expression and persuasion, especially because our actions and ethics are usually more rooted in emotion and a sense of self than in reason—even if people won’t admit this. [6/22]
Aesthetics are subtle but powerful tools of expression and persuasion, especially because our actions and ethics are usually more rooted in emotion and a sense of self than in reason—even if people won’t admit this. [6/22]
So whether it’s a book, a building, a film, a font, fashion, wallpaper, a song, or whatever, a cultural “text” (which need not actually have text, by the way) advocates sensori-emotional values. Things advertise themselves. [7/22]
Specifically, a text advocates a worldview in which its aesthetics are desirable, either as a conscious choice or as a baseline assumption. [8/22]
It puts a vote into world, saying, “This style and its whole way of being are important!” In understanding a text, try asking questions such as: What beliefs, experiences, or ways of being does this assume? [9/22]
Or ask: What would the world look like if this text were the only thing that anyone ever read/watched/listened to? [10/22]
Aesthetic messages can be independent of surface-level plots or topics. For example, a politician’s speech may superficially describe a new law, but its phrasing might also tell us a lot about the cultural assumptions underlying the politician’s worldview. [11/22]
A Beyoncé lyric might describe feeling desire, but the song can furthermore compel women to bond over rejecting cultural messages of shame surrounding their desire—and its rhythm might advocate for the appreciation of Latinx music, and by extension, Latinx culture. [12/22]
A text advocates for the situations of its creation and consumption, for the types of bodies, attitudes, desires, economics, politics, technologies, geographies, philosophies, and background experiences that it treats as normal or special [13/22]
(and likewise it advocates against those that it doesn’t account for or otherwise excludes). [14/22]
III. WHAT ARE THE STAKES OF AESTHETICS?
Although one text itself may have limited impact on a given individual, we create our world and our identities out of texts: [15/22]
Although one text itself may have limited impact on a given individual, we create our world and our identities out of texts: [15/22]
our favorite songs and outfits, our homes and cars and furniture, our speech mannerisms, our social media presence—all inherited from culture’s giant (but ultimately limited) menu. Enough drops in the proverbial bucket eventually fill it. [16/22]
Choices in love, spirituality, spending, and voting are informed by our cultural taste. The effects and meanings of texts can vary and change. Meaning is neither singular nor absolute, and is instead something we do—think of it more like a verb (“to mean”) than a noun. [17/22]
Even though our experiences are subjective, they are networked in a shared culture, and they often have enough in common that we understand each other as we discuss them. We might then use the word intersubjective to describe meanings. [18/22]
There is no special weight to what the creator of a text “really meant,” whether it is “art for art’s sake,” or commercial, or whatever. These notions are irrelevant to how texts act freely within and contribute to the world. [19/22]
Because the creation, continued existence, and use of a text are wrapped up in human choices, and because human choices affect and are affected by people’s relationships to each other and to all kinds of power and pleasure, everything is political. [20/22]
Everything is political even (and perhaps especially) when it makes no claim to be. The “political” doesn’t just mean governmental stuff; it concerns all the ways that people organize and use power, consciously or otherwise. [21/22]
Grasping all this can be enlightening, exhilarating, and exhausting. To ask what sensori-emotional values are circulating before our very eyes is to take a vital step in navigating the world with intelligence and compassion. [22/22 & end]
