Guilty Pleasures? Moral Contamination, Aesthetic Pleasure, Wagner and Bayreuth

• In Event: 2331 - Moral Crisis and Meaning in the Sociology of Culture

Abstract

Kantian theory asserts that art works can be understood, evaluated and enjoyed on their own terms by virtue of their aesthetic structures and sensory contours. However in the social world the capacity to enjoy art works is often threatened by moral violations and associations with evil. Polluted actions by artists or problematic uses of their work can reach over to spoil or deny the pleasure of their consumption. The paper looks to the paradigm case of Richard Wagner and the Bayreuth Festival, which are contaminated and made spiritually dangerous by multi-layered cultural and historical associations with anti-semitism, Hitler and the Third Reich. It draws from an interview study with Wagner fans to report on the techniques and folk-logics through which Wagner’s operas can still be enjoyed in light of this history.

Authors

• Philip Smith, Yale University

• Florian Stoll, Bayreuth Academy of African Studies