Producing Pathways to Action: Alienation and Aesthetic Experience

• In Event: 4262 - Experience and Evaluation

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that Marx and Dewey’s theories of alienation and aesthetic experience are two sides of the same coin. The necessary components of aesthetic experience for Dewey are a self, a material object which is transformed, a receiver of the object, and a relational environment which includes both the material world and the community. These four aspects are precisely the aspects that Marx identifies as estranged through the process of industrial production. For Dewey the aesthetic process of production brings the artist into unison with herself, with the product of her labor, with other human beings, and with the material environment. The process of production, as described by Marx and Dewey, provides an account of the social self connected to the material world and to objects. Aesthetic experience, further, is an account of micro-social change. Through aesthetic experience, a person reorients herself temporally to the material world, thus opening pathways for action and social change.

Author

• Sarah M. Neitz, University of Notre Dame