Taste, Disgust, and Feminist Aesthetics

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Elizabeth Keathley, Associate Professor (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: The fourth volume in the Routledge series “Understanding Feminist Philosophy,” Carolyn Korsmeyer’s Gender and Aesthetics: An Introduction, aims to provide undergraduate philosophy students with some grounding in feminist aesthetics. The initial chapters provide a clear, although not unproblematical, summary of the ways gender is implicated in aesthetic theories of Western philosophy, how these implications bear on women’s artistic education and practice, and feminist critiques of Western aesthetics. The final chapters theorize beyond traditional aesthetics to contextualize the challenging art of the 20th and 21st centuries, especially certain types of feminist visual and performance art. Particularly noteworthy are Korsmeyer’s discussions of feminist artists’ use of the abject and disgust as an aesthetic response. While these are challenging issues, and Korsmeyer must be applauded for taking them on, they raise numerous questions that she fails to address, and sometimes even to acknowledge. Although Korsmeyer includes music in the earlier chapters, the later chapters deal almost exclusively with visual art, and this omission raises questions about whether music is compatible with more recent aesthetic theories.

Additional Information

Publication
Action, Criticism, Theory for Music Education Vol. 4, no. 1
Language: English
Date: 2006
Keywords
Book Review, Feminism, Philosophy, Aesthetics, Musicology

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