The Aesthetics of Others

Abstract

Translated by Érica Giesbrecht.

The instigating texts by Els Lagrou and Shirley Campbell published in this session dialogue, to a greater or lesser extent, with a controversy on the same topic that occurred almost 20 years ago, in England, and whose transcription has become a classic for those who venture into anthropology of art. In 1993, there were a series of debates involving controversial issues in anthropology, later published in the collection Key Debates in Anthropology, edited by Tim Ingold. Among the debates, one drew special attention, especially to anthropologists who, little by little, returned to dealing with the production of material culture and also with performances, both in Western contexts and in “non-Western” realities. This is a discussion between Joana Overing, Peter Gow, Jeremy Coote and Howard Morphy about the possibility of cross-cultural use of the notion of aesthetics.

The heated debate did not just mobilize these four intellectuals. In addition to them, a series of other very important names for studies of the interface between anthropology and the arts made themselves heard: from the audience, among others, Alfred Gell and Robert Layton spoke. Howard Morphy and Jeremy Coote, two researchers who, at that time, were already producing avidly on the subject, spoke out in favor of using the notion of aesthetics as a transcultural category. On the other hand, Peter Gow and Joanna Overing took a position contrary to the universal application of the term “aesthetics”.

Of undeniable importance for those who work with the arts from an anthropological perspective, this debate has been read and cited by several authors. However, it is noted that the fundamental question  “can the term aesthetics be used universally?”  has not yet been satisfactorily answered and remains a dilemma dividing the academic community. Due to this impasse, Pro invited two researchers who face this issue in their work. Anthropologists Els Lagrou and Shirley Campbell accepted the challenge of each producing a text for our Debates session, returning to the same question.

According to Anthony Shelton (1992), the great obstacle to resolving the impasse comes from the fact that it is not clear what is considered “aesthetics”. The definition of the term should be established in advance, so that an effective debate on the concept can be held. According to the author, the polysemy of the term “aesthetics” in texts produced by the human sciences is so great that every author would need to determine, beforehand, the meaning of the term they are using.

Indeed, this appears to have been the crux of the 1993 debate in Manchester. Howard Morphy and Jeremy Coote argued that the category is, indeed, applicable to all societies, based on the assumption that all people have an aesthetic sensitivity (linked to sensory perception and the judgments arising from it), although always culturally shaped. Peter Gow and Joanna Overing said they were against the widespread use of the concept, based on the argument that it is a specific area of knowledge, whose emergence and development took place within the history of arts in the West.

We see, therefore, that the conceptions of aesthetics that were being discussed were quite different from each other. No one would doubt that aesthetic sensitivity is part of human “nature”, as Morphy and Coote professed. At the same time, few would disagree that, if we take Aesthetics as a branch of Philosophy consolidated in the 18th century, its use as a universal category will not be plausible.

Contrary to what occurred in the first debate, both texts that were written especially for the Proa start from the same idea of aesthetics. As a result, the two texts have many more similarities than oppositions to each other. Els Lagrou, professor at the Postgraduate Program in Sociology and Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and Shirley Campbell, visiting professor at the Department of Anthropology and Archeology at the Australian National University, in Canberra, both advocate the need to realize that Terms such as aesthetics and art can be applied to various social contexts, as long as both are used in a less “harsh” and ethnocentric way.

The authors' consensus regarding the transculturality of the notion of aesthetics is due, in part, to the recent development of studies that have the material culture and performances of various societies as objects of reflection. On the other hand, the redefinition of these notions by the Western artistic field itself helped to realize that, not even in their original environment, these concepts can be thought of according to classical definitions, linked, for example, to the idea of “beautiful” or of the artist's genius.

Another interesting aspect, which stands out in both contributions, is the interrelationship between the Anthropology of art and the Anthropology of things or objects. Thinking about artistic practices and objects from an anthropological perspective means unveiling social relations and intentionalities condensed in them or transmitted by them – a point that, coincidentally, is present in other sections of this issue of Proa, including the Gallery