All entries for Friday 11 June 2004

June 11, 2004

First idea for a PhD proposal

Over the last couple of days I have been distilling an idea about what might justify several years of academic work. Interestingly this idea has emerged from what I have been blogging about, as well as the work I have been doing in the Arts Faculty at Warwick. The idea is to give a much clearer idea about what the arts are, why arts education and theraphy is essential, and what follows from that in terms of cultural and political actions. But fundamentally, it is about a philosophical project that seeks to demonstrate the proper position and importance of aesthetics, which is no longer as an adjunct of epistemology. So here's my first thoughts:

Each art has a different arrangement of sensory experience that is drawn from and develops an everyday machinery of experience. As such we can talk about a 'clinical essence of each art' (Deleuze, Francis Bacon, The Logic of Sensation p.54). But what does Deleuze mean by clinical essence? His work with the psychotherapist Guattari was concerned with seeing psyhcological disorders as psycholgical orders (sensory arrangements) interrupted, 'botched' as they say in A Thousand Plateaus, carried out without the required support and context. In response to this they see the 'clinical essence' as being both the sensory arrangement and the support required for its successful operation (from, for example, the psychotherapist). This is a key point in Deleuze's aesthetics, one that also occurs at around the same time as Guattari's Chaosmosis. Art is both a sensory aesthetic expression and a therapy that supports and enhances that expression. And following from that, in the process of establishing and developing that clinical essence, it makes sense for there to be a pedagogical practice for each art, ensuring that the clinical essence is realised. Guattari, involved as he was directly in the clinical practice, was concerned with developing this pedagogy of the arts as therapy.

So the claim then is that there is, appropriate to each art:

  • a manner of arranging sensory experiece which defines the art;
  • a clinical essence defined by that sensory experience;
  • a pedagogical practice;
  • an evaluative judgement (aesthetics) to guide that pedagogical practice.

In the book on Francis Bacon, Deleuze goes into great detail about painting, and in some detail about music. In Proust and Signs, and elsewhere, he talks of prose and poetry. Dance on the other hand, which has an interesting relationship with both music and painting, remains to be explored. And perhaps we can apply this approach more widely. The study of history, for example, as an art with its own sensory arrangements, clinical essence, pedagogy and aesthetics. And how about languages, mathematics, sociology, the sciences, which now rather than being seen as solely motivated by a universal progression of knowledge are instead justified as therapeautic processes in themselves.

I'm just working on some short summaries of D&G's thoughts on the various art forms, including more on painting from the Francis Bacon book. That'll appear here shortly.


Robert O'Toole : 11 Jun 2004 10:59 |  Tags:    |  Comments (13) |  Report a problem