I am an alumna of Macalester College with degrees in Philosophy and Studio Art and a current graduate student at Prescott College, working toward a Master's of Science in Counseling and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Expressive Arts Therapy.
My primary areas of interest are mental health and wellness, the intersections of art with meaning, myth, and language, and explorations of gender and other social dynamics through post-modern thought.
Here, I lay the groundwork for approaching the question of artistic meaning and its societal impa... more Here, I lay the groundwork for approaching the question of artistic meaning and its societal impact — whether reinforcement or subversion of cultural narratives and structures. This foundation is in four parts. First, I will explore the relationship of artistic meaning to linguistic meaning and translation, which will illuminate the process of interpretation as transformative and necessarily distortional. From there, I will consider in what sense artistic meaning is yet maintained through translation. Lévi-Strauss’ discussion of mythology, elucidated through the second part of this paper, will provide a model for understanding this through the linguistic possibility of immanent transcendence. Given Lévi-Strauss’ assertion that “the purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction” (229), the third section will explore the need for this function through Julia Kristeva’s explanation of the abject in the maintenance of meaning itself, and through Talal Asad’s related discussion of the psychical impact of the instability of meaning on the ideological or societal level, as revealed through experiences of horror. Finally, I will show that art is capable of functioning on the levels of both poetry and myth: aesthetically and without possibility of accurate translation, yet also as a tool for navigating epistemic contradictions — the destabilizing contradictions within a social subject’s foundational understanding of meaning and identity. The myth-like aspect of artistic meaning can thus stabilize and reassure meaning for a subject whose epistemic framework is challenged. This paper will advance a theory of art as it reinforces and reifies a societal mythos, as a first and necessary step toward understanding how it might, in contrast, operate to subvert the mythos and thus structures of power.
When an artwork is not seen as holding meaning in its own right and independently of the thought ... more When an artwork is not seen as holding meaning in its own right and independently of the thought or will of a subject, it is reduced to a representation, a sign tied to but distinct from a meaning. In the same moment, the work is reduced to presences and absences: What is in the image, what is left out? What are the objects that constitute the object-whole? How might we decipher the meaning that evidently lies hidden behind each represented object, just as one might break a code with a table of corresponding meanings? What is ignored in this framework for understanding is a place for the unsaid. In contrast, the spaces between objects, when seen as equally important as the objects themselves, take on the weight of presence, are meaningful emptiness. These, too, are determinative of the artwork as a whole. Heidegger’s discussion of language in “A Dialogue on Language,” as well as in his chapter on “The Way to Language,” where he explores certain concepts of the “unsaid,” provide a framework for understanding negative space as visual silence or stillness. This essay explores meaningful emptiness as a visual parallel to verbal silence and the implications of this parallel within the postmodern project of deconstructing of Western dichotomies.
Here, I lay the groundwork for approaching the question of artistic meaning and its societal impa... more Here, I lay the groundwork for approaching the question of artistic meaning and its societal impact — whether reinforcement or subversion of cultural narratives and structures. This foundation is in four parts. First, I will explore the relationship of artistic meaning to linguistic meaning and translation, which will illuminate the process of interpretation as transformative and necessarily distortional. From there, I will consider in what sense artistic meaning is yet maintained through translation. Lévi-Strauss’ discussion of mythology, elucidated through the second part of this paper, will provide a model for understanding this through the linguistic possibility of immanent transcendence. Given Lévi-Strauss’ assertion that “the purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction” (229), the third section will explore the need for this function through Julia Kristeva’s explanation of the abject in the maintenance of meaning itself, and through Talal Asad’s related discussion of the psychical impact of the instability of meaning on the ideological or societal level, as revealed through experiences of horror. Finally, I will show that art is capable of functioning on the levels of both poetry and myth: aesthetically and without possibility of accurate translation, yet also as a tool for navigating epistemic contradictions — the destabilizing contradictions within a social subject’s foundational understanding of meaning and identity. The myth-like aspect of artistic meaning can thus stabilize and reassure meaning for a subject whose epistemic framework is challenged. This paper will advance a theory of art as it reinforces and reifies a societal mythos, as a first and necessary step toward understanding how it might, in contrast, operate to subvert the mythos and thus structures of power.
When an artwork is not seen as holding meaning in its own right and independently of the thought ... more When an artwork is not seen as holding meaning in its own right and independently of the thought or will of a subject, it is reduced to a representation, a sign tied to but distinct from a meaning. In the same moment, the work is reduced to presences and absences: What is in the image, what is left out? What are the objects that constitute the object-whole? How might we decipher the meaning that evidently lies hidden behind each represented object, just as one might break a code with a table of corresponding meanings? What is ignored in this framework for understanding is a place for the unsaid. In contrast, the spaces between objects, when seen as equally important as the objects themselves, take on the weight of presence, are meaningful emptiness. These, too, are determinative of the artwork as a whole. Heidegger’s discussion of language in “A Dialogue on Language,” as well as in his chapter on “The Way to Language,” where he explores certain concepts of the “unsaid,” provide a framework for understanding negative space as visual silence or stillness. This essay explores meaningful emptiness as a visual parallel to verbal silence and the implications of this parallel within the postmodern project of deconstructing of Western dichotomies.
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