Subjectivity and resistance through aesthetics

pp. 241-265

in: Thomas Teo, Outline of theoretical psychology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

Aesthetics is still a neglected field in theoretical psychology. The marginal status of aesthetics within theoretical psychology might be based on a notion that studies in epistemology, ethics, and ontology have an immediate relevance to the discipline and profession, whereas aesthetics is assumed to be superfluous. Discussing the concept of the psychological humanities, dimensions of a theory of subjectivity are presented that include socio-subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and intra-subjectivity. Based on the idea that a purely cognitive approach to resistance is limited, opportunities for the arts in engendering resistance in these three forms of resistance in subjectivity are presented. Beyond the consumerism and the commodification of art, its cooption by power, or its legitimizing and reproducing ideology in neoliberal society, it is argued that aesthetics may be an area of life that allows for a new stream of resistance. Using classical and current examples from literature, the fine arts, and the conceptual and performing arts, possible transformations in subjectivity are elaborated.